Good Christ can we dispense with the insane claim that people are just directly an organically reacting to the debate rather than the unprecedented weekslong all-channel media meltdown that followed?
Not that many people read Matt Yglesias, or even the NYT
The precipitating factor here was that the Biden campaign set a debate to turn their flagging numbers around and the candidate was barely functional, causing his numbers to slip into Electoral College blowout territory
It's cool how we've now set a precedent where if you can find a random polling crosstab that shows some person who isn't running doing 1% better than the winner of the Democratic primary the NYT will demand they drop out every day for six months