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Snap polls said former Vice President Joe Biden won Tuesday night's debate, but Donald Trump's campaign strategists hope to salvage something from the chaos by cutting several digital and broadcast ads that highlight what they believe were the president's strongest moments.
The first will highlight Trump's assertion, "I've done more in 47 months than you [Biden] did in 47 years." That's ''the central contrast which the campaign will try to drive home every day from now until November 3," says a Trump campaign strategist who was not authorized to speak on the record.
The other moments that stood out as ad bait: when the president challenged Biden to name one law enforcement organization that supports him. "Go ahead, think, we have time," Trump said, to which Biden responded, "We don't have time."
"You're going to hear that exchange a lot," says the campaign source.
Another blast on the law-and-order theme—which hasn't moved the polls in battleground states as much as the Trump campaign had hoped— will be moderator Chris Wallace asking Biden whether he ever called the mayor of Portland or the governor of Oregon—Democrats both—and asked them to shut down the violence in that city. "I don't hold public office now," Biden responded.
"That was a weak answer from a weak candidate," the campaign source says.
Trump will also hammer Biden—as he has for the past eight days—on the former vice president's unwillingness to disavow talk that he and Senate Democrats might move to expand the number of judges on the Supreme Court should the party secure both the White House and Senate in November. Biden deflected the issue during the debate, saying, ''whatever position I take on that that will become the issue."
Some independent pollsters were skeptical that any new ads cut in the debate's wake will make much of a difference. Frank Luntz held a focus group of 15 undecided voters and says the debate "actually convinced some of them not to vote at all."
''I've never seen a debate cause this reaction," he said.
