Biden has a new outsider strategy. Can he pull it off?

Biden’s new strategy might work — if he can manage not to prove the “elites” right.

On Monday, as members of Congress returned to Washington after a recess — with both chambers gathering in person for the first time since Biden’s disastrous debate performance — the president launched an early-morning preemptive strike. He sent a tough, get-out-of-my-face letter to congressional Democrats, reminding them that more than 14 million primary voters across the country chose him as their nominee.

“It was their decision to make,” Biden wrote. “Not the press, not the pundits, not the big donors, not any selected group of individuals, no matter how well intentioned.”

Minutes later, Biden called in to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” a venue where Democrats regularly gather for water-cooler conversations. Once again, the president asserted that the debate was nothing more than “a bad night.” In the aftermath, he said, he has spent the past 10 days holding campaign events and working rope lines to take the temperature of the party’s rank and file.

“I wanted to make sure I was right that the average voter out there still wanted Joe Biden, and I’m confident that they do,” he said. “I am not going anywhere.”

Asked about the donors, editorial boards and elected officials who have called on him to withdraw, Biden was defiant. “I don’t care what the millionaires think,” he said. “They were wrong in 2020. They were wrong in 2022. … I’m not going to explain anymore about what I should or shouldn’t do. I am running.”

He has a point about the political cognoscenti having been wrong about him in the past. Many doubted his ability to defeat Trump four years ago; and many more predicted a Republican “red wave” in the midterm elections, rather than the pinkish ripple that left GOP strategists sorely disappointed. Biden has indeed led Democrats to an impressive string of victories and better-than-expected showings.

As we know from all those ads for investment advice, however, past performance does not guarantee future results.

Especially on “Morning Joe,” Biden seemed energized by the idea of running as an insurgent against the Democratic Party establishment. Yes, he has been a card-carrying member of that establishment for decades, but up has been down in American politics for a while now.

On Sunday, at Mt Airy Church of God in Christ in Philadelphia, Biden was enthusiastically cheered by the African American congregation. Black voters are the most loyal of Democratic constituencies. They also tend to be, arguably, the most pragmatic — as they showed in the 2020 primaries, when African Americans in South Carolina, calculating that Biden was the candidate most likely to beat Trump, gave him a landslide triumph that propelled him to the nomination. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have been among the most vocal House members in their continued support of Biden, and not one, thus far, has called for him to withdraw.

The president is now attempting to revive the persona that won him those votes four years ago. In Monday’s letter and call-in, we witnessed the return of “Average Joe” Biden, who will always fight for everyday Americans and couldn’t care less what self-appointed pooh-bahs — “no matter how well intentioned” — might think.

“The voters of the Democratic Party have voted,” he wrote. “They have chosen me to be the nominee of the party. Do we now just say this process didn’t matter? That the voters don’t have a say? I decline to do that. … How can we stand for democracy in our nation if we ignore it in our own party? I cannot do that. I will not do that.”

Is this enough to quell the revolt against Biden’s candidacy? It might be. Counterintuitively, given Biden’s age, time is on his side.

Whatever congressional Democrats might be thinking, there was not even a new trickle of lawmakers calling for Biden to step aside Monday, let alone a flood. And for the rest of the week, Biden will be hosting NATO’s 75th-anniversary summit; his party is highly unlikely to say or do anything that might undermine him while he’s so visibly engaged in foreign policy. If his scheduled no-holds-barred news conference goes well on Thursday, Team Biden will argue that the debate is ancient history.

He can play the insurgent card only once, though. If he falters again, he won’t be able to point the finger at antidemocratic “elites.” He’ll have no one to blame but himself.