Former vice president Joe Biden doesn't always act like someone who wants to be president. The presumptive Democratic nominee keeps telling people not to vote for him.
Most of the time, Biden will pick a fight with a potential supporter and tell them to vote for someone else. On occasion, though, Biden will suggest that all voters who maintain a certain belief—that ex-staffer Tara Reade's accusation of sexual assault against him is true, for example—should vote against him.
"I think they should vote their heart, and if they believe Tara Reade they probably shouldn't vote for me," Biden said during a recent interview with MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. "I wouldn't vote for me if I believed Tara Reade."
That's a lot of Americans who shouldn't be casting votes for Joe Biden. In a Harvard-Harris poll published earlier this month, a majority of respondents—55 percent—said they at least "somewhat" believed Reade's allegation that Biden sexually assaulted the then-Senate staffer in 1993.
A Monmouth University poll published earlier this month didn't give respondents the option to express partial belief, but still found that a plurality of Americans—37 percent—believe Reade's allegation against Biden is "probably true," compared with 32 percent who said it probably isn't true.
Among independent voters, an ever larger plurality—42 percent—were inclined to believe Reade's allegation, compared with just 22 percent who said otherwise. Just 20 percent of Democrats said they thought Reade was telling the truth, compared with 55 percent who said Reade was probably lying.
Reade's allegation, and the media's foolish handling of it, has thrown the so-called #MeToo movement into disarray by forcing many advocates to awkwardly embrace a different standard than the one used to assess allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings.
Prominent Democrats, including Biden himself, previously made sweeping claims about how accusations of sexual assault against powerful men should be assessed. "For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you've got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she's talking about is real," Biden said during the Kavanaugh hearings.
So, if you agree with Biden, don't vote for Biden, according to Biden.