Of course, I didn’t expect Joe Biden to be brilliant, but I had no idea just how bad he would be. From the moment he shuffled to the podium to his first response, when he appeared to be dazed and confused while speaking with a raspy voice that was probably the consequence of one solid week of debate prep, it was clear that Biden would lose the debate if not the presidency. He couldn’t keep track of numbers or names, and his dead-eye stare was downright scary. It was enough to make you think that Special Counsel Robert Hur was right to describe the president as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” except maybe Biden wasn’t that sympathetic anymore. ...

Even as I was sure that Biden was losing the debate, I was already planning to write a column complaining about how the mainstream media’s talking heads were trying to make excuses for Biden and trying to convince viewers and readers that Trump had lost after all. But that plan went up in smoke within seconds of the debate ending, when John King told the CNN audience:

Right now, as we speak, there is a deep, wide, and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party. It started minutes into the debate, and it continues right now. It involves party strategists, it involves elected officials, it involves fundraisers, and they are having conversations about the president’s performance, which they think was dismal, which they think will hurt other people down the party on the ticket. And they’re having conversations about what they should do about it.