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I spent some time digging through Biden’s comments on race over the years.... what he said this week is part of a career-long pattern of thinking his own party’s activists go too far and even the awful the opposition on the other side can be understood:
theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
thread stretches to 1st big interview in 1970: “I have some friends on the far left&they can justify to me the murder of a white deaf mute for a nickel by five colored guys...But they can’t justify some AL farmers tar and feathering an old colored woman” theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
“I suspect the ACLU would leap to defend the five black guys,” Biden continued in 1970. “But no one would go down to help the ‘rednecks.’ They are both products of an environment. The truth is somewhere between the two poles.”
Biden saw his opposition to busing as being honest that it wasn’t the best tool - “I think I’ve made it possible for liberals to come out of the closet,” he said in 1975
1986: “People have tremendous difficulty accepting how could I be for civil rights and against busing.”
1986: “People have tremendous difficulty accepting how could I be for civil rights and against busing.”
Among what he would say about segregationists he had personal affection for, including Stennis&Thurmond, was to compare them to Stonewall Jackson as “thunderbolt from the sky.” He also liked that Stennis compared him to Jackson after his first floor speech theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
here's the Biden profile from 1970, in which he can first be seen distancing himself from liberal activists and urging people to understand those they'd find despicable: 
