Goody, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. Here's a dangerous idea for you.

The most important country in the world, the indispensable nation, the most powerful nation in the world,

gets to choose between two leaders, one of whom is an unrepentant liar who has no respect for the norms of democracy

and wants to subvert the independent judiciary and all the independent institutions that make

America great. And the other is a corpse, or, you know, close to being a corpse. That's a conundrum

that many people suspected we had before Thursday night. It's one that

we now are certain we face. So this episode is about the positives of what Democrats might be able

to do about it, what people who don't want Donald Trump to become president might be able

to do about it at this late juncture. I wasn't going to do a debate episode.

I thought, you know, debates don't move the needle, really, on the opinion polls.

This one is very, very early.

There are many, many months left to go before the election.

And, you know, I'm not going to get into the horse race.

I want to talk about the big things.

I want to talk about the big issues, the future of democracy.

I want to keep you guys focused on what really matters rather than getting into the minutiae of the political battle.

However, Joe Biden has left me no choice.

That was an extraordinary, revelatory insight into cognitive decline. And, you know, when

people say debates don't matter, and I've sort of been saying this as well, you know,

Barack Obama lost the first debate against Mitt Romney in 2012. You know, Donald Trump lost the

first debate against Hillary Clinton.

What that normally means is that if you have a gaffe, if you don't do a good performance,

...