What a horrifying, shameful, and embarrassing night for America.

For years I warned Democrats that their Trump Derangement Syndrome was blinding them to the failings of their standard-bearer. Dutiful media ran cover. Tonight the dam broke, though all is not lost.

I was at a wake. I came home to watch a funeral. At last night’s CNN presidential debate in Atlanta, President Joe Biden looked old, frail, pallid, and broken, mangling punch lines, unwittingly admitting to glaring failures in Afghanistan and on migrant crime. And God knows what he meant about the three trimesters of pregnancy and “we finally beat Medicare.”

Yet former President Donald Trump still lost the debate on substance. Trump’s unwillingness to answer straightforward questions on issues for which he had policy solutions--including child care, climate change, the fentanyl crisis, and mass deportations--was infuriating. His failure to prepare was apparent, his grasp of policy was pathetically lame, and his indulgence in wild hyperbole was maddening. Weirdly, he was at his best talking about abortion and January 6. But that was not nearly enough to carry the day.

Because of Biden's scary, halting, raspy optics early on, Democrats are hitting the panic button––especially with 67% of CNN viewers saying Trump won––but they shouldn't. As Biden grew in vigor and clarity over 90 minutes, he came across as decent, caring, and more with-it on policy, even if his policy prescriptions, or lack thereof, have been empirically awful for the country. Preposterous as this might seem, Trump was so unprepared, so simplistic, so ADD that Biden could still win this election, even though most Americans now see what I saw six years ago: it’s elder abuse to subject a man in Biden’s precarious state to another four years in office.

My bottom line: despite Trump's glaring failures as a debater and person, I know from his previous four years as President that he will at least tackle in earnest the core issues facing the country: illegal immigration, high taxes, inflation, crime, and a world at war.

Still, I wish both candidates would go away and never return to public life again. Their lies, crude ad hominems, and weirdly tone-deaf brags about golf handicaps on Thursday night were unbecoming and glaringly non-responsive to Americans struggling with persistent inflation.

We should start over with younger, brighter, healthier candidates who possess a command of policy and learned English, free of hyperbole, and who Americans can respect and rally behind.

As I feared, it was a sad night for America. We deserve and desperately require so much more.