WASHINGTON — President Biden plans to use the bipartisan debt limit agreement to return to his phantom re-election campaign, pointing to success in restoring his image with voters as a consensus–builder that is making progress on its pledge to unite the country, advisers told NBC News.
Biden pointed this out Friday during his first speech in the Oval Office, which he began by recalling how skeptics even in his own party doubted he could work successfully with Republicans. The budget deal was just one of 350 bipartisan laws he signed, he noted.
“I know bipartisanship is hard and unity is hard, but we can never stop trying, because in times like these – the ones we just faced, where the US economy and the world economy is in danger of collapsing – there is no other way,” he said.
The first phase of Biden’s 2024 campaign aims to cast him as a drama-free leader who defied expectations by working down the aisle. On Friday, Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will travel to North Carolina to discuss worker training programs in his Invest in America program, according to the White House.
It’s part of Biden’s “return to his previously scheduled lineup,” a senior Biden adviser said. His plan is to move from a month consumed by the debt impasse in Washington to a direct conversation with Americans on his economic program, in particular the legislation he signed to fund infrastructure projects and revive the economy. domestic manufacturing, as well as outline how it plans to build on those efforts, aides said.
The bipartisan agreement Biden signed over the weekend raises the debt ceiling and cuts federal spending.
The coming weeks will not be a victory lap on the debt-limiting agreement, aides said. After all, some Democrats strongly oppose several provisions of the legislation, which they see as succumbing to a “hostage-taking” strategy that Biden had vowed not to participate in.
The White House counters that Biden was able to protect key legislative initiatives and limit spending cuts offered in the negotiations. But for the White House, perhaps the biggest win was something that wasn’t in the text of the bill.
“Obviously the fact that he’s able to put in place bipartisan approaches to solving problems in this country is a huge strength for him that we talk about and will continue to talk about,” a Biden adviser said. . At the same time, the adviser warned: “This is a bipartisan bill. Campaigns are about contrasts.
One of the contrasts Biden has sought to draw as he campaigns for re-election, and which his advisers say will be effective with voters, is between a president focused on his job and a growing Republican presidential field. and which continues to be largely shaped by former President Donald Trump.
A memo of Biden’s campaign talking points distributed Friday to top surrogates argued that he was providing “strong and consistent leadership after four years of chaos and dysfunction” and that his “wisdom and experience are the reason for which he was able to negotiate an agreement that protects the key to his administration”. historical priorities and achievements.
Biden’s re-election campaign was just days old when his Treasury Secretary warned that the United States was weeks away from running out of money to pay its bills. It set off weeks of ominous economic warnings and fresh reminders of the deep divisions in Washington, which Biden himself had acknowledged this year had been harder to mend than he had hoped.
But Biden’s deal with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-California, which passed quickly and resoundingly in bipartisan votes in the House and Senate, sent a Biden team that had been sharply criticized for ceding the message war to the GOP. into overdrive to claim credit for what he billed as a major win.
Another Biden adviser said that even with some prominent Democrats opposed to the debt deal, the overwhelming majority of House and Senate Democrats backed him, ensuring he got to his office.
Rep. Ann McLane Kuster, DN.H., chair of the center-left NDP coalition, described part of her call with Biden last week as a “pat on the back for making the process work” and said said a “pragmatic solution prevailed.” She called Biden’s style “ruling from the middle,” pointing to the number of members of his coalition’s swing district who endorsed the compromise.
But she also said Biden had shown he would fight for his priorities, and she gave him credit for ensuring changes to Social Security and Medicare were out of place. .
Even as advisers tout the bipartisan breakthrough, Biden will continue to highlight the contrasts between parties that will shape the 2024 campaign. In his Oval Office speech on Friday, he said he would continue to push for new taxes on wealthiest Americans, for example.
“Republicans may not like it, but I’m going to make sure the rich pay their fair share,” he said.
While Biden may leave Washington more often in the coming weeks than he was able to during the debt standoff, the events will continue to be considered official rather than campaign events.
Biden’s campaign organization is still slowly taking shape. But aides are looking to highlight other key issues this summer that they say would boost turnout among key constituencies, including, for example, a major messaging effort around the first anniversary of the Court’s ruling. Supreme vacating Roe vs. Wade on June 24.
Councilors said they expect abortion to be an even bigger voting issue than it was in the 2022 midterm elections, when Democrats defied expectations by limiting losses in the House and even securing a seat in the Senate. Biden will travel to North Carolina, a battleground he surpassed by 75,000 votes in 2020, just weeks after the GOP legislature overturned the Democratic governor’s veto of a law banning most abortions after 12 weeks.
Biden’s team also expects him to headline more fundraisers, especially through the end of the quarterly fundraising reporting period on June 30. This deadline will offer a first look at his campaign war chest.
Biden advisers continue to believe that Americans — or at least the major voting groups they say fueled his 2020 victory — still dread the prospect of a lengthy presidential campaign, especially a potential rematch with the US. former President Donald Trump. Plans for more traditional campaign events are still months away, following the model of former President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, in which Obama didn’t hold his first rally until May 2012.
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com