The most obvious is whether Biden will drop out, allowing his party to nominate someone else as its candidate to run against Donald Trump in November. That question is different from but linked to the more urgent, unresolved question: Is Biden able to handle the job of the presidency now, much less in a year’s time?

Those questions are of central importance for the country but, in the cold calculus of politics, secondary for his party. Instead, Democrats are trying to figure out whether Biden might still be able to beat Trump despite the debate — or, more accurately, despite the debate’s reinforcement of questions about Biden’s age. Secondarily, the party is trying to figure out which Democrat might have a better shot at beating Trump. If Biden’s going to be replaced, the purpose would obviously be to demonstrably improve the party’s chances.

But such questions are very hard to answer. It is hard to know who might be better positioned than Biden against Trump both because Biden and Trump are still relatively close in polling and because it’s very hard to predict how a campaign will unfold with a new candidate suddenly thrust into the spotlight. Vice President Harris runs better than Biden and other oft-mentioned Democrats in CNN’s poll this week, but only subtly relative to margins of error. It’s simply impossible to say. So the party’s running on emotion more than anything — in part because of the lingering shock of the debate.

Here’s what we can say: The debate did not improve Biden’s chances. There are only so many events in a presidential campaign where candidates can count on an enormous amount of attention. Debates are among them. Biden came into this one running about even with Trump and needed to pull ahead. He didn’t, though it’s not entirely clear the extent to which he might have faltered.

We can also say that the poll that plays perhaps the most outsize role in the consciousness of Democratic elected officials and activists suggests that Biden lost ground. That’s the one from the New York Times and Siena College, a poll that thanks to the prominence of its sponsor, often drives discussion of the state of the race on the left.

The Times polled Americans before and after the debate, allowing us to see how things have changed. Among likely voters, that change was subtle: Trump led by four points before the debate and leads by six points now. Not a statistically significant shift — but also not a shift that suggests Biden accomplished what he needed to.

We can also dip into the poll to get a sense of what that shift might have looked like among certain voting blocs. We see, for example, a big shift among men (highlighted in the Times’ report on the poll), Hispanic Americans and among younger voters toward Trump. There was a big shift the other way among Black Americans.

But there are caveats to apply here. First, that the polls included smaller numbers of Black and Hispanic respondents, so the margins of error are higher.

More importantly, the numbers after the debate among men, young voters and Black voters look a lot like the numbers from the Times’s April poll. Then, men preferred Trump by 20 points compared to 23 points now. Black voters preferred Biden by 60 points; now it’s 65. Young voters preferred Biden by two points then and three points now. Views of the candidates among Hispanic voters, by contrast, did not revert to where they were three months ago.

The central question raised by the debate was whether views of Biden’s fitness to serve as president had changed. They did, again heavily among the groups identified above. Now a majority of Hispanic voters say that Biden’s age is such a problem that he can’t perform the job capably. So do men.

I should note, just to put some money on the table here, that I think another candidate would likely fare better against Trump. (Harris, for example, does better with young voters and voters of color, among whom Biden does unusually poorly.) I also think that it’s unlikely Biden beats Trump at this point, particularly given the role of the electoral college (which we’ll get to in a second). But I also admit that the numbers above don’t reinforce any of those assumptions concretely.

Besides, I offered a warning last week about relying too heavily on one poll. That warning stands, however appealing it might be to dig deep into that poll like an augur presented with a pile of animal entrails. So let’s instead look at 538′s average of polling nationally and in the five states that swung to Biden in 2020.

The vertical axis here is intentionally compressed to show movement. Which it does.

Since the debate, Trump’s widened his lead to about two percentage points. Since 538′s state-level averages are derived in part from the national average (since national shifts tend to trickle down to states), Biden’s lost ground across all five states in those averages. But, then, those shifts mirror those seen after the first debates in 2012 and 2020.

There is lots of evidence by now that the debate made the Democratic position worse even if, as the most hopelessly optimistic Dem might offer, it’s only because the debate didn’t help the incumbent president gain traction. Unfortunately for scrambling Democrats, the polls don’t do much to answer the questions above, whether Biden can’t beat Trump or which Democrat might be better positioned to do so.

The party is barreling toward what appears to be a cliff and can’t see over the edge.

The growing worry comes as Biden has told allies in recent days that he is in a tough moment and that he has to prove to voters in the coming days that he is up for the job, according to two people familiar with the conversations. His critics inside the senior ranks of the party argue he has done little over six days since the debate to directly address the deep concerns of Democrats and the voting public about his ability to handle the job.

Biden has only appeared in public three times since a rally Friday in North Carolina — for remarks on a Supreme Court decision, on extreme weather and at Stonewall National Monument in New York — to speak for a total of 22 minutes, exclusively while using teleprompters. He also attended a series of fundraisers and other weekend campaign events.

One senior campaign adviser called the situation “a deafening silence,” from the top, reflecting the concerns of other advisers who described a failure of the president to publicly demonstrate his fitness for office as panic built inside the party. Other longtime Biden allies — who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly — have described continued frustration about the political response and a growing conviction that a change needs to be made.

Biden spent much of Wednesday trying to push back on the concern by calling congressional leaders who had not heard from him, addressing his campaign staff and doing interviews with a series of Black radio stations ahead of a planned meeting with Democratic governors.

“The past few days have been tough. I’m sure you’re getting a lot of calls, and I’m sure many of you have questions as well,’ Biden told campaign staffers in a conference call, according to a person familiar with the remarks. “Let me say this as clearly as I possibly can and as simply and straightforward as I can: I am running. I’m the nominee of the Democratic Party. No one’s pushing me out. I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end, and we’re going to win because when Democrats unite, we always win.”

Vice President Harris, who was also on the call, added: “We will not back down. We will follow our president’s lead. We will fight, and we will win.”

Later, in a briefing for reporters, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden is “absolutely not” planning to drop out as the presidential nominee.

Even those who still argue Biden remains the best candidate admitted lost ground in recent days, though hope remains that poll numbers will stabilize over the coming week. Some Democrats have begun openly considering the idea that Harris could replace Biden on the ticket to take on Republican Donald Trump in November.

“There is significant erosion among elected [officials] and donors,” said Dmitri Mehlhorn, a donor adviser working with outside groups to elect Biden. “But the elected and the donors do not represent the substantial part of swing voters who are in the battleground states.”

Biden’s campaign team insisted on a June debate with Trump to address voter apathy and concerns about Biden’s age. His stammering performance, instead, triggered alarm in the party and an increase in public concern about his competence, as measured by public polls.

