“Just getting pulled into that discussion harms Biden,” said Amanda Renteria, who was national political director of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “Headlines matter no matter what the facts end up being. … This isn’t going away, obviously. And what you’ve learned in the last 48 hours is this is a narrative folks are going to want to push.”…

Some Democrats fear the accusation — even if it fails to stick with the electorate — could muddy a potent line of attack on Trump, who has been accused of sexual assault and misconduct by multiple women, and enable his allies to mount false equivalency attacks against Biden.

Chris Lippincott, a Texas-based Democratic strategist who ran a super PAC opposing Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018, said that “one of the things that has consistently aided [Trump] is that he is held to such a low standard. That’s not a standard to which Joe Biden is held.”

Regardless of the merits of the Reade accusation, Lippincott said, “It creates a problem for Biden that it would not for Trump.”