SUMTER, SOUTH CAROLINA — Joe Biden suggested that he should be judged on his eight years as President Barack Obama’s vice president while his 36 years in the Senate before 2009 should not be subject to scrutiny.

In what amounted to an attempt to reboot his campaign after a poll slump and fresh scrutiny of his work with segregationist senators in the 1970s, Biden accused his opponents of focusing excessive attention on his long legislative record.

“If you look at the issues I’ve been attacked on, nearly every one of them, somehow, is something to do with before 2008, as if my opponents want to believe I served from 1972 to 2008 and then took a hiatus,” Biden told the mostly black crowd of a few hundred in Sumter, South Carolina, on Saturday.

Biden stressed his connection to Obama, who remains extremely popular among black voters. “When I talk about the Obama years, my opponents talk about it, it’s ancient history. When others talk about something I said in the '70s, they talk about it like yesterday,” Biden said.

In the speech, the former vice president apologized for “any of the pain and misconception” that arose from comments that he made at a fundraiser in June, when he pointed to his relationships with segregationist senators James O. Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia as an example of civility.

He appeared to have flubbed this passage of his speech, seeming to apologize when the carefully worded text of his speech said only that he was “sorry for any pain that misperception may have caused.”

Over the years, Biden, 76, has repeatedly lauded his “ deeply personal relationships” with several segregationist senators.

On Saturday, Biden did not apologize for making the decision to work with the senators in his Sumter speech, arguing that he had to work with the power structure that existed at the time in order to create change.

Primary rival Sen. Kamala Harris of California attacked Biden during the first round of Democratic presidential debates in late June for not only for touting his relationships with the segregationists, but for working with them to oppose federal integration busing.

Biden conceded in an interview released Friday that he “ wasn’t prepared” for Harris’ forceful line of attack.

“Statements and votes I made on busing in 1970s have become an issue in this race. I know those those speaking to the issue today are saying what I said back then,” Biden said in his Sumter speech.

Biden touched on other pre-2008 policy positions and said he has been "grossly misrepresented," like the 1994 crime bill and a 2005 bill that made it harder to declare bankruptcy.

“I’m not beholden to banks. I supported the bankruptcy bill because taking a very bad bill that was going to pass overwhelmingly and make it better made sense,” Biden said. Before she was a Massachusetts senator, Elizabeth Warren, who is also running for the Democratic presidential nomination, fought against the 2005 bankruptcy bill.

On the 1994 crime bill, which critics argue helped contribute to mass incarceration and racial discrepancies in sentencing, Biden noted that a majority of the Congressional Black Caucus supported the bill. "It worked in some areas, but it failed in others," Biden said of the crime bill.

His message resonated with Sonji Pearson, a 48-year-old pastor in Sumter. “We all change,” she told the Washington Examiner. “Like he said, when things happen, you do what you do at that moment because of circumstances and different situations, but he’s grown since then.”

Though Biden condemned "armies of opposition researchers" trying to "weaponize" his record, he warned earlier this week that his team has dirt on his primary rivals and "all this dirt about other people's pasts."