Biden’s private outreach to lawmakers has also been minimal since the debate, prompting leaders within the party to express their surprise to others. Biden waited until Tuesday to speak with House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) and until Wednesday morning to speak with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.). His meeting Wednesday afternoon with Democratic governors was scheduled only after a request by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Some House Democrats continued to debate among themselves Wednesday whether to call on Biden to step down, with drafts of a possible public letter circulating. Two Democratic members of Congress — Jared Golden (Maine) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.) — publicly said Tuesday that Biden can no longer win, while Rep. Lloyd Doggett (Texas) said he should be replaced as the party’s presidential candidate.

On a text chain Wednesday morning, House members shared a new YouGov poll that showed Biden down two points to Trump. Another poll shared on the text chain showed that former first lady Michelle Obama would trounce Trump by 10 points.

The anxious lawmakers didn’t put any stock in the numbers but marveled at how “there’s all this potential to defeat Trump and it also says how much it’s being held back by Biden,” according to one lawmaker on the text chain.

Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), one of Biden’s closest allies in the House, said Wednesday morning that he had still not spoken with the president. A spokesperson said the two connected later in the day.

“I think that the president should have a series of town hall-type meetings, engaging with voters, with the media,” Clyburn said. “I think he should not have his reactions to questions from the voters through a filter. Let him give unfiltered responses to their questions, and let the media report on it.”

Democrats involved in House and Senate races say much will depend on whether Biden’s polling continues to slide in coming days, and how that impacts Democratic candidates. There are some signs Republicans are moving to capitalize on Biden’s faltering debate performance. Arizona’s Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake plans to air a statewide ad that hits Democratic candidate Ruben Gallego on Biden’s decline, said one person familiar with the ad planning.

Biden advisers pointed to a coming schedule of events that could begin to address these concerns, including campaign travel Friday to Wisconsin and Sunday to Pennsylvania. He has a scheduled sit-down interview Friday with ABC News.

Both the campaign and the White House are hoping that a series of events in the days after the Fourth of July holiday will reassure voters and party insiders. They point out that no senior Democrats have called on him to step down.

The initial damage control after Thursday’s debate and the subsequent North Carolina rally was handled almost entirely by staff. Those private phone calls, video conferences and other presentations focused largely on other aspects of the campaign and offered no opportunity for questions or only screened questions. Top campaign staff have written multiple memos and emails to staff, donors and supporters asking for calm and redoubled work.

“The president and his team have been through the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. And you know what? That will continue,” Jeff Zients, the White House chief of staff, said on the White House call. “The only way to get through it is as a team.” He took no questions.

The encouraging talk about fundraising numbers and the grass-roots operation has failed to address the central concern that Biden himself is not up for the job, say several senior strategists who have decided in recent days that either Biden has to prove his ability or that Democrats need a new nominee. Allies have also pointed out that the focus on internal campaign polling and analytics — showing a stable race, with Biden trailing Trump slightly — has failed to address the question of how the debate performance affected Biden’s ability to overtake Trump before the fall.

The argument by top Biden advisers has long been that enough voters will ultimately choose to oppose Trump, but that argument lacks a clear empirical basis beyond polls that show a majority of the country remains open to supporting Biden in theory, people familiar with the situation said. The campaign has also been hit by external polling that has shown a sharper drop from Biden’s already poor standing in matchups with Trump and third-party candidates.

“’The polling isn’t changing’ is not a sufficient message,” said one Democratic veteran of presidential efforts, who reflected the sentiment of several other strategists. “The fundamental point is it is not about a single debate performance. It is about the shaky confidence that people had is now gone. And him giving two four-minute statements and reading a teleprompter at a rally and a fundraiser is not going to cut it.”

The high-dollar donor community, meanwhile, has overwhelmingly turned against Biden, according to people familiar with the conversations. Whether that has a material effect on fundraising if Biden stays in the race is less clear. In multiple cases, donor advisers say, large donations to outside groups that were expected have been withheld since the debate.

Liberal donor networks like the Democracy Alliance, American Bridge and the Strategic Victory Fund have all held calls in recent days where donors have expressed concerns about moving forward, though none of the calls resulted in formal calls for Biden to leave the race. Officials at one independent group has begun to review polling to see how their planned advertising will fare if Biden is not the nominee.

Multiple donors have described the debate performance as reflecting elements of Biden’s performance in smaller group settings at donor events in recent months, when he appeared halting and struggled to communicate. That recognition has fueled calls for him to step aside, according to people familiar with those conversations.

A business executive who helped arrange a fundraiser for the Chicago convention in the last year said the Biden team refused to let even major donors ask questions in a small group. That was shocking, this person said.

“I told them my donors don’t care about a photo. They want to talk to him. The Biden people just wouldn’t let them,” the person said. “It was clear they were managing him in a way I’ve never experienced before. Donors expect to get to talk to the president if you’re writing a big check and having an event with him.”

Multiple top party donors joined the chorus on Tuesday in phone conversations with Pelosi and Schumer to say that the current situation was not sustainable and a new nominee was needed, according to people familiar with the call. Spokespeople for Pelosi and Schumer declined to comment.

During a fundraiser in McLean on Tuesday night, he was in good spirits and spoke at a donor event without a teleprompter set up for the first time since the debate. He made light of his debate struggles — “I know I didn’t have my best debate nights” and suggested it was a result of jet lag. Biden returned to the United States from meetings in Europe 12 days before the debate.

Biden touted strong campaign fundraising since the debate. “So far, so good,” he said.

Members of Biden’s family have been firm in encouraging him to stay in the race, adamantly saying that he has a game plan and rebuffing suggestions that he would consider stepping aside, according to four people close to the family. “The family is still all-in,” one of them said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “They’re still supportive.”

They have acknowledged the tough debate, and the tenuous moment, but have said absent high-level defections like Pelosi or Schumer, or a significant drop in polling data, he will remain as the party’s nominee. They also frequently point to others having often doubted him only for him to overcome expectations, a sentiment still coursing through many of the family members, the people said.

Josh Dawsey, Liz Goodwin, Paul Kane and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez contributed to this report.

In his first interview since penning an op-ed in the Bangor Daily News, Golden stopped short of calling on President Biden to exit the presidential contest after his faltering debate performance. But he did predict that Biden would lose to Donald Trump in November. He added that he’s unsure whether Vice President Harris could beat Trump, either.

Asked whether he believes there is a Democrat who could prevail over Trump, Golden said, “I don’t know who can beat Trump in this current moment.”

