As aides and allies watched Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s first debate performance last month, their initial optimism about his abilities turned to alarm as Senator Kamala Harris laced into him over race and busing.

It wasn’t just Mr. Biden’s halting answers that worried some of them. They thought he was showing his age — that, at 76, he appeared slow off the mark, uncertain about how to counterpunch as he allowed Ms. Harris to land clean hits without interruption.

Within minutes, aides sent talking points to supporters entitled “regarding the civil rights exchange,” and had information on his record ready for a late-night conference call. But his top advisers and other Democrats knew his unsteady response — ending with his listless comment that his “time is up” — would exacerbate questions about whether Mr. Biden, a veteran debater, was nimble enough to handle intense campaign moments or to beat President Trump on a debate stage next year.

“It felt like he was a step slow,” said Mike Lux, a Democratic strategist who was a top Iowa staffer for Mr. Biden during his 1988 presidential campaign and is so far neutral this cycle. “If Joe comes back strong in the next few debates, I think it’ll be fine. But I do think he looked kind of old in this debate.”

As Mr. Biden prepares for the next debate this Wednesday night, which will include a rematch with Ms. Harris, he and his advisers are grappling with how to make sure he doesn’t appear so shaky, cognizant that a repeat performance could do lasting damage to his campaign and erode his advantage in the polls. Several advisers emphasized that Mr. Biden is in excellent health, and said he will be more prepared to defend his record and more willing to draw contrasts with his opponents than he was at the June debate.

But interviews recently with more than 50 Democratic voters and party officials across four states, as well as with political strategists and some of Mr. Biden’s own donors, revealed significant unease about Mr. Biden’s ability to be a reliably crisp and effective messenger against Mr. Trump.

While the president’s own style of communicating is often controversial — his bellicose tweets, his misstatement of facts, his demeaning language about minorities and immigrants — he has a largely united Republican Party behind him. Mr. Biden is still trying to prove himself to Democrats as their best hope in 2020; many of those interviewed were most concerned about his agility, and linked it to the sensitive subject of Mr. Biden’s age.

Some voters couched their misgivings in euphemisms about wanting “new ideas” or “new people.” Some expressed fears of appearing “ageist” — a reflection of the good will Mr. Biden enjoys with much of the Democratic rank-and-file. Others referenced their own lives: If they have “slowed down” upon reaching a certain age, the thinking goes, Mr. Biden must have as well. And a few people were blunt.

“Seventy-plus is too old,” said John Hampel, 68, of West Des Moines, Iowa, who said he would like to support a centrist candidate. Mr. Biden would fit that ideological bill, but Mr. Hampel, citing his own age, continued, “I think he should pass the torch.”

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If elected, Mr. Biden would become the oldest president in history at his inauguration, at 78, surpassing Ronald Reagan, who was 73 when he began his second term. Among the other Democrats running for president, Senator Bernie Sanders is 77 and Senator Elizabeth Warren is 70.

A Pew Research Center survey from May found that only 3 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners said it was best for a president to be in their seventies; 47 percent preferred someone in their fifties.

Mr. Trump, who himself would be the oldest president ever if he wins a second term, has faced questions about his own physical and mental fitness for years. He has handed his critics unceasing fodder, whether because of his stated aversion to exercise or his penchant for impulsive, offensive and often-invented observations on all manner of topics.

Despite all that, Mr. Trump is seeking to turn Mr. Biden’s age into an issue. He has sniped publicly that Mr. Biden is not the political athlete he once was, while being even harsher in private. Meeting with a group of union officials in the West Wing earlier this year, the president appealed for their support in part by tapping on his head and saying, “Biden is losing it,” according to a participant in the meeting who disclosed the president’s comment on condition of anonymity.

His unsubstantiated attacks on Mr. Biden, and more muffled disquiet from some Democratic activists, infuriate Mr. Biden’s friends and advisers and are contrary to the view of Mr. Biden’s doctor, Kevin O’Connor.

“Vice President Biden is in excellent physical condition,” said Dr. O’Connor, a retired Army colonel, who served as a White House physician and was named physician to the vice president in 2009. “He is more than capable of handling the rigors of the campaign and the office for which he is running.”

Biden aides grumble there are far fewer questions about the age of his fellow candidates in their 70s, noting that Mr. Biden is in strong physical shape for his age.

