Biden's picturesque setting with a dark twist

Elections are about choices. When elections go poorly for presidents, the choice becomes a referendum on their performance in office - one often decided in the negative.
Joe Biden made the short flight from Washington to Philadelphia on Thursday to try to reframe this November's mid-term election choice as not about him, but about choosing between democratic freedoms and "Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans".
"Maga Republicans do not respect the Constitution," said Mr Biden. "They do not believe in the rule of law... and they're working right now as I speak, in state after state, to give power to decide elections in America, to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself."
A campaign speech
Earlier on Thursday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that Mr Biden's speech was not going to be political.
But it was decidedly political.
Although Mr Biden noted he was not criticising "mainstream Republicans", who he said he can work with, he added that their party is currently "dominated, driven, intimidated by Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans".
He said that these Republicans view the mob that attacked the Capitol on 6 January "not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger at the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots". It was a line that took on particular potency given Mr Trump's comments earlier in the day that he would consider pardoning and apologising to those charged in the 6 January Capitol attack.
In addition, Mr Biden made sure early in his speech to mention abortion rights - an issue that has been driving Democratic voter engagement and turnout since the Supreme Court reversed Roe v Wade protections.
"Maga forces are determined to take this country backwards. Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love," he said.
Mr Biden also made a point to tick through his list of recent legislative accomplishments - on infrastructure investment, gun-control, prescription drug pricing and climate change.
"We're proving in America no matter how long, the road to progress does come," he said - and as far as progress on Democratic priorities, that progress may have come just in time for the president.