The Gonzo Primary Weekly: Biden explained himself better in 1975
Biden has lived experience. Why hasn’t he learned more from it?
Photo via Flickr by Marc Nozell.
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At Untold Story, I’m looking to work through and diagnose both what ails political media coverage and deliver journalism that clarifies our American political moment going into the presidential election in 2020. It’ll be a process. I’m Jeremy Borden, independent journalist, reluctant political junkie, with bylines in publications big and small but with a sense that more of us in the media need to tilt at windmills if the mess that has been made of the American Experiment is going to continue.
So far, I’ve announced a new project called The Gonzo Primary by defining the broad parameters for what healthy media coverage might look like as we start from scratch. Last week, I took on South Carolina’s deep history of racial animus, a backdrop to the primary campaign continuing there.
Below: Busing and the integration of schools in America is a battle we continue to fight today. In fact, the record shows Biden explained himself better in 1975 than he did on the debate stage last week.
What I’m Reading
Keeping up with the madness this week is all I could really manage as I dive into primary source material in the Supreme Court cases, particularly on gerrymandering. Because...
This Really Happened
Oh, boy, there was a lot of holy shit news this week. The Democratic field and primary debate has been better defined (I dissect the history behind Biden’s comments below), the Supreme Court decided there’s no good way for the courts to figure out partisan gerrymandering and they’ve decided they’re basically fine with the two parties state governments picking and choosing our representatives anyway. In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote, “[f]or the first time in this Nation’s history, the majority declares it can do nothing about an acknowledged constitutional violation because it has searched high and low and cannot find a workable legal standard to apply.” (We’ll have to dive in more another time on this because the implications are profound).
But, perhaps most extraordinarily, a journalist and author accused the president of rape in a book and major magazine story — and the news cycle only shrugged.
As if rape were the same as sex, the president said accuser E. Jean Carroll was “not my type.”
While the New York Times was far from the only mainstream outlet that didn’t do much with the story at first, because the rest take their cue from The Gray Lady (for better or worse) I’ll pick on them a bit as a way of exposing how important MSM discussions are and have the power to drive narratives and spark change—or not.
The Times played the story in its book section, which Executive Editor Dean Baquet said after the fact was “overly cautious.” This is a good time to note that the Times got rid of its public editor position, which was basically a paid critic that had some ability to criticize the newspaper both internally and externally, ostensibly holding the Times to the same standards it holds everyone else.
In short, the last person to hold that position, Liz Spayd, was highly controversial and the Times got rid of the position, saying that, well, they take a lot of shit on Twitter and everywhere else and don’t really need that kind of guff from inside the newsroom (my paraphrase).
As for the Carroll story, the Times has since come back with its own reporting on the case and played it bigger after the criticism.
Here’s Baquet in the Times’ Reader Center:
In retrospect, Mr. Baquet said, a key consideration was that this was not a case where we were surfacing our own investigation — the allegations were already being discussed by the public.
The fact that a well-known person was making a very public allegation against a sitting president “should’ve compelled us to play it bigger.”
The Times is continuing to report on Ms. Carroll’s allegations.
So, basically, since the Times wasn’t breaking the news and getting credit for allegations that the president raped someone, they weren’t going to say too much about it?
I know how these conversations go among editors who are still steeped in the newspaper wars of the 1980s: “How can we own this story?” They got Carroll’s two friends on the record — important interviews, for sure, that reveal, or at least reminds us, that our current president has managed to get away with an unreal level of criminality in his life — and did their own profile of her. So even though the paper no longer has a public editor, the public criticism worked.
My analysis shouldn’t just be about the journalism. Just as telling about where we are in society is why Carroll didn’t want to reveal the attack in 2016, when Trump was running for president and other women were coming forward with their own allegations. From the NYT Daily podcast transcript, picking up after Carroll tells two friends about Trump’s attack on her:
As they tell it, after these two separate conversations, these women never spoke of the alleged attack again. They kind of went on with their lives and their friendships. And even during the presidential race, when other women were coming forward to talk about Trump’s disregard for women’s bodies compounded by the “Access Hollywood” tape coming out, as she tells it, she does not feel compelled to talk about this either publicly, or even privately.
