Joe Biden and the Anita Hill thing…..

At a Democratic rally in a downtown ballroom Sunday evening, Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island spoke vividly about the Senate hearings on the sexual assault allegations against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, saying her “stomach turned” as she watched. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse was indignant, vowing “no more Kavanaughs” if the Democrats win control of the Senate in November.

When it was Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s turn to speak, he was stern but circumspect — even philosophical. Republicans, he said, had displayed “blind rage and brute partisanship,” imperiling the Supreme Court’s moral authority. He accused them of flouting norms he enforced as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1990s.

“Dr. Blasey Ford gave courageous, credible testimony,” Mr. Biden said, referring to Christine Blasey Ford, who says Judge Kavanaugh attacked her when they were teenagers. “She was denied an F.B.I. investigation, which was automatic when I was chairman.”

It was a pointed but careful condemnation from Mr. Biden, and a sign of how his former role on the Judiciary Committee is complicating his present-day status as a leader in the Democratic Party.

As he actively explores a 2020 presidential run, the 75-year-old former vice president is coming under increased scrutiny from his fellow Democrats because of his role in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings in 1991, as explosive debates over gender, sex and the Supreme Court overshadow the themes of economic fairness that Mr. Biden trumpeted across the Northeast in recent days.

His name has been invoked frequently in recent days, mainly by Republicans, for leading the 1991 hearings when an all-male, all-white Judiciary Committee aggressively questioned Anita Hill about claims that Judge Thomas sexually harassed her. The hearings have long been a source of discomfort with Mr. Biden among Democrats who remember the process.