Last debate between Trump and Biden was more civilized 2:19
(CNN) -
The second and final face-off between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden looked more like a normal debate than their first meeting.
But it probably did nothing to change the trajectory of the race.
Amid a plethora of lies, Trump criticized Biden for failing to resolve issues such as institutional racism during his time in the Senate and as vice president, portraying him as a typical politician.
Biden lashed out at Trump in terms of politics, criticizing his handling of the pandemic and his focus on health care, the economy and immigration.
But sometimes the former vice president got personal.
At one point he called Trump "one of the most racist presidents we've ever had in modern history."
Here are seven takeaways from the latest 2020 presidential debate.
Trump lowers the temperature
Trump entered the debate Thursday with almost unanimous consensus among his advisers: calm down.
No one could say with confidence if he would follow the advice.
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He did so, for the most part, helped, in part, by a new rule of silence that he lashed out against before the head-to-head.
Yes, he was still telling falsehoods.
Yes, he was still launching personal attacks.
Yes, he downplayed the coronavirus, the biggest crisis facing the country, without assuming any responsibility for it.
Yes, he insisted that hundreds of migrant children separated from their parents are well cared for.
But for most of the face-to-face, he seemed more moderate and more determined to stick to a plan.
He was even courteous to NBC moderator Kristen Welker, telling her at one point that she approved of her performance.
After the last debate, Trump felt he won and few aides told him otherwise.
But after watching clips of himself, Trump acknowledged that he could tone it down a bit.
The result was a huge sigh of relief from Republicans, who feared another abrasive performance that would put voters off.
And it led to a more substantive debate, with voters able to hear definitive answers.
It's unclear how that helps Trump.
Often his answers, particularly about health care and race, lacked substance.
And again he avoided drawing a concrete agenda for the second term, something that he failed to articulate for most of the campaign.
But if the race depends in part on Trump's behavior, his approach on Thursday is more in line with what his team expected.
Trump's illusions
This is how Trump used his first two minutes in the final debate 2:29
Trump's first response, which was meant to indicate how he would lead through the next phase of the coronavirus, was based instead on looking back and thinking hard about a vaccine.
And like many of his responses for the rest of the night, Trump's central argument seemed to be that things could be going much worse.
Though he spoke in a new and less aggressive style, Trump's response amounted to the same rejection of the pandemic that he has been offering for months, one that voters have largely rejected.
“It will go away and, as I say, we are turning the curve, we are turning the corner.
It's going away, ”he said, ignoring the increase in cases across the country.
As he does almost every time he is pressed about his response to the pandemic, Trump cited his decision to close travel to China, even though thousands of people were exempt and could still enter the country.
He insisted that the United States was suffering along with Europe, which is also experiencing new peaks.
But unlike Trump, leaders there, including French President Emmanuel Macron, have imposed new blockades.
And he put most of his optimism into a vaccine, which he claimed would arrive "in a few weeks."
There is no indication that it is true.
Vaccine trials are still ongoing and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has imposed rules that require months of data for the emergency use of a new vaccine.
Later, Trump acknowledged that his promise of a vaccine "within weeks" was not a "guarantee."
But he said he was hoping to have one by the end of the year.
Their responses were a sign that Trump does not plan to change his approach to the coronavirus, even as cases increase.
He said it earlier this week;
In a forum, Trump responded when asked what he would do differently: "Not much."
Instead, the key distinction Trump tried to make was his aversion to any additional lockdowns to prevent further contagion.
"We cannot shut down our nation," Trump said.
"We can't lock ourselves in a basement like Joe does."
READ
: ANALYSIS |
Successes and failures of the last presidential debate
Biden predicts a 'dark winter'
This is how Biden and Trump collided on health in final debate 4:14
Biden offered a much bleaker view of the virus.
And he predicted a 'dark winter' was approaching, as he accused Trump of denying responsibility for the spread in the United States and wasting months that he said should have been used to accelerate the production of protective medical equipment and prepare schools and businesses for the reopening.
"Anyone who is responsible for so many deaths should not remain president of the United States," Biden said.
Biden was much more measured than Trump in discussing how he would handle the virus.
He said he would set national standards for opening schools and businesses and would seek stimulus funds to prepare them.
It also offered a harsher look at the timeline for a possible vaccine, one that more closely aligns with what public health experts have projected.
He said there is "no prospect of a vaccine being available to the majority of the American people before the middle of next year."
Biden, however, provided a unifying moment when he criticized Trump for blaming Democratic governors for the spread of the virus in his states.
“I don't see this the way he does: blue states and red states.
It's all America, ”Biden said.
He noted that spikes have occurred in recent weeks in Republican-leaning states.
"They are all Americans," he said.
