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The president called into a friendly morning show to attack his critics. The year was 2024.

Earlier this week, CNN’s Jake Tapper opened “The Lead” by reading out a transcript of one of the president’s answers during a call-in interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that morning.

“‘The fact of the matter is, how can you assure you're going to be out on, you know, on your way to go, you know, work tomorrow, age, age wasn't, you know, the idea that I'm too old,’” the host read, pausing for a second. “Keep in mind, that sound bite is supposed to be reassuring to Democratic supporters.” Tapper went on to slam other recent lapses, including one statement he called “not coherent.”

The caustic tone from a flagship mainstream cable host, even one as fair-minded as Tapper, was striking for the obvious reasons, but also for another: Nothing he pointed out was new.

As the Democratic Party is engulfed in a political crisis without modern precedent — weighing whether to force its presumptive nominee from the race mere weeks before its convention — it’s become difficult to argue with a sentiment that, ironically, now seems to unite both stalwart Biden defenders and longtime Biden detractors: The issue now consuming media coverage and the liberal mainstream is not by any means new.

It’s true that the president’s debate performance was uniquely poor — while some outlets deployed euphemisms like “unsteady” or “stumbling,” he simply struggled to piece together complete, let alone coherent, sentences. But June 27th was not a shock to either voters or anyone who has watched Biden fairly.

For years now, the president’s public appearances have been heavily strained, even with a near-omnipresent teleprompter. He’s frequently mixed up heads of state and countries. He’s butchered his own Cabinet officials’ names and called out for a deceased congresswoman. He’s claimed to have met with long-dead foreign dignitaries and claimed to have been arrested during the civil rights movement. He’s delivered speech lines so difficult to understand that they’re hard to transcribe. Amid it all, he’s held fewer press conferences and sat for fewer interviews, even with friendly outlets, than any modern president.

What all this indicates about Biden’s cognitive state is open to interpretation — and it’s notable that Democratic insiders argue his condition has only qualitatively changed within the past six months or so. But even as polling shows concern about the president’s age hitting new heights (WSJ and ABC/WaPo found 80% and 85% of voters now believe Biden is too old to serve a second term), Americans’ judgment has been abundantly clear for years.

As early as 2022, polls showed firm majorities of Democratic voters hoping for a different nominee in 2024. That remained true even after the better-than-expected midterms. Before he officially announced his re-election in April 2023, polls from CNN and Yahoo/YouGov found nearly 70% believed he was too old for a second term. By late summer, surveys from the AP, NBC, Washington Post, and Monmouth found even worse numbers, hovering at or above 75%.

All four confirmed how uniquely vulnerable the president had become: Biden polled 25 points worse than Trump on the issue. The deepening worry seemed to seep into voters of all stripes. In December, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found Americans were less opposed to the idea of Trump running with a felony conviction than Biden running at all.

But Democratic leaders universally dismissed both the avalanche of polling and the evidence of Biden’s own appearances, even as they often whispered about their own concerns in private. Many took solace in dismissing age-related concerns as selectively edited “cheapfakes.” Now they’ve stopped ignoring longstanding public opinion.

The sea change in the past two weeks is undeniable. Mainstream outlets have published an array of pieces that present a narrative about Biden’s acuity that was, as recently as mere weeks ago, almost entirely confined to the conservative ecosystem. Most significantly, they all feature a flood of Democratic aides and operatives suddenly willing to offer examples of the president’s condition — often citing anecdotes from months or even years ago.

Elected officials, too, have done an about-face. Last September, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not only denied Biden’s age was a liability, she pitched it as a source of “wisdom.” Now, she calls it a “legitimate question” whether Biden’s performance indicated a medical “condition.” In May, Sen. Patty Murray, a senior Democrat, publicly denigrated reporting about Biden’s capability for the job. Now, she’s calling for him to “seriously consider” the future.

Some Democrats now explicitly argue that Biden’s personal, not just political, faculties, have deteriorated. Actor and Democratic super-fundraiser George Clooney made waves by calling for a new nominee. But more significant was his allegation that, in private, Biden is “the same man we all witnessed at the debate,” an assessment that was endorsed by former Obama aide Jon Favreau. A House Democrat now tells reporters they knew back in the winter that “something has changed” in the president. An aide reports Cabinet meetings were “kind of an act.”

One is left to wonder about a scenario in which the debate debacle did not happen, where Democratic officials, who had already denied the concerns of a supermajority of voters, merely witnessed the president’s struggles off camera.

So much of the conversation around the 2024 election, particularly among the hyper-online, revolves around questions of how journalists should frame their coverage of a unique campaign featuring a uniquely anti-democratic figure. And what’s become clear is that many journalists' decision to aggressively cover the president’s age now may well be driven by the same motivation that led them to tamp down coverage previously: a desire to avoid a Trump victory.

One could fairly make the case that it is a worthwhile, even morally necessary, goal. But both conservative and liberal critics of the media have a point: many journalists’ conduct before and after the debate reveal an agenda, and both were heavily informed by groupthink.

So what happens next? For now, neither the steady drip of calls for Biden to step aside nor the defiance of his loyalists seems strong enough to immediately defeat the other. A campaign official privately emphasized Black lawmakers’ continued public support of the president as a key bulwark.

But many plugged-in politicos increasingly agree one person may hold the keys to the deadlock. "It's Pelosi 100%," said a former high-ranking staffer for the Obama campaign, who privately hopes the president will step aside. That echoes the sentiment of many in recent days who believe the former Speaker, revered across her party, may be alone in the ability to usher the president to an exit.

If that ends up happening, it would place the former Speaker back in the center of yet another major historical moment, and, to use her own parlance, once again found by the times.

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