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Congratulations to our presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden!
Democratic Primaries
In reply to the discussion: Kamala's attack on Biden was months in the making [View all]Celerity
(43,485 posts)90. 'she played fast and loose with the truth'
The head fact checker at CNN, Daniel Dale's Twitter thread
here it is unwound
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1144461457624403974.html
Daniel Dale
@ddale8
7 hours ago, 6 tweets, 1 min read
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. Thats 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 campaigns 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.
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. Thats 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 campaigns 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.
He played de jure (what the South had) vs. de facto (what the North had for the most part) semantic games (even tried it as a water-muddying explanation again in the debate 2 days ago!) as a way to ensure desegregation via the federal government was made much more difficult in the North (and thus Delaware, which mostly had de facto segregation).
Joe Biden called busing a liberal train wreck. Now his stance on school integration is an issue.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/joe-biden-called-busing-a-liberal-train-wreck-now-his-stance-on-school-integration-is-an-issue/2019/06/28/557705dc-99b3-11e9-830a-21b9b36b64ad_story.html?utm_term=.7e64c79ab655
snip
During the debate, Biden charged that Harris was mischaracterizing his record. Yet Bidens opposition to court-ordered busing is one of the most well-documented views of his career. In his 2007 autobiography, Promises to Keep, he called busing a liberal train wreck.
While Biden ran and won election as a liberal, Delaware voters at the time also elected anti-busing Republicans. Many white parents in the suburbs of Wilmington, the states largest city, were not willing to send their children into the city, where the schools were dominated by black students.
During the heat of the battle, in the mid-1970s, Biden called busing an asinine concept, the utility of which has never been proven to me. Ive gotten to the point where I think our only recourse to eliminate busing may be a constitutional amendment.
snip
The following year, Biden told NPR that liberal Democrats for too long had kept quiet about the matter because it would put them in the company of Alabama Gov. George Wallace (D), a leading segregationist.
Speaking to a Delaware weekly called the People Paper, Biden put it starkly: The new integration plans being offered are really just quota systems to assure a certain number of blacks, Chicanos, or whatever in each school. That, to me, is the most racist concept you can come up with. 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. Thats racist!
Biden, meanwhile, led a faction of Democrats to sponsor legislation that would restrict the ability of federal courts to institute busing orders, according to a 1978 account in the Wilmington Evening Journal. During this period, he worked to sponsor anti-busing legislation with Southern senators with segregationist backgrounds.
That upset Democrats who supported busing, and some of them took Biden aside and asked how and when the racists had gotten to me, as Biden told it in his autobiography. An aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. told Biden he was being duped.
snip
Biden's track record on busing: In 1977, he called it a 'bankrupt policy'
(video)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/videos/what-joe-biden-said-about-school-busing-amendment-in-1977/vi-AADz8Hl
CNN Biden letters reveal he resisted this desegregation tactic
Senate Rejects Amendment to Restrict Judge's Authority on School Busing
(Biden was for it)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/08/24/senate-rejects-amendment-to-restrict-judges-authority-on-school-busing/6ba7d8ed-d746-46c5-8aa9-51e134ec89bc/?utm_term=.552468cca54f
here admits to making anti-bussing acceptable (if not respectable, then reasonable) for long-standing liberals to oppose bussing, even though at the time civil rights protections were under attack
https://books.google.se/books?id=ZFQE3bLDsS4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Between+North+and+South:+Delaware,+Desegregation,+and+the+Myth+of+American&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjI3vygyYzjAhXyxcQBHYohDEIQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=Between%20North%20and%20South%3A%20Delaware%2C%20Desegregation%2C%20and%20the%20Myth%20of%20American&f=false
He supported a wide-reaching Jesse Helms anti-integration (not just bussing) amendment
How a Young Joe Biden Turned Liberals Against Integration
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/joe-biden-integration-school-busing-120968?o=1
snip
Sen. Jesse Helms, a Republican from North Carolina, was the first to strike. On September 17, 1975, when a larger education bill came up for debate, Helms offered a crippling anti-integration amendment. It would prevent the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) from collecting any data about the race of students or teachers. In addition, HEW could not require any school to classify teachers or students by race. Thus, HEW could not withhold funding from school districts that refused to integrate. This is an antibusing amendment, Helms explained. This is an amendment to stop the current regiments of faceless, federal bureaucrats from destroying our schools.
Biden rose to support Helmss amendment. I am sure it comes as a surprise to some of my colleagues that a senator with a voting record such as mine stands up and supports [the Helms amendment]. Helms replied that he was happy to welcome Biden to the ranks of the enlightened. After the laughter died down, Biden launched an anti-busing screed. I have become convinced that busing is a bankrupt concept. The Senate should declare busing a failure, and focus instead on whether or not we are really going to provide a better educational opportunity for blacks and minority groups in this country. He praised Ed Brookes initiatives on housing, job opportunities and voting rights. In one breath, Biden seemed to reject busing in the North and the South, and claimed that he was committed to equal opportunity for African Americans.
A few other senators spoke briefly about the amendment, then Brooke sprung to action. The Helms amendment would eviscerate Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Brooke said, which enabled HEW to cut off funding to school districts that refused to integrate. Brooke asserted that the federal government should attempt other integration remedies before resorting to busing. But if compliance with the law cannot be achieved without busing, then busing must be one of the available desegregation remedies. Brooke introduced a motion to table Helmss amendment. Brookes motion passed, 48-43. Biden wouldnt budge, and voted with Jesse Helms and the anti-bussers.
