Elections

Julia Rothman is an illustrator. Shaina Feinberg is a writer and filmmaker. Both live in Brooklyn. More

The term “gender gap” has a clinical sound to it, like it’s an intrinsic condition of our politics. But it did not always exist, and with each recent election cycle, it has become more extreme.If we look more closely at it, the gender gap probably deserves another name: It’s the white male gap. Or the white male problem.Think about what the political map would look like if just white men voted.We’d have a Senator Roy Moore representing Alabama, where 72 percent of the state’s white male voters (and 63 percent of the white women) cast their ballot for a man who was accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl — and who faced sexual misconduct allegations from multiple other women related to incidents they said occurred when they were underage. (He has denied the accusations.) We’d likely have a Senator David Duke from Louisiana. The entire U.S. Senate would look far different — with Democratic senators from just a handful of the bluest states. And there would never have been a President Barack Obama.Polls in advance of Nov. 3 reveal a huge gender divide. The electorate as a whole seems ready to cast out President Trump by a big margin. But not men. The most recent poll by The New York Times and Siena College shows 48 percent of men backing the re-election of Mr. Trump, compared to 42 percent backing Joe Biden. For women, it’s 35 percent for Mr. Trump, and 58 percent for Mr. Biden.Broken down by race, the latest poll from Pew Research has Mr. Trump leading Mr. Biden among white men by a 12-percentage-point margin — 53 percent to 41 percent. Why do men and women, even some living under the same roof, have such divergent views on what issues matter and what people are fit to be our leaders? The U.S. gender gap has been the subject of a trove of academic research. The findings, generally, are not flattering to men. Women tend to cast votes based on what they perceive as the overall benefit to the nation and their communities. Men are more self-interested.Certainly, there are many men (and women) attracted to Mr. Trump’s racist, nativist and misogynistic rhetoric. For others, though, the choice is more nuanced.There’s a word that political scientists use — “salience” — that applies. It’s a way of framing what issues matter most to voters. A male and female partner in a marriage may both have been disgusted by Mr. Trump’s “grab ‘em by the pussy” comment. Neither liked his policy that separated migrant families at the border and put children in cages. Both think he bungled the coronavirus response.But these issues are not equally salient for them. The man cares; he just doesn’t care as much. His main concern is more likely to be the balance in his 401(k) account.“Women think about government in terms of the well-being of the country,” says Melissa Deckman, a professor of political science at Washington College in Maryland who has written extensively on the gender gap. “Men are much more likely to think about it in terms of their wallet. Their bottom line is, how does this affect me?”II.When Ronald Reagan defeated the incumbent president, Jimmy Carter, in the 1980 presidential election, exit polls showed that women favored him by a slim 2-percentage-point margin but that he won the male vote 55 to 36 percent. The last time the gender gap was that big was the 1950s, but at that point — and traditionally — it was women who were the more conservative voters, which was largely attributed to their greater religiosity.Polling is consistent that women are more likely to favor government spending on social issues, and that is likely one reason the gender gap emerged in 1980. Mr. Reagan campaigned aggressively to starve big government and shrink generous social programs, railing against “welfare queens” at a time when women, many of them poor, were increasingly heads of single-parent households. He fell in line with the Republican Party’s strong anti-abortion stance, even though he had signed liberal abortion legislation as governor of California. Some argued that the gender gap emerged because women were voting in their self-interest. But the sociologist Martin Gilens, now the chairman of the public policy department at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, took issue with that idea.In a paper published in the Berkeley Journal of Sociology late in Mr. Reagan’s first term, he wrote, “I do not believe that ‘women’s issues’ such as the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) or abortion, nor economic conditions such as the growing number of impoverished women, are primarily responsible for the gender gap, though they may play a part.” Instead, he continued, “I think the gender gap reflects traditional differences in male and female values and personalities, differences such as men’s greater competitiveness and concerns with issues of power and control, and women’s greater compassion and nurturance, rejection of force and violence, and concern with interpersonal relations.”The language is a bit dated, but much of the research since has come to similar conclusions. A 2012 report from what is now the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University reviewed polling results and summed up the issues dividing male and female voters.Women, it found, were more likely to favor an “activist role for government” and were more supportive of guaranteed health care, same-sex marriage and restrictions on firearms. They were more likely to favor legal abortion without restrictions, though polls sometimes show fairly equal support among men and women on abortion.Men’s political views were shaped by a more individualistic attitude, the report found — a feeling that government should not help so much.Dr. Deckman, the Washington College professor, points out that the lived experiences of many women do not attract them to such a view.