Well, among all the other things that have withered and died under Trump’s touch we can now add presidential debates. Team Biden will understand that they can’t refuse two more cage matches with Trump. They can’t “quit.” But the real question is who will want to watch? Last night settled any question still left hanging in the air that we’re dealing with something truly foul and reckless.

To quote Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, no one, especially women, wants to spend more time with, “a big fat asshole”.

Before the debate’s first “segment” was half through the verdict was pretty well in, “This is a disaster.” By dawn today some of the early quotes are already legendary.

Jake Tapper at CNN: “That was a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck. That was the worst debate I have ever seen, in fact it wasn’t even a debate. It was a disgrace.”

His colleague Dana Bash (a nice blonde lady): “”I’m going to say it like it is. That was a shit show. We’re on cable. We can say it. Apologies for being crude. But that is really the phrase I’m getting from people on both sides of the aisle on text and the only phrase I can think of to describe it.”

Frank Bruni in the New York Times: “I’m not exaggerating when I say that Trump was breathtaking, and I may even be paying him something of a compliment, because it takes a peerless combination of audacity and mendacity to pull off some of what he pulled off.”

And on and on. Trump’s behavior was so ugly and boorish, so untethered from any kind of reality and dignity I couldn’t help but imagine mothers and fathers with impressionable children who had gathered to view an important historical event shuttling the kids off to an early bedtime to protect them from the snarls and hissing of America’s Elected Role Model-in-Chief.

It was so ugly it was obscene.

The ball is now in the court of the Commission on Presidential Debates. Since both campaigns have to agree to rule changes I don’t see how they get Team Trump to agree to a “kill switch” for microphones. Trump interrupted Biden something like 78 times. The switch would only be coming for him.

The Commission is also savvy enough to understand that Trump’s feral desperation is only going to get worse. He’s losing in national polling. He’s losing in battleground state polling. He’s getting obliterated in fund-raising. He doesn’t have enough cash on hand to be a TV presence in places like Minnesota, where he’s blustered he’s going to tip us red. (So … he has to fly in today and give another super spreader rally in an airplane hanger.)

The consensus is overwhelming that his brawling, drunk uncle routine last night is only going to make all those key metrics worse. (Biden pulled in an unprecedented $4 million in the first hour after the debate.) It’s a scenario that bodes for more of the same and worse for mild-mannered Steve Scully, of C-SPAN, moderator of the next debate.

If Chris Wallace couldn’t exert any control over Trump, Scully should bomb-proof the underside of his desk.

The negotiated agreement that the moderator would not provide fact-checking won’t be revisited. And it would do no good if it were. It would simply become a one-on-two debate with Trump raging against both the moderator and Biden.

As for Joe, I have to say he benefited from Trump’s belligerence. Biden had a half dozen golden opportunities handed to him to deliver a “Reaganesque” one-liner. When Trump muttered, “To be honest … ,’ Biden’s play was to wait a beat and reply, “Well, this’ll be a first for you. We’re all ears.”

Likewise, if at any point in one of Trump’s rabid rants Biden had just straightened up, looked at him in the eye and said, “Good god man! Get a grip! If you keep ranting like this you’ll have a stroke!” 61% of the viewing audience would have nodded and said, “No shit.”

Old School polite and diplomatic Joe Biden is/was no match for the New School Fox-and-Twitter bred histrionics and fact-free torrents of Trump. But Trump so wildly and crudely overplayed that hand no sane adult faulted Biden for failing to be glib and theatrical.

The reaction line Biden needed most was at the end, when Trump — the President of the United States — was asked to directly and unambiguously tell his most radical white supremacist supporters to stay calm and respect the outcome of the election, and his response was to tell the armed-to-the-teeth neo-Nazi Proud Boys to, “stand back and stand by.”

I mean, I bolted upright in my chair and shrieked, ” ‘Stand by!!!!’? What the [bleep] are you talking about you, appalling thug?”

Maybe the key issue facing the Commission is whether another debate as ugly and potentially inciteful as last night serves to enable Trump to spray more gasoline on possible insurrection.

I mean, Trump, who is incapable of hiding his darkest impulses did say/promise, “This isn’t going to end well.”

The Commission may need to believe what he says.