Since film magnate Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual harassment and assault in October, scores of women have come forward as part of the #MeToo movement to say that they, too, have been victims of sexual misconduct. As more and more people come forward with allegations against powerful people and some of those powerful people lose their jobs, some have called the moment in history a tipping point ; others have called it a reckoning . And while many are being taken to task for their alleged misconduct and there is potential for a cultural shift in the way we view sexual harassment and assault, this isn't the first time women have publicly spoken out against alleged harassers. In 1991, law professor Anita Hill sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Senator Joe Biden , and detailed the alleged harassment she experienced from her boss, Clarence Thomas, who was just about to be confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. Throughout Hill's testimony, she weathered attacks on her character and her trustworthiness from those on the Senate panel, and many have blamed Biden for allowing those attacks and failing to do more. Nearly three decades after her testimony, and after Thomas was seated on the court, Biden wants Anita Hill to know that he's sorry. 
 
 In an interview with Teen Vogue 's editor in chief, Elaine Welteroth, Biden said there are a few things he would do differently if he could go back and redo those Anita Hill hearings. 
 
 "I believed Anita Hill. I voted against Clarence Thomas. And I insisted the next election — I campaigned for two women Senators on the condition that if they won they would come on the Judiciary Committee, so there would never be again all men making a judgment on this," Biden said. "And my one regret is that I wasn’t able to tone down the attacks on her by some of my Republican friends. I mean, they really went after her. As much as I tried to intervene, I did not have the power to gavel them out of order. I tried to be like a judge and only allow a question that would be relevant to ask." 
 
 But ultimately, Biden said he wasn't able to do enough. 
 
 "I wasn’t able to convince three women we’d subpoenaed to cooperate with testimony. At the last minute, they changed their mind and said they wouldn’t do it. I had them sign an affidavit saying, ‘I want you to come, and you’re saying, “No, I will not come.“‘ In retrospect, some, including Anita, think I should have subpoenaed them no matter what," he said. "The reason I didn’t: I was worried they would come and not corroborate what she said and make — I mean, Clarence Thomas won by only two votes. And we still thought we had a chance at beating him." 
 
 "I wish I had been able to do more for Anita Hill," he said. "I owe her an apology." 
 
 Many, including Hill, have criticized Biden for allowing some of the remarks those on the Committee made, including insinuations that Thomas allegedly talking about women's breast sizes was "not too bad," according to The Washington Post. Some even said Biden's tone with Hill bordered on disbelief of her accusations. According to Politico , the hearing was "seen as Biden's subjecting an African-American woman to public humiliation and abuse." In fact, Biden has offered public apologies to Hill before , but she has said it wasn't enough. 
 
 "I still don’t think it takes ownership of his role in what happened," Hill said in a recent interview with The Washington Post . "And he also doesn’t understand that it wasn’t just that I felt it was not fair. It was that women were looking to the Senate Judiciary Committee and his leadership to really open the way to have these kinds of hearings. They should have been using best practices to show leadership on this issue on behalf of women’s equality. And they did just the opposite." 
 
 "You cannot just bring people forward into a process where you know they’re not going to be treated fairly," she continued. "That’s not being heard." 
 
 In the Post interview, Hill said truly being heard is what women are grappling with today during the #MeToo movement. Biden told Teen Vogue something similar. 
 
 "We’re now at a point here where we have a chance to change the culture," he said. Biden was clear that harassment is a part of our culture, deeply ingrained and even normalized to a point where we sometimes don't even notice it. Through his work on college campuses and involving men in the effort to prevent sexual violence through his It's on Us campaign, Biden said he hopes he's able to make some headway toward the sea change that's clearly coming. 
 
 "I’ve gotten asked by press a lot of the last 23 years, how will I know when I’ve succeeded. We will have succeeded when not a single woman who is abused ever, ever, ever asks herself, What did I do?" he said. "We’ve got to change it. We’ve got to change the culture." 
 
 Related: The Surprising Way Experts Are Successfully Combating Sexual Assaults on College Campuses ||||| The revisiting of former Vice President Joe Biden’s handling of Anita Hill's allegations in 1991 has offered other potential Democratic candidates a wide opening as they jockey for position ahead of the 2020 campaign. | Patrick Semansky/AP Photo Politics Biden confronts the ghost of Anita Hill ‘It’s not going to be something he can charm out of. I think in 2018, you can’t just smile it away,’ said one Democrat. 
 
