If the election were held today, President Biden would lose, according to nearly every poll. Grizzled Democratic campaign veterans like to point out that Presidents Clinton and Obama were both underwater in their first term and came back to win; with slowly improving economic conditions, they argue Biden can do the same. But this view has a kind of Baghdad-Bob denialism. Unlike Clinton and Obama, Biden's public approval has been persistently in the dumps since the early months of his presidency. And unlike the politically masterful Clinton and oratorically-gifted Obama, voters don't believe Biden has the mental agility for a second term.

Those who argue for replacing Biden with a younger, more vital candidate—Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, for example—solve only half of the problem: Democrats increasingly Left-wing economic, social and foreign policies have proven very unpopular with voters. The 2022 issues of abortion and Trump's looming presence in the midterms eclipsed this reality and intoxicated Democratic elites into believing they should stay the course, despite mounds of polling evidence to the contrary.

Let's take the first of these two problems: the candidate himself. The New York Times/Sienna poll shows 61 percent of voters don't believe Biden has the needed mental capacity for a second term. That surely reflects more than just the incoherent, unscripted public meanderings (which we saw again in Pennsylvania last week), or Biden's allusions to his recent conversations with dead French and German leaders.

Voter concern is not just about an occasional verbal hiccup. Rather, the deeply and widely held unease is more about whether there is a steady hand at the helm, particularly in an increasingly unstable world.