I mean, a question would be why you chose not to say something in 2016?
E. Jean Carroll
Shocking as it sounds, I thought it would help him. And shocking as it sounds, I was correct.
(Reporter) Megan Twohey
Why did you think it would help him, the women coming forward with allegations of groping?
E. Jean Carroll
Because it is a masculine, powerful, leader-like thing to do to take what you want, to have as many women for your own pleasure as you can take.
Made-for-TV debates produce a few authentic moments for Democrats
The Democrats had a debate in Miami, some of them spoke Spanish and reporters did some arm chair analysis. I could offer some — Beto doesn’t seem to know much about immigration law, a little disturbing for a guy from El Paso; and Elizabeth Warren delivered an indictment of the economy that will likely serve as the backdrop for whomever wins.
One worthy note from the coverage worth remembering: the field is likely to be winnowed by October, so this next stretch is crucial. Even though I’d like for this newsletter to be focused on an out of the Beltway perspective, it’s also key to understanding the primary that this is a show being run by the Democratic National Committee and Democratic donors. As the old adage goes, candidates don’t drop out because they want to, they drop out because they run out of money. Also in this case the DNC’s criteria to make the debate stage will also naturally streamline the field.
More importantly, I think Warren may have alluded to what will become the organizing principle of the new left, win or lose: the ability to mobilize. Famously, Barack Obama shut down his vaunted campaign operation when he could have used his unprecedented coalition of voters of all races and incomes to push his agenda—which may never unite around a single presidential candidate again.
This is the central organizing principle of the campaign for Bernie Sanders and cribbed, effectively, by Elizabeth Warren.
As The Intercept’s Ryan Grim notes in a profile of Warren that begins with the debate:
“The will of the people matters,” she said. “You better understand, the fight still goes on [after the election]. It starts at the White House and it means that everybody we energize in 2020 stays on the frontlines come January 2021. We have to push from the outside, have leadership from the inside, and make this Congress reflect the will of the people.”
If we weren’t so blinded with partisan hatred it’s something that would unite conservatives and liberals alike.
Occasionally in these made for TV spectacles moments of truth interrupt regularly scheduled programming. And that’s what happened to Joe Biden, although not for reasons we might expect.
The Gonzo Primary: Why didn’t Joe Biden just tell the truth?
Iowa Caucus Countdown: 218 days
Joe Biden didn’t tell the truth about his position on whether he thought African American kids should be bused in to integrate white schools in 1975. But diving into the history a bit, Biden’s position on busing and education in black communities was far more tenable in 1975 than the one he offered at this week’s debate.
For sure, the issue is tender and complicated. It’s worth noting that the first African American ever elected to the Senate, Republican Edward Brooke, said at the time that the anti-busing measure Biden supported was “the greatest symbolic defeat for civil rights since 1964.”
First, let’s go to what will for sure be an early touchstone and back-and-forth in the Democratic primary campaign thus far between Biden and Senator Kamala Harris:
BIDEN: The fact is that, in terms of busing, the busing, I never — you would have been able to go to school the same exact way because it was a local decision made by your city council. That’s fine. That’s one of the things I argued for, that we should not be — we should be breaking down these lines.
But so the bottom line here is, look, everything I have done in my career, I ran because of civil rights, I continue to think we have to make fundamental changes in civil rights, and those civil rights, by the way, include not just only African-Americans, but the L.G.B.T. community.
HARRIS: But, Vice President Biden, do you agree today — do you agree today that you were wrong to oppose busing in America then? Do you agree?
BIDEN: I did not oppose busing in America. What I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education. That’s what I opposed. I did not oppose ——
HARRIS: Well, there was a failure of states to integrate public schools in America. I was part of the second class to integrate Berkeley, California, public schools almost two decades after Brown v. Board of Education.
BIDEN: Because your city council made that decision. It was a local decision.
HARRIS: So that’s where the federal government must step in.
BIDEN: The federal government ——
HARRIS: That’s why we have the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. That’s why we need to pass the Equality Act. That’s why we need to pass the E.R.A., because there are moments in history where states fail to preserve the civil rights of all people.
