After massively hemorrhaging, stemming the bleeding falls far short. A blood transfusion is needed.
At best Trump stopped the bleeding off last night of some Right leaning voters, who really didn't want to desert him but needed a rationale not to bail after watching him self destruct at the last debate and during the weeks that followed. Trump didn't come off as totally off his rocker last night, and that might be enough for some. But nothing that happened on that stage last night helped Donald Trump expand his limited appeal. There was no blood transfusion given his dangerously anemic presidential campaign last night.
And that is seeing Trump's performance in the most favorable of Pro Trump lights. Trump's attempts to attack Biden's character if anything worked against Trump, reinforcing his own image as a man who is totally unhinged, contrasting poorly against Biden's dignity and sincerity. Trump once again repeating that the Virus is "going away" was the most devastatingly jarring sound bite of the evening, encapsulating in one sentence his willful detachment from reality while the pandemic once again surges across America. Trump embraced ending Obamacare in the midst of that pandemic as millions of Americans are losing employer provided health care plans. And he offered nothing but empty promises for how he would replace it after four years in the White House doing nothing to advance a specific alternative.
Trump might swing a few votes his way in Texas and Pennsylvania with his fervent embrace of fossil fuels, but in so doing he probably provided the sharp contrast with Joe Biden's concern over climate change that can motivate more younger voters to make it to the polls for Biden on election day. And once again, in his last best chance to do so, Trump offered no vision to America of what a second term of a Trump presidency would look like beyond "more of the same" if and when the pandemic ends. Trump is the only president since polling began who has never registered a positive approval rating from the public while in office. America is rejecting more of the same.
