Top leaders in the Democratic Party rallied around President Joe Biden this weekend after his politically disastrous debate performance on Thursday as polls show Americans are increasingly concerned about the 81-year-old’s ability to do the job, including a significant portion of Democrats. 

Biden’s campaign and key congressional allies took to the airwaves on Sunday to argue the debate was not a death knell to the president’s reelection hopes and push back on the growing calls for Biden to step aside. They pointed to his record, emphasized the dangers they say former President Donald Trump poses and insisted Biden has the stamina and strength to win reelection and serve out a second term through age 86.

“He is our candidate for November. And he has the best shot to beat [Trump],” said Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a close Biden ally and the co-chair of his campaign, on ABC News’ “This Week.” “I think he’s the only Democrat who can beat Donald Trump.”

South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, a key endorser who helped Biden secure the Democratic nomination in 2020, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the debate was “a bad performance,” but chalked it up to Biden being over-prepared and said he would advise the president that “very clearly he should stay in this race.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is attempting to lead his caucus back to a majority this fall, said on MSNBC’s “The Weekend” that the debate was “a setback,” but called on Democrats to “lean in.”

Jeffries' predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, said Biden “has been a great president of the United States” and made the case that Trump's false claims during the debate mattered more than Biden’s performance.

“Why do we talk all about Joe Biden? This guy is old, he doesn’t have a stream of thought that’s logical and nobody says anything about that,” Pelosi said on former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s MSNBC show. “You saw on one side of the screen integrity, concern for people. On the other side you saw dishonesty and self-serving lies.”

Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock and Pennsylvania Sen. Jon Fetterman also on Sunday joined the chorus of elected Democrats dismissing concerns from allies and calls for Biden to step aside from donors, some officials within the party and the editorial boards of major newspapers like the New York Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Former President Barack Obama, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other major Democratic figures also voiced their support for Biden’s continued candidacy in recent days.

“There is not one single senior Democrat [who has called for Biden to step aside]. There’s not a single governor, there’s not a single senator, there’s not obviously his vice president who endorses him and supports him,” Coons said.

But polls that have come out since Thursday’s debate show increasing levels of concern about and outright opposition to Biden’s pursuit of a second term. A CBS News poll of registered voters found 72% believe Biden “does not” have the “mental and cognitive health” to continue serving as president, up from 65% earlier this month. Just 49% thought the same of the 78-year-old Trump.

Similarly, just 28% of those polled thought Biden should be running for president, down from 37% in February. Nearly half of registered Democrats surveyed by CBS News said Biden should not be running and that he should step aside to give another candidate a chance to take on Trump.

Another poll from the Democratic-aligned firm Data for Progress conducted on Friday found voters are more concerned about Biden’s age than Trump’s four criminal cases — including his conviction on 34 felony counts in New York — and his “threats to democracy.” More than half of independents said they were more concerned about Biden’s age and health than Trump’s legal woes and authoritarian politics, while just 36% thought the reverse.

“If Biden is going to stay in this race, and I think he is… they could run the perfect campaign and it won't get you to a win number of 270 electoral votes, unless that fitness number were to get better,” David Plouffe, Obama’s 2008 campaign manager and White House adviser, told Psaki on a separate segment of her show. “He made a problem that's close to existential works. It doesn't mean it can't be addressed, but it's going to require great strategy, great tactics, and there's risk on both sides.”

For its part, Biden’s campaign is expressing confidence and boasting of fundraising totals, saying on Sunday that it have raised over $33 million since Thursday, including $26 million from grassroots donations. They said nearly half of those donations were from first-time donors and said the campaign has more recurring donors than they did at this point in 2020.

“We know that in modern campaigning, singular moments do not spell the outcome of any race,” Biden pollster Molly Murphy told Psaki on Sunday. “They will potentially bump the polls up or down in one direction or another. And that may last a week or two… but the fundamental lesson that we are taking out of this debate and every other moment is this is a closely divided country. This is going to be a nail biter of an election. Every vote matters.”

Biden was at the presidential retreat Camp David in Maryland on Sunday, where he spent a week preparing for the debate. According to NBC News, he was planning to gather his family to discuss the future of his campaign, but the White House pushed back on that notion and noted the trip was pre-planned.

For now, the outcry for Biden to step aside from activists, pundits, editorial boards and former supporters has not been publicly echoed by current Democratic lawmakers in Washington and the most influential figures in the party today.

In an appearance on MSNBC’s “Velshi,” Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin came closer than most elected Democrats in discussing the possibility of Biden stepping aside.

“We’re having a serious conversation about what to do. One thing I can tell you is regardless of what President Biden decides, our party is going to be unified and our party also needs him at the very center of our deliberations and our campaign,” Raskin said. “Whether he’s the candidate or someone else is the candidate, he’s going to be the keynote speaker at our convention, he will be the figure that we rally around.”