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SEATTLE — On a trip to the Pacific Northwest this week, President Biden observed the construction of an earthquake-proof airport runway, paid for with funds from the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law. He unveiled a plan to restore national forests devastated by wildfires. It supported a largely unfulfilled climate agenda.

He also spoke out loud what his advisers had been saying privately for weeks: The seismic forces of a pandemic and the urgent demands of the presidency, including a war in Ukraine, had consumed more of his time than he had anticipated and pushed him away from life. He wants to sell the domestic agenda.

As Mr. Biden’s poll numbers continued to be depressing ahead of the midterm elections, he called for support from supporters, some with deeper pockets than others.

“We must protect the United States Senate,” Mr. Biden said on Thursday as he stood in an ostentatious house overlooking Lake Washington in Seattle. “We can’t afford to lose it. We can’t afford to lose the house.

“What I’m worried about is that whatever the emergency, I’m so focused that we didn’t actually sell what we were doing to the American people.”

The trip gave him some respite from Washington and returned to the campaign-track schmoozing style that energized him. In Seattle, Mr. Biden appeared before a group of major donors, including Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith.

At another fundraiser earlier in the day in Portland, Ore., Mr. Biden complained that two Democrats, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Cinema of Arizona, had kept most of their hopes up by joining the Republicans. broader social spending bill and other initiatives. These include the heart of Mr. Biden’s climate policy: $555 billion plan Leading the nation towards clean energy and electric vehicles will achieve about half of the United States White House’s 2030 target, analysts say.

“Forty-eight members of the United States Senate voted with me 96 percent of the time,” Mr. Biden told a group of fundraisers as he rolled over the hills of a disco ball at a yacht club near the Portland airport. “Forty-eight. There aren’t two of them.”

Mr. Biden told that crowd he hopes the Democrats will win two more Senate seats in the midterm elections and support the party’s majority in the legislature. It was unclear which two seats he meant, but they do watch races in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina.

The return to domestic matters was a sign of what was to come as the interim period approached.

Biden’s advisers say Russia will remain a priority for the administration, but Russia must be balanced with overcoming domestic challenges such as rising prices and an unpredictable coronavirus pandemic. There’s also the greater challenge of showing what the administration is doing as it tries to explain why more of Mr. Biden’s other promises, which include progress in suffrage initiatives, lowering prescription drug prices and tackling climate change, have not been fulfilled.

Biden officials say the administration, beginning with the president, understands the need to accept the ejection shock the American people feel as the conflict in Ukraine continues. The White House is looking to send the president into the country to promote its agenda more often as the interim period begins in earnest – with an alarming warning, they say, the coronavirus and Russia could continue to push it away.

“Presidents don’t choose the conditions under which they govern,” Democratic strategist David Axelrod said in an interview. “You wake up every day knowing that something undesirable can happen. Many of these situations are unsatisfactory.”

A senior administration official said that as Mr. Biden began traveling the country to collect donations and assist Democrats in vulnerable areas, he needed to contrast further with the Republican Party – particularly its leader, former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Biden, in three speeches during his trip, said that the Republican Party had transformed from what he called “traditional” conservative doctrine into a party focused on culture wars.

“There’s nothing conservative about deciding to kick Disney out of its current stance because Mickey Mouse? Do you really think we shouldn’t be able to say ‘gay’?” Mr Biden referred to the conflict between the theme park and Florida lawmakers in Seattle over a law banning classroom instruction and discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in some elementary school classrooms.

On Friday, he described the Trump-era Republican lawmaker as “a different breed of cat” than those he knew from his time in the Senate, referring to Republican leaders. privately Mr Trump said he was responsible He vowed to banish him from politics for inciting the deadly uprising of January 6, 2021, but publicly worked in Mr Trump’s favour.

“This is now a MAGA party,” said Mr Biden, referring to Mr Trump’s campaign slogan.

Before leaving the Pacific Northwest, the president also sought to draw attention to a climate agenda that argued that concerns had ceased. Mr. Biden took office with an ambitious climate change agenda to address what he calls the “existential threat of our time.”

While the demonstrators are preparing “We Fight for Our Future” During rallies around the country, Mr Biden, which compelled the administration and Congress to pass climate legislation, signed an executive order that he said would strengthen the US’s international forest protection commitments made at a climate summit in Scotland last year. It also promised that all vehicles in the United States will eventually become climate-friendly.

“I think we’re at one of those moments in world history and in American history where we’ve reached the point where the crisis on the environment has become so obvious – with the notable exception of the former president – that we really have an opportunity to do things we couldn’t do two, five, 10 years ago,” said Mr. Biden. among cherry blossoms in Seattle’s Seward Park on Friday.

Last year, on his first Earth Day in office, Mr. Biden pledged that the United States would lead the world in tackling climate change and promised to roughly halve America’s emissions by 2030. Over the past year, his management has made the road easier. for solar and offshore wind development; regulations to phase out hydrofluorocarbons, a potent greenhouse gas commonly found in refrigerators; and restored Obama-era limits on emissions from vehicle tailpipes.

It also offered regulations on methane emissions a measure to force companies from oil and gas wells and explain greenhouse gas emissions through the Securities and Exchange Commission. But so far, his administration has failed to enact the heart of Mr. Biden’s climate policy, namely the $555 billion plan on clean energy and electric vehicles.

The measure remained in the Senate due to unified opposition from Republicans, as well as a strong vote in the equally divided legislature, Mr Manchin.

At the same time, rising gas prices, partly due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, prompted Mr. Biden to call on oil companies to drill more. And last week, the Home Office reversed one of its most important environmental campaign promises, opening up more public land for drilling.

The White House has objected to the notion that it is insufficient or that demand for more oil would conflict with the administration’s environmental goals.

“The president has climate goals and wants to keep fighting for climate control,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One on Thursday. “And he used the power of his office to do that.”

Lisa Friedman Contributed to reports from Washington.