President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden squared off Thursday night in their final debate, which stood as the trailing incumbent’s best chance to change the race’s trajectory with just 12 days until the election.

The Nashville debate offered them a final national stage to outline starkly different visions for a country in the grips of a surging pandemic that has killed more than 225,000 Americans and cost millions of jobs. Despite historic tumult, the race has remained largely unchanged with Biden holding advantages in many battleground states while Trump faces a shortage of campaign cash and, crucially, time.

Worried that Trump could lose the White House and cost Republicans the Senate, some advisers urged him to trade his aggressive demeanor from the first debate for a lower-key style and put the spotlight on Biden, whom he derides as “Sleepy Joe.” But Trump made no such promise.

Biden, who has stepped off the campaign trail for several days in favor of debate prep, expected Trump to get intensely personal. Trump’s focus on the Biden family in recent days appeared to come at the expense of his last significant opportunity to offer a unifying message to a nation reeling from a virus that killed more than 1,000 people on the day the two men faced off.

The former vice president and his inner circle see the president’s approach chiefly as an effort to distract from the coronavirus, its economic fallout and other crises of Trump’s term.

Final debates often play an outsized role in electoral outcomes. But Thursday night’s showdown was different from those past.-AP

(Presidential debate) A final national stage to outline visions