Fresh Off a Series of Victories, Biden Steps Back Onto the Campaign Trail

WASHINGTON — President Biden is preparing for one of the biggest tests of his presidency: Can he save his party?

Fresh off a series of legislative victories, the president kicked off the transition to campaign mode with a speech at a Democratic National Committee rally in Maryland on Thursday as he tries to preserve the party’s control of Congress in the midterm elections.

In a spirited speech before an enthusiastic campaign crowd, Mr. Biden delivered his strongest condemnation to date of what he called “ultra-MAGA Republicans” and hailed the success his administration has had in meeting key priorities on climate change, guns, jobs and the coronavirus.

“Trump and the extreme MAGA Republicans have made their choice: to go backwards, full of anger, violence, hate and division,” Mr. Biden said to about 2,400 people at a suburban Maryland high school gym. “But we’ve chosen a different path: forward, the future, unity, hope and optimism.”

The president’s new stump speech was the start of what his aides say will be a more aggressive Joe Biden, willing to brag about his accomplishments and assail his opponents.

“If the MAGA Republicans win control of the Congress, it won’t matter where you live. Women won’t have the right to choose anywhere, anywhere,” Mr. Biden said, prompting loud boos from the audience. “Let me tell you something. If they take it back and they try and pass it, I will veto it.”

But Mr. Biden’s approval rating remains stubbornly low — lower, in some cases, than those of the candidates he hopes to help — and inflation remains stubbornly high. At 79, Mr. Biden is the oldest president in American history, which has become an increasingly uncomfortable issue for Democrats.

Embracing the role as his party’s top campaigner will mean directly confronting Republican attacks when nearly three-quarters of voters say the United States is heading in the wrong direction. It will also mean enduring cold shoulders from some Democratic candidates, a few of whom have made clear that they would prefer if Mr. Biden stayed away.

Representative Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat who is running for the Senate, cited scheduling conflicts when Mr. Biden was in his state in July, declining to appear beside the president even as Mr. Ryan — a moderate — is locked in one of the country’s most intense campaign battles in a traditional swing state that has been moving toward Republicans.

Mr. Ryan’s spokeswoman, Izzi Levy, said the president was not someone the congressman wanted to campaign with.

“We haven’t been interested in him or any other out-of-state surrogates,” she said, noting that Mr. Ryan’s approval rating in Ohio was higher than Mr. Biden’s. “I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”

In the West Wing, the president’s advisers are betting that he can help Democratic candidates despite the drag on his popularity. They note that gas prices have dropped for more than two months; the coronavirus has receded, as Mr. Biden promised it would; and he has pushed through big Democratic wins on climate change, drug pricing and taxes on corporations. On Wednesday, he announced billions of dollars in student debt relief, a move that aides hope will energize young voters.

White House strategists also believe no one is better positioned to contrast the Democratic Party’s ideas with those of “ultra-MAGA Republicans,” a phrase the president uses to draw attention to the control that former President Donald J. Trump still wields and the number of Republicans who adhere to his election-denying conspiracies.

“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,” Mr. Biden said at a D.N.C. reception before the evening rally on Thursday. “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something, it’s like semifascism.”

The F.B.I.’s search of Mr. Trump’s home in Florida this month to retrieve classified documents has focused attention on him at an opportune time for Mr. Biden, raising new questions about the former president’s norm-busting — and possibly illegal — behavior. But it has also made it tougher for the White House’s messages to break through the barrage of Trump-related news coverage.

In a strategy memo released by the White House this month, advisers promised that Mr. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and members of the cabinet would fan out across the country for events intended to promote the president’s accomplishments.

The memo, from Jen O’Malley Dillon, a deputy White House chief of staff, and Anita Dunn, a top communications adviser, said the president would deliver two complementary messages: a reminder that Democrats “beat the special interests” in passing legislation that nearly all Republicans opposed and an attack on the extreme policies embraced by Mr. Trump and his allies.