“The person he’s going to be running against is about the same age,” said Representative Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, a Biden campaign co-chairman, in reference to Mr. Trump. He also noted that his candidate is in better shape and, alluding to the president’s erratic behavior, is “of sound mind.”

Or as John Morgan, a Florida donor who hosted the former vice-president at his home for a fund-raiser this spring, put it: “Can you see Donald Trump jogging?”

Mr. Biden’s allies describe him as a fitness fanatic and reasonably disciplined eater who also enjoys ice cream and cheeseburgers. As vice president, he favored staples like yogurt and juice, salads with protein and for dinner, pasta or fish, said John Flynn, who served as military aide, personal aide and as a senior adviser to the then-vice president over the course of about five years. Mr. Flynn added that he sometimes briefed Mr. Biden at the gym.

“I work out every morning,” Mr. Biden said earlier this month. “I usually work on the Peloton bike, and I lift.”

His aides insist that Mr. Biden has more energy than they do. At a South Carolina fish fry last month, allies note, he outlasted rivals in greeting voters late into the night. Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, has also vouched for Mr. Biden’s vigor, saying on CBS in April, “if you travel with Joe Biden, you won’t think he’s too old.”

Mr. Flynn relayed a story about a high-level, 48-hour trip to Iraq and Rome in 2016.

“I think the only person that didn’t sleep on that flight, besides the flight crew, was him,” Mr. Flynn said. Speaking of Mr. Biden’s stamina more broadly, he continued, “Even though he had been up for as long as he had, he still was the sharpest.”

On the campaign trail, Mr. Biden sometimes recalls an encounter with a heckler who called him “Sleepy Joe” — a Trump nickname for him — during a July 4 parade in Independence, Iowa.

But as Mr. Biden notes in the retelling, when he asked the individual if he wanted to jog along with him on a steamy summer morning, the heckler demurred.

Amy Wright, an Independence resident, told him as he stopped to greet on her the curb: “If you can run, you’re not Sleepy Joe.”

But for all of the energy Mr. Biden can exude, he is also prone to uneven performances. He is often warm and empathetic toward voters — many of whom emphasized that with age comes experience — and was quick and humorous at a news conference in Portsmouth, N.H. earlier this month.

Yet he also meanders and sometimes speaks so softly at events that it can be difficult for attendees to hear. After Mr. Biden tripped over a few lines while addressing Planned Parenthood activists last month in Columbia, S.C., one audience member, Marda Kornhaber, tried to be delicate.

“He didn’t come off, I’m trying not to let the age thing …” Ms. Kornhaber, a human resources executive from Charlotte, N.C., said before stopping herself. “But he did seem like he bumbled a few times. That leaves me a little sad.”

He also relays stories about his decades in public life that can seem off-key at best, and deeply controversial at worst.

Some of Mr. Biden’s allies argue that he has long struggled to be succinct.

“He’s never been good at synthesizing his thoughts into 30-second or 60-second answers,” said former Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, who is 75. “He was just as awkward in ’88.”

Where he shines, Mr. Rendell said, is in interactions with voters.

“If you’re a good politician, it re-energizes you,” Mr. Rendell said. “If you care about people, it re-energizes you. Joe’s a good politician, and he cares about people.”

As Mr. Biden prepares for the next debate, scores of his supporters have offered the same unsolicited advice to his aides: borrow from the playbook of another septuagenarian candidate, Mr. Reagan, according to campaign officials.

Some of these would-be wordsmiths have suggested invoking a version of Mr. Reagan’s “there you go again” from his 1980 debate with Jimmy Carter a few months before Mr. Reagan’s 70th birthday. Others have urged Mr. Biden to defuse questions about his age by employing Mr. Reagan’s rejoinder about not holding Walter Mondale’s “youth and inexperience” against him, a line that helped Mr. Reagan bounce back from a lackluster first debate in 1984.

It is unclear if the former vice president’s aides want him to say anything that will draw more attention to his age.

But Mr. Biden often says that it is fair to raise the issue — and he has sought to make light of it, even joking about challenging Mr. Trump to a push-up contest.

“I find it fascinating, they talk about pass the torch, it’s the time,” Mr. Biden said at a fund-raiser in California, where he spoke in broad strokes about the Democratic field. “And then they talk about me being naïve. I thought at least they’d give me credit that if I was that old I wasn’t naïve.”

Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting from Des Moines.

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