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Biden's claim tonight that he only opposed federally mandated busing and did not generally oppose "busing in America" was a flagrant misrepresentation of his position in the '70s and '80s. He'd made crystal clear he opposed busing as a concept, as a matter of principle.
Biden's remarks on busing in the 1970s were generally very unequivocal -- "I oppose busing. It's an asinine concept." "A bankrupt concept." "Busing does not work." He expressed pride for making anti-busing sentiment "respectable" among liberals.
As recently re-reported by WaPo, Biden said things like this about busing: “What it says is, ‘In order for your child with curly black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin to be able to learn anything, he needs to sit next to my blond-haired, blue-eyed son.’ That’s racist!"
It wasn't just words: working with avowed racists, Biden pushed legislation to make it difficult to run busing programs. There *was* a caveat: he said he would support busing in cases where it'd been proven that a community had been intentionally segregated. But otherwise no.
Biden's campaign says that his position on busing would not have stopped the particular local busing program that Kamala Harris was a part of, since it was voluntarily adopted by the local community. In general, though: she was not mischaracterizing his opposition to busing.
Biden campaign’s argument is that him saying in the ‘70s that he opposed busing was understood then to mean he simply opposed federal-mandated busing, not all busing. Like when GOP said under Obama they oppose health reform, was obvious it meant Obamacare, not all health reform.
