Former President Bill Clinton, who has grown increasingly frustrated that his economic policies are viewed as out-of-step with the current focus on income inequality, on Wednesday delivered his most muscular defense of his economic legacy.

The speech reflected a strategic effort by Mr. Clinton and his advisers to reclaim the populist ground now occupied by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and other ascendant left-leaning Democrats, and, potentially, to lay out an economic message that could propel his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to the White House in 2016.

“My commitment was to restore broad-based prosperity to the economy and to give Americans a chance,” Mr. Clinton told students at Georgetown University, his alma mater, as Mrs. Clinton looked on from the front row. For nearly two hours, the former president defended the impact of policies like welfare overhaul and the earned-income tax credit, and displayed a series of charts detailing the number of people his policies lifted out of poverty.

“You know the rest,” he said of the 1990s. “It worked out pretty well.”

As president, Mr. Clinton presided over one of the healthiest economies in recent memory, but he also forged a new model of a pro-business, pragmatic Democrat who championed public-private partnerships and open markets. His language as president was more focused on lifting the middle class than castigating the wealthy. That should not be confused with a lack of concern for the poor, Mr. Clinton says now.