And he panned the Biden campaign’s focus on safeguarding democratic principles as a winning message against Trump, calling it a “complete, abject failure.”

Golden, who sits in a district Trump won by roughly seven points in 2020, predicted that Biden would lose his Republican-leaning House district in November by a margin larger than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. He warned that a major loss in his district could be a warning sign for other vulnerable Democrats who have voted with the Biden agenda more often than he has.

Golden’s perspective comes as his fellow House Democratic colleagues continue to grapple with whether Biden should remain atop the Democratic ticket after a debate performance last week that has brought about more questions than reassuring answers from Biden’s orbit. Only one has so far publicly called on Biden to step aside: Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.).

Golden and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), who co-chair the centrist Blue Dog Coalition, both publicly said Tuesday that Biden would not fare well in their swing districts.

But they stopped short of calling for Biden to exit.

“I recognize that I’m in not in a position to make that decision for Joe Biden. He is,” Golden said. “What I can say is what I think is going to happen if he is the nominee.”

Golden offered that perhaps another Democrat could beat Trump. But he didn’t say who, and he was bearish on Harris’s chances given that he hasn’t heard from constituents about her and how she fares in his district.

“I would love someone running for president in either party or both candidates to be fresh faces, like young with new ideas, not retreads of the past,” Golden said. “And that’s not what we’ve been given by either party in Donald Trump and Joe Biden.”

Golden’s decision to speak out was not meant to coincide with Doggett’s. Though he did not watch the debate, Golden said he knew he would have to put out a statement about Biden “because it’s what everyone in America is thinking” and talking about. He said it was notable to him that former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on MSNBC on Tuesday that “it’s a legitimate question to say, ‘Is this an episode or is this a condition’ about the president.”

Golden’s message to his party goes beyond his warning about Biden and directly against a core argument Democrats are making. The Maine Democrat acknowledges the need to run local races but said he’s concerned that Democrats may be too keen on attacking Trump as a threat to democracy. He says, rather, that Democrats should be focusing on how their constituents are feeling economically and socially.

“The preferred campaign message of not just Joe Biden but a lot of Democrats that this election is about saving democracy happens to be a complete, abject failure. If you’re trying to appeal to, let’s say, just regular people or to, like, swing voters in swing states, it’s very clearly going to be about the economy, as it almost always is,” he said. “When you look at the last Congress, like, there’s plenty of good things that we did.”

Unlike most of his colleagues, Golden believes Democrats must tout the strength of American democracy — even though it was tested on Jan. 6, 2021. But he says the message should be that the system held because of government leaders who were willing to do the right thing and stand up to Trump and uphold the law. He believes Trump would be surrounded by similar people during a second Trump administration.

He echoes what many House Democrats have recognized since the debate: It’s imperative for them to win back the majority because they may be the only chamber that could act as a check on another Trump administration.

Golden stated, for instance, that the House could block a Republican majority’s attempts to reimpose Trump’s 2017 tax law, which slashed taxes for corporations and rich Americans.

“We’ve got good new laws that the Congress passed that we can run on. We should be talking about those things and reminding people, ‘Listen, when the Republicans are in control, like, you know what they do? They try and cut taxes for the rich,’” he said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is signaling to members that Harris would be the best option to lead the ticket if Biden chooses to step aside, said two people familiar with this thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations.

Rep. James E. Clyburn (S.C.), a high-ranking member of the House and a longtime Biden friend, has publicly said he would support Harris if Biden stepped aside, adding that his fellow Democrats “should do everything to bolster her, whether she’s in second place or at the top of the ticket.”

Tim Ryan, a former Ohio congressman and presidential candidate, said in an op-ed that while he loves Biden, Harris should be the Democratic nominee for president after Biden stumbled in a high-profile debate performance last week. Some other possible contenders — including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and California Gov. Gavin Newsom — probably wouldn’t jump in the race this year and would support Harris if Biden were to remove himself from the ticket, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Democrats’ growing move to rally around Harris as a potential nominee — almost always with the caveat that Biden remains the choice for now — is a sign that they are gaming out a world without Biden as the party’s standard-bearer, even as they try to blunt years of hand-wringing about Harris’s ability to win the White House on her own.

That could remove one of the major obstacles Democrats have long seen to the notion of replacing Biden: the fear that it would result in a damaging political free-for-all as the party’s most promising stars battle it out for the nomination.

Many Democrats are also worried that Harris would be a weak candidate, based in part on her ill-fated presidential run in 2020, when she was forced to drop out before a single vote was cast. But choosing someone instead of Harris, the first woman of color to serve as vice president, seemed politically untenable.

Now some in the party are rethinking the idea that Harris would flounder as the Democratic nominee, especially compared with Biden, given his struggles.

A CNN poll released Tuesday found that voters favor former president Donald Trump over Biden by six percentage points, 49 percent to 43 percent, similar to results from before the debate. But Harris performs better, trailing Trump 47 percent to 45 percent, a gap that falls within the margin of error.

And, some say, Harris could energize Democratic-leaning groups whose enthusiasm for Biden has faded — Black voters, young people and women. Some progressives say she could win back some voters who are disenchanted with Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza war.

Some of the shift in thinking is practical: With four months before Election Day on Nov. 5 — and early voting beginning weeks before that — picking anyone but Harris would represent a legal, political and financial minefield, according to interviews with more than a dozen political strategists and people close to the decisions of White House aspirants.

Choosing a new nominee outside the current ticket would raise questions about the status of the delegates that Biden and Harris have won — and the nearly quarter-billion dollars in their campaign coffers, money that cannot easily or perhaps even legally be handed to someone else.

Then there are the optics: Harris is the first Black woman to win a nationally elected office. Shunting her aside for someone White and possibly male could alienate the Black voters who the campaign says are key to winning the White House in 2024, and it could subject a party that prides itself on diversity to charges of hypocrisy.

Harris supporters also argue that many of the people often discussed as alternatives to Harris — Whitmer and Newsom, along with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.), Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore — are popular in their home states and in Democratic circles but remain untested on the national stage.

“People want the president to be successful, but it’s unclear where we’re headed,” said Jamal Simmons, Harris’s former communications director. “And so as people begin to ponder if we had to do something else, what that something else would look like, who that someone else would be, the math leads you to Kamala Harris.”

While Harris has been singed by criticism, supporters say, she is a known quantity, both from her own presidential race and from her experience as the running mate on a 2020 Democratic ticket that faced withering attacks.

