Democrats are privately raising concerns that Joe Biden may not be the party’s best bet in the 2024 election, as he continues to struggle with gaffes, low approval ratings, and a stalled agenda in Congress.
An increasing number are expressing worry about the US president’s leadership, his age and his capability to take on Donald Trump a second time, according to reports.
Mr Biden’s 18-month presidency has been plagued by vote-losing issues including inflation rates unseen in four decades, surging gas prices, a spate of mass shootings, and a Supreme Court poised to end the federal right to an abortion.
While Mr Trump has not confirmed he will run in the next presidential election, he has hinted at a desire to return to the White House. And if the election was to be held tomorrow surveys have the 75-year-old Republican trouncing Mr Biden by six points.
The New York Times interviewed 50 Democratic officials, from county leaders to members of Congress, who believed that an ageing Mr Biden will not be able to take on an insurgent - and deeply determined - Republican party.
Nearly all believed his age - 79 now, 82 by the time the winner of the 2024 election is inaugurated - is a deep concern about his political viability.
America’s paper of record tends to set the agenda of US media coverage. Its highly critical take on Mr Biden’s performance months out from the midterm elections suggests it is losing faith the president will be able to claw his way back.
“It reads like an obituary,” wrote one political commentator of the Times piece.
Democrats initially explained away Mr Biden’s early polls ratings as outliers, but survey after survey in recent weeks has put his popularity at under 39 per cent - record lows for a sitting president.
According to separate Associated Press polling in January, just 48 per cent of Democrats want him to run again.
Some expressed anger that the president did not move to try to codify Roe v. Wade, the law that guarantees women’s access to abortion, before it was too late.
Others lamented his general lack of inability to persuade centrist Democratic senators to back his agenda, desperate having narrow control to advance a progressive agenda.
“I just wish that since we have the majority now they would have behaved the way Republicans did and push things through,” said Elizabeth Guzmán, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates.
Some in the party have been suggesting it starts considering possible alternatives, such as liberal senators Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, or possibly even young Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Howard Dean, the 73-year-old former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee chairman, has long called for a younger generation of leaders in their 30s and 40s to rise in the party.