“We expect women to be caretakers. That’s just still sort of the reality,” she said. “They do more taking care of kids, of elderly parents. That’s pretty universal around the world, but here in the U.S., it’s persistent.”Women in Europe and other Western democracies are also more likely to vote for left-leaning candidates, but the gender gaps tend to be more modest. The reason, said Rosie Campbell, a professor of politics at King’s College, London, is that the issues that divide America’s political parties — and sexes — are not as contested in places like England. “Social welfare programs, public health care, abortion, guns, those are mostly off the table,” she said.III.You can make an argument that, rather than men and women having changed their ways of thinking over the past several decades, the two major parties have basically branded themselves by gender, as well as by race. The hundreds of million of dollars spent each election cycle to “energize the base” serve to herd voters into their respective tents. Once inside, they hear messages that reaffirm and cement their party identity.The Republican Party is for white men and people who think like white men. “We see it in poll questions that ask, “Is America getting too soft and feminine?” Dr. Deckman said. “Those who answer ‘yes’ lean strongly Republican.”The Democratic Party is the party for women and for people of color, who are even more dependable Democrats than women. It is also, increasingly, the party of the college educated: In a late September Washington Post-ABC News poll, Mr. Trump led Mr. Biden by a modest 8 points among white men with a college degree, but by a whopping 39 points among white men without a college degree. In other words, white college-educated men are beginning to vote more like women and people of color. These demographics may increasingly unite to head off the most extreme manifestations of the white male vote.Even among minority voters, however, there is a gender gap. A Pew poll in early October showed that just 6 percent of Black women support Mr. Trump; for Black men, it was 11 percent. There was a bigger gap between Hispanic men and women: 23 percent of women were for Mr. Trump, and 35 percent of men.Mr. Trump has widened just about every pre-existing divide in America, and it is hard to imagine a candidate better suited to turn the gender gap into a canyon. His boorish tone, inability to express empathy and unwillingness to admit mistakes are not qualities that most women find attractive. “Women see him being the opposite of someone who is caring,” said Dr. Gilens.To the extent that Mr. Trump is entertaining, he would appeal more to men. There is evidence that when men and women pay attention to politics, they are looking at two different pictures.“Men consume more political news, but for a lot of them, especially younger men, it’s like a hobby and a sport,” said Eitan Hersh, a professor at Tufts University and the author of “Politics is for Power.” They follow Nate Silver, a statistician and the founder of the website FiveThirtyEight, “like he’s some kind of god.”“The women can’t do that because they’re out there organizing,” Dr. Hersh said. “They are way more active right now.”Mr. Trump was already deeply unpopular with female voters when the coronavirus hit, and his calamitous response to it may have put a large majority of their votes out of reach. Men are dying from the virus at greater rates but in almost every other way, women are bearing the burdens. In September, when the new school year began and many children were stuck at home, learning online, women left the work force at four times the rate of men.IV.The gender gap cannot be completely differentiated from rank misogyny. Some would argue that it is misogyny. At the very least, it is a sign of our nation’s broken culture that men and women cannot agree on fundamental moral questions: The importance of integrity and common decency. The humane treatment of society’s most vulnerable. The worthiness of a man to lead our nation who apparently paid hush money to a porn star.Anything could happen between now and Nov. 3, but Mr. Trump might be fading so fast and hard that Mr. Biden could be the first Democratic candidate for president to win the male vote — though not the white male vote — since Jimmy Carter in 1976.The president clearly knows he is struggling with women. His deficit with them is amplified by another kind of gap: Women consistently turn out to vote in higher numbers than men, by an average of about 4 percentage points.