“I don’t know that Gretchen Whitmer going into Philadelphia is going to help turnout. I think Kamala Harris does,” said Mike Trujillo, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Hillary Clinton. “I don’t know if Gavin Newsom goes into Raleigh, North Carolina, or Charlotte, North Carolina, that he’s going to be able to turn out African Americans that are the base of the party. I think Kamala Harris can do that.”

Equally important, according to some strategists, is that voters say they are uninspired by the current rematch of two elderly men who have already served in the White House; Harris would present a younger face and a symbol of change. Biden is 81 and Trump is 78, while Harris is 59.

Still, there are many within the party who are not yet persuaded that Harris can win. Not only did her one presidential campaign collapse in disarray, they say, but she repeatedly stumbled early in her vice presidency.

Harris struggled, for example, when Biden asked her to tackle the root causes of illegal migration to the United States by working with leaders of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to improve conditions there. (Harris’s defenders say the president had handed her an impossible task.)

Others worry that Harris’s reputation as a California liberal, accurate or not, could alienate White centrists in the Midwestern suburbs that Democrats need to win. Some of these skeptics include major Democratic donors, suggesting that Harris could have a harder time than Biden raising campaign cash.

At the same time, Biden’s aides have forcefully insisted for months that he is Democrats’ best — or perhaps only — chance of beating Trump, an assertion that has done little to bolster party members’ views of Harris’s prospects.

Multiple Democrats who have said they would get behind Harris, however, point to her post-debate interview when she was had to balance a defense of Biden and the shaky debate performance millions of viewers saw. “That was a thankless job she had to do, and she did a very, very good job,” one senior House Democratic aide said.

But overall, there are signs that a growing number of Democrats can now envision a relatively smooth transition to a Harris-led ticket, especially if Biden throws his support behind her.

Beyond party leaders, rank-and-file Democrats have also begun vigorously discussing post-Biden scenarios. One Democrat in Texas, slated to be a delegate to the party’s convention in August, said it would be almost impossible at this late hour for someone like Newsom or Whitmer to win the nomination, then conduct a full-blown presidential campaign from scratch.

So the choices come down to Biden and Harris, this person said — and Harris would be better.

“As the only other option really being Vice President Harris, I think I would prefer that — and prefer the challenge of trying to drive up polling and drive up support — more than to keep support when we have a president going for reelection who may not have the best physical well-being,” the delegate said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Amid the intensifying conversations among Democrats, there are signs that Harris’s potential Democratic rivals are backing off — or being encouraged to back off.

Whitmer would not run for president this year and would be “all in” for Harris, according to a person close to the Michigan governor. Newsom has also hinted that he would back Harris, a fellow Californian. California lawmakers say they don’t believe he’d run this year.

“It’s got to be Kamala at the top and pairing her with someone new and dynamic and good could be super invigorating,” one Democratic California House member said.

A person close to Clyburn said the high-ranking Democrat had made his comments about Harris on MSNBC with the explicit goal of warning top Democrats against contemplating an alternate ticket not headed by Harris, should Biden step aside. Clyburn is an influential figure in the party, and other Democratic members have been sending a similar message to their colleagues who could be considering different rising stars to lead the ticket, according to a person who has been communicating this message.

Clyburn was “expressing his support for the president during this extraordinary period, and reminding voters and donors alike of his steadfast support for the second name on that ticket — Vice President Harris,” Marcus Mason, a DNC member, said.

Harris has so far refused to engage in any of the public strategizing. Since the debate, she has been Biden’s defender in chief, telling any camera in sight that voters should look at Biden’s successful 3½ years in office, not his 90 minutes of struggling in a debate.

In an interview with CBS News on Tuesday, Harris declined to answer a question about whether she is ready to lead the country if Biden is unable to, saying rather that she is “proud to be Joe Biden’s running mate.”

“Look, Joe Biden is our nominee,” Harris said. “We beat Trump once, and we’re going to beat him again. Period.”

Biden’s camp has said any discussion of a possible replacement is moot, since he is not pulling out. His campaign has tried to convince anxious supporters that despite a stumbling debate performance, he remains easily the best choice atop the party.

Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s campaign chair, told donors at the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta on Friday that “nothing fundamentally changed in the race” despite the furor over the debate. And the campaign has touted strong fundraising numbers in the days since.

“Joe isn’t just the right person for the job,” first lady Jill Biden said at a Saturday fundraiser in East Hampton, N.Y. “He’s the only person for the job.”

Many Democrats privately say they like Harris personally and as a symbol of change, but they wonder how a politician who has at times struggled in the brightest spotlight would contend with a potentially bruising campaign, one that could feature racist and sexist dog whistles and perhaps more overt bigotry.

Harris’s supporters argue that her last two years have shown more strides than missteps. She became a leading voice on abortion rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, seizing on a central plank in the Democratic platform and one that Biden sometimes seems uncomfortable discussing.

Harris has traveled the country to attack Republicans for eroding Americans’ rights, courting conflict with some of the GOP’s most vocal antiabortion voices. She has met with dozens of global leaders, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky half a dozen times, developing a foreign policy portfolio she had earlier lacked.

Just as salient, supporters say, Harris is at the intersection of many of the principles Democrats say they stand for: diversity and inclusion, gender and racial equity. Some Democrats are coming to the conclusion that divorcing her from the ticket might speak louder than any campaign ad or messaging.

“At this moment, women feel under assault on abortion,” said Simmons, Harris’s former communications director. “People of color feel under assault on diversity and inclusion. It would be difficult to pick a ticket that does not include the first woman of color to be vice president.”

Descendants of Pvts. Philip G. Shadrach and George D. Wilson, members of the Union Army’s 2nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment, received the Medal of Honor on their behalf during a White House ceremony led by President Biden.

“Every soldier who joined that mission was awarded the Medal of Honor, except for two soldiers who died because of that operation, but never received this recognition,” Biden said. “Today, we right that wrong.”

The event closed a decades-long campaign by the men’s families to rectify what they and many historians came to see as an unjust oversight in recognizing everyone involved in what became known as the Great Locomotive Chase.

Shadrach and Wilson were among a group of 24 who carried out the brazen plan in April 1862, commandeering a train outside Atlanta and blazing an 87-mile path of destruction north through Georgia to the Tennessee line with adversaries in hot pursuit. When the chase finally ended, the raiders were captured, and eight were put to death. Most escaped, though several were held as prisoners of war for nearly a year.

Nineteen soldiers received the Medal of Honor — including the first ever awarded — for their role in the mission. (Several of them were recognized posthumously.) Another soldier, captured before the raid began, later refused the award, historians said. Two others involved were civilians and did not rate it.

