The media meets its Hunter’s Notebook moment — after years of denying the obvious, even dissemblers like CNN have had to concede what we knew all along

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A movie ends its run

"At the end of the day, Joe Biden looks like the caricature that conservative media has been painting," Chuck Todd of NBC News admitted. "And there were no clips tonight. Right? This was—you saw before your eyes."

All those bogus stories like “the real Joe Biden, in private, in the Oval Office, is the sharpest mind in the room” flew in the face of reality, denied what everyone could see, but the media (tried to) feed the public stories of “fake videos”, and outright assertions that “there’s nothing to see here”. Last night, that all came to a stumbling, gasping halt.

Biden’s disastrous debate pitches his reelection bid into crisis

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

If Joe Biden loses November’s election, history will record that it took just 10 minutes to destroy a presidency.

It was clear a political disaster was about to unfold as soon as the 81-year-old commander in chief stiffly shuffled on stage in Atlanta to stand eight feet from ex-President Donald Trump at what may turn into the most fateful presidential debate in history.

Objectively, Biden produced the weakest performance since John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon started the tradition of televised debates in 1960 — then, as on Thursday, in a television studio with no audience.

Minutes into the showdown, hosted by CNN, a full-blown Democratic panic was underway at the idea of heading into the election with such a diminished figure at the top of the ticket.

Biden’s chief debate coach, Ron Klain, famously argues that “while you can lose a debate at any time, you can only win it in the first 30 minutes.” By that standard, the president’s showing was devastating. The tone of the evening was set well before the half hour.

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Biden’s voice was weak, at times reduced to a whisper. Early on, the president’s answers drifted into incoherence. He missed openings to jab Trump on abortion — the top Democratic talking point — and meandered into highlighting his own biggest political liability, immigration. “We finally beat Medicare,” Biden said at one point, lapsing into confused silence. It was the kind of debate gaffe that Democrats had hoped to avoid. Worse, while Trump spoke, Biden often watched, his mouth gaping open, exacerbating an impression of a president cruelly diminished. His bravura battering of Trump in a debate four years ago was a distant memory.

To see a president struggle before millions of people watching on television all around the world was tough to see. As a matter of humanity, the personification of the ravages of age that await everyone was painful. Biden’s campaign revealed during the debate that he had been suffering from a cold. But by that time, the damage had already been done.

Biden had entered the debate facing a somber test — to prove to the majority of Americans who believe he is too old to serve that he is vital, energetic and up to fulfilling his duties in a second term that would end when he is 86. Instead, the president ended up validating those fears and potentially convincing many more voters that his faculties have decayed. The stumbling performance raised questions about the strategic choice Biden’s campaign made in pushing for a debate with Trump. It also completely undercut attempts by the White House and the campaign to talk up Biden’s heartiness behind the scenes. Memories of the president’s barnstorming State of the Union address in March, when he put many fears about his age to rest, have now been obliterated.

‘Painful’

Often, presidential debates are remembered for visual moments that become embedded in the collective public consciousness in subsequent days. Troublingly for Biden, a viewer only paying attention to visual clues would surely have formed the impression that Trump was the more robust personality. And the history of presidential elections suggests that the candidate who seems strong often beats the one who is weak.

“It’s painful. I love Joe Biden,” said Van Jones, a CNN political commentator. “He’s a good man, he loves his country, he’s doing the best that he can. But he had a chance … tonight to restore confidence of the country and of the base and he failed to do that. And I think there are a lot of people who are going to want to see him take a different course now.”

Not really germaine, but it is revealing, and pretty damn funny:

"Look, there’s so many young women who have been—including a young woman who just was murdered," Biden said. "The idea that she was murdered by an immigrant coming in, and they talk about that. But here’s the deal. There’s a lot of young women who are being raped by their in-laws, by their spouses, brothers and sisters."

Jesus wept.