Mitchell Epner: 1/ My thoughts on the Presidential Race after Thursday night's debate. A. Joe Biden had a very bad night. He appeared frail and disoriented, particularly at the start. He was poorly served by a format that provided for no "fact checking" by the moderators, because he was not up to the job of . .

1/ My thoughts on the Presidential Race after Thursday night's debate. A. Joe Biden had a very bad night. He appeared frail and disoriented, particularly at the start. He was poorly served by a format that provided for no "fact checking" by the moderators, because he was not up to the job of . .

2/ . . . correcting Trump's egregious and repeated lies. B. Donald Trump had, in my opinion, the second worst Presidential debate performance in history. He lied throughout, did not bother to veil his fascist intentions and declared "I did not have sex with a porn star" - which will likely . .

3/ . . . come back to haunt him, including during sentencing on July 11. C. If people believe that Joe Biden just had a "bad night", it will be relatively easy for him overcome this moment. If people that Joe Biden is only going to get worse, it will be much harder. D. In the 24 hours after . .

4/ . . . Joe Biden and his team did a great job to staunch the bleeding. His appearance in North Carolina was as a good as I could have imagined. E. The NY Times calling for Biden to drop out, without calling for FPOTUS to do the same, was the most irresponsible thing I have ever seen it do.

5/ F. For the last 44 years, I have versed myself on DNC Convention rules (since I was a 10 year old supporter of Ted Kennedy's call for an open convention in 1980). I am not aware of any process that would allow for a seamless transfer of delegates from Biden to anyone. G. Creating chaos . . .

6/ . . . at the 2024 DNC would seem to be a recipe for disaster. I think that things could go as badly as 1968 in Chicago, if there is an attempt by the DNC to push aside Biden and/or Harris against their will. G. I will vote for WHOEVER I believe is the most likely to defeat Donald Trump in . .

7/ . . . Donald Trump in November. I mean that literally. If it is Joe Biden, I will work my hardest to re-elect President Biden. If it is Kamala Harris, I will work my hardest to elect VP Harris. If it is ANY other individual (from Bernie Sanders to Joe Manchin), I'll work my hardest for them.

Thank you.

You can't put that out there unless you're going to tell us who the first worst debate performance was?

... Joe Biden June 2024, unfortunately.

I thought that was obvious, in context. Yes, in my opinion, President Biden's performance was the worst in modern Presidential Debate history (since 1960), The only worse debate performance, in my view, was Admiral Stockdale in the 1992 VP debate.

If a lawyer chooses to frame one as ranked and one as merely bad, I have to assume the change in format (not ranking both) was on purpose. Not that I don't think ranking Biden worst would be unjustifiable.

Never debate a nazi. There is no "winning" in that scenario. They dont argue in good faith and dont actually believe in the exercise as it pertains to arguing over policy points. Platforming lies (live debate) doesn't strengthen the democratic process it actually erodes and destroys it.

What we all witnessed Thursday was a Tr—p rally with hostages

My understanding is that Trump routinely deploys a tactic called the Gish Gallup. Layer upon layer of unrelated BS. Impossible to fact check. It's all lies anyway. Gish Gallup is not a new debate tactic. It's designed expressly to overwhelm your opponent. More flood the zone, so to speak.

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