BIDEN: I’ve supported the E.R.A. from the very beginning when I ran for ——
CHUCK TODD (Moderator): Vice President Biden, 30 seconds, because I want to bring other people into this.
BIDEN: I supported the E.R.A. [Equal Rights Amendment] from the very beginning. I’m the guy that extended the Voting Rights Act for 25 years. We got to the place where we got 98 out of 98 votes in the United States Senate doing it. I’ve also argued very strongly that we, in fact, deal with the notion of denying people access to the ballot box. I agree that everybody, once they, in fact — anyway, my time is up. I’m sorry.
It is a painfully tortured argument for anyone who ostensibly believes in civil rights to suggest that the federal government doesn’t have a role in enforcing civil rights. In much of the South, African Americans wouldn’t have equal voting privileges today in elections (although Republicans have found other ways to dissuade potentially Democratic voters from casting ballots) had the federal government not stepped in and forced states to give them that right.
As for busing, the Joe Biden of 1975 made a much better argument for his opposition than he did at the debate. History has borne out many of his worries of those on the side of integration and civil rights had in how to create a more equal education system for black and white students and whether busing would work.
First, it’s important to remember that busing sparked violence all around the country and particularly the South, something very much on Biden’s mind, he said at the time. But just as importantly, Biden’s opposition to busing was rooted in a far more noble cause — equal resources and dollars for public schools, regardless of what neighborhood they were in.
That is not to say that busing wasn’t a noble cause and didn’t have some immediate positive effects, especially for people like Senator Harris. Her education undoubtedly would have been stunted without being able to go to a white school with more resources more quickly.
But Biden’s concerns—and not the awkward dance he did around the truth on the debate stage—carry far more water than his argument that bussing should be left up to local governments.
Biden supported an anti-busing amendment from North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms but for different reasons than Helms. According to the Congressional Record (starting on page 29103):
The reason why I rise today in support of this amendment —which I, too, believe is clearly an antibusing amendment, and a vote for or against puts you in a position of whether or not you are "for 'em or again 'em" in terms of busing—is that I have become convinced that busing is a bankrupt concept that, in fact, does not bear any of the fruit for which it was designed.
If anything, it obfuscates the real issue today which is whether or not there is equal opportunity within the educational field for all people within the United States. I am a little bit miffed by some of my colleagues—and I am not addressing this to the Senator from North Carolina [Jesse Helms], but some of my colleagues—who, in fact, have felt strongly that we should not be busing, and say they want better schools, but, at the same time, have engaged in the same conduct and logic as the President of the United States.
He said that busing was not a good idea, that we have to spend more money on education, and then vetoed the education bill. I fail to follow the logic and I question the sincerity of those who say they are concerned about equal educational opportunity for all people and say they are not racist or people who are trying to subvert the legitimate aims and ambitions and aspirations of minority groups in America and, at the same time, do not follow their own position, as stated by, for example, our President.
It seems to me that instead of concentrating on busing students, what we should be doing in this Chamber is concentrating on matters which have been led by distinguished Senators like the Senator from Massachusetts, Senator [Edward] BROOKE, who, in fact, in all areas of opportunity in America, from housing to job opportunity, to education, to equal credit, to voting rights, has consistently voted to see to it that minorities have equal access to everything from credit to the ballot box. I strongly support each and every one of those pieces of legislation including, as the chairman of the Consumer Affairs Subcommittee of the Banking Committee, equal credit opportunity.
But it seems to me that we have got to act right down to it and face it in this Chamber, whether or not you are a liberal or conservative, namely whether busing produces any positive results and, if it does, and do they outweigh the liabilities. If you believe that way then you should vote against the Helms amendment. But if it does not, if you believe as I do, we are not addressing ourselves to the real issue that exists in this country with regard to equal opportunity in education, and we are causing brush fires all over the Nation and heightening racial tension instead of solving any of the problems then, you, in fact, should vote for the Helms amendment.
Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. BIDEN: In just a moment, if I may take just 2 more minutes. ... Let us not make busing in relation to the social issues of the day what Vietnam was to our foreign policy. Vietnam we found out did not work in 1965, and some tenaciously held onto it as if it were some way out of foreign policy, and we started to talk about our national image and what it would do to us instead of doing what the farmer senior Senator from Vermont, Senator AIKEN, said, namely declare that we won the war and leave.