 Joe Biden began the month by kissing foreheads and preaching unity at a breezy Labor Day march in Pittsburgh. He will end it under question about whether his decades-old record in Congress can withstand the withering scrutiny of the current political moment. 
 
 With a sexual assault allegation against Brett Kavanaugh roiling Washington, Biden’s handling of a similar matter — the Anita Hill hearings — has erupted back into public view, exposing a rare point of weakness for Biden in the run-up to the 2020 presidential campaign. 
 
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 It’s an issue that can’t easily be sidestepped in the post-Obama era Democratic Party, where the conversation surrounding sexual harassment is light years beyond where it was in the early 1990s when Biden chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the grass-roots energy is in the progressive wing. If the former vice president decides to run, he’ll have to navigate a field that could exceed 20 challengers — almost none of whom will be burdened with the baggage of seemingly ancient political and culture wars. 
 
 Toi Hutchinson, president of the National Association of State Legislators and an Illinois Democratic state senator who helped launch a statewide #MeToo awareness effort, said Biden will face a tough road with the 2020 electorate if he doesn’t address the Hill hearings straight on. 
 
 “He in particular is going to have to find a way to connect to women voters and say, ‘This is what we have learned [since Biden’s time as Judiciary chairman]’, said Hutchinson, who wasn’t yet born when Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972. “It’s not going to be something he can charm out of. I think in 2018, you can’t just smile it away. I think what [Biden] does best is when he goes straight up the middle, takes it on directly. I don’t think there’s any other way. It offers an opportunity to look people square in the eye and take on this issue directly. And I think women in this country will respond to his directness.” 
 
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 Now a front-runner in early Democratic primary polls, Biden was pilloried at the time for his handling of the 1991 confirmation hearings of then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Thomas was accused by Hill of inappropriate sexual behavior, and Biden was criticized for failing to blunt attacks on Hill and for not calling witnesses who could have supported her. 
 
 “It certainly was not his best moment,” said former Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-Colo.), one of seven Democratic women who dramatically marched to the room where Senate Democrats were caucusing in 1991 in an attempt to make their case for why the vote on Thomas should be delayed as a result of Hill's accusations. “To have railroaded that through and not listened to the other three women and let his colleagues absolutely tear her apart was absolutely horrible.” 
 
 Schroeder said, “I don’t think people will be happy about it, the more they think about it. A lot of people probably forgot about it, but this brings it all fresh to mind again. We can all say the Republicans are messing up, but guess who messed up first?” 
 
 Biden’s management of the Hill testimony in Thomas' confirmation hearings has long loomed in the background of his political biography, viewed as a weakness when he considered a presidential run in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, the eventual nominee. But two years later, the weight of the #MeToo movement has only intensified the spotlight on politicians’ handling of issues related to sexual harassment and misconduct. 
 
 In an interview with Elle , published Tuesday, Hill noted that Biden last year acknowledged he owed her an apology. But he never took the next step. 
 
 “‘He said, ‘I owe her an apology.’ People were asking, ‘When are you going to apologize to her?’”’ Hill told Elle of Biden. “It’s become sort of a running joke in the household when someone rings the doorbell and we’re not expecting company. ‘Oh,’ we say, ‘is that Joe Biden coming to apologize?’” 
 
 Asked whether she was still waiting for Biden’s apology, Hill said: “There are more important things to me now than hearing an apology from Joe Biden. I’m OK with where I am.” 
 
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 Patti Solis Doyle, who served as Biden’s campaign chief of staff in 2008, called the former vice president one of the most viable potential 2020 candidates in the Democratic field. Still, she acknowledged that if Biden doesn't apologize directly and put the matter behind him quickly, the issue threatens to hang over him in 2020, when the #MeToo issues are likely to play a prominent role in the presidential debate. 
 
 “If Anita Hill believes she’s owed an apology, then she’s owed an apology, without question. And he should give one,” Solis Doyle said. “Certainly, Joe Biden did not do the harassing. Joe Biden ended up voting against Clarence Thomas. But what was done to Anita Hill in those hearings … it was unseemly. And as chair of the Judiciary back then, he probably should have taken a bigger role in making Anita Hill feel safe and comfortable, and clearly, she did not feel that way.” 
 
