Notably, it will start a six-week, $30 million TV and digital ad buy on Saturday, aimed at drawing out the “full-throated” contrast between Biden’s vision for “where the country can go” against “Donald Trump’s dark, dangerous and chaotic vision for the country,” said campaign communications director Michael Tyler on a call with reporters Friday morning. The ads will target battleground states, as well as Black and Latino-focused outlets and channels.

It’s part of a broader strategy to bury Trump in non-stop spending, made possible through Biden’s significant fundraising advantage. And while the barrage is notable for its timing — months earlier than allies for President Barack Obama started attacking then-candidate Mitt Romney in May 2012 — it also stands out for the reassurance it is providing to anxious Democrats, at least in the current moment.

“I think Joe Biden might have changed SOTU into the Start Of The Uplift with last night’s speech,” said Dan Sena, a Democratic consultant who led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2018. “Democrats needed him to lay out the playbook for this election, in particular on the economy and immigration. We got the vision and contrast we need as the campaign season starts.”

Biden’s speech on Thursday, his final State of the Union ahead of the 2024 election, was overtly political. Largely dispensing with the ceremonial statesmanship of the night, he drew repeated and sharp contrasts with Trump on democracy, abortion rights and immigration — all issues that are on track to define the general election contest between two incumbent presidents.

Though Biden never mentioned Trump by name, he cited his “predecessor” 13 times. In 2023, Biden referred to his “predecessor” only once. The campaign-centered focus of the speech left Republicans fuming. But Democrats argued that it was an effective move by the White House to lay out the stakes of the election in simple terms.

“Swing voters want to see a fighter that can protect them from a second Trump term,” said Bradley Beychok, co-founder of American Bridge, a pro-Biden super PAC. “Biden left no doubt he’s ready to take the fight to Trump. Couldn’t think of a stronger start for Biden as the campaign really comes into focus.”

Biden’s speech was not without its missteps. He mistakenly invited people to go to Moscow, misstated the name of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old student in Georgia last month, and used the term “illegal” when discussing Riley’s alleged killer. For that last line, the president was criticized by those in his own party.

Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) chastised Biden with a post on X: “No human being is illegal.”

On the call, Biden campaign advisers pushed back on those criticisms. Tyler pivoted to Trump’s position on immigration, arguing that Trump and Republicans are “using immigrants as their primary political punching bag” as they plan on “erecting mass deportation camps, ending birthright citizenship.”

Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez added, “our community knows Joe,” and “they know who is fighting for our community.”

For several months, Biden and his campaign have been weighed down by stagnant public polling that regularly show the president trailing Trump in head-to-head matches in swing state and national surveys. The Biden campaign has insisted that those dynamics will shift once the race clarifies into a Biden-Trump rematch, assisted by a massive gush of paid advertising both from the campaign and Democratic outside groups.

When asked about those voters tuning into the race, Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said that “all the, kind of, core metrics of a campaign are picking up,” citing fundraising and volunteer engagement, “exactly as we expected to happen as this became more real and more clear for folks that there’s a choice.”

“I don’t think we should be looking, at all, at just polling alone,” O’Malley Dillon continued. “Whether it’s in ‘22, ‘23, across these elections, Democrats have won on the issues the president is campaigning on over Republicans, across the board, when we’ve set that clear choice up. That’s not always tracked in public polling.”

Trump allies also sought to use Biden’s State of the Union as a chance to highlight a vulnerability: Biden’s age. A TV ad, paid for by a Trump super PAC and designed to irk the president, aired throughout the lead up to the speech. The spot asked whether Biden could “even survive until 2029?”

During his speech, Biden tried to deflect age concerns by noting that throughout his political career, he’s either been “too young,” referring to when he was elected to the Senate at 29, or “too old.”

On the call the next morning, Tyler was asked about the pro-Trump super PAC ad and whether the campaign felt the need to respond directly.

“Last night, again, was a perfect encapsulation of what this election is going to be about,” he said. “It’s not going to be a contrast in age. It’s going to be a contrast in the age of the candidates’ ideas.”