Concerned that Hillary Clinton is still struggling to generate excitement, President Barack Obama is preparing to campaign for her by reminding voters there was a time he didn't like her so much, but he came around — and they should too.

That’s the only way, Obama and aides working with him think, that she’ll have the positive mandate she’ll need to govern. Winning the White House by just not being Trump won’t help win House and Senate races, and it won’t give her the support she needs if and when she’s the new president, trying to keep the public and Congress behind her agenda.


“You want people to feel as passionate about Hillary Clinton being president as they do about stopping Donald Trump. If this isn’t a close race, it’s still going to matter a great deal for her presidency,” said David Plouffe, Obama’s 2008 campaign manager and now an outside political adviser to both the president and the campaign. “That’s one place where we need to see some improvement, on the intensity side of the Clinton question.”

That imperative will define Obama’s message when he hits the trail for his rescheduled joint rally with Clinton, which will take place in Charlotte, North Carolina, on July 5.

“He can make the case as the highest profile convert to be her supporter," said White House communications director Jen Psaki.

Obama’s not going to stop mocking and trolling Trump. The only person who enjoys that more than the Democratic base and the press is the president himself, who alternates between seeing the Republican nominee as a charlatan and as a dangerous amplifier for hatred.

"The way the president sees it is: there will be a lot of people out there talking about Donald Trump—there's more than enough material,” Psaki said. “He will do that too. But he wants to spend most of his time making the strong, optimistic case for the country under a future President Clinton, and why she presents the best case to be his successor."

The conversations around Obama’s message are being led out of the West Wing, while the conversations about schedules and logistics are being led out of Brooklyn. That includes the larger development of a calendar to capitalize on the president’s popularity, which could take him well beyond normal Obama coalition appeals to young people, African-Americans and Latinos and into places like Iowa and Colorado.

Obama and his aides believe he’ll be able to appeal to the skeptical sections of the base, particularly among the young, progressive and anti-establishment voters who helped him beat Clinton eight years ago and drifted in larger-than-expected numbers to Bernie Sanders this year.

There are no set meetings or conference calls between the White House and the campaign -- there are just a few points of contact to minimize leaks and potential legal issues. Most contact is bound up in Jennifer Palmieri, the former White House communications director and senior Clinton adviser who’s able to intuit a lot of what the president’s staff is thinking to save them from having conversations in the first place. She’s been known to pop into the Oval Office herself, but is more regularly in touch with Psaki and principal deputy press secretary Eric Schultz.

Sometimes the conversations are checking in on reaction to news of the day, sometimes it’s more complicated than that—like in January, when Obama kicked off the year by announcing new executive actions on gun control and Palmieri sent an email saying that Clinton happened to be about to kick off the week talking guns herself. After the Orlando shooting, the campaign waited to put out its reaction after being given a heads up that Obama was going to address the attack himself in the White House briefing room.

White House political director David Simas and Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook also talk frequently, but that’s about it. There are rarely conversations directly between White House press secretary Josh Earnest and Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon. Campaign chairman John Podesta, who spent a year as a senior adviser in the White House, occasionally talks with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough.

Plouffe is the main liaison on the outside, but not the only one. Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, Jim Messina, now the co-chair of the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA, spoke with the president earlier this month, and longtime political guru David Axelrod continues to advise Obama and his staff as they’ve been planning.

Bill Clinton occupied the role of Obama’s “secretary of explaining stuff” in 2012, making the case as a former political opponent for Democratic economic principles that hearkened back to the ‘90s boom as a way of getting people to see past the gains that most still weren’t experiencing after the recession. This year, Obama will be Hillary Clinton’s secretary of explaining her.

“When he speaks about her character and her integrity and her leadership style, I think that will obviously have more authenticity than any other messenger,” Plouffe said.

The White House is weeks away from finalizing the convention speech that aides know will be Obama’s last big speech with the full political spotlight on him. Planning the fall campaign calendar is further off than that, with the needs of the Clinton campaign and Senate candidates still uncertain.

“It’s persuasion and turnout. He’s the guy who can do it,” said Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, where Obama’s expected to spend a significant amount of time into the fall, though adding, “Don’t discount Bill either.”