Of course Biden is counting on DNC Media to refrain from following up on all the mistakes he made in his interview, but he did badly enough to where they can't really get away with declaring the story over. This thing has legs now.
The strategy of hiding Biden until the convention just became impossible to continue. That would be bad for him no matter what the story was about, but it happens to be about the issue Democrats claim is one of their most important obsessions.
Every honest Democrat watching that interview is about to have a string of sleepless nights imagining how Biden will fare when it's Donald Trump asking the questions during a debate.
The casual assumption until now has been that Trump can't possibly hurt Biden with this issue because he's Donald Trump. This dramatically underestimates, Trump's brashness, the public's position on the issue of sexual harassment, and the particulars of the Reade case.
I invite Democrats to go ahead and try "Biden's sexual harassment is okay because Trump is a boor" and see how that flies with the suburban single female vote they're so desperate to hang onto. At BEST, you'll depress their turnout in a haze of mutual disgust.
And there's no overstating how much the Kavanaugh experience will haunt Democrats here. Biden can be beaten to a pulp with his own words. The Dems went so far overboard with Kavanaugh that they can't pull back. Even with the short media attention span, that story is too fresh.
The temptation will be for Dems to say: Well, okay, maybe Kavanaugh got a raw deal but NOW it's time to put all that behind us and give Joe Biden the presumption of innocence Kavanaugh was denied. Let us have fairness from this day forward! You can't be against fairness, right?
That might have worked with most other Repubs, but it sure as hell won't work with Trump. He's going to have a field day quoting Biden and other Dems from the Kavanaugh debacle and reminding voters how they tried to destroy a good man and keep a good justice off the Court.
Many Dem factions (including the media) REALLY want to put the Reade thing to bed, declare themselves satisfied, say Biden has addressed the issue, and Move On. They won't be able to. Too many voters they need took them seriously during the Kavanaugh hearings. /end
