“Our integrity is on the line!” one MSNBC host told me the other day, employing genuine if well-rehearsed urgency. This was a week ago, during the first wave of the Great Democratic Panic, when the intraparty battle lines over Joe Biden’s fitness for office were still calcifying. Yes, many of the most notable members of the liberal punditocracy—Tom Friedman, Nicholas Kristof, David Remnick, the Pod Save America crew, the Times editorial board, etcetera—had already staked out positions and called on the president to step aside. George Stephanopoulos, who had sat face-to-face with Biden, had also inadvertently admitted to the world that he didn’t believe the president could serve another four years. Meanwhile, the Democrats’ anxiety was metastasizing with each of Biden’s wince-inducing public appearances, the White House was tripping over itself to evade a newly animated press corps, and almost all the polls were starting to trend in the wrong direction.