For six months, frustrated White House aides have been promising that President Obama would do more than just raise money for embattled Democratic candidates, that he would set out a message that could carry those candidates to the finish line Nov. 4th. On Thursday, he finally did that with a speech at Northwestern University that offered a stout defense of his record and tried to chart an economic course forward.

Coming only 33 days before Election Day and long after the dynamic has been set in most of the contested races, it may prove ineffective, particularly if the president does not follow through and repeat his message in the days ahead. Indeed, Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee warned Thursday that it is “possibly too little too late for Democrats on the ballot who would have benefited from a strong economic populist message all year long.” Green has long championed a more aggressive stance by Obama and calls economic populism “a political winner.”