The debate Democrats feared

…a raspy, seemingly sick Biden quickly overshadowed the substance, generating a fresh panic among Democrats about his age and health at the worst possible time.

Text threads lit up across Washington between Democrats within the first fifteen minutes of the debate, gauging the damage.

“It’s awful,” one veteran of two major Democratic campaigns said.

“It’s bad,” one Democrat close to the administration said.

“My non-political friends who just began tracking the election are concerned about Biden after watching this,” one senior Democratic aide said.

“If it gets Biden not to run, then it was very good,” one former Obama campaign aide darkly texted. “Otherwise it’s bad.”