 Solis Doyle said Biden would have an easier time touting his record on women’s issues and connecting with the surge of women voters if he put the matter to rest. 
 
 “I don’t think it’s going to be a disqualifying issue for Joe Biden, but he should address it and he should apologize,” she said. “What is happening with the very credible and serious allegations against Judge Kavanaugh has brought this to the forefront of our politics. I think if Judge Kavanaugh gets [confirmed], it will be a topic of discussion in the midterm elections … thereby making it a topic of discussion in 2020.” 
 
 Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), who lobbied the Senate on Hill’s behalf along with Schroeder in 1991, said the injustice of the Anita Hill hearings “wasn’t Biden alone” and that while Biden will be “examined for it” in 2020, he will also be credited for his work on the Violence Against Women Act, among other issues. 
 
 “I’m not sure the public will hold this against him given his apologies, and his advice from his own experience,” she said. 
 
 Norton said the Kavanaugh hearings may signal a broader shift in politics ahead of the 2020 presidential campaign. Following Hill's testimony in the Thomas confirmation hearings, she said, the country “turned on its heel, it became the Year of the Woman … And I must say, I’m seeing a redux of that.” 
 
 A Biden spokesman declined to comment Thursday, but pointed to the former Delaware senator’s extensive remarks on the issue in December in Teen Vogue . He told the magazine that month, "I wish I had been able to do more for Anita Hill … I owe her an apology." 
 
 That interview is among the clear signs that Biden understands he has not fully put the issue behind him — a necessity given the critical role women and black voters play in a Democratic primary. On Friday, Biden said Kavanagh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, "should not have to go through what Anita Hill went through” if she chooses to testify. 
 
 “My biggest regret was I didn't know how I could shut you off if you were a senator and you were attacking Anita Hills’ character,” Biden told NBC’s ‘Today’ show. "Under the Senate rules I can’t gavel you down and say you can’t ask that question although I tried." 
 
 The revisiting of Biden’s performance in 1991 has offered other potential Democratic candidates a wide opening as they jockey for position ahead of the 2020 campaign. 
 
 A lawyer for Ford has said her client is “prepared” to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week, giving two high-profile Democrats, Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey, an opportunity to distinguish themselves from Biden’s performance years ago. 
 
 “Everyone’s always wondered whether we were going to see a tail-off of this #MeToo stuff. And it’s not. It’s sticking,” said Amanda Renteria, a former top campaign aide to Hillary Clinton. “I do think anyone, no matter where you are, no matter where you’re running, needs to really think about whatever role they’ve played in the past, and how that will be viewed in a new world.” 
 
 If Biden runs for president, Renteria said, “This bucket of issues is obviously going to come up.” 
 
 Like many Democrats, however, Renteria suggested the Anita Hill hearings are far from insurmountable for Biden. 
 
 “He’s just so real and authentic — I think he’ll figure out that piece, if that’s what he wants to run,” Renteria said. 
 
 Biden’s broader record also shows a progression that will enable him to argue that his understanding as an elected official grew over the years, including authoring the Violence Against Women Act and spearheading the “It’s on Us” campaign, which raised awareness about sexual assault on collect campuses. 
 
 “I think starting with the crime bill and passage of the Violence Against Women Act, that was his first act of atonement, if you will, for what he did to Anita Hill,” said Christine Pelosi, a Democratic National Committee member from California and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's daughter. 
 
 Saying that Biden had exhibited a “series of awakenings,” Pelosi said, “You can draw a line from a disgraceful hearing to seeds of hope in the Violence Against Women Act to ‘It’s on Us’ as vice president.” 
 
 Adelaide “Tootsie” Dennis Kline, an attorney and founding member of the South Carolina-based I Believe Anita Hill group, said she, too, believed Biden could overcome the 1991 hearing — but only because she doubted the salience of sexual harassment as a voting issue. 
 
 “It’s accepted by a lot of voters without any problems, apparently,” she said. 
 
 Of Biden, Kline said, “I don’t know if Sen. Biden has become more mature about these issues since then. … I don’t think a lot of people have gotten it. It’s been a lot of time — 27 years — and I don’t see the landscape changing very much.” ||||| "Confirmation" by Michelle Thompson based on Associated Press photos (Michelle Thompson) 
 
 In 1991, George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas for a seat on the Supreme Court, just five days after civil rights icon Thurgood Marshall announced that he was retiring after 24 years. Thomas, despite an impressive résumé, had served as a federal judge for only 19 months. None of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee for the Federal Judiciary members rated him “well-qualified.” 
 
