Biden tries to turn the page on a shaky debate: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, senior political editor Mark Murray looks at how Democrats' efforts to downplay concerns about Joe Biden's age have come back to bite them. Plus, we break down all the fallout from Thursday's debate and another day of major Supreme Court decisions.

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Biden’s allies spent a year dismissing concerns about his age. That was a mistake.

By Mark Murray

After Thursday’s debate, there’s a separate storyline to consider beyond President Joe Biden’s shaky performance and former President Donald Trump’s lies and misleading statements.

That storyline: the yearlong Democratic campaign to discredit concerns about Biden’s age, his fitness and his ability to defeat Trump in a non-Covid presidential campaign — especially with polls showing a super-majority of voters having worries about Biden’s age.

Biden’s allies and liberal commentators sneered at Rep. Dean Phillips’ plea last summer for someone, anyone, to challenge Biden in the primaries to prove he’s up to the task in a race against Trump. (That someone eventually turned out to be Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat, himself.)

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“He’s essentially torpedoing his career completely and destroying any goodwill he has within the Democratic Party,” one House Democrat told NBC News about Phillips’ challenge to Biden.

They attacked special counsel Robert Hur after his report this year referred to Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”

“Cheap shot” and