Trump dusts off his 2016 playbook
With nearly 50 million votes already cast and time nearly exhausted to reverse his luck in the polls, Trump turned to the tactics that helped him win four years ago.
He tried to portray Biden as a typical politician, just as he did with Hillary Clinton.
He repeatedly noted that Biden was in elected office for 47 years, and blamed him for not solving problems such as systemic racism.
Joe, I applied because of you.
I ran because of Barack Obama.
Because you did a bad job.
If I thought you did a good job, I would never have run, "Trump said.
However, the tactic could have backfired at times, because it gave Biden an opportunity to relate the political achievements of the Obama administration.
READ
: ANALYSIS |
Obama scathingly scolds Trump before final debate
However, Trump was less effective in trying to turn a series of complicated and unproven allegations about Biden's son Hunter into a campaign-altering moment.
Outside of the right-wing echo chamber occupied by Trump and his most ardent supporters, he did not deliver one of those moments.
And it was opened to sharp responses from Biden about Trump's own business operations in China and the failure to publish his tax returns.
"The guy who got in trouble in Ukraine was this guy," Biden said, pointing at Trump.
"Trying to bribe the Ukrainian government to say something negative about me, which they would not do."
Trump's actions in Ukraine led the House to impeach him.
Trump's eagerness to go back in time even extended to falsely accusing Biden of referring to blacks as "super-predators" during the discussion of the crime bill in the early 1990s. And he didn't;
it was Clinton who used the term.
Biden hits his policy marks
This would Biden do if a country interferes in elections 0:39
The former vice president's most effective moments Thursday night could have been his evisceration of Trump's economic, health and immigration policies.
Those policy-focused moments underscored a grim reality for Trump: Although Congress could get in the way, Biden is campaigning on a number of detailed policy proposals.
And it often explains what they would mean to average Americans.
Trump, however, has repeatedly failed to detail what he would try to do if he wins a second term.
Biden criticized Trump for seeking to have the Supreme Court overturn the Affordable Care Act and its protections for those with pre-existing conditions - a group of Americans in which Biden noted that he will soon include those with COVID-19.
Trump, who has long promised a plan to protect those people but never delivered it, denied the reality that his protections would be repealed if his administration's judicial effort is successful.
Biden detailed his proposal to allow Americans to purchase a public health insurance program and introduced a new phrase to describe it: "Bidencare."
He also strongly advocated raising the minimum wage from $ 7.25 to $ 15 an hour, while Trump said the matter should be left to the states.
Most significant may have been the part of the debate that focused on immigration, when Biden eviscerated Trump over the report this week that 545 children who were separated from their parents at the border have yet to be reunited with their families.
Trump said the children are "very well cared for," even though they have been separated from their families for months or years.
"They got separated from their parents, and that makes us a laughingstock and violates every notion of who we are as a nation," Biden said.
A question about the "talk" remains unanswered
Trump and Biden were asked a provocative and important question about race: Could you understand why black parents give their children the "talk" about how to handle encounters with law enforcement?
Trump did not specifically address the question, and his instinct was to insist that he has done more for blacks than any previous president since Abraham Lincoln, and to attack Biden for his track record, including in a crime bill from the 1990s.
"I am the least racist person in this room," Trump said.
Biden, meanwhile, tried to portray Trump as a fan of racial divisions, one of the main arguments of his entire campaign.
"Abraham Lincoln here is one of the most racist presidents we've had in modern history," he said sarcastically, referencing Trump's earlier claim.
"This guy has a dog whistle ('covert message') as big as a fog horn."
The candidates' responses were less designed to convince black voters that either would be better for them than to convince white voters that Trump is or is not a racist.
It's one of the factors that has lowered the Trump poll numbers among suburban women.
These have been dulled by Trump's constant revival of divisions.
It is unclear how simply claiming that he is not racist Trump will reverse that impression, given the ample evidence that he stoked racist conspiracies or fostered racial divisions.
For a candidate who believes he can shake off Democratic support among black men, not offering any kind of action-based or political response seemed like a missed opportunity.
Biden says he would 'transition the oil industry'
The moment of debate that Republicans were seizing on Thursday night was Biden's comment that he would "transition the oil industry, yes."
"Oh, that's a great statement," Trump responded.
"That's a great statement," Biden said.
"Because the oil industry pollutes significantly."
He went on to say that he wanted a gradual transition to cleaner forms of energy.
But Trump tried to immediately turn the moment into a political advantage in oil- and manufacturing-heavy states.
Will you remember that, Texas?
Will you remember that, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Ohio?
"Said Trump.
It's unclear if the timing is the kind of political change Trump could hope for.
However, it could be problematic for Democrats running in red areas like Texas.
After the debate, Biden's campaign sought to clarify the trade, saying the former vice president was talking specifically about eliminating oil subsidies.
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