Opinion | After the Debate: ‘I Don’t Think Joe Biden Should Be Running’

Douthat: I’m not — am, you know what? I am actually not enjoying this.No, I mean, I am enjoying it — [Laughs] Look, I have spent the Trump era arguing with people who take the situation with Donald Trump as president extremely seriously and suggesting that you need to see the absurdist side of it. And so in this situation, too, I think it is important to see the absurdist side of this spectacle, right down to what we haven’t even talked about, the great golf handicap debate that closed out this debate for the ages.

Klein: I refuse to talk about the golf handicap debate.

Cottle: Oh my god, no, but guys.

Douthat: But look, Ezra just made a really strong pragmatic case for how the Democrats need to try to win this election, can’t let Trump get in, Biden’s going to lose — if he goes on like this, he’s going to lose.

But there’s also just — the same kind of case that was made against Republicans who went along with Trump should be made against Democrats who go along with Biden now. Biden is a different kind of danger to the U.S. than the instability of Trump, but it is a dangerous thing for the United States of America to consider re-electing the man we saw on stage to the presidency at an extremely dangerous moment in world history. It is morally bankrupt for the Democratic Party to go forward with this man as president. And that has to be said as well.

But it’s also funny. It’s also a little funny.

Cottle: So I have been excruciatingly aware and had many discussions about all of the kind of logistical challenges that people have talked about. When you push out an incumbent president, you’re just asking for a world of hurt. But that said, at this point, the party really is overdue for a good gut check. And I think there are a lot of senior Biden people who need to be asking themselves, what on earth are we expecting to happen to turn this around? And I just can’t come up with a good scenario. So, Ezra, we’re going to go with your plan, right?

Klein: The problem I think the Democratic Party has is twofold. One is just simply a collective action problem, and this was also the thing that was an issue around the primaries. As Ross suggested, the only real Democrats who ran against Biden, were Dean Phillips and then, in a different way, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.