telling that president biden who has long kept strong ties with the african american community and is the first president to pick an african american woman to be his running mate and make her vice president, it s still struggling or lagging substantially among support with african american voters. i think this is going to change over time, though, as we near closer to election day, as the number of months toward election day dwindled down. there is going to be a more attention towards that race and i think the democratic base of the party, with you is largely african americans, will still rally around the president in the end. and a lot of what we are hearing him say, daniel, sounds familiar to what his campaign slogans in 2020, this is a battle for the soul of our nation. he also cast himself, you know, as the antidote against racism. what do you i can make of this
not yet complete. now, biden did not specifically mention former president donald trump by name, but he did talk about some of the traits and moments of his presidency. he warned of people who try to stoke division in this country and also those who have tried to cling to power. the president also specifically referenced those clashes down in charlottesville and the comments from the former president when he said that there were very fine people on both sides. president biden tried to warn that there are still sinister forces operating in this country to try to thwart progress, including racial progress. fearless progress towards justice often meets ferocious pushback, the oldest and most sinister of forces. that s because hate never goes away. highs under the rocks. and when it s given oxygen, it comes out from under that rock. that s why we know this truth as
well. silence is complicity. it cannot remain silent. we have to live through this battle for soul of the nation. reporter: this marks the first commencement address president biden has delivered this dpraj situation season and there is a reason why he chose howard university. it is one of the country s most prominent historically black universities, somewhere where vice president kamala harris attended when she was in college. during the address several graduates stood up in a silent protest, holding signs with messages that were important to black voters. black voters were key to propelling president biden to the white house in 2020 and it s a constituency he will need to court once again if he wants to be re-elected in 2024. thank you. let s discuss now and get some insight on the president s pe speech and more of today s top political stories from the new republic s senior political correspondent danielle strauss. good morning to you. thank you for joining us. let s talk abou
strategy? will it be effective this time around? on the one hand, it s still it s an argument we have seen before and the real rule in campaign politics is don t run last year s race. at the same time, it shows us that the biden team wants to keep most of the focus on a chaotic republican primary right now. and this is the pitch that they made in 2020. biden s argument in his most recent presidential campaign was that he wanted to bring normalcy or lower the temperature of the country. he wanted to offer a sort of sense of stability to voters which they end the end found appealing. so, yeah, i am not surprised by the slogan and arguing this is about democracy and the soul of the nation. those are all sort of themes that president biden used to argue that was the more stable candidate, that his administration would be less chaotic, and again turn down the
h hobe etf. we are moving along. it s hard to tell. there is discussion about changes but we are not there yet. reporter: now, it s interesting that president biden said we are not yet at crunch time. to remind our viewers, june 1st is the earliest date that the treasury department declared that the u.s. would no longer be able to pay its death for the first time in this country raes history. it s not a lot of time here. we know that president biden is tpt ed to leave for a foreign trip to japan and australia on wednesday. so only a couple of days. but when we are talking about going forward here, we know that the president and the top congressional leaders are expected to meet early this week. obviously, would probably have to be before wednesday when the president leaves and also treasury secretary janet yellen will be meeting with top credit suisse ceos and wall street bankers to talk about the state