Two distinct news items this week show in stark terms the generational civic dilemma that the Democratic Party faces from state to state, county to county, and coast to coast. Both involve the matter of age and the comfort in office of the powerful — and arguably, the hazards of voters yielding their judgment to a single party boss.

One item is the publication of the new book "Original Sin," by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. Neither the subtitle, "President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," nor its highlighted reporting, should surprise anyone who even casually followed last year’s national elections. Biden, now 82, was declining to the point where he couldn’t run for reelection.

By the time of his disastrous June 27 debate in which he mumbled and rambled incoherently, the 46th president had been stubbornly refusing to confront the problem. No matter the motive, he and his wife Jill and close advisers were complicit in denial.

The party isn't a company owned by a president. Millions of voters and other candidates depended on the dubious decision. By the time Vice President Kamala Harris was substituted for Biden, it was too late for the rank-and-file to select anyone else or plan a full campaign. Harris lost the popular vote to Donald Trump, who turns 79 next month.

Among the worried Democrats during the Biden candidacy's collapse was then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Sometimes Biden would call him, chat, and admit he forgot why he called, or ramble or forget names, the book says. Schumer worried that the president’s voice "was not just slower but oddly quieter, reminding Schumer of his mother, who had Parkinson’s," Tapper and Thompson write.

Clinging to power while performance erodes is familiar in Washington. The late Sen. Dianne Feinstein and former Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell are recent examples. President Ronald Reagan wasn’t diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease until 1994, but there were rumors of his cognitive decline during his second term, which ended in 1989.

The other news story involves a young and calculatingly defiant politico calling for a generational transition. Months before his election in 2020, Biden declared at a campaign stop: "Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else," Biden said. "There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country."

With that bridge now permanently out of service, generational transition happens to be on the lips of party activists. On the Democratic National Committee, 25-year-old vice-chair David Hogg has made an unorthodox move from his post to support primary insurgents who may be deemed preferable to incumbents. Hogg said he’d only back contests in solid-blue districts but DNC Chairman Ken Martin is pushing to "require all party officers, including myself, to remain neutral in primaries."

Hogg, a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in Parkland, Florida in 2018, became a populistic gun control activist. He may lose his seat for procedural reasons, but that's almost beside the point. He'll be somewhere on the scene.

For better or worse, the party is in wider ferment. At a moment when it tries to win back the House of Representatives, its messaging, ideology, posture and policies are all in flux post-Biden. Losing the presidency and both houses of Congress usually means a shift at least in broad tones.

How this period of infighting and reorganization opportunities turns out will be an essential off-year story for both parties.

Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.