Defiance has become as much a part of Joe Biden’s psychology as Delaware.

But as the president and his inner circle dig in following his disastrous debate performance last week, a growing number of Democratic leaders are saying they want him to step aside for the good of the party – and the country.

Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas was the first to break ranks.

“I represent the heart of a congressional district once represented by Lyndon Johnson. Under very different circumstances, he made the painful decision to withdraw. President Biden should do the same,” Doggett said in his statement Tuesday.

“There’s a large and increasing group of House Democrats concerned about the president’s candidacy, representing a broad swath of the caucus,” another House Democratic lawmaker told CNN on condition of anonymity to speak candidly. “We are deeply concerned about his trajectory and his ability to win. We want to give him space to make a decision [to step aside], but we will be increasingly vocal about our concerns if he doesn’t.”

Biden is expected to meet Wednesday with Democratic governors and congressional leaders, the White House said Tuesday. The announcement came after CNN reported that some governors expressed concerns about the president’s debate performance. The governors, one source said, were worried about going public with their concerns out of fear it would lead to Biden digging in further.

Many leading Democrats doubt that Biden is up to that — and they see his secluded schedule since Sunday as evidence they are correct. That schedule is keeping to Biden’s general mode. Using one metric: Biden has held 36 news conferences since taking office, compared with Trump’s 64 by this point in his presidency, Barack Obama’s 72 at this point in his, and George W. Bush’s 82 by this point in his.

Trump has also been out of public view since a post-debate rally in Virginia on Friday and has no schedule for the rest of the week. Anchors for a local television station announced that he at the last minute canceled an interview after the rally after aides asked for the questions in advance. He is expected to spend much of the next few days in New Jersey golfing.

Even for some of those who are staying committed to Biden, a sense has settled in that there is little chance he would be able to make it through the four years that another term would entail. The debate performance has so shaken Democrats that even stalwarts like Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse told local reporters back home in Rhode Island on Monday that he wants a fuller accounting of the president’s health.

From the West Wing to Wilmington

While the high command of the Biden campaign on Monday tried to “keep reassuring everybody and absorbing people’s worries,” one adviser said, there has been a growing appreciation for the anger and concern many Democrats have expressed.

“The seriousness of this is felt by people in the West Wing and in Wilmington,” a different adviser added.

Several Biden advisers told CNN the campaign is still working to assess the true fallout of the debate among voters in key battleground states, with an eye on whether Biden has fallen in a head-to-head matchup with Trump or whether the field of swing states has expanded. A range of engaged senior Democrats cite Minnesota and Virginia as important gauges, as well as the Senate race in Michigan. House Democrats are deep into their own polling, assessing how much damage has been done.

As dark as the mood is among some aides — including those who feel the wind knocked out of them after years of internalizing a related Biden mythology that he always delivers in a crunch — others are hoping to prove wrong people who never believed in him.

Responding to The New York Times Editorial Board on Friday calling for Biden to drop out, one Biden aide reached out to CNN to offer this: “That sh*t is like jet fuel in my veins I love it.” The New York Times did not endorse Biden in the 2020 Democratic primaries.

No clear fix
The same small, insular inner circle that has guided Biden to this point is handling the fallout. Few familiar with how the members of that circle work believe it would be possible to force any of them out.

Still, top aides at the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee have spent the days since the debate on a constant churn of calls. Several people involved say that many of those calls have started badly but ended at least somewhat better. And the Biden campaign on Tuesday announced that June was its best fundraising month ever, with $127 million banked — with almost a third of that raised since the debate.

Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon on Monday evening told members of the campaign’s National Finance Committee that the team is “clear-eyed, not pollyannish,” two participants on the call told CNN. She did not telegraph anything about Biden’s plans other than full steam ahead.

But after several previous calls with donors boiled over, the campaign restricted that Zoom call so that the only way to pose questions was to put them in a moderated chat.

“Every time Joe Biden is counted out, he proves his doubters wrong. I have faith he’ll do it this time too,” said Andrew Weinstein, a longtime Biden supporter and donor.

Phil Murphy, the New Jersey governor who called Biden the “comeback kid” at a fundraiser he hosted with the president on Saturday night, said that at their dinner table they had a wide-ranging, coherent conversation that covered, by his telling, Ukraine, the Middle East, wage growth, job creation, dealing more effectively with corporations, and expanding prekindergarten and community college.

“His life story, almost every step of the way — including through tragedy — is the story of a guy who’s been counted out and succeeds against all expectations and all odds,” Murphy said. “And he’s in another one of those moments.”

This story has been updated with additional details.