Years ago, when I was a new partner in the DC office of a large New York law firm (which I hated), I had a case in the US Court of Federal Claims. I was in charge of the case, but the argument was to be done by one of the firm’s full time litigators. I said at the counsel table while the litigator (who knew the case well and had rehearsed with me quite a bit) started to fumble and say things that had nothing to do with how we planned to present our argument. I looked very disgruntled, I am sure, because when the litigator finished his presentation, the judge looked at me and said: “Mr. Hessel, you look like you want to say something. I don’t want you to leave here thinking I didn’t give you a chance.” He obviously saw what I saw. I got up, explained the case, and we won a nice victory. (I never worked with that litigator again)

That is exactly how I felt last night watching the debate. “Jake Tapper”, I thought, “let me talk.” In my imagination, Jake and Dana Bash started whispering to each other and then Dana turned to the camera and said “Thank you, President Biden. Now we’d like to hear from Art Hessel.”

That did not happen.

I heard a C-Span caller this morning refer to Biden as a Zombie President. That is how he looked. I read that he had a cold, and of course that happens. But considering it was a cold that his makeup team (I am sure he has a makeup team – just as I am sure he’d like to make up this debate) couldn’t cover, why didn’t he come out at the beginning and tell the world that he had a cold and it was affecting his voice (for example)?

Trump, I must admit, sounded like he was 25. His voice never faltered at all. Of course, almost everything he said was nonsense and counterfactual, but he looked like he was telling it straight if you didn’t know better. And, yes, the media will fact check him to death, but his supporters will believe him and not the fact checkers. We all know that.

So, now there is talk about replacing Biden on the ticket. Some of us have been saying that for months. It doesn’t mean that we support Trump over Biden (duh!), but it means that we think Biden will have a difficult time winning (now a more difficult time), and that a Trump victory spells chaos and more.

And so the talk is going to rev up about finding a new candidate, or having some sort of an open or brokered convention. There is time, since the convention is not until August 19. But how that will work, no one knows. And, as Edie points out, if the Democrats say “we must replace Biden” and then fail to, this would probably cinch a Trump victory, and prove that even the Democratic party does not have faith in the Democratic candidate. And poor Kamala Harris – if there is a replacement, it should not be Harris (based on her popularity, not on objectivity), so – to make everything clean – she would have to drop out as well.

But we were with two other couples watching the debate – all never Trumpists, pretty much never Republicans, and certainly Democrats. All of us were shattered by the President’s performance. And you can imagine the “uh, uh, uh, we beat Medicare” clip and others being rolled out all throughout the campaign.

In addition to the Trump lies and the Biden stumbles, it was an ugly debate, insults (instigated by Trump) flying both ways, followed by a stupid debate about golf handicaps and winning tournaments at clubs you own when asked about age. And Americans were obviously not the only ones watching the debate – what do our worldwide allies and adversaries (political leaders and would-be political leaders, journalists and thinkers) think about these two candidates, one an obvious liar (more obvious to them than to Trump’s supporters here) and the other only vaguely looking like the man who was Joe Biden?

The Trump positions are frightening (NATO, tax cuts, climate change, Putin, women’s rights and so on), and Biden should have been able to counter them, but he wasn’t. And Biden needed a sharp focus on his two biggest vulnerabilities – the border and inflation, and was not able to speak to them coherently either. In fact, Biden simply flailed from topic to topic, with no sense of direction or organization.

Of course, debate success is not related to the ability to govern, or to negotiate to reach consensus. But it is certainly related to the ability to win an election. And you can’t win an election, looking like a Zombie or a deer caught in the headlights, and having every other sentence trail off in undecipherable words (I assume they were words).

You want to know how I felt sitting in the Court of Federal Claims watching my case slip away? I felt exactly the way you felt last night watching the debate.