President Obama’s message to voters is simple and full of populist zeal: Democrats are on the side of the little guy, not the Wall Street brokers, celebrities and chief executives.

And yet as his poll numbers slide, the president’s greatest utility to Democratic candidates may not be his presence at campaign events – some would prefer that he keep his distance – but in his still impressive skill at vacuuming up millions of dollars from some of the country’s richest and most generous donors.

In town after town, the president is holding events that highlight his party’s work on behalf of the average Joe – but which are scheduled to leave plenty of time for unpublicized fundraisers with people who are anything but.

Obama started Wednesday at the Tastee Sub Shop in Edison, N.J., where he attended a roundtable with small-business owners. He ended the day mingling with some of New York’s wealthiest at the Greenwich Village townhouse of Vogue editor Anna Wintour. Price of admission: $30,000.

In the next several weeks, the president will fly around the country – Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida – explaining how his policies help struggling workers by day and wooing the rich and famous by night.

“For a Democratic president who has to convince the public that he understands the economic troubles that ordinary folks are facing now, it’s a contrasting image,” said George Mason University professor Stephen Farnsworth. “There’s no real alternative, though. Obama is doing what he has to do.”

Obama is by no means the first president who has struggled to balance the demands of fundraising with the need to appeal to the middle class. George W. Bush ranked his richest donors – “Pioneers,” “Rangers,” “Super Rangers” – according to how much they gave. At the same time, he successfully portrayed himself as an anti-elitist who snickered at the snobby rich.

“If Republicans somehow refrained from doing the very same thing, it would be a problem” for Obama, said Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University. “But Republicans don’t go to convents and monasteries to raise money. That’s not where the money is.”