Many baby-boom Democrats trace their political roots to the rebellious 1960s. Young progressives led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and “the Squad” embed protest in their politics. Yet amid panic and crisis over the teetering re-election campaign of Joe Biden, the party has apparently lost its nerve to act up. On July 12th Democrats entered their third week since the president’s shockingly impaired debate performance elicited widespread calls for him to yield to a younger candidate who can defeat Donald Trump in November. In private, many elected Democrats still say Mr Biden should stand aside. And yet in public, among office-holders, the rebellion looks anaemic.

True, the number of congressional Democrats openly calling for Mr Biden to withdraw has been growing day by day. Yet the pace is glacial, given the short time remaining until the president is formally renominated as the party’s standard-bearer. By July 12th the ranks of declared dissenters numbered 19 in the House—just under a tenth of Democratic membership—and they included but a single senator, Peter Welch, a first-termer from Vermont.

There are some discernible patterns in this muddle. One is that vulnerable House candidates —sensing an existential threat to their careers—are proving more willing than others to declare that the emperor in the White House has no clothes. A disproportionate number of the House members calling on Mr Biden to stand aside are running in races ranked as competitive by the Cook Report, a nonpartisan research group. They include Marie Glusenkamp Perez, a newcomer from Washington state, who won a previously Republican seat in 2022 by fewer than 3,000 votes. Declaring for the rebellion on July 11th, she did not prevaricate: “I doubt the president’s judgment about his own health, his fitness to do the job, and whether he is the one making important decisions about our country.”