WASHINGTON, D.C. March 9 (DPI) – In this age of media rage-baiting, a report yesterday in The Washington Post – about remarks by a young Joe Biden, in 1975, on busing and desegregation  – seemed intended to cast hostility on the now-76-year-old potential presidential candidate.

A young Washington Post reporter named Matt Viser – himself not yet born in 1975 – dredged up the interview of Biden with a local Delaware weekly newspaper in which a young Biden said, in somewhat indelicate terms, that the government should have a limited role in racial de-segregation, and that he opposed school busing to achieve racial parity in education. Biden is quoted as saying:

“I do not buy the concept, popular in the ’60s, which said, ‘We have suppressed the black man for 300 years and the white man is now far ahead in the race for everything our society offers. In order to even the score, we must now give the black man a head start, or even hold the white man back, to even the race,’ ” Biden told a Delaware-based weekly newspaper in 1975. “I don’t buy that.”

In the interview, Biden dismissed government efforts to impose diversity in schools. “We’ve lost our bearings since the 1954 Brown vs. School Board desegregation case,” he said. “To ‘desegregate’ is different than to ‘integrate.’ . . . I am philosophically opposed to quota systems. They insure mediocrity.”

Biden’s views of course have evolved over the years, and he’s widely regarded as a champion of civil rights through his political career.  The old interview though got top-of-page treatment by The Post this week.

But readers – at least readers whose comments were deemed most popular – were unwilling to throw Biden under the bus for 44-year-old comments.

The most popular comment on WashingtonPost.com of more than 1,700:

I’m pretty sure Biden was also against gay marriage 45 years ago, too, yet he was the first in the Obama Administration to publicly support it, and in so doing pushed up Obama’s own schedule for the same.
Show me a politician who doesn’t evolve over 5 decades and I’ll show you someone I’m not voting for.

Two replies:

Well said and I couldn’t agree more.  Those who don’t grow and change over their lifetime have learned nothing.  I still will support and vote for Biden.

Me too … I’m a progressive on this issue but will vote for Biden in the Democratic primary if he’s our best candidate to beat Trump. Though he might have been wrong on this specific issue 50 years ago, it doesn’t appear his views came from any racist attitude … even back then, and his record on issues of racial fairness and reconciliation during his entire career has been stellar.

Other top recommended comments:

We aren’t being asked to vote for the Biden of the 1970s. We are being asked, perhaps, to vote for the Biden of 2019. People change, and Biden certainly has.
However, I’m reluctant to fill in the oval on a 78 year old with all his baggage.  I like him. But I think we need a fresher face.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good…. Any of the baggage held by Democrats is pocket lint compared to Republicans, especially Individual-1.