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're for people who don't like politics, have busy lives, but are willing to tune in on this one night.

Something like HALF of all the people who'll vote in November were watching last night.

That's something like 3-5x the number who watched either convention's acceptance speech, and it'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.