TEN YEARS AFTER HE BECAME VP, NEWS OUTLETS DECIDE BIDEN’S TRACK RECORD ON BUSING IS NOTEWORTHY. At Hot Air, Allahpundit writes:

Did Team Obama, at least, do that investigation? Vice presidents are normally vetted within an inch of their lives before being selected. Presumably O and his team knew all about Biden’s view of busing, the crime bill, and so on and determined that they were collectively not so problematic that they should look elsewhere for a running mate. But the media was free to render a different verdict, as it’s now in the process of doing, and to challenge Obama aggressively on it. They didn’t. And it’s no mystery why.

I think the most charitable explanation for this oversight is simple laziness. They didn’t give Biden the kid-gloves treatment in 2008 because they were in the tank and determined not to make trouble for a historic Democratic nominee, one might say. They gave him the kid-gloves treatment because they don’t do much investigating themselves, even of their own archives. Even this year, it may be the case that most of the media reports about Biden’s history with busing have been spoonfed to them by rival campaigns like Sanders’s or Harris’s. The reason Uncle Joe didn’t get dinged for this a decade ago might be as simple as the RNC’s oppo team having either dropped the ball or concluded that there was little to be gained by feeding the press stories about Biden’s opposition to busing (a position overwhelmingly shared by Republicans). But again: If you prefer this theory, you’re stuck believing that the press is uninterested in doing the basics of its own job, even when there are potentially high-stakes consequences in a national election.

Well, yes. Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.