“Our polling shows that messages that highlight that the president and congressional Democrats defeated special interests tests well,” Ms. O’Malley Dillon and Ms. Dunn wrote in the memo, which was addressed to Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff. “Our goal for the next few weeks is simple: take our message — one that we know resonates with key groups — and reach the American people where they are.”

That is exactly what some of Mr. Biden’s allies are hoping he will do.

Four months ago, strategists and pundits had all but written off Democratic hopes in the fall, suggesting that the party was doomed. Now, strategists at Way to Win, a progressive consulting and donor group, argue that Democrats can avoid political defeat — and even be successful — by aggressively making their case about the accomplishments of Congress and the Biden administration.

In a 34-page presentation for grass-roots organizations and political activists early this month, Way to Win argued that Democrats should acknowledge that “Americans are bombarded and overwhelmed with crises” but emphasized that “Trump Republicans will take us backward by overturning the will of the people, controlling our lives and ruling for the wealthy few.”

Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, a founder of the group and an author of the presentation, said in an interview that Mr. Biden could be an important part of delivering that message — if he pushed beyond the usual campaign tactics.

“During his whole career, Biden’s always been a workhorse, not a show pony, right?” Ms. Fernandez Ancona said. “I think he needs to use all the tools in the toolbox, and not just like traditional political stumping and press, but like new media, like these emerging platforms — podcasts, TikTok and influencers. You should get out in a different way.”

There is little indication so far that Mr. Biden and his White House are planning nontraditional efforts. On Thursday, during his remarks in Maryland, the president was flanked by Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and several of the party’s candidates who are running this fall.

Before the rally, Mr. Biden headlined a private, committee fund-raiser for the Democratic Grassroots Victory Fund, part of a concerted effort by party leaders to raise record amounts of money for their candidates. The president is scheduled to host another committee fund-raiser in New York on Sept. 19.

Throughout the summer, a number of Democrats in competitive races have broken with the White House on policy — as some did this week after his announcement on student debt forgiveness — or otherwise distanced themselves from Mr. Biden.

In one campaign ad, Representative Kim Schrier of Washington highlighted “taking on the Biden administration to suspend the gas tax.” Another spot featured Representative Jared Golden of Maine noting his differences with “President Biden’s agenda” as he cast himself as an “independent fighter.” And in an explicit pitch, Representative Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat running for re-election in a challenging Ohio district, released a television ad declaring that “she doesn’t work for Joe Biden; she works for you.”

Several Democratic strategists conceded that Mr. Biden would most likely confront more hesitancy from his party’s candidates. But his allies have noted that he has appeared with some Democrats in competitive races. And such reluctance is not unique to the current president.

“You didn’t see President Obama flying into a bunch of red states to campaign for senators in Arkansas and Nebraska and Louisiana,” said Ben LaBolt, a former campaign aide and administration official under President Barack Obama. “You go where you can have an impact on turnout.”

He added that Mr. Biden and his advisers needed to make sure he went to places where he could be helpful.

“There’s a strategic deployment of the president that still allows candidates to define their own message in a localized way based on the top priorities for their states or districts,” Mr. LaBolt said.

White House officials said they hoped one way Mr. Biden could improve Democratic turnout was by focusing attention on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, ushering in a wave of abortion bans in conservative states. Abortion rights activists have been frustrated that Mr. Biden has not been more aggressive on the issue, but aides say they recognize its power to motivate Democratic voters.

The real trick, the president’s allies said, will be framing the race in ways that seemed virtually impossible earlier in the year.

“A lot of this is how people see the race,” said David Axelrod, the political adviser and strategist who helped Mr. Obama win the White House in 2008. “Do they see it as a referendum on current conditions? Or do they see it as a choice between a productive governing party and an obstructive opposition? And that’s the struggle. He may feel that he can help tilt that balance.”

Katie Glueck contributed reporting from New York.