David A. Graham: Biden’s gaffe exposed the cracks in his coalition

Biden insisted that wasn’t his position. Harris was still able to be bused to schools in Berkeley, he said, because the local government made that choice. “What I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education,” he said.

This is a thin defense, as Biden must have known. Throughout the civil-rights movement, southern governments raised the banner of local control in their fight against civil rights. The federal government ought not to force measures such as busing or integration itself, they argued. The fact that Biden’s stand against federally mandated busing was a political winner is a reminder that Delaware is south of the Mason-Dixon line, geographically and at times politically. But as Harris was quick to point out, only Washington had the muscle to step in and force the hand of local governments using local control as a smokescreen to maintain discrimination.

“There was a failure of states to integrate public schools in America,” Harris said, noting that even schools in the famously liberal Berkeley were barely integrated two decades after Brown v. Board of Education. “So that’s where the federal government must step in. 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 the pass the ERA. Because there are moments in history where states fail to preserve the civil rights of all people.”

Biden was by now on his heels, sputtering about old votes.

“I supported the ERA from the very beginning. I am the guy who extended the Voting Rights Act for 25 years and got to the place where we got 98 out of 98 votes in the United States Senate doing it. And I also argued very strongly that we in fact deal with the notion of denying people access to the ballot box,” he said.

Read: Joe Biden’s endless search for the middle on race

Biden’s long record is a double-edged sword: He can point to votes for the Equal Rights Amendment when it was a hot-button issue the first time around, but he also served alongside men such as Eastland and Strom Thurmond, and his dredging up of this history cuts both ways.

Finally, he finished, sounding petulant: “Anyway, my time is up. I’m sorry.”

The potential double entendre, applying to both his answer on the debate stage and his command of the Democratic race, was not lost on anyone who heard it.

Whether it will become fact remains to be seen. Biden’s political death has been foretold many times. Gaffes have sunk Biden during previous presidential bids, but so far nothing in this campaign has been fatal. Even after the Eastland gaffe, African American Democrats of the older generation hastened to shore him up, and his formidable support among black voters doesn’t seem to have diminished significantly.