Both sides have a point. Barring the emergence of some really credible documentation, it’s going to be nearly impossible to informally adjudicate—formal adjudication being absolutely impossible—the accusation. Too much time has passed.

On the other hand, the very recent precedent set by the mainstream media and mainstream liberals during the Kavanaugh episode is that all accusations should be revisited, no matter how old. Indeed, one could make a better argument for considering Reade’s accusation than Blasey Ford’s: the latter concerns behavior that occurred during the accused person’s teenage years in the early 1980s, whereas Biden allegedly committed his transgression while a sitting U.S. senator. And again, Biden himself has taken the position that we should believe women even if it takes them a very, very long time to come forward.

It seems unlikely the Reade accusation can sink Biden’s candidacy, but whether Democratic primary voters and the mainstream media are willing to air it out as they did Kavanaugh’s will tell us a lot about what “believe all women” actually means.