A brief interlude of normalcy in 2020 race
Thursday’s second and final US presidential debate, it turns out, was actually a debate.
Thursday’s second and final US presidential debate, it turns out, was actually a debate — a brief interlude of normalcy in an otherwise highly abnormal year, and a reprieve for voters turned off by the candidates’ noxious first face-off.
US President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden spent 90 minutes Thursday sparring over their approach to the coronavirus pandemic, the future of the nation’s health insurance system and who is best positioned to de-escalate nuclear tensions with North Korea.
There were heated clashes, but far fewer of the angry interruptions and crosstalk that made the opening debate nearly unwatchable.
A mute button mandated by the debate commission helped enforce decorum, clearing the way for Trump and Biden to make their closing arguments to the nation less than two weeks from Election Day. Both men have argued with pride throughout the campaign that there is little overlap between their visions – and that was abundantly clear in Thursday’s debate.
It was the president more so than Biden who entered the night needing to spark a shift in the race, given the public polls that have for weeks showed him trailing both nationally and in some key battleground states. Trump has struggled throughout the year to convince voters that they should look past a coronavirus pandemic that has killed 225,000 US citizens and infected more than right million. Instead, he’s been saddled by sharply negative assessments of his handling of the public health crisis, including his own Covid-19 illness.
Trump, the chief interrupter and aggressor in the first debate, insisted in Thursday’s debate that the country needed to “learn to live” with the virus and suggested his rival would damage the economy by taking drastic steps to shut down the country. Biden warned of a “dark winter” to come, with cases already on the rise as the weather cools and more activities move indoors, where the virus spreads faster.
“Anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president,” Biden said. “I will end this. I will make sure we have a plan.”
Some of Trump’s advisers and allies had urged him in the leadup to the debate to take a more traditional approach, focusing less on badgering Biden and more on drawing his rival out on their policy contrasts. Few had expected he would actually abide by that advice.
And though Trump was more measured than in the first contest, his more controversial impulses indeed flared at times. His answers were often filled with falsehoods, from his descriptions of initial Covid-19 death projections to his statements about the risks wind turbines pose to birds. He also made repeated references to unverified corruption allegations against Biden’s son Hunter for business dealings in Ukraine and China.
For some Republicans, the exchanges over Hunter Biden were a prime example of what has put Trump at risk of defeat in November: a campaign that still appears to be grasping for a clear message and approach to taking on his rival with just a handful of days before the election.
“Throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks was a fine strategy six months ago, but they’re still doing it 12 days from the election with 40 million votes already cast,” said Erick Erickson, a conservative writer.
The real number of votes cast is even higher: By the time Trump and Biden took the debate stage, more than 47 million people had already cast ballots.