In an emotional discussion with reporters on Tuesday, Shadrach’s and Wilson’s descendants swelled with pride knowing that the efforts of their ancestors and their families’ grass-roots lobbying effort, alongside historians, will at last be recognized.

Some who made the trip to Washington were acquainted with the story long ago. Others, including Wilson’s great-great-granddaughter Theresa Chandler, learned from the Army only four years ago that her lineage included a prominent Civil War figure.

Now 85, she said it has reshaped a legacy nearly lost to history.

“I would have given anything,” she said, “to be able to say, ‘Grandpa, tell me about it. … What was it like?’”

The mission was born from a desire to destroy the South’s ability to move troops and military equipment.

Maj. Gen. Ormsby M. Mitchel, assigned by the Union to its Tennessee campaign, mulled how to best attack Chattanooga, a well-defended Confederate citadel located along vital water and rail lines. If invaded head on, the rebels could flood the area with reinforcements on train cars from the south and overwhelm U.S. forces, he concluded.

James J. Andrews, a civilian spy for the North, crafted a novel solution. A small team of volunteers would travel 200 miles into Confederate territory dressed as civilians, steal a train engine, and then destroy tracks and burn bridges to strangle the secessionists’ logistical lines.

The plan faced setbacks from the start, said Shane Makowicki, a historian with the U.S. Army Center of Military History. It had rained ahead of the mission, making it difficult to ignite the bridges. The soldiers lacked tools and had to improvise, he said. And while some had experience with trains, there were little if any preparations undertaken beforehand.

“That speaks to the courage and heroism of these men that they volunteered for this,” Makowicki said. “Today, if we were going to send people to do this, you have months or weeks of specialized training.”

The mission, lead by Andrews, began north of Atlanta in present day Kennesaw, Ga., where the team seized a locomotive named the General and its three boxcars. The conductor, William Fuller, gathered a party and gave chase on foot before taking over a hand car and eventually several other locomotives to catch up with the Union soldiers.

The raid party made periodic stops to tear out track ties and sever telegraph cables in a bid to prevent other Confederate troops from learning about the raid. Oncoming trains on the single track forced the General to stop several times, according to an Army summary of the mission.

In other cases, the raiders employed subterfuge to make it past authorities. At one stop, Andrews told a station master he was orders from Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard to deliver ammunition to Confederate troops in Chattanooga. The station master allowed them to pass.

As Fuller and his party closed in, the Union raiders aboard the General, low on wood to feed the engine, abandoned the locomotive 18 miles short of Chattanooga, the Army said. The men scattered, but all were eventually captured within two weeks.

Chattanooga fell the next year.

Andrews and seven others, including Shadrach, 21, and Wilson, 32, were tried as spies and saboteurs and hanged. Jacob Parrott, who was severely beaten in captivity, was among those who survived the ordeal and later made history as the first service member to receive the Medal of Honor.

Historians and family members could only speculate why Shadrach and Wilson were overlooked for so long. The unit was involved in heavy fighting afterward, and officers who would have kept track of such accomplishments were pushed to other units, said Brad Quinlin, a historian and author involved in advocating the men’s Medals of Honor.

Some members of the Shadrach family had pushed for the recognition since the Carter administration, they said. A 2008 spending bill included a provision to award the medal to the two men, but momentum did not pick up until 2012, when Quinlin and family member Ron Shadrach met. They later submitted fresh evidence for defense officials to review.

“There was nothing anywhere in any of my research, any documentation, that said these men did not do what the others have done,” Quinlin said.

Although the mission ultimately failed, it is remembered as a prominent moment of the Civil War and has yielded books and films, including Buster Keaton’s “The General” in 1926 and “The Great Locomotive Chase” in 1956.

Brian Taylor, Shadrach’s great-great-great-nephew, said delving into family history left him in awe, and doing so with his father deepened their relationship. They lovingly call Shadrach “Uncle Stealer,” and Taylor once climbed aboard the General, now a museum piece in Georgia.

Ahead of the White House ceremony, Taylor strummed an acoustic guitar and crooned a song he wrote about the mission. “Do it for the glory, boys,” he sang, “because you may not find your way back home tonight.”

“The seriousness of respondent’s misconduct cannot be overstated,” a state appeals court said in a ruling, adding that Giuliani “baselessly attacked and undermined the integrity of this country’s electoral process.”

Giuliani was already suspended from practicing law in New York, where he was admitted to the bar in 1969.

The court ordered Giuliani to be “disbarred from the practice of law, effective immediately, and until the further order of this Court, and his name stricken from the roll of attorneys and counselors-at-law in the State of New York.”

A spokesman for Giuliani, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, criticized the decision and said he would appeal it.

“Members of the legal community who respect the rule of law in this country should immediately come forward and speak out against this politically and ideologically corrupted decision,” the spokesman, Ted Goodman, said in a statement.

Giuliani said in a social media post that he was “not surprised” he was disbarred. He argued that the case against him was “based on an activist complaint, replete with false arguments.”

Giuliani could be disbarred in Washington, D.C., where he has also been suspended from practicing law.

Giuliani has faced a storm of legal problems over his leading role in Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 reelection defeat. He has been indicted on criminal charges in Georgia and Arizona over alleged schemes to subvert the 2020 election in each state. Last year, he was ordered to pay $148 million in a defamation lawsuit brought by two Georgia poll workers.

Giuliani filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York after the defamation case.

The decision Tuesday came from the First Judicial Department of the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court. The ruling found Giuliani “repeatedly and intentionally made false statements” about the 2020 election — “some of which were perjurious” — to courts, the public and state lawmakers.

“In so doing, respondent not only deliberately violated some of the most fundamental tenets of the legal profession, but he also actively contributed to the national strife that has followed the 2020 Presidential election, for which he is entirely unrepentant,” the ruling said.

The disbarment case focused on a slew of statements that Giuliani made during post-election news conferences and media appearances. One of them was the notorious news conference that he gave days after the election outside a landscaping business in industrial Philadelphia.

For example, the court found Giuliani “falsely and dishonestly” claimed that a ballot was cast in Philadelphia in the name of the late boxing legend Joe Frazier. The court also said Giuliani falsely asserted that “tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of non-US citizens voted” in Arizona.

John Catsimatidis, the owner of a New York radio station where Giuliani was abruptly taken off the air in May over his comments about the 2020 election, said in a text message to The Washington Post that the court’s decision was “very sad” for Giuliani.

Azi Paybarah contributed to this report.

