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It was not a show like in the first round. US President Trump left the steamroller in the garage, his challenger Biden had to switch roles. First findings of the final television debate.
By Katrin Brand, ARD Studio Washington
Donald Trump is running out of time. Shortly before the debate, the Fivethirtyeight polling platform calculated that Trump only has between twelve and 100 chances of winning the election, Joe Biden’s chances are 88 to 100. In US polls, Biden leads by an average of almost ten percentage points. So the television debate was the last great opportunity to regain ground.
Here are the first ideas of the night.
The style: silence is golden
In your throat, ready? Are you kidding? You’re serious when you say that. The spectacle of the first debate did not go to the second round. After 20 minutes there was a talk in the middle, but that was nothing compared to the unbridled anger of the first debate. This time it was really kind of an argument exchange, if you add innuendo, pettiness, and lies: the president was better than Biden, as always. Trump is good at making claims and not being dissuaded from it, and his supporters will have applauded in front of screens.
Otherwise, Trump apparently listened carefully to his advisers and left the steamroller in the garage. Almost presidential in his demeanor by his standards, he just made faces every now and then or drew circles in the air with his finger. Biden had to switch roles: from the victim who is knocked down to the attacker who taunts, provokes and irritates his counterpart. His bad luck: During the election campaign, he was so committed to the “good guy” that he simply cannot deploy robber guns as blatantly as the president.
Host Kristen Welker was exquisitely prepared. You can’t accuse her of being too nice to Biden. He had the evening under control with objective kindness.
Biden: Just keep the ball flat
Make no mistake, that was Biden’s strategy, hoping Trump would be his best enemy, as always. That didn’t work this time. The former vice president almost had to defend himself by remaining cautious in the Corona crisis, while Trump gives the impression that the country is long gone. Biden’s image of the dark winter that awaits America in the face of Trump’s bright future? The decision is simple.
Biden found no remedy against Trump’s attacks on alleged corruption in his family. Obviously, it couldn’t mobilize enough venom and bile in itself to be equally corrosive.
The weather problem in the end, became difficult again. During the first debate I couldn’t really understand what Biden was doing, this time maybe too well. He wants a climate neutral America, with many new jobs in the wind and solar power industries. This is what California millennial and leftist enthusiasts will like. But what could get stuck: Biden wants to abolish the oil industry. Trump will remember that during the last meters of the election campaign: Hello, Texas, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma and Ohio – who is the president that will secure your jobs?
Trump keep kicking
The president not only managed to control his impulses and thus let Biden run into the void. This time he was not distracted by his own flashes of inspiration, but listened well enough to explain some of his issues: Why did Biden, who has been in politics for almost 50 years and ruled with Barack Obama for eight years, so? as if he knew today how to do it better? Why are you now playing the friend of blacks after you passed controversial drug laws in the 1990s? Why hasn’t it disarmed North Korea a long time ago? Beaten, sunk.
That his policies on the Mexican border separated hundreds of children from their parents is nothing that makes Trump cry. And people who get cancer near Texas oil fields have made more money than ever.
He also accommodated a wealth of subtext for his fanbase: Biden’s alleged ties to Russia and China, his son Hunter’s work, the baffling laptop that popped up with supposedly enlightening emails.
Content? There was something…
Yes, this time there was something to learn about the content, at least something. Trump wants to “open up” the country, he wants New York to stop being a ghost town. Biden relies on masks and science. Biden wants to give millions of undocumented immigrants their path to citizenship. Trump finally wants to introduce his own healthcare reform.
But Trump’s important message remains that he doesn’t want to be political and that he doesn’t want to get involved in something like politics. He wants to remain the outsider, even after four years in office.
And now? Eleven days until the elections
More than 40 million people have already cast their vote, by letter or in person. The undecided proportion is less than ten percent. So under normal circumstances this debate is unlikely to have been chosen. On the other hand, four years ago, only a few narrowly won states tipped the scales in Trump’s favor. It is not over yet.
