The biggest story in the country today is still Joe Biden's debate disaster. That is getting lots of coverage. The second biggest story ought to be the utter failure of the media to get the story before the debate but of course the media doesn't spend much time talking about its own failures.

Still, it's worth pointing out just how easy it was for elected Democrats and partisan hacks on TV to push the idea that Joe Biden was not only fine but "sharp as a tack." This seems to have been a coordinated effort, something which ought to have raised suspicion about these claims, and yet the few outlets that did push back, like the Wall Street Journal, were hounded and attacked for doing so.

 Just listen to this supercut of absolute hogwash:

I recognize some of the voices. "Morning" Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, DHS Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Joy Behar, Anderson Cooper and several others who sound like MSNBC regulars. Some of these people were probably reading from a script prepared by the White House, others were just repeating what those surrogates had said.

The main point is that all of this was wrong and the people who are actually close to the president knew it was wrong. From the moment they set out to spread this lie, a reckoning with reality was inevitable.

“This was all predictable, and it pisses me off that everyone is acting shocked now,” one longtime Democratic operative said on Sunday. “The shocking thing is that people engaged in this deception, or delusion, or both, for so long.”...

“They were already behind, and they were hoping and assuming that the debate would change the dynamic of the campaign,” said Michael LaRosa, a former aide to first lady Jill Biden whose mild public criticism of the campaign’s strategy got him nasty pushback from many in Biden-world. “Now they’ve put themselves in an even more dire position, and put the party, frankly, in a really dangerous position.”...

Julián Castro, the former housing secretary who ran for president in 2020, said on NBC News Now on Friday that the Democrats’ current situation was the product not of one night but of two years’ worth of establishment pressure. “Anybody that stepped forward as a potential contender, the idea of having debates, campaign consultants that might think about supporting somebody else, all of them were shut down,” Castro said. “At each juncture, the opportunity for an off ramp was cut off, and now the party finds itself in a position where we only have four months left…to try and switch course.”

This didn't happen to them. They made it happen by lying to everyone for the past four years. 

There's another poll out today showing the debate hurt Biden. Fewer people than ever think he is "sharp as a tack."

According to Morning Consult’s weekly tracking survey conducted over the weekend, 37% of voters say Biden is mentally fit — down 6 percentage points from a survey conducted ahead of the debate. Among Democratic voters, 68% say Biden is mentally fit, down 9 points from before the debate. Both numbers are the lowest on record since Morning Consult began asking the question in 2020.

Perceptions of whether Biden is in good health fell by similar margins, from 41% to 35% among all voters and from 75% to 63% among Democrats. Half of Democrats and 68% of all voters also now say Biden is too old, up from 43% and 64% prior to the debate, respectively.

It's hard to believe that 68% of Democrats still believe Biden is mentally fit after watching that debate. The total US viewing audience across all networks was estimated at 51 million. That's a fraction of the population. My guess, and that's all it is, is that this poll of registered voters didn't limit responses to people who'd seen the debate. In other words, a lot of the Democrats who are still expressing support for Biden are the ones who haven't seen what the rest of us saw. Over time they probably will see clips or ads and so I'd expect these numbers to keep dropping until Biden gives them a reason to change their minds.

Will their be a 2nd debate? You can see why Biden would want one. When you hit the bottom, the only way to go is up. But from Trump's point of view, why give him another chance to climb back into the race?