With democracy at a moment of maximum peril, millions were pinning their hopes on the Democratic party as a last wall of defence – but the debate changed that

“With fear for our democracy, I dissent.” So wrote supreme court justice Sonia Sotomayor in a minority opinion this week. She was far from alone in the view that, with Donald Trump threatening an “imperial presidency”, American democracy is at a moment of maximum peril.

Millions are pinning their hopes on the Democratic party as the last wall of defence. Surely, they believed, Democrats would field their best and brightest led by a dynamic presidential candidate and demagogue slayer. Instead the party is offering 81-year-old Joe Biden and an internal civil war.

Signs were hiding in plain sight well before the US presidential debate against Donald Trump

Warning signs of Joe Biden’s decline were hiding in plain sight well before last month’s calamitous US presidential debate performance against Donald Trump.

But Biden had the perfect cover: a long history of verbal slips and other blunders that made it hard to blame his age alone. “I am a gaffe machine,” he admitted in December 2018 when asked about potential liabilities of his election campaign.

In appearance aimed at quelling nascent rebellion among Democrats, Biden made no big gaffes, but reviews are mixed

• Key takeaways from Biden’s ABC interview

Joe Biden has insisted that only “the Lord almighty” could persuade him to exit the US presidential race in a potential make-or-break TV interview aimed at quelling a burgeoning rebellion in the Democratic party.

In an exchange free from major gaffes but unlikely to appease his critics, Biden was asked by George Stephanopoulos of ABC News how he would feel if he were to remain the nominee and lose to Donald Trump. “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about,” the president replied.