Desperate Dems may now knife Busted Biden after that fumbling, mumbling, full-blown debate car crash. But, reveals ANDREW NEIL, here’s the crucial reason Trump was the even bigger loser…

The big panjandrums of the Democratic Party panicked last night after President Biden’s stuttering, mumbling, confused and often incoherent performance during the presidential debate with Donald Trump.

It might not have been a complete car crash. But it didn’t make much difference.

“We’re going crazy,” said one Democratic Party strategist.

“The well of affection for Biden among Democrats has dried up,” said another.

Yes, Trump threw around wild accusations and even the occasional outright lie, frequently failed to answer questions, and must have occasionally paralyzed the fact-checking machine. But his voice was strong, his answers clear, his discipline unusually impressive.

Crucially, Biden failed to hold Trump accountable for his untruths or nonsense.

He was simply too weak, too listless, too old, too sick — as many feared.

When he should have done the killing, he just fluttered and writhed, leaving Trump largely unscathed. So much for all the White House lies about Biden still being able to do the job.

After being holed up at Camp David for seven days with his advisers preparing for the debate—a remarkable amount of time for a man tasked with running a country—he emerged with his brain crammed with facts but without the mental acuity to process them and deploy them in a logical, meaningful way.

Instead, his responses often ended in nothing.

A friend told me she wished there had been subtitles. But no subtitling software, even one using the latest AI, could have handled Biden’s rambling incoherence.

His spinners said he had a cold. No one really believed it. No one thought it was a good enough excuse, even if it were true.

I’ve watched every presidential debate live on TV since the genre was relaunched by Gerry Ford and Jimmy Carter in 1976 (there was a 16-year interregnum after the original and historic debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960). Biden’s first 15 minutes last night were the worst start of any presidential candidate ever.

There has been a growing “Dump Biden” trend in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party for a while now. I wrote about it several times last year. But it was too timid to go public, too afraid to take action.

After last night, leading Democrats and their media fanatics are now flocking to the case en masse.

Post-debate analysis from the Democratic Party’s unofficial broadcasters, such as CNN (which hosted the debate) and MSNBC (or MSDNC, as Trump calls it), was dominated by left-wing pundits expressing despair and calling for Biden to step down.

The immediate reaction of the pro-democracy public press was equally brutal.

The oh-so-woke New York Magazine was blunt in its opinion that Biden had “failed.”

The diversity, in retrospect, was reduced to the statement: “Biden should never have debated Trump.”

Not for the first time, the Babylon Bee was the sharpest of them all: ‘Biden invents new language on live TV.’

We don’t know yet whether the growing steamhead behind the Dump Biden movement will get its way. There is still reluctance to force him out. They would much rather have him fall on his sword.

The pressure on him to do so will now be immense. In the coming days, a cacophony of Democratic voices will finally find the courage to speak out.

Democratic strategists had hoped that by now Jill Biden would have taken her husband aside and told him not to run again. To remind everyone that he defeated Trump in 2020, fixed the economy, and restored stability to the government. To say that he was always meant to be a transitional president and that it was time to pass the baton to a younger generation after a job well done. In other words, to declare victory and go home.

At least that’s how you could put it.

But the First Lady has grown quite fond of the privileges and prominence of her position and was quite looking forward to four more years in the White House. So she did nothing to help Biden out in a gentle and humane way.

The opposite is true. She urged him to run for a second term.

After last night, a compassionate woman would certainly have doubts.

If not, and if (as is almost certain) the upcoming polls confirm Democrats’ worst fears — that Biden will struggle to recover from last night’s disastrous setback — then the party’s big bosses will have to visit Biden and give him having to explain the harsh reality in silence but firmly.

With enough influential names, it is impossible to ignore their pleas.

We now know why so many DNC members wanted a debate in June.

It was unprecedentedly early in the annals of presidential election calendars. But it gives Biden enough time, just enough, to withdraw from the race and turn the party’s August gathering in Chicago into an open convention that will choose a new Democratic nominee.

Anyone who thinks that Vice President Kamala Harris will automatically take over power is mistaken.

Too many leading Democrats see her as an even bigger risk than Biden if she wants to topple the crown. The air will be thick with hats being thrown into the ring ahead of Chicago. Lists of runners and riders are already being compiled.

This is Trump’s worst nightmare. He wants Biden to remain his opponent because he knows he can beat him. He doesn’t like the idea of ​​running against a new, younger, more vibrant candidate (although he, like many Democrats, thinks Harris is even easier to beat than Biden).

Trump entered last night’s debate with the latest polls showing him ahead in five of the seven swing states, tied with Biden in Pennsylvania and with Biden alone in Wisconsin (the state with the fewest number of electoral votes of all swing states, aside from of Nevada) advocated.

He had hoped Biden would do badly enough last night to extend his lead in the swing states, even bringing New Hampshire, Virginia and Minnesota (which hasn’t gone Republican since Nixon’s landslide in 1972) into contention.

That would have been sweet for Trump indeed. But if the president has done so poorly that there is now unstoppable momentum behind “Dump Biden,” then all bets are off again.

One of the ironies that emerged last night is that the voice that will most insistently say, “Joe, don’t go,” will be Donald J. Trump.

Last night was not the finest moment for American democracy.

Not when one candidate accuses the other (Trump) of having the “morals of an ally cat.” Or when the other person suggests that his opponent (Biden) is too gaga to know what he is saying.

Of course, both statements could be true.

But perhaps the lowest point was when the two began to argue about who had the better golf handicap. That must have caused America’s many enemies around the world to scratch their heads and ask: Is the U.S. really so bereft of credible leadership these days?

To which the honest answer for now is: unfortunately, yes.