“There’s all sorts of hyperbole tonight and just these fantastical — these hypotheticals they have made up, future presidents are going to turn into assassins and all the rest,” Johnson said while speaking to host Kayleigh McEnany. “It’s madness.” He added that the president, unlike most offices, is elected by the entire population of voters. “No one who is elected to that office,” he said, “is going to be prone to this kind of crazy criminal activity.”

Maybe not that kind, sure. And maybe not if they aren’t worried about reelection. But I digress.

What’s interesting about Johnson’s comments is how unabashedly aligned with Donald Trump’s position it is. This isn’t surprising, given what we understand about the pervasiveness of Trump’s influence over the party. Here was a House speaker, elected to the House in the same election that made Trump president, speaking to Trump’s former press secretary, after all. But it is noteworthy that the head of one half of a governmental branch designed to act as a check on presidential power, agreed with the judiciary that the executive branch should have more power than the Constitution provided.

Johnson and his position, made possible by the backlash against his predecessor from the House Republican conference’s right-most fringe, is a reminder of how much Congress has shifted since Trump took office.

Analysis of the membership of the House and Senate shows that most Democrats assumed their positions before the 2016 election. That’s despite the wave election of 2018, in which Democrats benefited enormously from a voter backlash against Trump.

Most Republicans serving in the Senate or House, however, entered office after that election. Fifty-three percent of Democrats (and Senate independents who caucus with the Democrats) began holding congressional office before Nov. 8, 2016. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans took office after that election.

There are ideological differences, too. Using DW-NOMINATE estimates of how liberal or conservative the legislators are (compiled by Voteview), we see that Democrats who took office before the 2016 election have an average ideology score of minus-0.39 (where minus-1 is the most liberal and 1 the most conservative). Those who took office after have an average score of minus-0.36 — meaning they are slightly more moderate than the longer-serving Democrats.

The Republican side is different. Those who took office before Nov. 8, 2016, have an average score of 0.49 — more extreme than the Democratic average overall (because it is closer to 1 than the Democratic scores are to minus-1). Those who took office after the 2016 election have an average score of 0.53. The 16 most conservative members of the House Republican conference all came to the chamber after that election.

This is self-fulfilling to some extent; ideology scores are based on votes and newer legislators have taken more votes that reflect conservative values as measured by Voteview. But there is nonetheless a detectable shift to the right. The House Republican conference’s average DW-NOMINATE score in the Congress that ended in January 2017 was 0.48. The average in the current conference is 0.51.

There’s been some attention paid to the shift in the electorate since 2016. It may be hard for some of us to believe, but kids who were 10 the first time Trump was elected are now old enough to vote. They’ve only known a political world in which Trump was the norm for the Republican Party.

That idea holds true for Congress, too. Most Republicans on Capitol Hill have only known what Congress looks like and how it operates in the Trump era. Their expectations are necessarily different from those of legislators who had served in the previous decades.

Their assumptions about what constitutes “crazy criminal activity” may be somewhat different from other legislators or Americans overall.

Democrats feared Manchin — a moderate West Virginia senator who recently registered as an independent but caucuses with Democrats — would call for Biden to step aside. If he did, the senator would then become the first prominent elected official allied with the party to call for Biden to exit the presidential race.

But he didn’t. Senior Democrats heard of Manchin’s plans and started making calls to the independent-minded senator, who once used a Sunday show appearance to announce his opposition to Biden’s top agenda item and effectively kill it. The “full-court press” was quickly assembled to help dissuade Manchin from appearing on the show, according to two people familiar with the response who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

The effort included a weekend phone call with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who discussed the matter with Manchin, according to those people. Schumer talked with Manchin after the senator had already decided not to go on a Sunday show, one person said. The shows typically serve as a vehicle for prominent elected officials to discuss the news of the day and make their views known, both to the public and others in politics.

“Joe Manchin talks to lots of people because he wants to get different views and political perspectives,” Manchin senior political adviser Jonathan Kott said in a statement. “When he has something to say, you’ll hear it directly from him, and trust me, there’s nobody that can talk him out of speaking his mind.”

At one point, Manchin reached out to former president Bill Clinton to talk, but those two never connected, according to a source familiar with the effort. Clinton posted a message of support for Biden on social media after the debate.

Manchin’s reversal illustrates Democrats’ rapid tamping down of internal dissent over the 81-year-old Biden remaining their presumptive nominee as the campaign and party leaders argue that only the president and his family can decide his political future. Urging drastic action before examining post-debate polling is unwise, party leaders have argued, and Democrats are aware that being the first prominent Democratic official to do so could come with a political cost.

“Nobody wants to be the first one to knife Julius Caesar,” one Democratic Party official said.

On Tuesday, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (Tex.), went public and became the first sitting Democratic House member to call for Biden’s exit from the race.

In a statement, Doggett praised Biden for his years of public service, saying he has “achieved much for our country at home and abroad.” But, he said, the time has come for Biden to step away from the ticket because “too much is at stake to risk a Trump victory — too great a risk to assume that what could not be turned around in a year, what was not turned around in the debate, can be turned around now.”

“President Biden saved our democracy by delivering us from Trump in 2020,” Doggett said. “He must not deliver us to Trump in 2024.”

Privately, many Democratic lawmakers have raised questions about Biden’s viability as a candidate, and have expressed anger at Biden’s campaign. These Democratic lawmakers and donors say that campaign aides are dismissing legitimate concerns about Biden’s fitness and are furious that the campaign is trying to spin the debate as an unfortunate one-off, multiple members and aides said. The lawmakers worry about Democrats’ ability to retain control of the Senate and potentially capture the House in an election with Donald Trump at the top of the GOP ballot and pre-debate polling showing a tight race.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has asked candidates in close races to see how the next several days play out before speaking their minds. His message to donors, according to four people familiar with his comments, is that they should invest in the House. House Democrats have the best shot to win in November and will serve as a check on Trump, Jeffries has said.

In the debate’s wake, some editorial boards, Democratic strategists and donors have agitated for Biden to step aside and be replaced at the Democratic National Convention in August. But Biden’s allies have dismissively pointed out that no one inside the Capitol has joined those calls — providing a bubble of political protection that Manchin’s potential break would have pierced.

“I’m not doing it and I don’t know anybody who’s doing it,” former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters when asked Friday what she thought about those who are calling for Biden to step aside. “I mean, maybe some people outside.”

Those concerned about Biden’s ability to beat Trump have argued that it would take party elders like Schumer, Jeffries or Pelosi to go to Biden and express their concern for any possible change in stance to be contemplated by the president’s team.

