“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.” 

That was it. The moment. The line. The death knell. And the crazy thing about the words that best defined the 2024 Presidential Election debate is that Donald Trump wasn’t blustering or lying. I don’t think anyone who’d seen Joe Biden’s attempt at an answer honestly disagreed.  

Election debates are rarely significantly consequential. They might give a candidate or a party a little bump in the polls or some choice clips for social media or campaign advertisements. But as much as Democrats are in damage control today, playing down the significance of their candidate’s performance, this will go down in history as the moment that lost Biden the Presidency. The moment where it became absolutely crystal-clear for millions of people watching live and the billions of people viewing subsequent clips; either Joe Biden stands down or Joe Biden will be defeated.   

The crazy thing to remember is that everything about the debate was played on his terms. This was the Democrats’ big play to dispel the criticisms of his competence and energy. Joe Biden took a full week at Camp David to prepare. His team requested rules around the microphone being cut off to stop Trump from interrupting. And yet with all the prep, all the resource, he stood there with his mouth gaping, a dithering, pitiful, sometimes incoherent picture of a diminished, elderly man. If the goal was to prove the President had the energy and sharpness for four more years, it was a stunning own goal. Trump didn’t damage Biden. He didn’t need to. Biden damaged Biden. Take the politics out of it. At a human level, it was sad.  

I’ve covered the last three U.S elections, from Biden’s Vice-Presidential debates in 2012 through to his win in 2020. I was in a freezing Delaware car park on election night, four years ago. I’ve long felt that age alone is no reason for someone not to be President, but that a lack of vim and vigour most certainly is. I’ve taken time to get to this point –12 months ago I felt that Biden might be able to dispel the criticisms and the noise. Now, I cannot see a way in which he recovers his campaign.  

If the Democrats are to win the election, they need a new candidate. Someone young. Someone relatively centrist. Whatever it takes to pressure Biden to stand down, they must do it and do it now.  

If you step back, there are a couple of positives in this. Imagine for a moment if this wasn’t an abnormally early election debate. Imagine if yesterday couple of weeks before the election.  

Even though it’s an unprecedented situation, there is time for the Dems to scramble and to find a new candidate. 

It’s funny, in watching the fallout from the debate and imagining what will happen if Biden stands down, I was reminded of our own election in 2017 when Andrew Little stepped aside and Jacinda Ardern became leader. She enjoyed a huge surge in popularity. Jacindamania. It’s totally possible a new Democrat candidate would experience something similar.  

And even if they didn’t, even if a new candidate was defeated come November, would the result be any worse for the Democrats than that which they are heading towards right now?  

Either Biden stands aside or Biden will be defeated.