“So can I ask you to do me a favor? Suburban women, will you please like me?” he begged at a rally in Johnstown, Pa., on Oct. 13. “Please. Please. I saved your damn neighborhood.”This was part of an ongoing Trump trope — false in its particulars and racist in its intent — that Mr. Biden planned to flood suburban neighborhoods with low-income housing.Two days later, at a North Carolina rally, the president tried to appeal to women by telling them what they want — a torrent of Trump-splaining that seemed unlikely to help him with the female demographic. “You know what women want more than anything else? They want safety, security, and they want to be able to have their houses, and ‘Leave me alone,’” he said. “Right? The suburban woman.”Mr. Trump’s entreaties to women have come simultaneously with his attacks on the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Kamala Harris. Republicans spent a full three decades tearing down Hillary Clinton, often in flagrantly sexist ways — criticizing her clothes, her tone of voice, her physical stamina, her “likability,” her response to her husband’s infidelity. It worked and she lost because a large proportion of the nation, including lots of women, viscerally disliked her.The Republicans have had no such head start with Ms. Harris, a relative newcomer on the national stage. But the assault has begun. Appearing on Fox Business Channel after the vice-presidential debate, Mr. Trump twice referred to her as “this monster.”Half of the nearly 139 million Americans who voted in 2016 were married. It is impossible to know how many marriages include a Democrat and a Republican, but from data that researchers have compiled of voter registrations, it’s safe to say that it’s well into the millions.A few were willing to talk to me.Katie Blume works for a conservation advocacy organization, is a local officeholder in her small town in central Pennsylvania and was a Hillary Clinton delegate at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Her husband, a mechanic, is a Trump supporter. He was awaiting dental surgery, and not up for talking. I asked how she was coping.“I just drink more bourbon now,” she said.But more seriously, she added, “I have to compartmentalize it.”“He sees what’s posted on Facebook from his friends. One thing that resonates with him is immigration. He’s worried about people coming for Americans’ jobs. I care about social justice, the environment, reproductive rights. Those aren’t things he prioritizes. We talk about politics but we don’t argue about it.”I also spoke with Ann and Ilya Brodsky, who live in Fair Lawn, N.J. She is an educator and a liberal Democrat; he owns an HVAC business and is a Trump supporter.While they were good sports about it, they were arguing. Mr. Brodsky, who immigrated from Russia in his 20s, believes Republican rhetoric that Democrats are radically to the left and associates them with the Communist Party in the old Soviet Union. “Marx had a good idea but people went the wrong way with it,” he said.“Oh, please,” his wife said, “you have no idea what you’re talking about.”She said that their political differences were not important for many years, “but in this new regime, there’s no joking. It really can’t be discussed.”She began talking about gun control, an important issue for her. He said he believed every American family needed a tank in their garage.She put her head in her hands. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just can’t.”Michael Sokolove is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

Good morning, and welcome to our very last debate recap edition of On Politics — for this year, anyway. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host. Stay tuned for Giovanni Russonello’s Poll Watch later today.Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox every weekday.For President Trump, the measure of success in last night’s debate was clear: He needed a big win.This final matchup of the 2020 election season was his biggest remaining opportunity to substantially change the dynamics of a race that’s been slipping away from him for weeks — if not months.But instead of getting a debate victory, Mr. Trump fought Joe Biden to a draw, and that’s not what the president needed.There were some improvements over his previous debate performance: Following the advice of his aides, Mr. Trump focused his attention on attacking Mr. Biden, and restraining his emotional outbursts and frustrations with the moderator.While many of his arguments were littered with false and unsubstantiated claims, he drove a consistent message against Mr. Biden, casting him as a career politician who’s been ineffectual during his decades in Washington — “all talk and no action.”And Mr. Trump delivered red meat to his conservative base, alleging that the former vice president used his position to enrich his family — an unsubstantiated argument peddled by Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies.But amid all the attacks, Mr. Trump presented no clear vision to a country in the midst of a national crisis, failing to explain how he would use a second term.Mr. Trump is no longer a political outsider able to blame the Washington establishment for the country’s failings. Yet, he seemed to dismiss the more