As you have probably heard, there was a spat the other week at the Democratic presidential debate between Sen. Kamala Harris and former Vice-President Joe Biden. Biden was first elected to the US Senate in 1972 as a moderate Democrat from the state of Delaware, the northernmost southern state. (Delaware was a so-called “border state” during the Civil War, a state in which slavery was legal in 1860 but chose to remain in the United States.) He was an opponent of what was called at the time, “forced busing,” court-mandated plans to address discriminatory patterns in primary and secondary schools. Sen. Harris rightly called him on his opposition to busing, which he called at the time an “asinine concept” and “liberal train wreck.” She talked about her own educational experiences at the time, bussed in Berkeley, California as an elementary school student. Biden was defensive, clearly annoyed that anyone would question his civil rights credentials, adding that he was never opposed to busing per se, just mandatory busing.