There was a time not that long ago when Joseph R. Biden Jr. could go where Barack Obama could not, an emissary to parts of the country not exactly gushing over the 44th President. Now the tables are turned and it is Obama who jets from one battleground state to the next while the 46th president sticks largely to safe blue areas where he is still welcome.

After weeks of never crossing paths on the trail, the two Presidents finally meet up for their first joint campaign appearance since Biden took office. The two Democrats will team up in a last-ditch effort to save their party’s midterm election hopes at a rally in Philadelphia that will showcase the disparate approaches, histories and roles of the onetime running mates in a moment of political peril.

Obama, the urbane soaring orator from Hawaii, and Biden, the backslapping blue-collar President from Delaware, have always been a political odd couple, born of different generations, demographics and mentalities. For years in the White House, they sought the same goals with contrasting methods amid periodic tension. But now they come to this point in their relationship with Biden reliant on his former running mate to validate his own presidency and persuade the country to embrace his leadership.

“It’ll be very interesting to see them together because so far we’ve only seen them campaign separately,” said Gabriel Debenedetti, the author of The Long Alliance, a new book on the partnership between Biden and Obama. “Not only are their styles different, but their messages are different, too.”

Indeed, Obama, with his preacher-like cadences, talks about the deeper mood of the country at this juncture in history, his voice rising an octave as he skewers what he sees as the opposition’s hypocrisy and shallowness. Biden speaks like a veteran senator offering a staccato, meat-and-potatoes recitation of this bill he passed or that order he signed, and how he expects them to help families get through the day with more money in their pockets.

Whether poetic or prosaic, though, each addresses in his own way the threat they see in a passel of election deniers loyal to former President Donald J. Trump taking power in next week’s election.

As a former President, Obama feels freer to wage a frontal assault, using Trump’s name a half-dozen times in a speech. As the incumbent, Biden holds back somewhat, referring to “my predecessor” or “the former President” without naming Trump directly even as he makes the same points.

As they have hit the campaign trail, they have both been a little rusty since they largely stayed out of public amid the Covid-19 pandemic during the 2020 election.

New York Times News Service