Twenty of his rivals have lined up to run for president, believing the race for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination was wide open. But one week after launching his campaign, former Vice President Joe Biden is threatening to prove them wrong.

 

His liabilities may be glaring, but the 76-year-old lifelong politician has quickly emerged as the front-runner in the crowded contest by dominating the debate that matters most to many voters: electability.

 

Biden’s chief opponents privately concede that, for now at least, he has successfully cast himself as the candidate who can take down President Donald Trump. He may be out of step with the heart of the party on key issues, but Biden opens the race backed by a broad coalition of voters attracted to his personality, his governing experience and his working-class background — all elements that help convince voters he is better positioned than any other Democrat to deny Trump a second term.

One after another, voters who filled a community center in South Carolina’s capital to see Biden this weekend described him as a safe, comforting and competent counterpoint to the turbulent Trump presidency.

 

“With him you feel whole, and the country would be whole again,” said 62-year-old Barbara Pearson, who is African American and has long worked for county government. “I think he meets this moment.”

 

“I like Biden,” said 21-year-old University of South Carolina senior Justin Walker, who is white. “We know him. We know where he’s been. We don’t know that about the others.”

 

Biden’s strong start, evidenced by strong fundraising and polling, has caught the attention of his opponents. Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have already begun to turn on Biden, at least subtly, highlighting his reliance on rich donors and his record on trade, foreign policy and health care that is out of step with the party’s more liberal wing.

 

“Obviously the vice president has had a very good first week,” Sanders’ chief strategist Jeff Weaver said. “This is an incredibly long campaign. And I think as voters see the contrasts between the candidates on both a policy level and an electability level, you’re going to see wild swings in these numbers.”

 

In the midst of his inaugural national tour as a 2020 presidential contender, Biden is largely ignoring his Democratic opponents and focusing on Trump.

 

“Another four years of Trump,” Biden told South Carolina voters, would “fundamentally change the character of this nation.”

 

“Above all else, we must defeat Donald Trump,” he declared.

 

So far, at least, the message appears to be resonating.

John Anzalone, a veteran Democratic pollster who has advised Biden, highlighted the breadth of his early support, which touches on virtually every key Democratic voting bloc.

 

“People don’t understand the foundation of his support,” he said. “He leads with every demographic.”

 

Polls by CNN and Quinnipiac University over the last week show Biden with significant advantages among whites and nonwhites, those over and under 50 years old, non-college graduates and college graduates, those who make more and those who make less than $50,000 each year, and both moderate and liberal Democrats.

 

Biden’s fast start comes amid vocal concerns from energized liberal activists, who believe he’s not aligned with the Democratic base.

 

He has refused to endorse “Medicare for All,” a national program that would guarantee health insurance for every American, preferring to strengthen the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s health care law, and allow people to select a “public option” featuring Medicare-style coverage. He has also refused to back away from his support for trade deals, none more significant than the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has become unpopular among liberals and conservatives alike.

 

Rival campaigns suggest Biden’s record on trade could undermine his popularity with working-class voters in key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Should his perceived strength in the Midwest fade, his electability argument could fade as well.

 

Biden’s skeptics in both parties believe that above all, his performance while campaigning will determine whether he maintains his early strength. Few have confidence it will last.

 

Biden has a well-known propensity for verbal gaffes. And being closer to 80 than 70, he shows his age at times. He rambled through parts of his Saturday address, losing his train of thought and the audience more than once.

 

In just the last week, he has been mocked for downplaying the threat from China. He also muddled his initial effort to apologize to Anita Hill, whom he forced through aggressive questioning from an all-male Senate panel after she accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment nearly three decades ago.

 

“I think he’s the front-runner, but it would be a mistake to think that is going to last,” said Gilda Cobb-Hunter, a South Carolina Democratic state representative and president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators.

 

For one thing, she said, the African American vote will be fractured in 2020 given the presence of several candidates of color. At the Columbia rally on Saturday, many voters cited California Sen. Kamala Harris, the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, as a top choice behind Biden.

 

While skeptical of his staying power, Cobb-Hunter acknowledged Biden’s early advantage on the electability argument.

 

“What he does have going for him is a real solid belief he can take out Trump,” she said. “Biden so far has that aura.”

