As President Biden confronts a simmering threat to his candidacy from within his own party, he is dismissing what he casts as a familiar set of doubters: the editorial boards. The “millionaires.” The Democratic chattering class that, in his view, has long underestimated him.
Left unmentioned are the people who have been the loudest and most consistent in voicing concerns about Mr. Biden’s age and abilities: the voters.
Since the beginning of Mr. Biden’s last run for president five years ago, Democratic voters have aired concerns about his verbal stumbles, dated references and uneven, halting speaking style. Those anxieties have only deepened throughout his presidency — two years ago, a strong majority of Democratic voters said they wanted a new standard-bearer — even as many leading Democratic officials put aside their own private reservations to support his re-election.
Now, some lawmakers are publicly breaking with the president after his disastrous debate performance last month. But even if Mr. Biden, 81, succeeds in stemming high-level defections, interviews across the country made clear that the concerns among the Americans he needs to win re-election are real, grave and growing.
“You want to be on Team Joe, but you also see what other people saw at the debate,” said Judy Dixon, a township supervisor of Doylestown, Pa., who is also a leader of the local Democratic Party there. She was comfortable with Mr. Biden before the debate, she said, and will support him if he is the nominee — but she is currently part of an effort petitioning for a new Democratic candidate.
Asked about Mr. Biden’s suggestion on MSNBC this week that it was predominantly the “elites in the party” who want him to step aside, she replied, “That’s not accurate.”
Former Representative Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican who backed Mr. Biden in 2020, was more blunt: “Ha! Yeah, right.”
“The elites are the ones who have been protecting him the whole time,” said Mr. Dent, who added that he would not support former President Donald J. Trump this year but might not vote for Mr. Biden, either. Citing the conversations he had while vacationing on the Jersey Shore alongside fellow Pennsylvanians recently, he said, “Regular, normal people don’t think Biden should be running.”
The challenge for Mr. Biden is twofold: assuring Americans broadly that he is up to the task of serving until he is 86 years old — and quelling mounting fears among Democrats that if he remains on the ticket, his candidacy will deliver total control of Washington to Mr. Trump.
The polls “certainly show a difficult environment for President Biden’s re-election, and correspondingly that would likely lead to losses in the House and the Senate,” Gov. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat, said in an interview on Thursday, adding that he hoped Mr. Biden could demonstrate “the vitality and the charisma that he needs to turn this election around.”
He added at another point, “I’m sure the president and his close advisers are really thinking deeply about the path forward and how we can best position Democrats to win in November.”
A New York Times/Siena College poll conducted after the June 27 debate found that 48 percent of Democratic voters said Mr. Biden should stay in the race, and 47 percent said they would prefer another nominee. Among independent voters, a constituency Mr. Biden won in 2020, 72 percent said there should be a different Democratic nominee for president.
And a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released on Thursday found that 56 percent of Democrats said he should end his candidacy, while 42 percent said he should continue, even as the survey showed a tied race for the popular vote. Sixty-seven percent of Americans overall believe Mr. Biden should end his re-election campaign, the poll found.
“I don’t know if he’s all the way there,” said Robert Hightower, 30, from Douglasville, Ga., after watching clips of Mr. Biden’s debate performance, adding that after voting for him in 2020, he was leaning toward Mr. Trump this year.
A bipartisan poll in Wisconsin also taken after the debate had Mr. Trump up five percentage points against Mr. Biden, 50 percent to 45 percent.
Other post-debate public polling is just arriving, and it is possible that the national presidential race numbers will not shift dramatically, given the polarized nature of the closely divided country: Most Americans are already in their partisan corners.
But even before the debate, Mr. Biden was trailing in critical battleground states amid signs of erosion within important parts of his coalition.
“We had already seen in our polling that there were doubts about Biden, even among Democrats,” Patrick Murray, the director of the polling institute at Monmouth University, said. “It’s almost hubris to think that voters wouldn’t be thinking about this with an 80-year-old man.”
Many of those Democrats will eventually support the nominee, he said — though some may stay home if they are uninspired by their choices. But there are also warning signs among the small slice of persuadable voters who dislike both candidates and may decide the election.
“They’re not sure that he’s up to the job on the one side, but they’re also very concerned about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies,” Mr. Murray said. “We have a situation right now where they’re only focused on one-half of that equation.”
Mr. Biden’s allies have said there are opportunities to refocus attention on the choice in the election. He is running against a convicted criminal who tried to overthrow an election, paved the way for eliminating the constitutionally protected right to abortion, has plans for a radical reshaping of American government and is deeply unpopular himself.
They hope that next week’s Republican National Convention will remind voters of the alternative, and Mr. Biden has a number of public appearances scheduled in between, including a closely watched news conference set for Thursday evening.
“Nearly a million Americans donated to our campaign for the first time after the debate, a clear sign that there is strong enthusiasm behind the president as the candidate who can beat Donald Trump,” Lauren Hitt, a spokeswoman for the Biden campaign, said.
The decision about whether to stay in the race is effectively Mr. Biden’s alone: If he stepped aside, he would almost certainly have to release his own delegates, freeing them up to support another nominee. He has insisted that he is not leaving the race.
Certainly, some of the criticism of Mr. Biden has come from the donor class and other “elites” whose support he and other Democrats have typically enjoyed, including the movie star George Clooney, who urged him not to seek re-election after co-hosting a fund-raiser for him and, he said, being concerned by what he saw up close.
Still, Mr. Biden retains vital endorsements, including the backing of leaders from the labor movement and from the Congressional Black and Hispanic caucuses. Vice President Kamala Harris — whom some see as a natural successor if Mr. Biden stepped aside — has been working to help him shore up his standing.
Black women have long been the Democratic Party’s most reliable voting bloc, and there are signs that so far many of those voters remain firmly in Mr. Biden’s corner.
“There’s some questionable things because of Biden and his age and of course because of the most recent debate, but he’s done a lot of great things for us as people of color,” said Nicole James, 57, a Democrat from South Fulton, Ga., who is Black.
For many Democrats who feel great respect and affection for Mr. Biden, and consider Mr. Trump an existential threat to American democracy, this is a gutting moment.
There are real differences over which path forward would present the least risk, voters and strategists said.
The Biden campaign is quietly testing the strength of Ms. Harris against Mr. Trump in a head-to-head survey of voters, The New York Times reported on Thursday, though it was not clear why the survey was being conducted or what the campaign planned to do with the results.
Elaine Fudge, 50, from Acworth, Ga., said she thought it was too late to pursue a new nominee.
“I do not think it’s wise at this point,” she said. “Anyone that could step up to it, there’s going to be some skeleton hidden in the closet that they’re going to drag out and harp on, harp on, harp on. And then I think we would lose the White House.”
But other Democrats across the country, stunned by the debate, now think the riskiest course is for him to stay. It is a message coming from voters and some elected officials both in swing states and in staunchly Democratic territory.
“He’s not up for the job,” Lisa Bergeron, 63, of Bristol, R.I., said. “That’s OK! There’s no disgrace in that. But there is disgrace in letting this go on the way it’s going on.”
In Georgia, Mr. Hightower described feeling conflicted: He still considers himself a Democrat but has deep concerns about Mr. Biden. He would reconsider supporting Mr. Trump, he said, if Mr. Biden were to step aside for a younger, more dynamic candidate.
“They still have the right ideas in mind,” he said of Democrats. “It’s just more so their mouthpiece.”
Jennifer Medina and Kellen Browning contributed reporting from Las Vegas.
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