My hottest take: Even a garbage-fire debate like last night has huge value in a presidential election.

Think how many people have watched Trump say nonsense like he did last night *without* anyone to call him out or push back.

Think how many had a caricatured view of Biden as a senile old vegetable who got to see him unfiltered.

Debates are not valuable for politics junkies like me (and probably you). They& #39;re for people who don& #39;t like politics, have busy lives, but are willing to tune in on this one night.

Something like HALF of all the people who& #39;ll vote in November were watching last night.

That& #39;s something like 3-5x the number who watched either convention& #39;s acceptance speech, and it& #39;s a much less partisan audience.

Too much news coverage of politics is aimed at us junkies, not enough at the ~80 million watching last night.

And as painful and chaotic as last night was — all of them got a pretty decent view of who these two men are, for better and for worse.