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Mr. Kasich, 68, was an unlikely featured speaker at a Democratic convention. As a onetime brash young House Budget Committee chairman, he embarked with maniacal energy on a budget-cutting mission as part of Newt Gingrich’s Republican revolution in the 1990s and later clashed with labor unions as a governor allied with the conservative Tea Party in the 2010s. But he has moved away from the sharper edge of politics in recent years, focusing on issues of poverty and mental illness and even breaking with conservatives to expand Medicaid as part of President Barack Obama’s health care law.

Mr. Kasich insisted that his opposition to the president is not driven by sour grapes. “I don’t have any personal anger or anything toward him, I just don’t,” Mr. Kasich said. “It’s nothing to be taken personally. I just fundamentally disagree with the whole approach, and I’m deeply worried about our nation. I think if we continue this, I worry about how we ever will recover.”

The president, on the other hand, had no compunctions about making it personal. “He was a loser as a Republican and he’ll be a loser as a Democrat,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One several hours before Mr. Kasich’s speech. “Major loser as a Republican. I guess you can quote me on that. John was a loser as a Republican. Never even came close. And as a Democrat he’ll be an even greater loser.”

Not all Democrats welcomed Mr. Kasich either. To some on the left, the party was abandoning its principles by showcasing a Republican whose positions on abortion, Social Security, labor and other issues have been at odds with Democratic orthodoxy. Among Democrats surveyed by CBS News, only 38 percent wanted to hear Mr. Kasich speak at the convention, compared with 72 percent for Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and 63 percent for Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, two liberal champions who will also get airtime.

“The party should be focused on energizing Democratic voters rather than using their convention to reassure billionaires, corporate donors and Republican lobbyists that they won’t actually try to challenge the status quo,” said David Sirota, a former speechwriter for Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, who is also speaking Monday night.

Mr. Biden and his allies argued that Democrats should welcome anyone to their battle to remove Mr. Trump from the White House, and that a purity test would be self-destructive.