James Antle of the Washington Examiner documents an interesting development involving some of President Biden’s most ardent media supporters.

A new wave of liberal debate has broken out over whether President Joe Biden should end his reelection campaign.

New York Times columnist Ezra Klein suggested an open Democratic National Convention to replace Biden. New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait floated a counterproposal whereby Biden picks his successor with the help of various Democratic grandees if things don’t improve by summertime. 

Longtime Democratic operative James Carville got the ball rolling on this latest round of Biden doubt when he questioned the decision to forgo a Super Bowl interview.

This talk percolates and then fizzles every few months after an age-related storyline or a series of discouraging poll numbers.

Usually the news cycle passes and with it the urgency to contemplate alternatives to Biden at the top of the 2024 Democratic ticket.

It’s possible that this pattern will resume, with the White House physician saying there were “no new health concerns” for Biden and declaring him “fit to successfully execute the duties” of his office after the president’s latest physical examination.

But the real underlying concern appears to be that Biden hasn’t pulled away from former President Donald Trump, who has so far swept the Republican primaries and beat his last major opponent by nearly 42 points in Michigan on Tuesday.

Trump has a 2-point lead over Biden in the RealClearPolitics polling average. This advantage grows when third-party candidates are factored in and gets bigger still in most of the battleground states that will actually decide the Electoral College majority.

It’s early. The primaries aren’t over yet. But events ranging from Jan. 6 to criminal charges in multiple jurisdictions were supposed to have discredited Trump, hammering the final nails into a political coffin built during the pandemic. A dip in inflation without a recession or spike in unemployment, a more or less soft landing, was expected to restore faith in Bidenomics.