(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump turned in a more composed and disciplined debate performance Thursday night, offering a marked contrast to the chaos and fury that defined his first battle with Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
But even as the president earned credit for engaging in a more civil exchange of views — and maybe even brought a few doubters back into his camp — there was little reason to think he had scored the kind of dramatic victory he badly needed to turn around a race polls show he’s losing.
Trump’s supporters had spent more than a week teeing up an attack on the foreign business dealings of Biden’s son Hunter, but standing next to Biden during the final presidential debate in Nashville, Trump failed to make it stick. Biden managed to flip it back on Trump, pointing out news reports showing it was the president’s company that had a bank account in China, not him.
Biden’s best moments occurred when he resisted taking the bait as Trump accused him of being corrupt, leading Biden to call out Trump for failing to release a single tax return. “What are you hiding?” Biden said.
The former vice president was less sure-footed elsewhere in the debate. When under pressure from Trump, he appeared to endorse the eventual elimination of the oil industry. Trump immediately seized on Biden’s remark for voters in all-important Pennsylvania, where Biden’s position on reducing fracking wins him few friends in a state where fracking employs thousands of people.
After the first debate devolved into a mess of cross-talk and bitterness, this session was notable for its substance, as voters could watch the two men lay out their closing arguments on almost every topic — the coronavirus, immigration, race relations — and see the clear choice they face less than two weeks before Election Day.
Trump scored when he resurrected the parts of his persona that won him fans in 2016, contrasting his outsider’s stance to Biden’s 47 years in public life. And on the coronavirus, Trump accused Biden of supporting further economic shutdowns that have crushed the U.S. economy.
Even as the president’s allies crowed that the president’s tone could bring reluctant voters back home – or erase the memory of a first debate where even his debate coach said he was “too hot” – indications were that he had done little to change the underlying dynamics.
A CNN instant poll of the debate showed 53% of respondents thought Biden had prevailed, versus just 39% for Trump – a result roughly mirroring the president’s current deficit in the polls. Respondents showed essentially no change in how they conceived of the candidates’ favorability.
Trump’s steadier approach occasionally faltered, such as when he attacked the IQ level of immigrants seeking asylum and offered a scattered defense of his foreign financial entanglements and tax payments. Democrats also seized on Trump at one point seemingly belittling family dinner-table conversations during times of economic strife, after Biden looked into the camera and made a direct appeal to those voters.
Biden is leading Trump by 7.9% nationally in the RealClearPolitics polling average, and FiveThirtyEight’s predictive model gave the former vice president an 87% chance of victory heading into Thursday night’s contest. Trump has not led in a public poll of Pennsylvania – perhaps the most crucial battleground state – since May, and recent surveys show Biden with slight leads in states like Florida and North Carolina where victories would decimate the president’s path to re-election.
The president’s polling woes are reflected in his campaign’s finances. Trump’s re-election campaign ended September with only $63.1 million in the bank, an amount dwarfed by Biden’s $177.3 million cash on hand. And more than 47 million Americans have already cast their ballots – which would equal over a third of the total votes counted in the last presidential election.
Still, Trump overcame a polling deficit to win in 2016. And it wasn’t until after the first debate – where Trump’s frequent interruptions were widely criticized – that the former vice president posted a double-digit polling advantage, underscoring the extent to which the contests that draw tens of millions of viewers can shake up a race.
Unlike that contest, there were moments for Trump and his supporters to feel encouraged by on Thursday night.
His allies thought Biden made two major missteps on energy policy – first by challenging his campaign to post video showing he had ever advocated ending fracking, and then by acknowledging he wanted to eventually eliminate the oil industry.
“I would transition from the oil industry, yes. The oil industry pollutes significantly. It has to be replaced by renewable energy over time.”
Trump responded with incredulity. “Basically what he is saying is he would destroy the oil industry. Would you remember that Texas? Would you remember that Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Ohio?”
Biden later said he hoped the oil industry would be gone by 2050.
Unlike other recent appearances, the president was able to keep his discussion of the coronavirus pandemic relatively positive. He painted his own recovery from the disease as emblematic of the nation as a whole, and accused Biden — who described a nation entering a “dark winter” — of supporting further economic shutdowns that left the Democratic candidate on the defensive.“We can’t close up our nation or we’re not going to have a nation,” he said.Trump repeatedly cast Biden as a career politician, finding ways to inject that theme into discussions on everything from race relations to climate change. When the former vice president sought to sidestep a discussion of his son’s business dealings by dismissing the allegation as “malarkey” that didn’t affect ordinary Americans, Trump accused him of employing a typical political ploy.
“Let’s get off the subject of China and let’s talk around sitting around the table,” Trump said. “Come on Joe, you can do better than that.”
And Trump, pointing out that the Obama administration had at times detained migrant children, asked Biden, twice: “Who built the cages, Joe?”
Abraham Lincoln, Minimum Wage
The former vice president also said he felt good about how the debate went, and had standout moments of his own. Biden pounced when Trump claimed he was the best president for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln, accusing the president of pouring “fuel on every single racist fire.”“Abraham Lincoln here is one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in modern history,” Biden quipped.
Trump also struggled to defend his changing positions on raising the minimum wage, or to lay out an argument for what all he hoped to accomplish in a second term.
The president’s strategy underscored the extent to which his election strategy is now pinned on tarnishing the former vice president, who holds a substantial favorability advantage among voters. While 49% of voters say they have a favorable opinion of Biden, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released this week, just 40% say the same of Trump. And while only 44% say they dislike Biden, 55% of likely voters say they have an unfavorable opinion of the president.
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