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Not that he particularly tried. Strategists of both parties believe the campaign was winnable for the incumbent if he had embraced a more traditional strategy and style—something his entire presidency has shown him to be uninterested in doing. Discarding the advice of the political professionals, Trump insisted on rerunning the 2016 election, down to the leaked emails and antiestablishment rhetoric. He made little alteration to his bull-in-a-china-shop attitude, even though the hellscape he raged against was now one that unfolded on his watch. "COVID certainly didn't help, but this election was about the President's performance over the last four years, not just the last nine months," says Brendan Buck, a former top adviser to the GOP ex–House Speaker Paul Ryan. "It was four years of bumbling his way through every issue, alienating everyone who didn't agree with him, and never being able to use the tools he had for any particular good."
并不是说他特别地努力。两党的战略家们都认为，如果现任总统能够采取更传统的策略和风格——他的整个总统任期都表明他对传统不感兴趣——那么他就能够赢得这场竞选。特朗普不顾政治专业人士的建议，坚持重播2016年大选，甚至包括泄露的电子邮件和反建制言论。他几乎从未改变他那种“牛进中国店”的态度，尽管他所怒斥的地狱景象现在是在他的眼皮底下展开的。共和党前众议院议长保罗·瑞安的前高级顾问布伦丹·巴克说：“新冠当然没什么好处，但这场选举关乎总统在过去四年的表现，而不仅仅是过去九个月的表现，四年来，他在每个问题上都磕磕绊绊，疏远了所有与他意见不同的人，也从未把他拥有的工具用于任何特定的用途。”
As Trump careened from one outrage to another, Biden limited his campaign to theatrically cautious appearances: masked speeches to small, distanced groups; "drive-in" rallies where attendees sat in their cars. The longtime pol known for his garrulousness and gaffes stuck unerringly to the script. Many lines in his final TV ads were identical to what he said when he launched his campaign a year and a half before. Unusually for a general-election candidate, Biden actually saw his standing with the public improve over the course of the campaign. Only about 10% of the ads aired by Biden's campaign and allies were attacks on Trump, according to the Wesleyan Media Project. His campaign believed that his themes of unity, compassion and expertise were an implicit rebuke to the incumbent. "The message has been incredibly consistent: an implicit contrast between Trump's character flaws and their consequences for real people," says Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson, a veteran of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign. "Trump is selfabsorbed and chaotic; Biden is the opposite: in it for others, stable, the antidote to everything Trump represents." But Democrats now wonder if Biden, like Clinton before him, put too much emphasis on character and not enough on kitchen-table issues, and whether his decision not to campaign more in person was a missed opportunity.
在特朗普从一个愤怒转向另一个愤怒之际，拜登限制了自己的竞选活动，以戏剧而谨慎的方式亮相：戴着口罩，演讲群体为小规模且保持安全社交距离；“免下车”集会，参与者坐在自己的车里。这位以饶舌和失态而闻名的老牌政治领袖完完全全按剧本行事。在他最后的电视广告当中，有许多台词和他一年半前竞选时所说的台词一模一样。作为大选候选人，不寻常的是，拜登在竞选过程中确实看到了自己在公众心目中地位的提升。据卫斯理媒体项目称，拜登的竞选团队和盟友发布的广告中只有大约10%是针对特朗普的攻击。他的竞选团队认为，他的团结、同情和专业知识等主题是对现任总统的含蓄谴责。民主党策略师杰西·弗格森表示：“这一信息极其地一致，这是特朗普性格缺陷与其对现实生活的影响之间的含蓄对比。”弗格森曾在2016年参加希拉里·克林顿的竞选活动。“特朗普只顾自己，混乱不堪；而拜登则相反：对其他人来说，稳定是特朗普所代表的一切的解药。”但民主党人现在怀疑，拜登是否像之前的克林顿一样，过于强调个性而对细小问题关注不够，他不亲自参加竞选的决定是否错失了一个机会。
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