Former President Barack Obama is trying to do what he hasn't been able to do in two presidential terms: help Democrats succeed in a national midterm election when they already occupy the White House, the AP reported.

 Obama begins a state-by-state battlefield tour of Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin on Friday, with visits to Nevada and Pennsylvania next week.

The itinerary, which includes meetings with Democratic candidates, comes at a time when Biden and Democrats are trying to prevent a strong Republican onslaught aimed at breaking Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and taking key governorships ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Party strategists believe Obama has widespread influence even in times of economic uncertainty.

“Obama occupies a rare place in our politics today,” said David Axelrod, who helped shape Obama’s campaigns from his days in the Illinois state Senate through two presidential elections. “He obviously has great appeal to Democrats. But he’s also well-liked by independent voters.”

Axelrod and others noted that neither Biden nor former President Donald Trump can claim it, even though both have stepped up their campaigns in the run-up to the Nov. 8 election.

“Barack Obama is the best messenger we’ve got in our party, and he’s the most popular political figure in the country in either party,” said Bakari Sellers, a South Carolina Democrat and prominent political commentator.

Obama left office in January 2017 with a 59 percent approval rating.  A year later, his approval rating was as high as 63%, according to Gallup.

This is significantly higher than his ratings in 2010, when Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives in a midterm election that Obama called a "shellacking." In his second midterm election four years later, the Republican Party regained control of the Senate.

Biden traveled to Syracuse, N.Y., on Thursday. After months of Republican attacks on inflation, he made a closing economic argument, backed somewhat by news of 2.6 percent GDP growth in the third quarter after two previous quarters of contraction. "Democrats are building a better America for everyone with an economy in which everyone succeeds," Biden said.

Still, Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist, thinks Obama is better equipped to make the same argument to Americans who haven't yet decided who to vote for or whether to vote at all.

“If it’s just a straight-up referendum on Democrats and the economy, then we’re screwed,” Smith said, acknowledging that no incumbent party wants to run amid sustained inflation. “But you have to make the election a choice between the two parties, crystallize the differences.”

Obama, she said, did that in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, defeating many white working-class voters and others along the way.

He couldn't do it again in the midterm elections, but he's not president this time. Smith and Axelrod said that means Obama can position himself more cleverly to defend Democrats' accomplishments, from the specifics of the Inflation Reduction Act to the COVID-19 pandemic package, which many Democrats have avoided advertising because Republicans blame it on inflation.