SEATTLE — In road-testing his stump speech for the midterm elections, President Obama would like American voters to think of a car that has been driven into a ditch. (Take a wild guess who was at the wheel.)

“You had a group of folks who drove the economy, drove the country, drove our car into the ditch,” Mr. Obama told some 200 party faithful sipping sauvignon blanc by the pool Monday night at a Los Angeles fund-raiser.

The president may change a word here or refer to a different member of Congress there, but the basic arc of the anecdote has been the same at his stops so far this week on a three-day, five-state swing.

The White House wants to frame the November elections as a clear choice between the Democrats who have put the country on the road to recovery, anemic though it may be, and the Republicans who, in the White House view, got the country into the economic mess to begin with.