Presidential debate: key takeaways from the Trump-Biden showdown

The mute button, or at least the threat to do so, seemed to work. In the second presidential debate, the candidates of Donald Trump and Joe Biden were more restrained.

The candidates allowed themselves to speak among themselves. They used respectful tones. Even when they went on the attack, they did so in a calm and deliberate manner.

After a first bellicose debate, during which Donald Trump’s constant interruptions may have cost him support in subsequent opinion polls, the president has visibly turned down the volume, making him a much more effective debater.

This time, the content of what the candidates are saying could be what the American public remembers from the debate, not the chaotic way it was delivered.

Once again, Biden largely stayed under fire, avoiding the kind of gaffes and trips that might have contributed to Republican attempts to question his age and mental acuity.

The Trump campaign will try to make a problem of Biden’s call for a “transition” from oil-based energy, something risky to include at the end of the debate. Yet in an era of hybrid cars and energy-efficient homes, when even oil companies use similar language, it may not hit Americans as hard as Republicans imagine.

In the end, the first raucous debate will likely be what the history books will remember. And with polls showing that the majority of Americans have already made up their minds, and more than 45 million have already voted, the chance that tonight will have a lasting impact on the race seems slim.

The Trump campaign complained that this debate was supposed to focus on foreign policy, perhaps allowing the president to tout what he sees as his achievements in the Middle East, trade and Syria and to go after Biden for trade ties. of his son with China.

Instead, the debate, like previous debates, began on the coronavirus pandemic, a topic that polls show the American public cares more about.

Donald Trump once again promoted a vaccine that he said would be ready “in weeks.” He offered personal testimony of the power of new drugs to treat the disease and boasted that he was now “immune.”

Biden, unsurprisingly, went on the attack. He noted that Trump had repeatedly promised that the disease would go away on its own. He said there were 220,000 Americans dead and there could be another 200,000 by the end of the year.

In the back and forth between the two candidates, Trump continued to offer hope that things were looking up and businesses and schools should reopen. And when Trump said that people were “learning to live” with the disease, Biden swooped in.

“Are people learning to live with it?” I ask. “People are learning to die with him.”

At one point, Trump offered a response that he said was “maybe just to get this over with.” The president was clearly eager to move on to different topics.

Trump telegraphed early and often that he would make Biden’s son Hunter a topic of debate, and it wasn’t long before the president mentioned the former vice president’s family. He alleged that Biden personally profited from his son’s businesses in Ukraine and China, citing recent news based on information allegedly obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Biden’s defense was a blanket denial, followed by a subject change to Trump’s taxes and trade ties with China. That forced the president to spend time explaining how he actually “prepaid” millions of dollars in taxes and said again that he would one day publish his tax returns. The exchange, which would require paragraphs to explain in sufficient detail, likely left the casual American viewer confused.

Trump was counting on spilling blood with his attacks on Biden’s family, turning this into a controversy that ultimately brings his front-line opponent back to earth. Most likely tonight I won’t.

Four years ago, Trump took a hard line on immigration until the Republican nomination and, ultimately, the White House. However, when the issue came up in Thursday night’s debate, he tried to downplay some of the more extreme steps he’s taken while in office.

When asked about his administration’s policy of separating children from the parents of undocumented immigrants, for example, Trump tried to direct the conversation to the detention centers – “cages,” in Trump’s terms – created by the Obama administration to house unaccompanied minor immigrants.

Biden, with a flash of outrage, pointed out that the children Trump was detaining came with their parents and that the policy was making America a “laughingstock.” For many American voters, the audio of separated children crying for their parents may still be relatively fresh in their minds.

Trump’s response that those children were “so well cared for” in “such clean facilities” probably didn’t help his cause.

In the first presidential debate, Trump got into trouble when the issue turned to race relations, as he danced over whether to outright condemn white supremacist groups. This time, the president was considerably more agile.

He boasted of his bipartisan criminal justice reform and funding for historically black universities. He attacked Biden for his sponsorship of a draconian crime bill in the 1990s that led to a sharp increase in the number of black Americans in prisons. And, perhaps most potently, when Biden began to speak about his reform proposals, he questioned why the former vice president failed to achieve more when he served under President Barack Obama.

“It’s all talk but not action with these politicians,” Trump said. “Why didn’t you do it? You had eight years to do it.”

Anyone who has lived through the “tough on crime” of the 1990s in the United States will likely be surprised by this exchange of debates, where both candidates discussed the number of criminals they gave clemency and their efforts to reduce the number of imprisoned Americans. As the massive demonstrations against institutional racism earlier this year demonstrated, times have changed.