But all have publicly stood by him, with Jeffries and Pelosi defending him in a flurry of media appearances. “I’m with Joe Biden,” Schumer said Tuesday at an event in Syracuse, according to NBC News. “We’ve worked hard together for four years and delivered a lot for America and central New York.” Schumer is facing less internal dissent than Jeffries, given that the 81-year-old president served for decades in the Senate and has maintained individual relationships with some senators.

On Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who ran against Biden for the Democratic nomination in 2020, released a joint op-ed with the president outlining their efforts to reduce prescription drug prices.

That even Manchin — a perpetual thorn in Democrats’ side who spent months flirting with an independent presidential run that Democrats feared could boost Trump — has not broken with the president speaks to the tight lid that’s been kept on calls to oust Biden. Unlike his Democratic colleagues, Manchin has not endorsed Biden.

That dam may soon break, however, if polls show a steep decline in Biden’s standing or he does not ramp up his public appearances to show that he can do the job. Democrats in the House, which Republican control, now consider their chances of regaining the majority in November as the only firewall to a possible Trump administration, but also worry that Biden will drag down their chances to flip the chamber if he remains atop the ticket. And Democratic senators running in a gantlet of red and purple states must all hold onto their seats to keep that chamber in Democratic hands.

On Tuesday, former House member Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who ran for president in 2020, called for Vice President Harris to replace Biden on the ticket in Newsweek.

“Kamala was the highlight of a historically dreadful night,” Ryan said of debate night. “Those who questioned her chops over the past several years were rebuked by a polished, confident leader communicating clearly in the throes of a political meltdown of epic proportions. I loved watching it.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) expressed concern Tuesday morning about the impact of Biden’s candidacy down-ballot.

“I think he has to be honest with himself. This is a decision he’s going to have to make,” Quigley told CNN’s Kasie Hunt. “His decision not only impacts who’s going to serve in the White House the next four years, but who’s going to serve in the Senate, who’s going to serve in the House, and it will have implications for decades to come.”

The Biden campaign has sought to tamp down Democratic defections, putting out a flurry of polling and fundraising data to calm skittish donors and lawmakers. White House chief of staff Jeff Zients and Steve Ricchetti, another top White House aide, have spoken with Schumer and Jeffries as part of their efforts to calm the waters, according to people familiar with the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private discussions.

Jeffries has not yet spoken to the president, according to one person familiar with their relationship.

Lawmakers are not in Washington this week, which means many have been able to escape reporters’ questions. But they’ll face constituent concerns, especially during the July 4 holiday, where patriotic parades are popular stomping grounds.

While Jeffries has publicly stood by the president, he is hearing out frustrated Democratic colleagues who believe his stance could change. Jeffries and his leadership team continue to listen to House Democrats whose concerns have not dissipated since Biden’s strong performance at a North Carolina rally Friday. Multiple Democratic lawmakers and aides said they believe that if ensuing polls are dismal, House Democrats will have no choice but to call for Biden to step aside. Congressional leadership, they said, will have to follow.

House Democrats across the ideological spectrum remain furious at the lack of outreach and direction from the Biden campaign about the way to unify as a party. A majority of rank-and-file Democrats have not received any kind of formal communications from the Biden campaign other than the standard talking points and memos sent by the White House and campaign.

“The reassurance strategy, if that’s what you want to call it, is not working, and I think some find it a bit offensive,” one Democratic aide said.

“The President has spoken personally with multiple elected officials on the Hill and across the battlegrounds since the debate,” Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said in a statement.

Democratic chiefs of staff are now getting a daily memo from former White House legislative affairs director Louisa Terrell, who is helping the Biden campaign with talking points as well as polling and arguments to make their case that Biden is still in a position to be the nominee.

Some Democratic senators have been sharply critical of Biden’s debate performance, but none have suggested that he should step aside or is not fit to do the job.

Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said the Biden campaign has to address voters’ legitimate questions about whether Biden is up to the job.

“They have to have a plan that does offer that reassurance to voters who have a fair question: Can this person who we like do this job for another four years?” Welch said.

He also warned that if Biden performs badly, it will be a “fierce undertow” for Democratic Senate candidates, who face many tough races in the fall.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told a local TV reporter he was “pretty horrified” by the debate.

“I think people want to make sure that this is a campaign that is ready to go and win, that the president and his team are being candid with us about his condition, that this was a real anomaly and not just the way he is these days,” he added.

Tyler Pager contributed to this report.

The court also declined to hear challenges to Illinois gun laws including restrictions on the popular AR-15 rifle and high-capacity magazines, indicating the justices may not be inclined to immediately revisit the hot-button issue of guns after issuing two major rulings during a blockbuster term that ended Monday.

The Texas pornography law requires websites that host sexually explicit content to verify the ages of users. It was challenged by a trade association for the adult-entertainment industry, companies that host sexual content on their websites and an adult-film star.

Their petition says the Texas law imposes significant burdens on adults’ access to “constitutionally protected expression” — in this case, online sexual content — thereby violating their First Amendment rights. The challengers also argue that verification checks pose security and privacy concerns because they expose users to potential leaks, identity theft and extortion.

The Texas legislature passed House Bill 1181 in June 2023 as part of a broader Republican-led effort to limit the amount of sexually explicit materials minors are exposed to. The bill requires websites to use methods such as government-issued IDs to ensure that users are 18 years or older. It prohibits sites from retaining users’ identifying information and requires companies to display health warnings on their websites about accessing sexually explicit content.

The Texas law imposes fines of $10,000 per day that a company operates a website in violation of the age verification requirement and $10,000 per instance that the company retains identifying information. If a minor is exposed to sexually explicit content on a website that violates the age verification requirement, the company will be fined an additional $250,000.

Similar age verification laws have passed in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Utah and Virginia.

U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra of the Western District of Texas blocked Texas’s age verification requirement last year, saying the law probably violated the First Amendment. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reversed the ruling in March, citing the state’s interest in protecting the welfare of children as well as the Supreme Court’s 1968 ruling in Ginsberg v. New York, which prohibits the sale of obscene materials to minors.

“The age-verification requirement is rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in preventing minors’ access to pornography. Therefore, the age-verification requirement does not violate the First Amendment,” Judge Jerry E. Smith wrote for the majority.

Pornhub disabled its website in Texas after the 5th Circuit’s ruling and in April, in response to an emergency request, the Supreme Court allowed the Texas law to remain in effect while litigation continued.

