Susan Collins cares about justice. Sara Gideon cares about abortion.

In sharp contrast, with her disgraceful sight-unseen defense of Joe Biden, challenger Sara Gideon has shown how bad-faith partisans turn women and victims into political pawns. People like Gideon only care about sexual assault victims when it suits their agenda.

First, consider the evidence. There still isn’t enough to find Biden guilty. But unlike in the case of Christine Blasey Ford, further investigation has bolstered and corroborated Reade’s claim that Biden sexually assaulted her when she worked in his Senate office in summer 1993.

At first, there were two witnesses who claimed to have heard Reade’s allegation around the time it happened. One of them refused to be named or directly quoted, and the other, her brother, had changed his story at least once before. Then a third anonymous witness claimed to have heard Reade’s account 15 years after the fact. Then it was discovered that Reade’s late mother had called in to Larry King Live in August 1993 and referred to Reade’s “problems” while working for a “prominent senator.”

After that, it came out that in a 1996 response to a restraining order against him, Reade’s ex-husband filed a court paper stating that Reade had undergone “traumatic” sexual harassment while working for Biden.

And most compelling is the detailed claim by Reade’s former neighbor, Lynda LaCasse, that Reade had described Biden’s assault extensively just two or three years after it had allegedly occurred.

This amounts to extensive contemporaneous corroboration. If Reade is lying, then she has created a decades-long conspiracy of lies to bring down Joe Biden. She cannot have just made this up.

Contrast that with Ford, who didn’t tell anyone about the her allegation against Brett Kavanaugh for 30 years. Therapist notes from 2012 confirm that she disclosed an assault from the early 1980s in couple’s therapy, but even then the notes do not mention Kavanaugh by name. Then she had other three witnesses who claimed Ford told them about the allegation in 2013, 2016, and 2017. She also produced successful results from a polygraph test, a so-called lie-detecting method that’s inadmissible in court.

And that’s it. There is not one shred of inculpatory evidence from the 30 years after this assault allegedly took place. Every single person Ford identified as being present at the party denied that it ever happened. Leland Keyser, the close friend whom Ford had theorized as having driven her to the party where the assault occurred, now denies the plausibility of Ford’s allegation outright, and did not relent despite pressure from Democratic partisans to change her story. And there’s also not one iota of proof that Ford and Kavanaugh ever met.

Sara Gideon, the Democrat challenging Susan Collins in November, jumped into the Maine senatorial contest in large part because of the Kavanaugh confirmation, prior to which she had publicly rallied around Ford. Perhaps no other Senate challenger has built her bid more on opposition to Kavanaugh, and surely enough, she’s made clear why she targeted Kavanaugh in particular.

Considering the evidence, there can be no serious argument that Reade’s allegation is not at least as meritorious as Ford’s. Yet Gideon, having waved the flag for Ford, dismisses Reade out of hand, without even weighing the evidence. Her standard for believing accusers is simple partisanship. Worse, her own words suggest that Ford, in her eyes, wasn’t an accuser with a serious case, but a vessel for the holy grail of legalized abortion.

Gideon does not even appear to have taken Ford’s story very seriously. Just look at her own explanation for why she is backing Biden in spite of the allegations against him.

“Sexual assault and sexual harassment are incredibly serious issues and for too long, people have been too afraid to come forward,” Gideon has said of the Reade allegation. “Every person should be able to come forward and tell their story, and have it thoroughly looked into. I voted for Joe Biden in the primary because I thought he could bring this country together and meet the challenges we face. I still believe that to be true.” The emphasis is mine — the smoking gun, demonstrating Gideon’s utter, unfeeling and wholly partisan disregard for women “who come forward and tell their story” about Democrats.

In contrast, Collins delivered a 43-minute speech explaining her decision to vote for Kavanaugh. She explained that she had initially studied more than 300 of his rulings with the input of 19 attorneys, interviewed him and his colleagues multiple times, and then, in painstaking detail, how she evaluated the evidence and every witness cited by Ford.

“The Constitution does not provide guidance on how we are supposed to evaluate these competing claims,” Collins then said. “It leaves that decision up to each senator. This is not a criminal trial, and I do not believe that claims such as these need to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, nevertheless fairness would dictate that the claims at least should meet a threshold of ‘more likely than not’ as our standard.”

Collins concluded that the evidence was insufficient to merit sacrificing the judicial nomination system to the will of bad faith partisan actors. Gideon, in contrast, has made clear that evidence isn’t a part of her consideration. She is a consequentialist who chooses to believe women based on whether she feels the accused can to “meet the challenges we face,” and specifically whether they support unfettered access to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.

For Gideon, Tara Reade and any other Biden accuser who comes forward is simply an obstacle to be overcome without further thought.