Biden hoped for a big economic story to tell. Now, he's going small.

President Joe Biden began the year confident that his lengthy war on inflation was nearing a desired end.

But it hasn’t yet materialized. And it's forcing Biden to adjust what he and his team thought would be a winning economic message for them this election season.

Biden has begun adopting a more surgical approach when talking about the economy, highlighting specific areas where the administration has made strides in easing costs for some voters, regardless of the broader conditions affecting the electorate as a whole.

He used several days in late March and early April to focus on policy accomplishments in health care, where his team believes he holds a critical advantage over Donald Trump. He’s traveled to labor strongholds to tout local infrastructure projects and semiconductor investments. He’s delivered single-issue remarks on taxes and child care, and starred in campaign videos with individual people benefiting from his policies.

What he has done less of is stress the broad elements that he had championed earlier in his campaign, when he first boasted about “Bidenomics” and — after that didn't stick — devoted key segments of his stump speech to rattling off facts and figures meant to demonstrate the economy’s strength.

The shift to a more targeted message represents the latest indication that Biden and his team have yet to find their footing on the economy and that one of their biggest campaign hopes — that a strong economic outlook would rally voters behind Biden — may not actually materialize.

This has led him to focus more on smaller, individual improvements aimed at easing costs that have proved to be popular with voters, rather than trying to gain credit for an overarching economy that's statistically strong — but still viewed by most Americans with skepticism.

New data Friday showed the economy added another 175,000 jobs in April, a slowdown from prior blockbuster months that nevertheless tracks with White House projections that the U.S. is poised to shift into a lower, more sustainable gear. But even if the economy does hit its long-sought 2 percent inflation target in the coming months, advisers concede, it won't be enough for Biden to get substantial credit from voters who are more fixated on their higher day-to-day costs.

“People don’t want to hear '15 million jobs created,'" said one Biden adviser, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking on the economy. "They want to hear, ‘This person’s life was turned around.’”

Much of what has tripped up Biden’s plans for a more robust economic victory lap is rooted in the halting effort to reduce inflation. A stubborn series of price hikes to begin the year surprised Biden officials and economists alike, placing the president and his top aides in a politically uneasy stasis; one where job gains are strong and wages rising, but lasting progress on prices remains elusive.

“The No. 1 issue is the high level of prices in some key areas,” said Ernie Tedeschi, who was chief economist for Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers and is currently the director of economics for Yale's Budget Lab. “I think we have enough data to say that progress has mostly stalled for the time being.”

For some Democrats, especially those who were skeptical of the administration’s Bidenomics branding from the start, the more refined approach is a welcome change. They had long argued that Biden should spend more time highlighting the on-the-ground impact of his policies and less time touting high-level economic improvements.

Though Biden officials insist they haven’t abandoned the broader Bidenomics frame, the president has mentioned it in speeches only three times so far this year, according to a review of his remarks. Part of that, advisers say, reflects a ramp-up in campaign events that are focused on connecting with specific voters and demographics.

But Biden aides are also adapting to the tougher terrain, putting renewed emphasis on the range of accomplishments that the president can point to as progress — even if inflation hasn't cooled completely.

“We don’t do monetary policy — we do Bidenomics, and in this case that means doing everything we can to lower and hold down costs,” Jared Bernstein, Biden’s CEA chair, said in an interview. “You see our work in prescription drugs, in insulin, in junk fees, in proposals to lower taxes for families with kids with the Child Tax Credit, to significantly increase the supply of housing, to provide more affordable child care.”

At the close of 2023, Democrats had somewhat different hopes. Encouraged by a string of rosy economic indicators to close out the year, the party envisioned an election cycle marked by falling interest rates and stable prices.

But progress on inflation has since slowed. So have improvements in consumer sentiment. Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index fell in April for the first time in five months, while the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index hasn't risen significantly since January. The Federal Reserve is now expected to put off cutting interest rates until June at the earliest, meaning the inflection point Democrats view as important confirmation that inflation is back to normal might be too late to sink in with the electorate.

“The first cut matters more for what it signals than for what it does in terms of pocketbook impact,” said Tobin Marcus, head of U.S. politics and policy at Wolfe Research and a former economic adviser to then-Vice President Biden. “But I don’t expect that whenever we get the first cut — whether it’s July or September or even later — that we’re going to get some sharp and immediate change in voter perceptions.”

Rather, he added, “I think people are going to continue feeling fairly downbeat.”

White House officials remain confident the economy is on track for the soft landing of lower inflation and sustainable growth they’ve predicted for months — even if it takes slightly longer to arrive. The rebound in price increases to start the year, Bernstein argued, is the result of minor anomalies rather than any major shift in economic trajectory.

Biden advisers have also sought to put more focus on a competing Trump platform that includes hefty tariffs, efforts to devalue the dollar and mass deportations of immigrants that many economic experts warn would weaken the economy and push prices sharply upward.

“That is an inflationary agenda,” said Bernstein, who contended that voters will ultimately judge the two candidates based not on current conditions but on what their visions for the future say about “who’s fighting for them.”

That critical contrast is, increasingly, what Biden and his team are counting on to overcome any economic turbulence they might encounter in the interim. Gas prices are likely to rise again over the summer, serving as a visible pain point for consumers. Americans have yet to adapt to higher grocery prices, even as the pace of food inflation returns to normal. Without any imminent movement by the Fed, mortgage rates are expected to remain high, exacerbating the nation’s housing crunch.

But while Biden works to alleviate those issues, his advisers acknowledge there’s likely little between now and November that will radically change the economic landscape. The economy is strong, if imperfect. Inflation is down, if not fast or far enough. And for Biden, his challenge remains convincing skeptical voters that, at least for now, he’s done enough to earn the right to keep at it.

“Most years are years of either devolving into recession or coming out of a recession and recovering to get back to where we were. Very few are like this: treading water, churning along at trend,” Tedeschi said. “We don’t really have much of a playbook for what to do.”