Brooke had fought this fight before, but he would face a more formidable adversary in Joe Biden. When a southern conservative like Helms led the anti-busing forces, Ed Brooke could still rally his troops. But it would be tougher to combat the anti-busing faction when its messenger was a young liberal from a border state.
Immediately after the Helms amendment was tabled, Biden proposed his own amendment to the $36 billion education bill, stipulating that none of those federal funds could be used by school systems to assign teachers or students to schools for reasons of race. His amendment would prevent some faceless bureaucrat from deciding that any child, black or white, should fit in some predetermined ratio. He explained, All the amendment says is that some bureaucrat sitting down there in HEW cannot tell a school district whether it is properly segregated or desegregated, or whether it should or should not have funds. Finally, Biden called busing an asinine policy.
Brooke pointed out that the amendment would do much more than Biden claimed. Like the Helms gambit, it would still gut Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. But this time, a number of liberal senators that had opposed Helmss amendment now supported Biden: Warren Magnuson and Scoop Jackson of Washington, where Seattle faced impending integration orders; and Thomas Eagleton and Stuart Symington of Missouri, where Kansas City confronted a similar fate. Mike Mansfield, the majority leader from Montana, also jumped on board. Watching his liberal colleagues defect, Republican Jacob Javits of New York mused, Theyre scared to death on busing. The Senate approved Bidens amendment. Biden had managed to turn a 48-43 loss for the anti-busing forces into a 50-43 victory.
In a seminal moment, the Senate thus turned against desegregation. The Senate had supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Act and 1968 Fair Housing Act. In the early 1970s, as President Richard Nixon and the House of Representatives encouraged the anti-busing movement, the Senate remained the last bastion for those who supported strong integration policies. Biden stormed that bastion, and it seemed to be falling. On September 23, another border-state Democrat moved against busing. Robert Byrd, the West Virginian who had since repudiated his Klan past, offered a perfecting amendment. It would prohibit busing beyond a students nearest school. It passed the Senate by a vote of 51-45.
snip
If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
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And why when she politely and respectfully challenges his record, she's "attacking" him?
StarfishSaver
Jun 2019
#3
It's bad when you attack an opponents character which is what she did. Personal attacks will
UniteFightBack
Jun 2019
#5
Oh that's right that disclaimer was made...you're not a racist ...BUT....uh huh. Sorry but I want
UniteFightBack
Jun 2019
#23
True this is a primary and I wish it was just a regular old primary but our fucking county is at
UniteFightBack
Jun 2019
#111
And had she not prefaced her comment that way, people would be saying "She called him a racist!"
StarfishSaver
Jun 2019
#63
Just one of many purity tests that candidates will fail I suspect. YAWN. I see folks have really
UniteFightBack
Jun 2019
#110
Apparently, some folks are fine with his opposition to busing, and the deeper issue
Hoyt
Jun 2019
#114
Do you hear yourself? Now accusing him of opposing equal education for minorities.
UniteFightBack
Jun 2019
#115
I don't think saying "you hurt my feeings" (paraphrased) is politically effective.
LongtimeAZDem
Jun 2019
#78
Right. And how did Harris and her staff know Biden was going to make the segregationist...
brush
Jun 2019
#109
So are we to be satisfied that Biden did little preparation to combat such political attacks?
Freethinker65
Jun 2019
#2
Say it? No. "Project" it? That's a subjective assessment, but I think he does project it.
marylandblue
Jun 2019
#50
Clinton lost handedly? Because she was competent, qualified, and prepared??
Freethinker65
Jun 2019
#117
Let her. My guess is that Warren is better prepared for this than she was before.
marylandblue
Jun 2019
#52
So what? She came to the game prepared. Haven't selected a candidate yet, but I want one
Fla Dem
Jun 2019
#12
Your feelings are in line with the majority of Americans. There are 50 pundits and anchors
Skya Rhen
Jun 2019
#15
Biden opened himself up to this a week or so ago when he brought up working with Dixiecrats.
Hoyt
Jun 2019
#14
Don't doubt it. We do need to win -- but don't feel good about doing it like that.
Hoyt
Jun 2019
#47
Perhaps Biden should have "planned" a response to an obvious potential attack...
Wounded Bear
Jun 2019
#26
And to all the people who say this has nothing to do with race and she is not attacking his
UniteFightBack
Jun 2019
#27
Divider. Not a uniter. Not the kind of candidate that will accomplish the sole mission.
democratisphere
Jun 2019
#42
the role of prosecutors is to get convictions. truth and justice are irrelevant inconveniences nt
msongs
Jun 2019
#69
I don't think so either. MSM is trying to make it a "thing" but I don't think this will get Harris
emulatorloo
Jun 2019
#75
She prepared. Given the exchanges earlier in the month, he should have prepared better.
33taw
Jun 2019
#80
there's another candidate in the race, who has been around for while, with a statement on busing
wyldwolf
Jun 2019
#85
I can support a candidate who plans things out and executes them perfectly
IronLionZion
Jun 2019
#98
I can't support a candidate who did what Harris did...played fast and loose with the truth and
Demsrule86
Jun 2019
#103