This whole night was so many layers of exhausting, but probably not for the reasons you think... No rational, serious person was expecting Biden to Willy Wonka front somersault into this debate? it was going to be what this was, the only true surprise was probably the volume of his voice (which they chalk up to a cold, okay fine, I guess) and actually how well he did quickly processing and responding to trump's gish gallop and unchecked stream of consciousness mistruth firehose with little help from the impotent moderators for the majority of the night.

The people in this country, in their immediate reaction to this debate, demonstrate that they just fundamentally lack the focus, empathv and frankly basic intelligence to process the substance of this or any debate. On average, we respond solely to voice pitch, tonality, body language and facial expressions, like a still developing toddler... Or a dog.

The conspiracy theorists all say Joe is supposed to step down and Gavin Newsom somehow is added to the ticket which then will win. These conspiracy theorists also say that candidates are selected in advance by the powers that be and it’s all pagentry to deceive the gullible masses. Try to look surprised when he gets replaced and they add Gavin.

He seems like he's doing a-ok today. Wtf???where was this guy last night?? https://youtu.be/eWylhLOPk8c?si=E5uZIHS15XQ_TKma

What a disaster. I can’t remember the last time I saw a decent presidential debate, they all devolve into completely failing to answer the questions and just attacking the opponent. The only thing this new format did was prevent them from constantly talking over the opponent when their time was up.

What the hell happened to Biden? I mean, he’s old…but normally his speaking is far, far better despite his stutter. He could hardly get coherent rebuttals out half the time and had a hard time enunciating his policy goals.

Trump…nothing but a torrent of lies, [insert group] loves me, and “hurr durr you’re stupid, Biden.” But he was able to spew his word salad clearly.

They should have had fact-checkers, but the problem is that trump told so many lies so fast that 75% of the debate would have been the moderators having to correct trump’s bs.

This was embarrassing, to put it mildly. Terrifying to see trump look better than Biden - if you ignore what was actually said.

I'm not in a panic. I knew this. Should he have run again? Hell no. I wish he would have had the courage to call it a day.

That being said, I'm fully willing to endure 4 years of Weekend at Bernie's if it means I won't have to go through the embarrassment of having the orange moron at the helm.

People who aren't the VBNMW crowd saw the writing on the wall for Biden. This debate only helped Trump even tho Trump literally didn't answer anything. That is Trump's style all insults or jokes and no substance. Not sure what happens here it is way too late to switch to anyone else. We're cooked.

It was dumb just going along with Biden as the nominee, hubris and status quo thinking. Now the Democratic party needs to come up with something to energize the electorate. Scaring people with democracy being on the line, while completely true, isn't gonna do it. Hoping the attacks on reproductive rights will carry them over the finish line is a bad idea. Trying to bring Harris out now into the limelight isn't gonna work. People are tired and struggling. The youth feel betrayed and themselves are struggling. There is no energy coming from up on top. Dems have always sucked at messaging.

So, we've got an old, racist guy who lied through most of his statements and refused to possibly say that he would accept the results of the election vs an old guy with a history of a speech impediment that showed signs of his speech impediment and regularly pointed out the lies spouted off by his convicted felon opponent. Why are the media companies banking Trump again?

They did this to themselves. Total strategy failure, holding this debate so early in the race. Also trusting CNN's moderator to follow all the rules and fact check both candidates live.

Why do liberals fail at strategy? I suspect it's due to their tendency to spend more time thinking about how to go about things than on what things they should go about. Valuing the means at the expense of the ends, yet again.

I watched about 30 minutes, gotta say Trump was all over the map and not answering questions. Biden was raspy and stuttered, like he does , but he actually answered the questions. Trumps answer about what he would do about the fentanyl crisis was 'I bought a dog'

Shoulda given him the juice!

Legitimately planning how I'm going to weather a Trump presidency after the debate. Unimaginably disheartening.