"Down the Path Trump Has Opened Up in Our Politics Lies Moral Darkness and National Decline"

"Tuesday night was at once an audacious gamble for Trump and the most obvious play for him—an effort to demonstrate before a skeptical world that he can turn around his floundering campaign and win a shocking upset victory once again by trying the same old trick of treating the country as if it watches Fox News as obsessively and with as much relish as he does. Trump is utterly incapable of running to the center of public opinion, of making an appeal to a broader range of voters. So he just gets louder and meaner with the same old right-wing Republican message, hoping and expecting that a wider swath of the public will submit to the assault.                                                                                "All who care about the fate of American democracy need to hope that this is a gamble Trump will lose."

Damon Linker at The Week reacts to 2020's first presidential debate, and he adds that Trump acts like "the leader of a jerk liberation movement."