CLAIRE MCCASKILL: Now, the hard and heartbreaking part. I have been a surrogate for some presidential candidates in my time. I know what the job is after a debate, of a surrogate. I have never wanted to be a surrogate more than I do right now, because when you are a surrogate, you have to focus on the positives. But, I have said very clearly and very plainly on this network and my job now is to be really honest. Joe Biden had one thing he had to do tonight and he didn't do it. He had one thing he had to accomplish, and that was reassure America that he was up to the job at his age, and he failed at that tonight. Now, does that mean that my phone blowing up with senators and campaign operatives and donors, big donors from all over the country, does that mean that Joe Biden is not going to be the candidate? I don't know that. I think we’ll know a lot more in a few weeks, how this plays out, how the polling plays out, but I think a couple of things are going on right now. I think I'm not the only one whose heart is breaking right now. There are a lot of people who watch this tonight and felt terribly for Joe Biden and you know, you have to ask, how did we get here? How did we get to the point that we are spending a whole lot of time talking about the vice president tonight instead of talking about the president, and I don't know how the rest of the story is written. I don't know if things can be done to fix this. They might, and Trump is so terrible that this might heal itself, but based on what I'm hearing from a lot of people, and some of them are people that are in high elective offices in this country and you might guess where they serve, there is a lot more than handwringing tonight. I do think people feel like that we are confronting a crisis.
