Biden is planning two campaign speeches to underline the contrasts with Trump

President Biden is stepping up his campaign efforts as he looks toward November, planning a series of speeches that aides said Wednesday would stake the coming election as the survival of American democracy itself.

Even before a single vote is cast in the Republican Party’s nomination race, Mr. Biden and his team are treating former President Donald J. Trump as their de facto opponent in the general election. They try to frame the battle not as a traditional referendum on the incumbent president and his rule over the nation, but as an existential struggle to save the country from a dangerous adversary.

Now that the calendar has turned to 2024, Mr. Biden is making a notable escalation of his re-election campaign with a speech scheduled at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania on Saturday, the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, pro-Trump Capitol riot. crowd.

The location, where George Washington commanded troops during the Revolutionary War, is intended to create a sharp contrast between Washington, who voluntarily relinquished power after serving as the nation’s first president, and Mr. Trump, who refuses to accept the results of the 2020 race. . On Monday, Mr. Biden will appear in Charleston, S.C., at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, a historically black church where a white supremacist killed nine parishioners in 2015. The location epitomizes the country’s current struggle against political violence and white supremacy, his campaign said.

The two speeches are part of an effort to divert attention from Mr. Biden’s low approval ratings and remind Democratic and independent voters of the alternative to his reelection. In recent weeks, campaign aides have seized on Trump’s violent and authoritarian rhetoric and potentially radical plans for a second term.

“The threat that Donald Trump posed to American democracy in 2020 has only grown greater in the years since,” said Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Biden’s campaign manager. “Our message is clear and simple. We are campaigning as if the fate of our democracy depends on it. Because it is.”

Mr. Biden has held just one public event for his 2024 campaign, though he has drawn contrasts between his leadership and that of Mr. Trump and other Republicans in many official White House appearances. Instead, he has focused on recruiting donors at private fundraising events.

Mr. Biden’s performances will also provide voters with the first side-by-side contrast between himself and his predecessor this election cycle. Mr. Trump will hold two campaign rallies on Saturday in Iowa, where he leads the nominating contest by double-digit margins.

For months, Democrats have issued public and private warnings about the need for Mr. Biden’s campaign to engage more aggressively in the 2024 effort. Polls show the race to be neck-and-neck, with Biden struggling to key Democratic coalition constituencies, including young, black and Latino voters.

Biden aides said the campaign planned to hire organizing teams in every battleground state, eventually hiring thousands of staffers across the country. A new round of campaign ads is planned for later this week.

They also plan to send Vice President Kamala Harris on a national tour focused on abortion rights, which will begin in Wisconsin on January 22, the 51st anniversary of the landmark abortion rights ruling in Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court overturned that ruling in 2022 with the support of three judges appointed by Trump.