I think we should do the same thing with regard to the social issue and declare busing does not work, leave it, and get on to the issue of deciding whether or not we are really going to provide a better educational opportunity for blacks and minority groups in this country.
There was significant debate that day over a cornerstone educational study from sociologist James S. Coleman, who had been a proponent of busing in 1964. But when Coleman did a massive federal study to study the effects of busing and integration in 1975, he found that busing hadn’t worked as intended. As one magazine story summarizes:
...because in 1975 Coleman concluded in a new study that busing had failed, largely because it had prompted "white flight." As white families fled to suburban schools, the report concluded, the opportunity for achieving racial balance evaporated.
Political support for busing quickly waned. Many civil rights leaders, educators, policy-makers, and sociologists who had embraced Coleman's earlier findings now were outraged. They blasted him for abandoning his earlier commitment to desegregation.
This is still a question hotly debated in education circles. But it comes down to this: putting a child into a better school (ostensibly a white school that receives more resources and money) doesn’t mean that child has a better chance at success. “The logical conclusion: You can’t fix schools without trying to fix broader social inequality, too,” as one academic writing on the education site Chalkbeat concluded.
Some of Biden’s worries about busing have been borne out. Those with means went to areas with good schools and, undermined by subsequent court decisions at the state and national levels, schools in America have been largely re-segregated, to everybody’s detriment. The social fabric of American society is torn because of it.
My hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, stopped actively integrating its schools after a court decision in 1999, with profound consequences.
But what this country did get right is, of course, the principles that drove the busing policy: that “separate but equal” is also a failure and that schools, if they can be successfully integrated, create better students and a better society. From a New Yorker story about Charlotte:
Some might wonder why a commitment to school desegregation matters. Can't we just inject more resources into poor schools so that they have the opportunity to compete on an equal playing field? But research has long shown that singularly investing capital into a school in which the vast majority of students live in poverty has limited impact on achievement. The social science on the impact of desegregation is clear. Researchers have consistently found that students in integrated schools—irrespective of ethnicity, race, or social class—are more likely to make academic gains in mathematics, reading, and often science than they are in segregated ones. Students in integrated K-12 schools are more likely to both enroll in and graduate from college. While the most disadvantaged students—most often poor students of color—receive the most considerable academic benefits from attending diverse schools, research demonstrates that young people in general, regardless of their background, experience profound benefits from attending integrated schools.
As the editors of “Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow” make clear, "Students who attend desegregated schools exhibit greater levels of intergroup friendships, demonstrate lower levels of racial fears and stereotypes, and experience less intergenerational perpetuation of racism and stereotypes across multiple institutional settings.”
These are complicated policy questions that go far beyond schools. Economic justice is at the heart of whether the future is bleak for the poor and whether the government actively works against black and brown communities, as it does now. Trump’s core message gets at the idea of unfairness and injustice, while other Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are building their campaigns around those themes.
I’ve always thought the hype around Biden’s candidacy was overblown because it relies on equally unreliable polls—who aside from the hardest of partisans has made a decision about a candidate this early?— because his appeal didn’t resonate in his previous two campaigns and because he’s not nearly as progressive as he says he is.
But perhaps what should be most disturbing for people on Team Biden is that he can’t explain his own positions, or seems to have come up with quicker, more convenient explanations than his own truth, which is far more compelling and pragmatic than his momentary fiction. Last week, Biden could have said something similar to what he said in his 2007 memoir: that he watched black and white families in Delaware afraid for their lives, teachers quit and schools in a state of chaos as a result of busing. He could have said that the policy forced the courts to take up the matter again and again, effectively re-segregating schools. He could have offered a vision beyond school systems and beyond busing, one where economic justice is delivered to disenfranchised and discarded communities and which makes the question of busing obsolete because of natural integration, beyond the whims of state and federal courts.
And he could have said something similar to what he said in 1975, that while his generation has failed to produce the racial, social and economic equality that they promised, his lived experience has made him learn not to support things simply because they’re popular but because they work.
But that’s tough, especially at a debate. Easier just to say your time is up and hope to manage a moment rather than provide a vision that could actually produce results.