 Near the end of his hearing, a former employee of Thomas’s named Anita Hill came forward with sensational allegations of sexual harassment. The testimony took three days, with the hearing broadcast live. The nation was shocked, transfixed and deeply divided. 
 
 On April 16, HBO will debut “Confirmation,” a movie starring Kerry Washington as Hill and Wendell Pierce as Thomas. Conservatives have already called the screenplay biased, portraying Hill as courageous, Thomas as disingenuous and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. as inept. 
 
 The subject is still a raw wound for Thomas: “Mere confirmation, even to the Supreme Court, seemed pitifully small compensation for what had been done to me,” he writes in his 2007 memoir “My Grandfather’s Son.” 
 
 A look at the process, in the words of those who were there. 
 
 The late Republican senator Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) in his 2000 autobiography “Passion for Truth”: Bush announced that Thomas was the “best qualified” nominee he could find for the high court and that “the fact he was black and a minority had nothing to do with this.” Immediately I said publicly that Thomas was not the best-qualified nominee available and that race was a factor — and properly so. I did not object to Thomas’s nomination because I thought he was entitled to a hearing and because on the record, with his degrees from Holy Cross and Yale Law School plus his tenure on the court of appeals, he appeared at least marginally qualified. 
 
 The late Democratic senator Paul Simon (D-Ill.) in a 1992 C-SPAN interview about his book “Advice & Consent”: Gerald Ford followed the Constitution by consulting with senators. George Bush did not. Gerald Ford contacted people around the nation and said, “Who would be the best possible person to put on the court?” and then he submitted 20 names to the American Bar Association for their evaluation. George Bush submitted one. 
 
 
 
 Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas raises his right hand as he is sworn in on Sept. 10, 1991, during confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington. (J. David Ake/AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 Given his short time on the federal bench, Thomas and his advisers settled on the “Pin Point” strategy: An emphasis on his roots in Pin Point, the poor town in Georgia where he grew up, and his personal story of hard work, family values and character. So Hill’s accusation was especially devastating for him. 
 
 Thomas’s wife, Virginia, in 1994’s “Resurrection: The Confirmation of Clarence Thomas” by former senator John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), who served as Thomas’s mentor during the hearings: The nature of his anxiety . . . was the humiliation factor. That seemed to be his major concern. Here was this charge that was so against everything he had done in his public life and everything he believes in his private and personal thoughts, a charge being exposed and discussed by what looked like rational people, and it was killing him. Somebody was trying to destroy him and that was the major concern. He kept saying why are they trying to destroy me? He kept asking that question over and over again. 
 
 
 
 Virginia Thomas, wife of Clarence Thomas, as her husband gives his opening statement during confirmation hearings before the US Senate Judiciary Committee on September 10, 1991. (DAVID AKE/AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 Anita Hill being sworn in prior to testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 11, 1991. (Greg Gibson/AP) 
 
 Hill began her testimony on Friday, Oct. 11, 1991, and was aggressively questioned by the 14 men who made up the Senate Judiciary Committee. Thomas absolutely denied the allegations before her appearance and again the next day. \ 
 
 Hill in her 1997 memoir, “Speaking Truth to Power”: My world has been forever changed by the events that culminated in the “Hill-Thomas” hearings. I am no longer an anonymous, private individual — my name having become synonymous with sexual harassment. To my supporters I represent the courage to come forward and disclose a painful truth — a courage that thousands of others have found since the hearing. To my detractors I represent the debasement of public forum, at best, a pawn, at worst, a perjurer. Living with these conflicting perceptions is difficult, sometimes overwhelming. 
 
 Simon in the C-SPAN interview: After we were in the hearing for a while, it became apparent that we had something huge on our hands in terms of public attention. That played a role in the Thomas nomination, because on Friday, Anita Hill testified. Friday is a limited television audience. Saturday, Clarence Thomas testified — a much larger audience. People who saw only one of the two believed the one they saw, whichever one that was. I think that was a factor in public opinion being on his side — only one of the factors — and the public opinion being on his side I think was clearly a factor in some of the votes in the Senate. 
 
