President Joe Biden and his 2024 re-election campaign were blindsided over the weekend by a pair of major polls that not only showed him trailing likely Republican former President Donald Trump but also revealed a weak and fractured base of voter support.

The terrible news sparked a massive freakout among some Democratic strategists and the media about the status of Biden's campaign, which one labeled a "five-alarm fire," according to Breitbart.

Some of those increasingly anxious and frustrated strategists and pundits are now asking pointed questions about what Biden's campaign is actually doing to shore up support among voters and, in some cases, more bluntly questioning whether Biden should even be attempting to seek re-election.

Major bad news for Biden

The New York Times/Siena College released a new poll over the weekend that showed President Biden losing to former President Trump in five of the six "battleground" states and exposed worrisome cracks in the broad coalition of Democratic voter groups that helped Biden get elected in 2020.

That includes substantially weakened support among key blocs like black and Hispanic voters, young voters, and women, with the incumbent president's senior age and declining "mental sharpness" plus disapproval of his economic plans and foreign policies as major factors behind the decreased support.

Similar findings emerged from a CBS News/YouGov poll last week which showed that voter majorities believed the nation was worse off under Biden and that things would get better under Trump, particularly in terms of bolstering the economy, keeping the U.S. out of developing foreign military conflicts, and securing the nation's porous borders, among other things.

Democratic strategists and donors freaking out

NBC News reported that frustrated anonymous Democratic strategists erupted over the weak poll numbers for President Biden and what that revealed about his re-election campaign, with one likening it to a "cardiac case in need of a 'defibrillator,'" and another comparing it to "a lemming on course to 'slowly march into the sea and drown.'"

"This is a five-alarm fire," an unnamed senior aide to a swing state Democratic lawmaker said. "We have a deep bench of folks who could run and win. But that’s not happening."

The Washington Post reported that "increasingly anxious" Democrats were concerned that the Biden campaign was ignoring substantial warning signs evident in the polls and refusing any advice on possible course corrections to shore up a diminished base of support, particularly among minority voters.

"The chatter level is at an intensity I have not seen it before," one unnamed Democratic strategist told The Post. "There are concerns among people in the consulting world that the campaign is not being run the way it’s supposed to be run."

A report from Politico likewise revealed that a number of Democratic strategists and donors were now raising questions about the Biden campaign's activities and plans in terms of ad buys and events, with a primary concern being that Biden himself needed to do more and that the campaign needed to get more aggressive toward Trump specifically and Republicans more broadly.

Arguably one of the biggest blows came from David Axelrod, a senior adviser of former President Barack Obama, who surmised in a thread of tweets that perhaps Biden ought to consider dropping out of the race and stepping aside in order to allow a younger and more capable Democrat to become the party's new standard-bearer.

Biden camp not worried about early poll numbers

To be sure, in each of those articles was a statement from the Biden campaign that downplayed the expressed concerns by noting that the election was still a year away and that a lot could change between now and then.

While that is certainly true, alarm bells are still ringing among those who fear that a Trump return to the White House will become a reality if the Biden campaign and the Democratic Party don't make some serious adjustments in the weeks and months ahead.