Joe Biden's gaffes are starting to grate on some Democratic insiders, who fear they'll become easy fodder for President Trump to lob against the former vice president should he claim the party's presidential nomination.

Concerns over the 76-year-old former vice president's performance on the campaign trail recently began trickling down to members of the Democratic National Committee, many of whom are headed to San Francisco next week to hear from White House hopefuls at the body's annual summer meeting.

North Carolina committeeman John Verdejo told the Washington Examiner that while he doesn't find Biden's verbal missteps offensive, he warned the vice president it doesn't bode well for the coming primary fight against a crowded 2020 field and a potential general election battle against Trump.

"With all due respect Mr. Vice President, you should not be known as a gaffe machine," the treasurer of the DNC's Southern Caucus said. "If that's one of the things that you're going to run on, 'Oh, that's Uncle Joe AKA gaffe machine but he's a great guy,' that itself is a problem because there are 200 other candidates who are working just as hard as you, but they don't make gaffes like you do."

Shelia Huggins, also a DNC committeeperson from North Carolina, said Biden's unforced errors have the "potential to hurt" his presidential bid. But she was more forgiving of the mistakes.

"For some people that's what they are looking for even if it isn't perfect," Huggins said. "People have given him a little bit more leeway because they know him and are sort of like, 'Well, I know his heart even though he doesn't quite always get it right.' And it's not like we're giving him a pass because people did say, 'Hey Joe, you didn't get that right.'"

Georgia state Sen. Sheikh Rahman added that the blunders were part of the former vice president's "genuine" image and charm.

"He's an old man. I'm not that old, but sometimes I forget. I don't think it's a major flag to be honest with you," Rahman said.

Biden stumbled over his words on more than one occasion last week as he barnstormed first-in-the-nation state Iowa. The longtime senator for Delaware told reporters he met with Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivors under the Obama administration, despite the massacre unfolding one year after he left office. He suggested during a speech to the state's Asian & Latino Coalition that "poor kids" were "just as bright" as "white kids." He also urged Iowans at the state fair to "choose truth over facts."

Supplementing last week's cleanup efforts, Biden adviser Symone Sanders this week defended her boss against the barrage of criticism from political commentators, dismissing it as "a press narrative."

DNC members, once known as superdelegates but since 2016 renamed "automatic delegates," are influential party officials who can sway the outcome of next year's Democratic National Convention if voting for the nominee proceeds to a second round or beyond.