This is as close as we’re going to get to a prominent Democrat admitting that Biden will be too old and senescent by 2024 to do the job, so enjoy it. Here’s Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak being put on the spot by WaPo:

TT: Do you think that the president will be a campaign asset in Nevada this year? And do you think he should run for reelection?

SS: I don’t know if he should run for reelection. I think that’s a personal decision he has to make. I know how much stress is on the governors across the country. I cannot imagine the amount of stress that President Biden is under. I saw him a couple of weeks back at Senator [Harry] Reid’s funeral, and we had a chance to communicate just a little bit. You saw President Obama. He got to office with dark black hair and he left with hair as gray as mine. You can tell, the stress of the job. Is he an asset? To people that like him, he’s a huge asset. The people that are his detractors, he’s not an asset. You know, we’ll stand in Nevada on our record what we’ve done.

Translation: “I think what’s left of Biden’s brain will be Jell-o two years from now.”

It’s fascinating to think how Democrats might have handled a question like that if Kamala Harris had had a strong first year as VP. Granted, given her lack of retail political talent and the problems the administration faced with COVID and inflation, there’s no scenario realistically in which her first year could have been “strong.” But what if she’d at least been as strong as Biden? His favorable rating in the RCP poll average is 41.8/52.2; hers is 37.7/52.2. If she were at, say, 45/50 in favorability, higher than him, would Dems like Sisolak already be dropping hints like, “You know, I always imagined Joe Biden’s term as president as a bridge to a new generation of Democratic leadership”?

This party is staring at an increasingly real conundrum in which their presumptive 2024 nominee will be widely viewed by voters as no longer fit for office and yet might still be the strongest candidate they can realistically field, so thin is the Democratic bench. Name another Dem with a national profile who would be as competitive with working-class white voters as Sleepy Joe.

Still, probably not a good sign for Biden that pieces like this are appearing in lefty outlets like Salon just a year into his term:

The “whispers” began before Joe Biden was elected.

Some, of course, shouted them. Whether it was his Republican opponent calling him “Sleepy Joe” or members of his own party questioning his commitment to progressive policies and wondering if he was intellectually adroit enough to walk through the metaphorical minefields of historically divisive and nasty national politics, there were many who thought Biden wasn’t the best Democrat to meet the presidential challenge…

The susurrus surrounding Biden now includes many of the Democratic faithful who have gone back to wondering whether he is up to the challenge. “We don’t know — when he shows up, are we going to get someone barely there, or someone who’s on his game?” an influential Democratic activist said to me this week.

That problem won’t get better with time. The *best*-case scenario for Democrats is that it doesn’t get worse before 2024. If it does, they’ll either be stuck with a bad politician in Harris as their nominee or a nightmare in which the highest-ranking black woman in American history is somehow elbowed aside for her party’s nomination.

There’s only one choice who might be able to hold Democrats together. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, they have 2022 to worry about. This Politico “slow news day” take about how Biden’s party might potentially, conceivably, hypothetically win the midterms gave me a laugh. It can happen! If, uh, literally all of America’s major problems are solved between now and November and Dems also catch a few breaks:

DOUG SOSNIK of Brunswick Group argues that “there would need to be a series of developments in order for the Democrats to defy history”:

1. The virus needs to be contained with the country returning to a new normal.
2. Inflation needs to start going down by summer.
3. The economy and the stock market need to maintain steady growth, particularly as interest rates begin to rise.
4. The supply chain needs to return to normal.
5. There is not a global crisis.
6. Biden’s job approval rating needs to be in the high 40s by summer.
7. Republicans need to nominate unelectable general-election candidates and run lousy campaigns. They are capable of this and have done this in recent past cycles, choosing far-right candidates such as TODD AKIN or CHRISTINE O’DONNELL who ended up losing in the general election.
8. Trump and Republicans need to keep talking about the 2020 election.

Piece o’ cake for a guy whose own activist corps is now whispering to reporters that they worry he’ll be “barely there” when he makes a public appearance. If Democrats are smart, they’ll give up on the House and channel most of their time and money into trying to hold the Senate. There are few enough vulnerable incumbents on the ballot this fall that that cause isn’t completely hopeless. Although it seems more hopeless by the day.