 

A big part of the aura comes from stronger-than-expected fundraising.

 

In the weeks before his announcement, Biden’s team aggressively fretted about his ability to raise money. So when he bested his rivals by raising $6.3 million in his first 24 hours as a candidate, the political class was impressed.

 

Supporters say it was a textbook example of managing expectations, belied by the fact that aides were building a professional campaign with a deep fundraising network drawing on his connection to Obama.

 

“The way he launched his campaign was exactly the way you would have historically launched: Managing expectations and then blowing them out of the water,” said Rufus Gifford, Obama’s former finance director.

 

Yet his supporters, like his rivals, are acutely aware that the campaign has barely begun.

 

“Joe Biden is currently the front-runner. Obviously, if you are in that position you become more of a target,” said Biden donor Jon Cooper of New York. “We all realize that the hard work is ahead of us.”
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Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten, joined the large crowd at former President Jimmy Carter’s Sunday school class in rural South Georgia.

 

At Carter’s invitation Buttigieg stood and read from the Bible as part of the lesson at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains.

 

“You know him?” Carter had said earlier in reference to Buttigieg, drawing a laugh from the crowd.

 

Carter told the audience that two other Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, had previously attended his classes.

 

The South Bend, Indiana, mayor later tweeted: “I was humbled to meet with President Carter in Plains, Georgia today. He is a true public servant and America is blessed for his continuing leadership.” The Buttigieg campaign said in a statement that he had lunch with Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, and “enjoyed a conversation about topics ranging from faith to the rigors of the campaign trail.”

Scores of people arrived before dawn for a chance to hear Carter, 94, speak.

 

Entering when most people already were seated, Buttigieg’s unannounced visit elicited a murmur from the crowd.

 

“Who’s that?” asked a man seated in the back of the room.

 

“Mayor Pete, the guy running for president,” a woman answered.

 

Carter said he knew Buttigieg from working on a Habitat for Humanity project in Indiana where the mayor volunteered.

 

Many in the class greeted Buttigieg and took photos with him before Carter arrived in the sanctuary and took a seat in the front to teach.
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Spending a month at a historic ranch as its host and caretaker is not a dream vacation description, it’s a volunteer program offered by the U.S. Forest Service. The Hells River Volunteering Program allows anyone to spend a month at one of the most picturesque places in the country. The requirements are applying, stocking up on food and being ready to live without a cell phone. Lesia Bakalets traveled to Hells Canyon to talk with volunteers living at the ranch. Anna Rice narrates her story.
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Witches were still being burned at the stake when Sir Matthew Hale came up with his legal theory that rape could not happen within marriage. The 17th century English jurist declared it legally impossible because wedding vows implied a wife’s ongoing consent to sex.

Three and a half centuries later, vestiges of the so-called “marital rape exemption” or “spousal defense” still exist in most states, remnants of the English common law that helped inform American legal traditions. Legislative attempts to end or modify those exemptions have a mixed record but have received renewed attention in the #MeToo era.

Minnesota acts

The most recent efforts to roll back protections for spouses focus on rapes that happen when a partner is drugged, unconscious or otherwise incapacitated. Minnesota is the latest to take action. Its Legislature this week voted to eliminate the exemption, which had prevented prosecutions in those cases.

“No longer will this antiquated and shameful law be on our books,” Gov. Tim Walz said as he signed the bill into law Thursday. “The concept of a pre-existing relationship defense should have never been part of our criminal statutes.”

​A fight in Ohio

In Ohio, determined opponents plan to re-introduce a marital rape bill this month, after two earlier attempts failed.

Former lawmaker and prosecutor Greta Johnson was the first to introduce the Ohio legislation in 2015. She said having to address whether a woman was married to her attacker as part of sexual assault prosecutions struck her as “appalling and archaic.”

“Certainly, there was a marital exemption lifted years ago, but it was just for what in the prosecutorial world we call the force element — by force or threat of force,” she said. “You could still drug your spouse and have sex with them, and it’s not rape. You could commit sexual imposition against your spouse, and it’s not a crime. It was really troubling.”

