1/ There was one actually important moment in the disastrous debate. And its been totally ignored.

Trump unloaded a vicious, irrelevant, false attack on Hunter Biden's military record and personal struggle. Biden got ready to swing back. And then stopped.
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/09/29/president-trump-attacks-joe-bidens-son-over-ukraine-ties.html

2/ "Here's the deal. You want to talk about families and ethics?" Biden, goaded, said as he began to spool up a counter punch.

"I don't want to do that," he said.

"His family, we can talk about all night," he started to say. "His family already broke..."

Then he shifted.

3/ Biden changed course. "It's not about my family or his family," he said to the camera and those watching. "It's about your family."

Whether we as a country can make a similar shift will decide whether we escape Trumpism and the decline of our democracy--even if Trump loses.

4/ What the past few years have shown us is that so much of what holds up our democracy--and holds us together as a country--is the set of things we will not do not just those we do.

5/ The scariest part of the Trump years has been a realization that our laws and the Constitution are flimsier foundations than we had ever allowed ourselves to acknowledged.

It is ultimately unwritten, but accepted rules--norms--that allow the country to work.

Does a president and his appointments need to follow laws or court orders? When there is a pliant Justice Department and Congress, the hard to accept answer is "no, not really."

Can a president outright lie with impunity? The answer has been plain to see.

7/ If Trump is defeated, there will be great pressure from some Democrats to use Trumpian tactics--but for "good" not "evil." And it will be understandable.

8/ But for democracy to work, we have to decide that there are some means that are not justified no matter the ends.

There are some things we will not do even if we are justified.

9/ The truth is that there isn't an equivalence between Trump's attack's on Hunter Biden's personal challenges and the line of attack that Joe Biden veered from. Trump's children are either government officials or have taken actions implicating Trump himself.

10/ Nor does a return to accepted rules mean we can't change those rules. If as part of the democratic process, we decide to change the composition of the Court or the filibuster that is in keeping with how our system as always worked.

11/ What it does mean is the realization that civility and comity and an acceptance of the strictures imposed by them and the rule of law are not inconveniences or impediments to what needs to be accomplished but ways in which we do move forward.

12/ What Biden said at the end of the exchange was true beyond what he intended. It's not about his family or Trump's family, but about our families.

It's not about his party or Trump's party, but about the nation.

13/ Politics may be war without bloodshed, but it is also war without ultimate victors. There are no permanent defeats of one party or another.

Two years from now, four years from now, the tables will be turned. And only the ultimate narcissist can't realize that this matters.