I'm still thinking heavily about the debate and what the implications are and where we should go from here. I haven't yet landed on any particular course of action that I feel confident about.

It seems the takeaway from the pundit class is that Biden proved he is feeble, too old and mentally incapable of leading the country let alone winning the election and we all saw the emperor has no clothes. Thus he has to go.

The take of political insiders such as Obama, Newsom, Fetterman and other high ranking elected officials is that Biden had a bad night but is capable of the job and has done a good job the last 4 years.

I'm leaning toward the latter being closer to reality. I just went and watched Biden's Howard Stern interview from a month ago. This is a completely different Biden than what we saw on the debate stage. He was alert, heartfelt, articulate did not have that deer in the headlights look. He looked relaxed and in his natural element. He did not come across as a demanted man that is mentally incapble of his job. I strongly suspect that that is the Biden that people see who actually work with him on a daily basis. That is why the political class is not calling for him to resign, yet the pundits who have never actually met him are calling for him to step down. Notice that unlike Trump, there have been no leaks in 4 years that the man is mentally incapable of his job. No insiders have sounded the alarm. You don't have multiple ex-staff members coming forward and saying this guy is not up the job as you had with Trump.

What happened on Thursday? Why didn't the Biden we saw in the Howard Stern interview show up at the debate? I don't know. My guess is that it was some combination of nerves, bad debate prep, illness, fatigue from lots of recent travel and yes maybe some mental sundowning. I'm merely speculating.

Who is the real Biden? The one we saw at the debate or the one we saw on Howard Stern? I lean toward the latter. I think he is capable of the job, but is not a good debator(he used to be). He has gotten a lot done and I have little doubt that he can make good decisions when he's in the situation room with his cabinet. He does not perform well in high pressure situations on television where he has to speak extemporaneously, no doubt about it. He is not Gavin Newsom or Pete Buttigieg in oratory skills. Yet, I don't think for a second that he "doesn't know where he is" or doesn't understand delicate situations like the Israel-Gaza conflict or what's happening in Ukraine. I've heard him speak with clarity and nuance on foreign policy matters.

If I did decide that it's best for Biden to go, it won't be because I think he can't actually handle the day to day work of president. He has PROVEN that he can. And nobody that has actually worked with him doubts his ability to do the job. It'll be because the public perception(perception is usually reality in politics) that he is not mentally up to the job after the debate has so wounded his chances of reelection that we're better off betting on a different candidate, and that of course has its own share of risks.

I will be closely watching polling over the next few weeks to see what impact this had on the electorate. We have a very polarized and calcified electorate. I'm with Bill Maher when he says you could put Biden's head in a jar of blue liquid and I'd vote for that over Trump. I suspect tens of millions of others feel the same way. And of course Trump's base would not have shifted even if Biden had destroyed Trump in the debate. What few persuadable people there are in a handful of battleground states will decide this election and I need to how this shakes out numerically. We shouldn't make any hasty decisions while emotions are running high. Everyone needs to calm down and give it a couple weeks and access what the state of the race is at that point. I'm trying to be as pragmatic and unemotional about this as I can.