CNN —
Thirty-seven minutes after the conclusion of a late-night gala dinner with Asian leaders — punctuated by plates of wild Mekong lobster and beef saraman — a staffer handed the phone to President Joe Biden.
On the other end of the line was David Trone, the millionaire wine merchant from Maryland, thousands of miles and a 12-hour time zone away, who had just won another term in the House of Representatives.
The call wasn’t long, said a person familiar with it, but it reflected the warmth and enthusiasm Biden had used in calls to winning candidates dozens of times over the past week — each one solidifying a midterm election that dramatically changed the prevailing view of his presidency .
“There wasn’t anyone who didn’t ride with what we did,” Biden told reporters in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, shortly after Democrats won another two years of control of the Senate — and another round of congratulatory calls. “So I’m feeling good and I’m looking forward to the next few years.”
As Washington grapples with the domestic political ramifications of a voter-induced election quake that kept the Senate in Democratic hands and brought the inevitability of control of the Republican House of Representatives to the shakiest ground, the most significant short-term impact is felt here on Biden’s long-planned trip abroad, where the first face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping is looming.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan gave an insight into the current dynamics, noting the fact that “a lot of leaders took note of the results of the midterm elections, reached out to the president to engage him and support him say they follow her closely. ”
When Biden met with Asian leaders ahead of his meeting with Xi, those talks provided a crucial boost.
“I would say one issue that came up over the course of the two days was the issue of the strength of American democracy and what this election said about American democracy,” Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One as Biden of Traveled from Phnom Penh to Bali. Indonesia, for the G20 summit.
White House officials, even those bracing for losses in the weeks leading up to Election Day, have brushed aside any reluctance to use their Twitter accounts or television interviews to call out pundits and politicians who have predicted otherwise.
It’s the reflection — abroad and back in Washington — of a team that officials say has consistently felt underappreciated and, after a relentless and troubled first 21 months in charge, has long been striving for definite wins.
But on the other side of the world, Biden’s advisers say, there was a tangible effect related to the election results that, if they were in line with historical trends, threatened to undermine his standing ahead of the most momentous meeting of his first two years.
White House officials had been circling the G-20 as a likely meeting with Xi for months. Before the public announcement of the engagement, there were intensive preparations between both sides. The tenuous state of the relationship required a sit-down, regardless of domestic politics.
In the weeks leading up to the election, White House advisers downplayed the impact that wide-ranging midterm losses would have on the weight of Biden’s presence and embassy abroad, citing the same historical trends that they would later contradict.
But privately, several people familiar with the matter said, there was an awareness of the possible split screen of a US president grappling with his party’s political defeat at the same moment as Xi arrive in Bali at the height of his power would Community Party Congress, at which he secured a norm-breaking third term.
“Perception is important, as is political standing,” said a US official. “It’s not the be-all and end-all, and it has never been a central focus or driver of momentum, but we are aware of the fact that everyone around the world has been watching this choice.”
Far from being a liability, each of the congratulatory calls home has underscored the driving wind in the back of a president entering the meeting with Xi at a moment when US-China relations are turning away from great-power competition Inevitability seem to move conflict.
When asked if the results put him in a stronger position for the meeting, Biden didn’t hesitate.
“I know I’m stronger,” Biden said, before noting that the results weren’t a necessity for the meeting to achieve his goals, given his longstanding relationship with Xi, built during her time as her nations’ vice president . US officials are also careful not to overstate the impact in a trip — and in a region — where the levels of complexity and challenges far exceed what voters in any congressional district or swing state decide.
However, Biden is not subtle about his broad view of the geopolitical challenges of a moment he repeatedly describes as a generational “tipping point” centered on the struggle between democracy and autocracy.
As his advisers have moved to make this construct broad, Biden has made it clear that the leading autocracy, enlivening strategy and policy in nearly every corner of his government, is Xi’s China.
Implicitly in a mood in the White House that only seemed to get livelier with each new day of called races, the election results prove that Biden’s theory of the fall does, to a certain extent, work – that an American political landscape served to attract allies shake and enemies alike has actually stabilized in recent years.
Biden has placed high-stakes competition with China at the heart of his engagements with foreign leaders, urging allies by phone and in person to take a harder line. US officials have been looking for new ways to gain the upper hand in the vicarious economic and technological competition between the two powers for developing regions and neutral parties.
But officials, too, have experienced an unmistakable – and, in the opinion of many, understandable – reluctance.
“What I find is that they want to know: is the United States stable? Do we know what it’s about? Are we the same democracy we’ve always been?” Biden said at his post-election press conference, describing his conversations with world leaders.
By Election Day, allies and enemies largely had to take Biden at his word as he attempted to answer those questions with an emphatic “yes.”
Former President Donald Trump, whose electoral lies fueled the attack on the US Capitol, had not faded and he remained the most powerful figure within the Republican Party.
Biden had navigated the narrowest majority in Congress to enact a far-reaching domestic political agenda, part of which was carried out on a bipartisan basis. Yet he still had an approval rating in the low 40s, weighed down by four decades of high inflation and a population exhausted from years racing from crisis to crisis.
The possibility that Biden would face the same harsh judgment in his first two years in office as nearly all of his recent predecessors was not entirely probable. It was expected.
Instead, Biden’s own political justification as he moved through bilateral meetings and backtracks, gala dinners and summits, served another purpose for his approach on the world stage: validation.
Biden “believes it establishes a strong position for him on the international stage and we’ve seen that I think it plays in vivid color today,” Sullivan told reporters after Biden left the ASEAN-US summit , as the Xi meeting loomed. “I think we will see that equally when we go to both the G20 and his bilateral engagements in Bali.”
Biden’s last day in Phnom Penh included a pull-aside meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and critical meetings with the leaders of Japan and South Korea – all with a focus on China.
But in between, he found a few minutes to jump back on the phone.
Nevada Rep. Dina Titus, who was facing an uphill battle for re-election in a newly drawn district, had secured another term. Biden had to pass on his congratulations.