All 50 states had laws making marital rape a crime by 1993, whether as a result of the two preceding decades of activism by women’s rights groups or because of a pivotal court ruling. Nearly 9% of women and 0.8% of men have been raped by an intimate partner, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National surveys have placed the percentage of women raped within marriage between 10% and 14%.

Still, many states’ marital rape laws have loopholes, not only involving the victim’s capacity to consent, but related to age, relationship, use of force or the nature of the penetration. Some impose short timeframes for victims to report spousal rape.

Skeptical in Maryland

A recent Maryland bill sought to erase the marital exemption for all sex crimes.

During discussion of the bill, one skeptical male lawmaker wondered whether a spouse might be charged with sexual assault for “smacking the other’s behind” during an argument. Maryland Del. Frank Conaway Jr., a Baltimore Democrat, raised religious concerns.

“If your religion believes if you’re married, two are as one body, then what happens? Can you get a religious exemption?” he asked.

“No, I would actually say that the First Amendment would prevent the state from getting entangled in that sort of judgment,” replied Lisae Jordan, executive director of the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault. “So you would have to rely on your faith and your commitment to that to not bring those charges. But that’s no place for the General Assembly.”

The bill died in March.

Common rationales

Professor D. Kelly Weisberg of the University of California Hastings College of the Law said the Maryland debate touched on some of the common rationales for the marital rape exemption over the centuries.

One is Hale’s premise from the 1670s that marriage implies irrevocable consent and even property rights by the husband over his wife and her body. Those ideas have never truly disappeared, said Weisberg, author of a new reference book on domestic violence law.

She said other arguments for such laws are that marital privacy is a constitutional right, as when spouses can’t be forced to testify against one another in court, that marital rape isn’t serious enough to criminalize and that it would be difficult to prove.

For those and other reasons, Weisberg said marital rape laws have not kept pace with other domestic violence laws. That means in some cases an unmarried domestic partner has more legal protections against attack than a spouse.

One woman’s story

Changing attitudes — and laws — about marital rape is what drove Jenny Teeson to go public this year with her story.

The 39-year-old from Andover, Minnesota, was going through a divorce in 2017 when she discovered a flash drive with videos taken by her husband. They showed him penetrating her with an object while she lay drugged and unconscious. In one, their 4-year-old lay next to her on the bed.

Teeson turned the videos over to the police. After an investigation, her husband was charged with third-degree criminal sexual assault against an incapacitated victim. Charges were brought in the morning, but dropped by afternoon because of the state’s marital rape exemption.

“I was beside myself,” she told The Associated Press.

Her ex-husband ultimately pleaded guilty to a gross misdemeanor charge of invading her privacy and served 30 days in the county jail. Still shocked that he could not be charged with a felony because of the state law, Teeson decided to take action.

“I thought if I can’t have the law be in place to keep myself, my kids and my community safe, I could wallow in it, or I could do something about it,” she said.

The AP does not normally identify victims of sexual assault, but Teeson has shared her story publicly, including during testimony before legislative committees. Democratic state Sen. Karla Bigham credited Teeson’s advocacy for persuading lawmakers to pass the bill.

“She had to relive the trauma every time she shared her story,” Bigham told her colleagues during a debate in the Senate chamber this past week. “Her voice speaks loudly to those women who deserve justice. Let’s do the right thing. Let’s right this wrong.”

17 states

AEquitas, a resource for prosecutors, reported last month that 17 states still maintain some form of the exemption for spouses who rape partners when they are drugged or otherwise incapacitated: Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Washington and Wyoming.

In Ohio, state Rep. Kristin Boggs, a Democrat, said she’s not optimistic the upcoming version of the marital rape bill will be any more successful in the Republican-controlled Legislature than it has been in the past.

But at least one past opponent — the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association — has evolved on the issue. Executive Director Lou Tobin said he expects the group will support a bill that seeks to eliminate the exemption.

“In the past, I know that there’s been some concern that these cases are difficult to prove; they can be a lot of he-said, she-said back and forth,” Tobin said. “But sorting through those things is what prosecutors are for.”

Boggs’ bill would again call for removing references to the marital exemption throughout Ohio’s criminal code. Her argument in favor of it is straightforward.

“Our rationale for introducing this legislation is simply that your legal relationship to another human being shouldn’t give you permission to rape them,” she said.
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