Last week, I made the single worst prediction of my short career as a political commentator, declaring in my weekly Daily Beast column that “My mind is made up. Your mind is made up. One of these guys is going to be president next year, but this debate isn’t going to be determinative unless one of them does something really stupid or dies.”

Well, Biden didn’t do anything stupid and he didn’t die (although I might ask for a second opinion on that point), but the first, and likely only, presidential debate of 2024 may very well go down as the single most determinative event of the campaign. Why? Because, for Gampy Joe, this debate was about a single, fundamental question: is he competent and capable enough to serve another four years?

The answer: no.

No.

I’ll say it again: no.

I don’t care that Trump lied. Trump always lies. His lies are baked into his candidacy, as well as his own incompetence and corruption. If anything, Trump was the best possible version of Trump last Thursday, keeping his bellicosity and flights of inane rhetorical fancy to a minimum while still unleashing his usual unchecked diarrhetic river of bullshit. And before anybody asks, fuck that fucking fascist blowhard. He will never—never—get my vote. But for those who don’t feel their skin crawling, as I do, whenever he befouls my television screen, it was simply Trump being Trump.

But this wasn’t Biden being Biden, or at least the Biden we were reassured is still “sharp as a tack.” For many Americans, this was the longest we’ve seen an unscripted Biden in years. The White House has been steering him away from press conferences and long interviews, a tactic which many found disquieting before the debate, but which now seems like political malpractice. Not for Biden, for the country.

The White House said Biden still had a cold, Tuesday. The same day, as Daily Beast reported Tuesday, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called for Biden’s ouster from the 2024 presidential ticket on Tuesday, calling his mental fitness a “legitimate question.”

Her comments, in an interview with MSNBC, came hours before Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) became the first sitting Democratic lawmaker to call for Biden to bow out of the presidential race. He was quickly followed by Adam Frisch, a Democratic House candidate in Colorado, who echoed the call.

Tim Ryan, who’s running for Senate in Ohio as a Democrat, posted........

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