Because of his faltering performance at the June 27 debate, Biden can count on even greater scrutiny, with less margin for error. As much as he wants this campaign to be about highlighting the risks of a second Trump term, Biden has assured that his own vulnerabilities will be a focus of voters’ concerns.

Campaigning on Friday in Michigan, Biden delivered a ferocious new attack against Trump as he sought to shift the focus back on his opponent and show members of his own party that he still has the fight to wage a winning campaign. Biden also insisted again that he will not end his candidacy. “I’m the only Democrat or Republican who has beaten Donald Trump ever,” he said. “And I’m going to beat him again. I know him. Donald Trump is a loser.”

Biden is dug in, confident that no one can knock him out. Nervous Democrats, fearing a loss to Trump in the presidential race could lead the party to a broader defeat down the ballot, continue to signal, whether bluntly or politely, publicly or privately, that he should reconsider. That sentiment, however, has not achieved critical mass. But neither has Biden yet won the battle to silence his doubters.

Every public statement by a Democrat leader is now parsed for meaning, as was the case with a letter that House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) sent to his colleagues on Friday. Jeffries said he had taken all their concerns to the president during a private meeting Thursday evening. He did not say he had urged Biden to quit the race, nor did he say in the letter that he believes that Biden should stay in.

Jeffries’s statement appeared to be in step with former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), whose public remarks earlier in the week indicated that she does not regard Biden’s declarations that he is staying in the race as a definitive answer. It is not clear what message Biden has taken away from what she said. Nor it is clear whether those were her last words on the matter.

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has said publicly he is with Biden, nonetheless is carefully watching things, gathering information particularly about prospects for holding the party’s slender majority and leaving himself some room to maneuver, according to The Washington Post’s Liz Goodwin and Leigh Ann Caldwell.

Friday brought some additional calls from House members for Biden to step aside, but the numbers were not significant enough to change the dynamics. There was no wave, as some had predicted, but no groundswell of support, either. The party appears immobilized as the days tick by. No one thinks this is good, or that it can last indefinitely.

Privately, those with doubts about Biden’s ability to win the election see no clear path to victory. His most obvious route — perhaps his only route — is through Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Winning those three states plus one congressional district in Nebraska would put Biden at exactly 270 electoral votes, the minimum needed to be elected. That’s a very low ceiling, and it leaves zero margin for error.

Biden’s doubters anticipate that the next round of polls in battleground states will show Biden in a more perilous position than before the debate, though no one can be sure. An AARP post-debate poll of Wisconsin released last week showed the president down six percentage points in a state he won by less than a point in 2020. Biden says he doesn’t really believe the polls.

A pair of national polls released this week, one a Post-ABC News-Ipsos survey and the other by NPR-PBS News-Marist, showed no change in the balance between Biden and Trump. In both cases, the race was essentially tied before the debate and remains that way.

The Post’s average of polls shows movement of almost two points nationally in Trump’s direction since the debate. Biden led Trump in polls throughout 2020, won the popular vote by 4.5 percentage points but won Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona by a percentage point or less. That he is behind nationally is cause for worry for Democrats because of what it is likely to mean for battleground states.

Biden’s news conference on Thursday was a moment when he and his team hoped he could begin to put the issue to rest. Since the debate, Biden has been called on to show more vigor, to hold more rallies and especially to appear in more unscripted settings, such as in interviews or at news conferences.

He has done that, doing some informal events, the kind that in the past showed off his empathy and regular-guy persona. But many Democrats are still on edge, fearful of the consequences of another serious slip up.

During the hour-long news conference, he took more than a dozen questions. Speaking at the conclusion of the NATO summit, he drew some questions about foreign policy, familiar turf that gave him an opportunity to show his command of the issues. At times, however, his lengthy answers were difficult to follow. Was that just the younger, verbose Joe Biden or something more concerning? People read it as they wished.

He also made an unfortunate verbal flub at the beginning when he called Vice President Harris “Vice President Trump.” Earlier, he introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin,” though he corrected himself almost instantly.

Before the debate, those kinds of small gaffes would have gotten little attention and imbued with less meaning, written off as “oh, that’s just Joe.” In the post-debate environment, however, Biden is being judged, fairly or unfairly, through a more critical lens, including by elected officials in his party.

That’s a clear sign of how the dynamic of the campaign has changed. Biden long has wanted to avoid having the election be mostly about him. He wants this to be a choice between him and Trump. His campaign has been built around a strategy of making voters fear a second Trump presidency so much that they overlook their reservations about the president’s age and capacity to serve effectively for another four years.

That was an easier case to make before the CNN debate, where Biden struggled at times to complete sentences, appeared to lose his train of thought, looked distracted — and, to the dismay of many Democrats, was seen as ineffective in prosecuting the case against Trump or correcting the many times Trump lied or distorted the truth.

Many Biden supporters, particularly rank-and-file Democrats, are frustrated to the point of anger that Trump seems to be getting a pass — not only for his record of lies, but also for his often rambling performances and verbal flubs. Some of that anger is aimed at the press, including from Biden on Friday. But the press has also been blamed in some quarters for covering up Biden’s decline.

With Biden in trouble and Democrats taking their internal disagreements public, Trump has uncharacteristically stayed out of the way. He will be back in the spotlight soon, though, when the Republicans convene for their national convention on Monday in Milwaukee.

Biden’s supporters want more focus on the dangers they see in a Trump victory, from extreme policies like the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants, to threats of retribution against his opponents to what is contained in Project 2025. These ideas have been highlighted in the media and will be again, but long-standing questions about Biden also have been elevated and won’t fade away.

The issue of whether, because of his debate performance, Biden should stay in the race has divided Democrats along racial lines, according to The Post-ABC-Ipsos poll. Majorities of White and Hispanic Democrats say he should pass the torch. Most Black Democrats want him to keep running.

Four years ago, Black Democrats in South Carolina revived his flagging candidacy during the primaries. Then, the fear that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was on a path to become the Democratic nominee and, if nominated, would be a weak general election candidate, prompted rapid consolidation around Biden as the safest and best choice to win.

Today nothing is as clear-cut as it seemed then.