Biden says he 'wasn't prepared' for Harris to confront him during debate

Former Vice President Joe Biden knew his fellow 2020 Democratic presidential candidates would focus on him during last week's debate, but he had no idea the charge would be led by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Biden told CNN's Chris Cuomo in an interview that aired Friday morning.

"I was prepared for them to come after me, but I wasn't prepared for the person coming at me the way she came at me," he said. Biden told Cuomo one reason why he felt that way is because he knows Harris, and she also knew his late son, Beau Biden. Harris brought up race and busing to desegregate schools in the 1970s; at the time, Biden opposed this, arguing that the practice did not offer students equal opportunities.

Biden told Cuomo Harris mischaracterized his position, and while he did not think the Department of Education should mandate busing, local districts needed to do what they saw fit. At the time, he received an "overwhelming response from the African American community" in Delaware, he said, and "they did not support it." Today, there's still the need to "equalize education in every area," Biden said. "Every child out there is capable, but they're living in circumstances that make it difficult. So what are we doing? We're sitting around here as if it's an insoluble problem."

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Harris and other candidates also criticized Biden for saying he was able to work with two segregationist senators in the 1970s, and Biden said he thinks they should be focusing on the future rather than what happened decades ago. "I get all this information about other people's past and what they've done and not done," he said. "And, you know, I am just not going to go there. ... We should be debating what we do from here."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.