When President Joe Biden first launched his 2024 re-election campaign last spring, it was intended to be focused on highlighting his purported accomplishments, both legislatively and through executive actions, with an emphasis on what he has done to stabilize and improve the nation's economy.

All of that was essentially abandoned on Friday in favor of a fiery campaign speech almost solely about the particular and unique threat that former President Donald Trump and his supporters pose to American democracy and freedom, according to NBC News.

The apparent abandonment of his prior largely positive campaign messaging to instead mount a full-scale attack against Trump and his MAGA supporters was also revelatory of an apparent panic on the part of Biden and his team as they grapple with the fact that the former president is consistently leading the incumbent in most of the polls.

Biden focuses speech on Trump, MAGA, Jan. 6 "insurrection"

President Biden's speech on Friday in Pennsylvania near Valley Forge was intended to be delivered on Saturday, the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, but was moved up a day due to the forecast of inclement winter weather.

The president repeatedly invoked that particular date and uttered some variation of the term "insurrection" to describe Trump and his supporters on multiple occasions as he styled the incident not as a protest that spiraled out of control but instead as a deadly pre-planned assault on democracy and the foundation of the nation.

In denouncing the former president as some sort of unprecedented authoritarian threat to the country, Biden made the obligatory references to Nazi Germany in terms of Trump's rhetoric and supposed desire to be an authoritarian dictator who uses any and all means necessary to oppress his political opponents.

Biden also seemingly cast himself and his supporters as being akin to General George Washington and his Revolutionary War soldiers as they huddled for the 1777-1778 winter at Valley Forge before eventually defeating the oppressive British Empire and gaining democracy, freedom, and independence.

All-out attack launched against Trump and MAGA a "moral obligation" for Biden

NBC News, which noted the stark difference between this concerted rhetorical attack against former President Trump and his MAGA followers and President Biden's prior focus on the economy and other issues, cited an unnamed Biden campaign adviser as saying that this speech was "a sharpening, not a shift" in the campaign's strategy and was an "opening salvo" ahead of other similar attacks on his rival going forward.

Yet, the outlet pointed out that even some of the campaign's advisers acknowledged that "swing voters are likely to be turned off by aggressive anti-Trump messaging this early in the race."

That said, deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks told MSNBC on Wednesday, "Our campaign believes that it is a moral obligation that we paint the picture of the threat that Donald Trump and the Republican Party pose to America."

One unnamed adviser told NBC, "The president fundamentally believes that the vast majority of Americans do still believe that the sacred cause of this country is democracy, and that is true without respect to party affiliation overall."

Biden campaign undoubtedly panicking over poor polling

The Biden campaign may try to deny that this provocative speech, in which the president essentially smeared a substantial portion of the population as domestic enemies and a threat, was not an abandonment or "shift" away from his previous focus on the economy and his purported accomplishments, but that claim largely falls flat.

There is little doubt that the actions of Biden and his campaign are closely pegged to the current situation in the national polls, the vast majority of which show former President Trump maintaining or even expanding the lead he gained over the increasingly unpopular Biden in October and November last year.

That has created an unmistakable air of panic for Biden and his people, which was evident in the president's ferocious maligning of his predecessor and those who would dare to cast their vote in support of his return to the White House.