“Some elected Democrats loyal to President Joe Biden raised fresh questions on Tuesday about his 2024 re-election bid, with one calling for him to step aside, a shift after many defended him in the wake of last week's shaky debate performance…

“U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett became the first congressional Democrat to call for Biden to withdraw from the presidential race on Tuesday. He told NBC News in an interview that he hoped other Democratic lawmakers would follow his lead… The president and his campaign are scrambling to bolster support. Biden will hold a meeting with Democratic governors virtually and in person at the White House on Wednesday and speak to lawmakers this week, White House officials said.” Reuters

Here’s our coverage of the presidential debate last week. The Flip Side

Many on both sides are critical of the Democratic Party:

“Even worse than those unbearable 90 minutes has been the spin that followed. Democratic operatives and Biden’s friends in high places came to his defense; Barack Obama himself brushed off the president’s dismal performance, posting on Twitter that ‘bad debate nights happen.’ C’mon. Yes, a bad debate night happened to Obama when he was running again in 2012. A bad debate night is not what happened last week…

“Pushing this line is offensive, and contemptuous of the American voting public. Everyone saw the same debate: It was reality rubbing human mortality in our faces. Biden is old, and the process of his aging seems to be accelerating, as it is wont to do… My anger isn’t even really at Biden himself. I am mad at the Democratic Party, which seems to truck along with a mission of its own while remaining wedded to the past.”
Hillary Frey, Slate

“The Democratic Party, as an institution, was determined to avoid [a competitive primary]… [They] had their reasons. Incumbency has advantages, which are lost if the incumbent is replaced with an untested national candidate. Biden had beaten Trump once. Every incumbent to face a serious primary challenge has lost; confusing correlation with causation, Democrats believed that they could avoid the problem by not having the primary…

“Ordinary, rank-and-file Democratic voters wanted an alternative to Joe Biden because they could see what their leaders tried so hard to conceal: that old Joe, who had run as a one-term transitional figure in 2020, was no longer up to the task of another national campaign. If Democrats are led to the slaughter in November behind a feeble old man, it will not be because of their voters, but because their leaders denied them a choice in the matter.”
Dan McLaughlin, National Review

Other opinions below.