Calls for President Biden to drop his re-election bid — or at least predictions that he might — are growing louder.

Concerns about Mr. Biden’s age, his family dramas and possible corruption, and about Vice President Harris’s word salad public statements and dismal approval rating were once the purview solely of rightwing press and GOP strategists. Now, they’ve gone mainstream.

“The pressure is certainly on,” a Democratic strategist, Hank Sheinkopf, tells the Sun.

The Atlantic ran a piece Friday titled, “Step aside, Joe Biden.” The Hill published an op-ed calling on Mr. Biden to drop out of the race “immediately.” The Times published a story on the grandchild Mr. Biden refuses to acknowledge, and over the weekend one of the paper’s star columnists, Maureen Dowd, challenged Mr. Biden’s family-man, nice-guy image, calling his refusal to meet his granddaughter, Navy, not a political issue so much as a “human one.”

“Joe Biden’s mantra has always been that ‘the absolute most important thing is your family.’ It is the heart of his political narrative,” Ms. Dowd wrote. “What the Navy story reveals is how dated and inauthentic the 80-year-old president’s view of family is…. The president’s cold shoulder — and heart — is counter to every message he has sent for decades, and it’s out of sync with the America he wants to continue to lead.”

The shift in coverage is not limited to Mr. Biden’s family troubles. Despite dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 as “Russian disinformation,” CNN’s Jake Tapper said on a podcast this week, “I’m not going to shy away from covering Hunter Biden. He is the president’s son and has made a lot of money being the president’s son.”

Mr. Biden’s age — his physical health as well as possible cognitive decline — is also getting more coverage. Mr. Biden opted out of attending a dinner Tuesday with NATO leaders in Lithuania, with administration officials citing his busy summit schedule and speech preparation. Unspoken, though, are the issues of age and stamina: Mr. Biden is the oldest president ever to serve. If he wins re-election, he will be 86 years old at the end of his second term. That’s older than the average American man lives.

Mr. Biden’s fall on stage at the Air Force Academy graduation last month, stumbling on the steps of Air Force One, and his gaffes that seem more like senior moments than mere mix-ups — saying “God save the Queen” or mistaking Ukraine for Iraq — aren’t helping. Mr. Biden told CNN this weekend that with his advanced age comes “wisdom.”

Voters aren’t buying it. A June NBC poll finds that 68 percent of Americans are concerned Mr. Biden doesn’t have the “necessary mental and physical health to be president.” More than a third of Democratic and independent voters say Mr. Biden’s age makes them less likely to vote for him, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll. Americans are concerned Mr. Biden won’t make it through a second term, and they don’t want a President Harris, whose approval rating sits at 39 percent.  

“Kamala Harris is a problem. The stumbling is a problem. The age is a problem,” Mr. Sheinkopf says, listing other issues like crime, the war in Ukraine, immigration, and the economy. Yet he says that it’s unlikely Mr. Biden will drop out of the race of his own volition.

“What is the probability of anybody giving up that job? It doesn’t happen. It just doesn’t happen. Richard Nixon had to be forced out under threat of indictment,” Mr. Sheinkopf says. “Is Biden gonna say, ‘By the way, thank you. This has been fun. I’m giving up the Secret Service. I’m giving up Camp David. I’m giving up not having to pay for a meal. I’m giving up being the most powerful person in the world’?”

“Nobody leaves,” Mr. Sheinkopf says. “Their polling numbers can be in the toilet. They don’t leave.”

The major exception to this is President Johnson, who in March 1968 announced he would not seek re-election. The parallels to 2024 are striking. Johnson’s approval numbers were in the toilet over his handling of the Vietnam War, the riots plaguing many cities, and big government expansion. His vice president, Hubert Humphrey, was weak. He also faced challengers from within his party. One of those challengers was Robert Kennedy, whose son, Robert Kennedy Jr., is now challenging Mr. Biden.

The major difference: Johnson was only 59 years old, not in his 80s. There was also no Trump factor.

“Americans are mostly concerned about making sure that Donald Trump doesn’t get anywhere near the Oval Office again. And Joe Biden is the only person that’s proven the ability … to defeat Donald Trump,” the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, Raymond Buckley, tells the Sun.  

Mr. Buckley says “there’s zero conversation” among party insiders about Mr. Biden dropping out. “I’m 100 percent confident that he will be re-elected in November of 2024,” he says.

The director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, Neil Levesque, disagrees. “There’s a lot of consternation and concern amongst Democratic activists, both here and in Washington, D.C.,” he tells the Sun. Yet he also doubts Mr. Biden will drop out of the race of his own accord, saying his 84-year-old mother once told him, “Someone giving up power in Washington, D.C., is like me giving up my car keys.”

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, is playing the supportive Biden surrogate while prepping for if or when Mr. Biden bows out. Mr. Newsom recently started a super PAC to run ads in red states and is proposing a 28th amendment to the Constitution to curb gun rights — a quixotic effort at best, but one sure to garner Democratic support nationally.

The press, too, seems to be preparing for the possibility of a Newsom presidential bid. Politico ran an article about Mr. Newsom’s inner circle of advisers Monday. The tall, telegenic governor appears the likely heir apparent — not Vice President Harris — should Mr. Biden drop out or be forced out of the race.

“Newsom’s getting himself ready,” Mr. Sheinkopf says. “It’s all about preparing for the date Biden decides not to go.”