Biden sexual assault claim divides Democrats as Republicans pounce

The allegations of sexual misconduct by Tara Reade against the former vice-president Joe Biden have caused new fault lines within the Democratic party, especially between its left wing and the establishment.

Reade is a former Biden Senate staffer who has accused the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee of sexually assaulting her while she worked in his office in the 1990s. Biden and his campaign have flatly denied the allegations and major news outlets have continued to investigate.

Meanwhile, liberal grassroots activists have clashed with centrist Democrats and senior party figures over how to respond to the allegations. The arguments often point to how Democrats approached previous high-profile sexual assault allegations, such as the accusations by Christine Blasey Ford against Brett Kavanaugh during the now supreme court justice’s contentious confirmation hearings.

Peter Daou, a Democratic strategist who has argued that the “Democratic establishment” has moved to undercut Reade’s allegations, said three basic factions had emerged.

Related: Who is Tara Reade and what are her allegations against Joe Biden?

“You have Biden’s opponents on the Republican side and they’re going to seize on this,” Daou said, adding that there was also “the left – progressives and leftists” who want to see Reade’s allegations taken more seriously, and then the Democratic party establishment figures who are trying to undermine Reade. The latter group, Daou said, is “just absolutely wedded to Biden right now, will not let go, so they’ll defend him at all costs – even if that means completely destroying the #MeToo movement”.

Daou pointed out that other women have accused Biden of unwanted touching. In response to those accusations, Biden has said he would work to better respect other people’s personal spaces.

Republicans have been eager to confront as many rank-and-file Democratic politicians as possible with the allegations. The National Republican Congressional Committee has been blasting out emails targeting specific Democratic House candidates over Reade’s claims.

The subject line of a Friday email from the NRCC read: “Why does McBath not believe Tara Reade?” It asked why the Georgia congresswoman Lucy McBath was “yet to say whether she’ll stand by her endorsement of Biden amidst allegations of sexual assault, although she was quick to support Dr Ford during the Kavanaugh hearings”.

Similar questions are being asked by progressives and some more moderate Democratic party leaders. David Sirota, a former speechwriter and senior strategist for Bernie Sanders, has argued that Democrats have been too eager to discount Reade’s allegations.

A small group of insurgent Democratic congressional candidates have begun to raise concerns that Reade’s allegations are not being taken seriously enough. Rebecca Parson, a liberal Democrat challenging the Washington state congressman Derek Kilmer, said in an interview on Friday that Biden should step down over Reade’s allegations. Parson said she believes Reade and thinks the charges create too much of a vulnerability for Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

“I want to defeat Donald Trump in November and yes, I’m a progressive and I’m in the left-wing of the party, but something that really unites the people in the centrist wing and the progressive wing is we all want to defeat Trump,” Parson said. “I don’t think we do that with somebody who has all these allegations against him, especially because Donald Trump has assault allegations against him and unfortunately with Donald Trump, Trump doesn’t care about being a hypocrite.”

Parson added: “I think that Biden should withdraw and any one or more of the candidates who aren’t running should restart their campaign because the Democratic primary isn’t over yet.”

Those arguments aren’t shared by many of the most high-profile figures in the Democratic party. The New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a leading advocate against sexual harassment and sexual assault, told reporters on Tuesday that she supported Biden amid the allegations.

“So when we say believe women, it’s for this explicit intention of making sure there’s space for all women to come forward to speak their truth, to be heard. And in this allegation, that is what Tara Reade has done,” Gillibrand said, according to CNN. “She has come forward, she has spoken, and they have done an investigation in several outlets. Those investigations Vice-President Biden has called for himself. Vice-President Biden has vehemently denied these allegations and I support Vice-President Biden.”

The former Georgia state house minority leader Democrat Stacey Abrams also said she believed Biden.

Related: Joe Biden denies sexual assault allegation from former staffer Tara Reade

“The New York Times did a deep investigation and they found that the accusation was not credible. I believe Joe Biden,” Abrams said in late April.

Others, including the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, have also said they support Biden in response to Reade’s allegations.

But Parson is not alone in arguing that at this point Biden should drop out of the race. A Politico/Morning Consult poll found that over a third of Democratic voters surveyed say the party should switch out Biden as their presumptive nominee because of the allegations.

Other Democrats argued that Biden can both adequately address Reade’s allegations and still be a viable opponent against Trump. The Massachusetts congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, a progressive favorite, wrote a Medium post arguing that the allegations can be examined without undercutting Biden’s chances of beating Trump.

“I reject the false choice that my party and our nominee can’t address the allegations at hand and defeat the occupant of the White House,” Pressley wrote.