of course, it often is a referendum. the white house wants to make it as much of a choice as possible. and they have been handed kind of an easy way into that. the president today talking about rick scott s sort of plan for what the republican agenda would be, that even republicans like mitch mcconnell in the senate don t want to talk about. and that plan is basically going to be fodder for democrats over the next several months. it s going to be that as an issue, the policy prescriptives in it, and the overall politics of the moment. i don t think it s any secret this speech and the pivot in the president s language and tone is coming at a time when ballots are being cast. today is tuesday, a primary day in america. in two states. and on the ballot in a lot of these states are candidates that have been endorsed by former president trump, and i think the white house wants to make it clear the choice is between a biden administration and democratic leadership and, you
got beto o rourke at 5%. after that, you drop to 2%, there are people under 2% and 1%. to your point that these people think they re special, by the way, by many measures, they are. they re accomplished, they re interesting people with really good policy prescriptives. what they don t seem to be asking themselves is am i more special than someone else who i can get out of the race and support? well, you know, is it your time? certain candidates catch fire because it s their time. i had the fortune of working for for a young senator from illinois who most people said shouldn t run and he it was his time and h e caught witfireh hope and change. if you re in the top five or six of the pack, you probably there s still a chance for you because the electorate is still very fluid. i, here, again, this voice in the back of our heads saying it s not a national race. it s a state-by-state race and pay a lot of attention to these national polls where biden s running really far ahead. but
in this particular poll, it s got beto o rourke at 5%. after that, you drop to 2%, there are people under 2% and 1%. to your point that these people think they re special, by the way, by many measures, they are. they re accomplished, they re interesting people with really good policy prescriptives. what they don t seem to be asking themselves is am i more special than someone else who i can get out of the race and support? well, you know, is it your time? certain candidates catch fire because it s their time. i had the fortune of working for for a young senator from illinois who most people said shouldn t run and he it was his time and he caught fire with hope and change. if you re in the top five or six of the pack, you probably there s still a chance for you because the electorate is still very fluid. i, here, again, this voice in the back of our heads saying it s not a national race. it s a state-by-state race and pay a lot of attention to these
african-american audience and african-american voters. what have you heard that stands out in terms of policy prescriptives that will really move the needle on the issues you re most concerned about. let s talk about where we can actually be pragmatic and gain traction. one of the things we know is that many black americans are underemployed. while we ve got historic unemployment rates, that is, historically low unemployment rates, black americans are still unemployed at twice the rate of white americans and at the highest rate of any other ethnic group. that gap hardly ever seems to budge. no, it doesn t. black americans always have a higher unemployment rate than the general population. that s right. and when they are employed, they re underemployed, they re not in a high-paying, high skill jobs. so one of the things we think about is the future of work, for instance. thinking about the new economy jobs that are tech in orientation or automation in orientation, how is it th
bran stat said today, we re not that close to tway deal is concern for the markets and the administration. let s talk about a subset of wages i know matters a lot to me. the gender pay gap. it is still an issue. i remember a year ago when larry kudlow was still your colleague at cnbc. he said the gender pay gap didn t exist. he was wrong then. and if he repeats himself today, he d be wrong now because women in the united states were earning 82% of what men did in 2017. that means it would take a woman 47 extra days of work to do the same thing as her male counterpart. and if we close the gap at the rate we re going somebody told me it s going to be 80 years or something before it closes. i don t understand why it still exists. it just makes absolutely no sense. i guess the point is we can keep looking into why it exists or we can decide, john, what fixes it? do we need policy prescriptives to actually fix this? because the free market doesn t seem to be doing it on its own.