Essentially, Biden was for busing before he realized that position would have cost him politically, then he was against it. Now that the issue is not longer a current discussion, he promotes his initial support of busing.
This does bring up an interesting question though, that he changes his position due to feedback from his constituents. Essentially democracy in action. (Perhaps this needs to be investigated more, but let’s play it out.) If he had continued to support busing he would have just been voted out and someone else who opposed it would have come in. So no change. Bit of a lose-lose scenario.
Biden was obsessed with ending busing, stating that, in his first eight years in the Senate, “No issue has consumed more of my time and energies.” 23 — Mediocre, pg 61
Suddenly, he remembered his actions around busing much differently. When he was interviewed for the popular podcast Pod Save America in March of 2019, Biden decided to burnish his busing record by focusing on the time he voted to support busing in 1974—and not the decade he spent trying to defeat it. “In the middle of the single most extensive busing order in all the United States history, in my state,” he said, “I voted against an amendment, cast the deciding vote, to allow courts to keep busing as a remedy. Because there are some things that are worth losing over.” 28 — Mediocre, pg 63