Trump's less offensive demeanor may have
convinced some wavering voters not to desert him at the last minute.
His most effective attack on Biden reprised the role as an
anti-Washington outsider in which he has always been most comfortable.
"You had eight years to get it done. Now you're saying you're going to
get it done, because you're all talk and no action, Joe," Trump said in a
number of variations, pinning the two-term former vice president as a
lifelong politician. His assault on Biden's Senate record on 1990s
criminal justice bills seemed designed to help him on the margins with
Black male voters in swing states.But
the lesson of Trump's presidency is that momentary discipline can be
purged in subsequent days by raging performances and controversies that
derail his own political aspirations.It
is also hard to see how Trump's callous dismissal of the more than 500
undocumented immigrant kids, separated at the border from parents whom the administration cannot find, helped the President's already sinking support among crucial suburban women voters. 
Election 101"They
are so well taken care of, they're in facilities that were so clean,"
Trump said, leaving a gaping opening for Biden, who frequently compares
his own humanity to the President's callousness, to deliver a
well-rehearsed line."Kids were
ripped from their arms and separated. And now they cannot find over 500
sets of those parents, and those kids are alone. Nowhere to go. Nowhere
to go. It's criminal. It's criminal," Biden fumed.Biden's
camp can celebrate that the former vice president escaped from two
highly perilous engagements with the most unpredictable debater in
modern politics largely unscathed and likely enhanced. For a
front-runner, that is priceless. And the President's decision to pull
out of what should have been a virtual second debate after he came down
with Covid-19 now feels like a big mistake.
Biden dodges Trump's trap
The
President's hard line on immigration reflected the way he has always
behaved in office -- as though he's running in a Republican primary. It
was the same with his allegations of huge corruption against Biden and
his son over alleged business dealings in Ukraine and China. Moaning
about the "laptop from Hell" and asking Biden to "clean it up and talk
to the American people" might have been understandable to Fox News
viewers primed on the latest conspiracy theory but probably baffled
everyone else. And Trump's gambit only opened the door for Biden to
hammer him over his refusal to release his tax returns and to raise
questions about the President's own business conflicts.