Maybe after Tuesday night’s debate it will have finally sunk in that Democrats are going to have a very, very, very hard time winning the presidency next year.

It was an embarrassment to watch Sen. Kamala Harris, who was once considered a serious contender for the nomination, drone on about how the president of the United States should be “taken down” from Twitter. She apparently thought it would be a standout moment to “urge” Sen. Elizabeth Warren to join her in that campaign-defining cause.

Warren, having branded herself as the ultimate liberal truth-teller, wouldn’t admit that her dreamy healthcare policy proposal would absolutely require a tax increase on middle-income households. “Costs will go down” was her answer every time she was asked about that inescapable fact, almost as if someone had pulled a string on her back to make the sound.

South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg sounded like he might have been onto something when he dismissed every single Democrat proposal on gun control. But then he offered his own unique one: “We have to just get something done.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders literally had a brush with death and is now acting like nothing’s wrong. Joe Biden pretended his son Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine, which just happened to coincide with his own political engagement there, is nothing, even though Hunter had just said earlier the same day that it was done with “poor judgement.”

Are any of these people listening to themselves?

If I were head of the DNC I would be absolutely soiling my pants. The party is rudderless, and the first contest of the primary is just four months away.

Democrats are no better off today than they were in the 2016 election, but they might take some comfort in knowing that the shoe was once on the other foot.

This same show played out in 2012, when Republicans were certain that beating President Obama would be a breeze. That was delusional thinking then and it’s delusional to think it about President Trump now.

Trump may have shaken the conventional wisdom on politics, but some things really will never change. Incumbency counts for a lot. That's bad news for Democrats, but hopefully they’re seeing things a little more clearly after last night.