 George H.W. Bush in a 1991 letter published in “All the Best,” a collection of his writing: What’s happening to Clarence Thomas is just plain horrible. All the groups that tried to beat him on abortion or affirmative action have now come out of the woodwork. They are trying to destroy a decent man. I do not think they will succeed but they are in a frenzy around here. . . . I know nothing of Ms. Hill but I know a lot about Clarence Thomas, with whom I visited again yesterday and continue to have total confidence in his honor and decency. This is an ugly process and one can see clearly why so many good people elect to stay out of public life. 
 
 Republicans turned the questioning to Hill and her credibility; Democrats were criticized for allowing that to happen. Biden (D-Del.), the committee chairman, was singled out by liberals for showing deference to Thomas and not calling any witnesses who could support Hill’s testimony. 
 
 Anita Hill's 1991 testimony at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearing will breathe new life in the HBO movie "Confirmation." Considered by many as the sexual harassment tipping point, Hill's allegations paved the way for many modern gender discussions. (Nicki DeMarco/The Washington Post) 
 
 Former senator Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) in a 2014 interview on the “Death, Sex & Money” podcast: I’d had a wife who’d had much more harassment than Anita Hill. And that’s when I lost my marbles. I thought, “What is this? I mean, for God’s sake, what did he do?” Well, nothing. “Did he touch you?” “No.” “What is it?” “He wanted to talk about Long Dong Silver and pubic hair and coke cans.” “Is that it? Is that it?” “Yes, it is. I wanted you to be aware of his behavior.” And so I was a monster. I was just pissed to the core. 
 
 Biden in Specter’s “Passion for Truth” (he omitted any mention of the hearing from his own memoir): My role, I decided — and I had great debates with my staff about it — I was going to be a judge and I was going to apply rules that were not required to be applied. . . . Out of a sense of fairness, that’s what I was going to do. And I wasn’t about, with my view of civil liberties, to attack a guy I was already against. I was against him from day one. 
 
 Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), whose checkered personal history with women effectively silenced him during the hearings, in a speech at Harvard two weeks afterward:I am painfully aware that the criticism directed at me in recent months involves far more than honest disagreement with my positions, or the usual criticism from the far right. It also involves the disappointment of friends and many others who rely on me to fight the good fight. 
 
 Republican Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) in a 2010 CNN interview: I can tell you Clarence Thomas was telling the truth. I believe that Anita Hill was an excellent witness. I think she actually believed and talked herself into believing what she said. There was a sexual harasser at that time, according to the sources I had, and he was her supervisor, he just wasn’t Clarence Thomas. I think she transposed that to where she believed it because she was outed by the feminist women at that time and she couldn’t change her mind after — she couldn’t change her tune. And that’s what happened. 
 
 [Does HBO’s ‘Confirmation’ favor Anita Hill? Kerry Washington and others say no way.] 
 
 After Hill’s testimony, Thomas told the committee that he would not answer any further questions, angrily calling the hearing “a high-tech lynching.” 
 
 Gary Wills, the New York Review of Books, 1995 : Whatever one thinks of the lynching trope, it worked. And one aspect of Thomas’s character was vindicated — his audacity. The nerve of it is breathtaking. He had, in effect, ceded the areas of competence and constitutionalism: He was “out to lunch” when it came to subjects about which he was expected to be knowledgeable, and he gave up all his earlier comments on “natural law,” on ideas in general. He had staked everything on character — and now he would not answer any questions about his character. He sat there on his last limb, and angrily started sawing it off, with this dare: “Catch me before I fall, or you are all racist lynchers.” And, to their shame, the senators, shamefacedly, caught him. But weren’t Hill’s charges false, or at least suspect? Even if they were, Thomas’s performance did not merit confirmation. It is also a mark of character — of judicial temperament if you will — to face criticism as a lawyer, with arguments, not with torrents of invective against the committee for asking questions one does not want to hear. 
 
 Former Washington Post reporters Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher in their 2007 biography, “Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas” : The starkly different testimonies of Hill and Thomas left no possibility for misunderstanding. Wiggle room? There was none. Neither Hill nor Thomas offered a backstory about their involvement with each other that might have led the Senate — indeed the nation — to conclude something beyond the obvious: One of them was lying, period. Was lying to the committee, to the country, perhaps even to him or herself. 
 
 NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, who reported on the Hill story, in an introduction to the 2005 published transcript of the hearing: Despite the fact that Hill took and passed a lie detector test, the two sides were no match for each other. The Thomas forces, frantic but unified, marched together to a strategic tune composed by Thomas and Danforth and orchestrated by the White House. Hill’s forces, inexperienced, in disarray, and with little or no support from Senate Democrats, were left to flounder. When it was over, public opinion polls showed the people believed Clarence Thomas by a margin of two to one, a ratio that would reverse itself in less than two years. 
 
 
 
 Anita Hill poses for a portrait during the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 18, 2013, in Park City, Utah. (Victoria Will/Invision/AP) 
 
 Although the Judiciary Committee voted not to approve Thomas’s nomination, the full Senate voted 52-48 to confirm. 
 
 Danforth in a 2009 interview with NPR’s “Tell Me More”: It’s very hard for me to say that there is anything I could have done differently because it was like walking down the street and getting in a fight in an alley. I mean, it was just awful. It was just an absolutely terrible situation. And for the people that wanted to defeat him, there was no limit, just anything goes. And I thought it was awful. And I hope that doesn’t happen to any other nominee. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth trying to destroy a human being to win a political point. . . . It’s certainly not a fight I wanted to be in. It was absolutely the worst experience of my life. 
 
 Democratic Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), in a recent interview: Across the country, the televised hearings opened the eyes of millions of people to the importance of public hearings for Supreme Court nominees. The hearings also sparked a national conversation about issues that had received scant congressional attention until then. There is also a poignant lesson from those hearings for this very moment. There was a Democratic majority in the Senate at the time and a Republican in the White House. In sharp contrast with what we’re seeing today with the [Merrick] Garland nomination, with a Republican majority calling the shots, no one back then blocked Clarence Thomas from a hearing, from a committee vote, or from a floor vote. After those revealing hearings, when the committee voted to disapprove the nomination, the committee still sent Justice Thomas’s nomination to the floor and the full Senate so that all senators could uphold their constitutional duty. We followed precedent, and we felt a responsibility to respect it.” 
 
 Danforth in “Resurrection”: Clarence Thomas, just confirmed as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was soaking in a bath, reading, when Ginni told him the result of the vote. He shrugged at the news. . . . Clarence describes how he felt when he learned of the vote: “Not blasé but not happy. I felt I had been abused. I just felt like I went through something that shouldn’t have ever occurred.” 
 
 Hill in “Speaking Truth to Power”: What happened in October 1991 should not have happened to me or anyone else. 
 
 Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly gave credit to NPR’s Nina Totenberg for breaking the story of Anita Hill’s allegations against Clarence Thomas. A Newday story on the allegations by Timothy Phelps moved on the wire services the night before Totenberg’s report aired. 
 
 READ MORE: “Does HBO’s ‘Confirmation’ favor Anita Hill? Kerry Washington and others say no way.”
– When law professor Anita Hill faced the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 to testify about the sexual harassment she said she endured from then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, she also faced down attacks on her character and credibility—and many (including Hill herself) still blame Joe Biden, the senator who led the panel, for allowing that to happen. Now he tells Teen Vogue he's sorry for his role. "I believed Anita Hill. I voted against Clarence Thomas," he says. "And my one regret is that I wasn't able to tone down the attacks on her by some of my Republican friends. I mean, they really went after her." He says he felt his hands were tied as he tried to simply play "judge" in the proceedings, but he wonders if he could've done more, including subpoenaing witnesses who may have backed Hill up. "I wish I had been able to do more for Anita Hill," he says. "I owe her an apology." Also making the rounds, per the New York Times: a video of Biden on The View Wednesday morning, in which he consoled Meghan McCain as they talked about the aggressive brain cancer both her dad, Sen. John McCain, and Biden's son, the late Beau Biden, were struck by. After an emotional McCain confessed to Biden she couldn't get through his book on Beau's life and his battle with glioblastoma, Biden took her hand and said to her: "One of the things that gave Beau courage, my word, was John." He then discussed recent breakthroughs in dealing with the cancer and told her that "if anybody can make it," it was the senator. "You gotta maintain hope." Among the online reaction to the segment, which can be viewed here, was a tweet from John McCain: "Thank you @JoeBiden & the entire Biden family for serving as an example & source of strength for my own family."