Those stories of grief are typically interwoven into his discussion of policy. When he spoke about cancer, for example, he connected it to the Affordable Care Act that he helped pass, or the initiative named after Beau.

“I’ve experienced loss,” Biden said in Hudson. “But I will be damned if I stand by and lose my country! It will not happen!”

The line, which Biden rolled out the day before, earned loud applause.

After all his speeches, Biden works the rope line, meeting voters one-on-one. His gift of empathy is undeniable as some grieve with him over mutual loss. Others petition him to help with their health problems.

“He’s a great man. It feels like you know him, that he cares about regular people, that he cares about decency,” said James Graham, a 71-year-old Vietnam War veteran who talked to Biden Tuesday in Somersworth about the death of a friend of his in the war and related it to Beau Biden.

Biden knew what to do. He hugged Graham so tightly that his Vietnam vet cap almost popped off his head.

Biden makes certain to be sunnier at times during his remarks, cracking a joke or two off the cuff. On Sunday, he delivered his familiar line that “I have never been more optimistic about our future.”

Yet his message doesn’t exactly convey that. It is about restoring an old order, one that resonates with the middle aged and elderly attendees who tend to populate his events but fails to animate younger voters. His top surrogates underscore that message: Biden leans on John Kerry, the former secretary of state and 2004 Democratic nominee, to attest to his qualities; Sanders employs Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the recently elected firebrand who electrifies the progressive movement.

The entire package, beginning with the tone of Biden’s message and his subdued style of speaking, falls flat with many younger people.

“Frankly, when he speaks, a lot of what he’s saying seems very sad,” said Madison Moore, a 21-year-old student from Mercer College in Georgia who came to New Hampshire with her class to witness the first-in-the-nation primary. “We heard a lot about deaths, and cancer and people losing their jobs. He doesn’t really seem solution-oriented in how we fix those problems.”

Sanders, by contrast, is dominant among those aged 17 to 29 — in Iowa, he won 48% of their vote, more than double anyone else — and his message resonates strongly among them. At a town hall in Hanover, a college organizer for Sanders opened the event by mentioning her own struggle to pay for school and friends who had to sell blood plasma to pay tuition bills. The next student talked about her deep skepticism about the American Dream. She was followed by another volunteer who described how Sanders had inspired him to action, and how he admired the senator’s fight against the establishment.