America failed to seize this opportunity. Will Biden be able to take matters into his own hands?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Asher Hildebrand is an associate professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.

Of all the questions that come to mind after watching Thursday’s presidential debate, one stands out at the top: How the hell did we get here?

Unlike some Democrats who drink excessively and send panicked text messages into the wee hours of Friday morning, I still believe Joe Biden can defeat Donald Trump (more on that below).

Yet, watching Biden and Trump sputter and bluster through 90 minutes of tired arguments and petty insults—while the moderators sat idly by, silenced by CNN’s inexplicable decision not to fact-check or challenge the candidates—it was impossible to escape the conclusion that our nation has failed to meet this moment. The very future of American democracy is at stake, and we’ve responded with… golf handicaps?

Think for a moment about the January 6th insurrection, where you were and how you felt. As I watched the chaos unfold from my living room in Durham, I remember the visceral feeling that our shared values ​​were under attack, that a bright red line had been crossed, that we were all in this together.

In the aftermath of the insurrection, it appeared that this sentiment was widely shared among Americans of all parties. Even Republican leaders in Congress have called for Trump to be held accountable. For a fleeting moment, it seemed as if the GOP would finally wipe out the cancer of MAGAism and reclaim its identity as a responsible, conservative, minor-Democratic political party.

We all know what happened next. When historians look back on the period between January 6, 2021 and November 5, 2024, there is no doubt that the Republican establishment’s unforgivable failure to marginalize, delegitimize, or criminalize Donald Trump will be the central theme of history.

Instead, the party elites (and even its main opponents!) chose to defend and coddle it; instead, the cancer metastasized; instead, the party of Lincoln died on the barricades of the U.S. Capitol. There is no double-edged sword to this fact.

Yet it is now clear that the Democratic establishment also failed to rise to the occasion, underestimating (once again!) Trump’s staying power as a candidate and overestimating how much measure Biden’s unique appeal in 2020 could be replicated in 2024.

The central premise of Biden’s candidacy is that he is uniquely capable of guiding the nation through this moment of peril—that the risk of rolling the dice on an untested alternative is too great.

But the debate reminded us that staying the course also carries significant risks. Biden’s remarkable record as a public servant and candidate, his sincere commitment to the values ​​of liberal democracy, and his basic decency as a human being may ultimately matter less to voters than their concerns about his fragility. And whatever doubts we may have about Kamala Harris, Gretchen Whitmer, or the many other potential Democratic alternatives, fragility is not one of them.

If Biden chooses to stay in the race—as is widely expected—he still has plenty of time to remind voters of the difficult choice they face and reassure them that he is up to the task. If the confident, charismatic candidate who showed up in Raleigh on Friday is the candidate we’ll see regularly on the campaign trail in the weeks ahead, then Thursday’s debacle could quickly fade from voters’ minds. After all, the fundamentals of the race remain unchanged, and Donald Trump remains Donald Trump.

But if the Biden we saw in Atlanta shows up instead, then the alarm bells currently ringing in Democratic circles will be justified. And we will remember this moment and wonder how things went wrong.

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