The justices will also review the Food and Drug Administration’s regulations for e-cigarettes. The Supreme Court’s decision to accept the vaping case is a key test of the FDA’s authority to regulate flavored e-cigarettes that have become popular among teens but are deemed harmful by public health officials and anti-tobacco organizations. The agency has denied millions of applications for flavored vaping products, arguing the nicotine products are risky and appeal to young people. The vaping industry has responded with numerous lawsuits, arguing vapes are less risky than smokable tobacco products and can help wean adults off cigarettes.

Several appeals courts have sided with the FDA. But in January, a divided 5th Circuit ordered the FDA to reconsider its decision prohibiting two companies from marketing their e-cigarette products. In a stinging decision, the majority said the agency sent manufacturers on a “wild goose chase” of requirements for applications. The lawsuit was filed by Triton Distribution, which asked the agency to approve vaping pen liquids with flavors such as “Signature Series Mom’s Pistachio” and “Suicide Bunny Mother’s Milk and Cookies.”

Until recently, the FDA had denied all applications for flavored e-cigarette products even as illegal ones — often manufactured in China — proliferated in vape shops across the United States. Last month, the agency approved four menthol-flavored products manufactured by tobacco giant Altria Group, in a decision that alarmed anti-tobacco groups. On Tuesday, those groups warned that the Supreme Court siding with the 5th Circuit would cripple the agency’s ability to curb the harms of e-cigarettes used by millions of teens, most of whom prefer flavored products.

The high court this term delivered monumental decisions that legal experts say could upend government efforts to protect public health. The most consequential ruling came Friday when the conservative majority reversed a 40-year-old legal precedent, known as the Chevron doctrine, which required judges to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous federal laws.

“In the aftermath of the evisceration of the Chevron doctrine, the stakes for preserving the vital role FDA plays are high,” said Mitch Zeller, the former director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products. “The public and Congress should be very concerned if the court tries to substitute its judgment for that of a science-based regulatory agency.”

The court will also take up two cases dealing with the guidelines for the First Step Act, a bipartisan bill signed by President Donald Trump in 2018 that offers sentencing reductions for nonviolent federal offenders who participate in rehabilitation. The goal is to reduce recidivism and shrink the prison population. It has resulted in the early release of thousands of inmates.

The cases, which have been consolidated, examine a narrow question: whether the act’s sentencing reductions apply to a defendant who was sentenced before the act became law, had their sentence vacated for other reasons and was then resentenced to a new prison term after the law’s enactment.

The Supreme Court is wading into the culture war over transgender rights next term, as well. Last month, the justices agreed to review a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming care for minors. Senate Bill 1, which was signed into law on March 2, bans puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery to treat minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

The challengers say the ban violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex and gender identity.

Biden’s performance Thursday reinforced the biggest concern voters have expressed about his candidacy: his age. He moved slowly, spoke softly and had trouble articulating his thoughts. More than once he lost his train of thought entirely.

It was an earthquake. Democrats, desperate to block former president Donald Trump’s return to the White House, began openly discussing how to replace Biden as their party’s nominee. Political observers and pundits were happy to entertain alternative scenarios. Polls were consulted and vibes checked. Private phone calls and public interviews all pointed in the same direction: Something needed to change.

There was also general agreement on what that change might look like. While Vice President Harris has often polled at or near Biden, much of the conventional wisdom centered on the idea that Democrats should come together at the party’s upcoming convention and identify someone else to be the nominee — someone perceived as more obviously electable than Biden or Harris. There was a great deal of insistence that this was the only way to ensure that Trump wouldn’t be reelected.

On Tuesday afternoon, though, CNN released new polling that is distinctly at odds with those arguments.

We should be very cautious about reading too much into one poll. That’s always true, and certainly in a moment when things are so unsettled. But the CNN poll, conducted by SSRS, is worth considering seriously for a few reasons. First, it was conducted entirely after the debate. Second, it is a quality, well-regarded poll. And third, its findings are less useful in establishing certainty about how the party might move forward than they are in demonstrating that any such certainty is unwarranted.

CNN’s last national poll was in April, when Trump had a six-point lead in a head-to-head matchup against Biden. In the new poll, Trump has … a six-point lead. In fact, the top-line numbers are exactly the same as they were two months before.

What’s more, there aren’t significant shifts in the favorability of either candidate. Biden and Trump are each viewed more favorably by members of their parties than they were in April.

One shift CNN found in the new poll, though, was that Americans, including Democrats, are now more likely to say that someone else has a better chance of beating Trump than does Biden. But the last time CNN asked the question, in January, Democrats already said someone else would be a better bet.

It’s a shift of degree more than viewpoint, a doubling of the difference between the two.

So who might that someone else be? CNN offered respondents a battery of options, including Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). The candidate who runs the best against Trump?

Harris, who trails by two points.

The other candidates trail by four to six points, in a poll with a margin of sampling error that is 3.7 points. No clear leader — but the idea that Harris runs worse than other candidates is simply not supported by the data.

In fact, across demographic groups, Harris outperforms Biden. On the chart below, the dots shown to the left on a given blue line indicate the candidate who fares better against Trump. Notice that the solid circles — those indicating Harris’s margins against Trump — sit consistently to the left. The exception is among men, among whom both candidates do about as well.

Harris does noticeably better with women, independents and non-White voters. Those groups and younger voters are also more likely to view Harris favorably than they are to view Biden favorably (among respondents who had an opinion of the candidates).

This is a weird, complicated situation, so it’s worth putting a fine point on a few things.

For one thing, just because people are wary of Biden doesn’t mean they won’t vote for him. CNN’s poll found the same dynamic at play that many other polls have found: Biden’s support is primarily made up of people who support him because they oppose Trump.

If you are planning to vote to block Trump’s election, that you view Biden more negatively or are more supportive of someone replacing him doesn’t necessarily mean that you aren’t going to vote for him anyway. Hence Biden doing as well against Trump now as he did two months ago.

It is also true that measuring whether other candidates might do better against Trump is extremely tricky. Harris’s two-point gap is not significantly different from Whitmer’s five-point one. Perhaps Whitmer would be a better candidate than Harris and more easily surge past Trump. This poll can’t tell us that — but no poll really could. What this poll does suggest is, instead, that the idea Harris is disadvantaged relative to other candidates has little merit.

The final consideration is the one we began with: This is one poll. It’s a good one, in polling terms, but different pollsters talking to different people can yield different results. It may still be the case that Biden collapses; it is still the case that he is walking a much narrower tightrope than he was a week ago. But this poll doesn’t reinforce the idea that he is necessarily doomed.

Nor does it bolster the idea that slotting in, say, Newsom will mean puppies and sunshine for Democrats until early November.