On Thursday night, as Jake Tapper and Dana Bash brought CNN’s instant classic of a presidential debate to a close in Atlanta, executives and producers at the network breathed a collective sigh of relief. For the next two-plus hours, the network’s pundits would try to comprehend Biden’s disastrous, unspinnable collapse and convey the gravity and the magnitude of the Democratic panic to viewers—and, in fact, several panelists would remain on set for almost an hour after the cameras stopped rolling, discussing all the possible ramifications. (“There may have been tears by some,” one of the panelists told me.) But, for those who had been involved in programming the debate itself, 10:39 p.m. brought catharsis: They had fulfilled their mission, such as they saw it, and—crucially—they had not become a part of the story.