“The fact is, to be a running mate, you have to be a team player and step up where your team is weak or fill that role where they need you,” she said. “This comes with the job.”

Advisers to four of the potential candidates who spoke to POLITICO — none of whom would go on record — expressed what they described as a sense of frustration that accusations against Biden are being examined more intensely than the more numerous allegations against President Donald Trump.

The advisers all said they hoped Biden would speak out soon, but conceded there’s no way he — or those in contention to be his running mate — can continue to avoid the subject as they run for office or jockey to be on the Democratic ticket.

“‘Believe the woman’ didn’t mean believe all women, all the time. But this is an era of slogans and we’re paying the price for that,” said an adviser to one of the women under consideration, noting Reade’s story changed over the time.

“The #MeToo movement was an over-correction to decades of ignoring women and not believing them. And what we’re seeing now is a result of that over-correction,” the adviser said. “It’s not ideal. It’s not what we want to be talking about.”

That means for many of the top veep prospects — all of whom are women — the job will entail squaring their earlier stances with the allegation against Biden. Since former Biden staffer Tara Reade accused Biden of assault last month, their reactions have been markedly different than during the Kavanaugh hearings: they’ve either stood with the former vice president or said nothing.

Few are in a more potentially awkward position than California Sen. Kamala Harris, who used the hearings as a springboard to her own presidential campaign and made clear she believed Ford’s accusations in 2018.

Harris later told reporters that after the Kavanaugh hearings, her “biggest fear is that there will be a group of people who retreat, right? That’s my biggest fear, that there will be people who will decide that if they speak out it doesn’t matter, and will feel deflated by what happened in a way that causes them to recede.”

Earlier this month, however, Harris stuck with Biden.

“The Joe Biden I know is somebody who really has fought for women and empowerment of women and for women’s equality and rights,” Harris told the San Francisco Chronicle , though she made sure to say Reade “has a right to tell her story. And I believe that and I believe Joe Biden believes that, too.”

Harris’ defense of Biden has been joined in recent weeks by many of the top veep contenders — among them Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.