43 minutes of Democrats panicking, insisting Joe Biden should step down.

[noumoe]

43 minutes of Democrats panicking, insisting Joe Biden should step down.

David Plouffe: "It's a Decon 1 moment... Sadly. It really pains me to say this. They're three years apart. They seemed about 30 years apart tonight."

Mika Brzezinski: "Biden had a terrible night. He could not land a thought. Not even in the closing statement. That's the easiest part... It was terrible. Terrible. There's no way to spin it."

Nicholas Kristof: "I think Trump already arguably had an edge before the debate. That debate raised an awful lot of questions in the minds of a tremendous amount of centrist voters. And, we don't have the chance after the convention to choose a nominee who will be a stronger candidate. So I think the time is now. I think we have better nominees who are more likely to keep Trump out of the White House."

Abby Phillip: "The panic that I'm hearing from Democrats is not like anything I've heard in this campaign so far. Biden's answers, in a lot of cases, were not coherent and deeply problematic. There's a real concern here that there's been damage done that cannot be undone."

David Axelrod: "I think there was a sense of shock at how he came out at the beginning of this debate. How his voice sounded. He seemed a little disoriented. He did get stronger as the debate went on, but by that time, the panic had set in. There's going to be discussions about whether he should continue."

Max Boot: "I thought it was a disaster for President Biden. I defended him as being the best viable alternative to Trump, but after last night, I no longer believe that, sadly. I thought he looked feeble. He looked out of it. It was the worst debate performance I think there's ever been in the history of presidential debates going back to 1960. I think it raises serious doubts about whether Biden can stop Trump in November, and on the current trajectory, I would say he can't. I would say the Democrats need a new nominee."

Sara Haines: "President Biden needs to step down and be replaced. I would implore those closest to the President to have a very hard conversation. Democrats have twisted themselves into a pretzel to say don't believe your lying eyes. Joy Behar at 81 is not Joe Biden at 81, and that was on full display last night."

Alyssa Farah: "I was genuinely in shock last night watching this. It was stunningly worse than I expected. He needs to put country before his own ambition and step aside."

Sunny Hostin: "Biden lost that debate. I think that is an accurate depiction of what happened. Blame it on a cold. Blame it on his stuttering. Blame it on over-preparation, whatever. But he did lose. Maybe he needs to go. Maybe he needs to be honest with himself and the American people."

Alex Wagner: "There has been a uniformly negative reaction to Biden's performance tonight. He did nothing to disabuse the country of the notion that he is very old and was lost frequently."

Claire McCaskill: "Joe Biden had one thing he had to do tonight, and he didn't do it. He had one thing he had to accomplish. And that was to reassure America that he was up to the job at his age. And he failed at that tonight. I'm not the only one whose heart is breaking right now. There are a lot of people who watched this tonight and felt terribly for Joe Biden. And, you know, you have to ask, how did we get here? How come the Democratic Party doesn't have them [Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer] at the top of the ticket?"

Chuck Todd: "Joe Biden looks like the caricature that that conservative media has been painting. You saw it before your eyes. I've been talking to a lot of leaders in the Democratic Party. Elected coalition leaders. There's a full-on panic about this performance. Not like, oh, this is recoverable. It is more of a, okay, he's got to step aside. The panic level is particularly high among elected Democrats who have to share the ballot with him. There's a full-on panic tonight."

Van Jones: "He had a test to do tonight. To restore confidence in the country and of the base, and he failed to do that. I think there are a lot of people who are going to want to see him consider taking a different course now. We're still far from our convention, and there is time for this party to figure out a different way forward if you will allow us to do that. But that was not what we needed from Joe Biden, and it's personally painful. For a lot of people, it's not just panic. It's pain."

Peter Baker: "38 years of covering politics, I've never heard a party panic the way I've been hearing in the last 12 hours. It's kind of like the political equivalent of a run on the bank. There is a conversation about what to do and whether there should be a new nominee. Even people like Senator Jeanne Shaheen, an incumbent Democratic Senator, said that's the question that is now on the table."

Cenk Uygur: "The man is obviously way too old, has something. I don't know what it is. He's obviously hiding it. Onset dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, I don't know. But he definitely has something. He can't remember anything. We beat Medicare? Do you think they're not going to use that in an ad? Do you think that's the best candidate the Democratic Party has? The Democratic Party is a disaster."

John King: "Right now, there is a deep, a wide, and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party. It started minutes into the debate, and it continues right now. It involves party strategists and involves elected officials. It involves fundraisers, and they're having conversations about the President's performance, which they think was abysmal, which they think will hurt other people down the party on the ticket. They're having conversations about what they should do about it. Some of those conversations include: Should we go to the White House and ask the president to step aside? Should prominent Democrats go public with that call?"

Joy Reid: "The universal reaction was somewhere approaching panic. The people who were texting with me were very concerned about President Biden seeming extremely feeble, seeming extremely weak."

Michael Steele: "Tonight you have MAGA gloating and Democrats outwardly worrying about the state of the race to the point where they are not hiding their discussions about how they get Joe off the ticket."

Joe Scarborough: "If he were CEO, and he turned in a performance like that, would any corporation in America, any Fortune 500 Corporation in America, keep him on as CEO? In fact, as the New York Times said, he spent much of the night with his mouth agape and his eyes darting back and forth. He missed one layup after another after another. We saw last night why this race has been close and why I fear Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States."

Bill Kristol: "Millions of people watched that and thought four more years of him as President, it's just not doable. I really feel like we are in a moment of genuine crisis... You have to be honest about this. Joe Biden should not be president for the next four years."

However, after Bill Clinton and Barack Obama signaled that the Party would remain committed to Joe Biden, despite widespread recognition of his apparent senility, George Orwell's words come to mind:

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."