than 222,000 people killed by the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and the plight of hundreds of children separated from their parents at the southern border.For his part, Mr. Biden remained unfazed by the assault. He accused the president of trafficking in Russian disinformation and challenged him to release his taxes.Even with mute buttons and social distancing, the debate ended up being a strikingly normal political event in a very strange election year. Neither man performed in a way that would automatically disqualify him among his supporters or undecided voters.For some viewers, the debate brought back memories of 2016. Four years ago, Mr. Trump entered the final debate trailing in the polls and needing a big victory. He stuck with a more measured tone, attacked Hillary Clinton as a political insider and had his best performance of that campaign.Then, Mr. Trump trailed Mrs. Clinton by about six points, according to polling averages. Mr. Biden now leads by around nine points nationally, and he’s made notable inroads into key parts of the president’s coalition.Much of Mr. Biden’s strength stems from the low marks voters have given the president on the defining issue of the campaign — the coronavirus pandemic. Last night, Mr. Trump still did not have any good answers for how he would manage the spread of virus.As he has for months, the president tried to downplay the severity of the pandemic, arguing that the virus is easing its grip on the country even as the number of new infections hit the highest point in months. The claim flouts not only current reality but also what most voters expect for the future.Recent polling by The New York Times and Siena College found that just over half of likely voters believed that the worst of the pandemic was yet to come, compared with 37 percent who said the worst was over.“Anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America,” Mr. Biden said.In a particularly unpredictable election season, a Biden win is not a forgone conclusion, as my colleague Adam Nagourney detailed in the paper yesterday. But a draw in the final debate may not be enough to sharply turn the race away from him.When the debate began, more than 48 million Americans had already voted. For Mr. Trump to win this race, he must energize a “red wave” in the final days of this contest that could overtake the Democrats’ early voting advantage. That either means turning out a sizable number of new voters or persuading a decent slice of Americans to change their opinion and back the president.Mr. Trump may have gotten his best performance of the campaign last night, but it’s not clear that it will be enough to get him what he needs.Election 2020 More

The closing moments of the final presidential debate focused on climate change. Joe Biden stressed the need to expand sources of renewable energy while again disputing Donald Trump’s claim that he intended to ban fracking, which he does not. ‘I know more about wind than you do,’ Trump retorted, drawing an exasperated laugh from Biden. ‘It’s extremely expensive. Kills all the birds’
Humanity has eight years to get climate crisis under control – and Trump’s plan won’t fix it
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In Donald Trump’s world – laid bare during Thursday night’s final presidential debate with his Democratic rival Joe Biden in Nashville – fossil fuels are “very clean”, the US has the best air and water despite his administration’s extensive regulatory rollbacks, and the country can fix climate change by planting trees.
But according to the harsh realities being laid out by climate scientists, Trump’s world does not exist.
Humanity has just eight years to figure out how to get climate change under control before the future starts to look drastically worse – multiple-degree temperature increases, global sea-level rise, and increasingly disastrous wildfires, hurricanes, floods and droughts. Doing so will mean that unless there is a technological miracle, humans will at some point have to stop burning oil, gas and coal.
“We’re told by all the leading scientists in the world we don’t have much time,” Biden said. “We’re going to pass the point of no return within the next eight to 10 years. Four more years of this man … will put us in a position where we’ll be in real trouble,” the former vice-president said.
Much of the media coverage of the exchange – which as usual didn’t come until the end of the debate as time was running out – will probably focus on Trump’s attacks on Biden. He called his plan job-killing, argued it would cost $100tn and not $6tn, and accused Biden of flip-flopping on fracking. The drilling method has fueled a natural gas boom in swing states such as Pennsylvania, which both candidates see as critically important to winning the election. At one point, Biden dared Trump to publish evidence of him ever saying he would end fracking, and Trump promised he would.
Stories might quote Trump, who has denied the human-made climate crisis in a variety of strange ways, telling Biden “I know more about wind than you,” despite previously wrongly claiming wind power causes cancer. “They want to take buildings down because they want to make bigger windows into smaller windows. As far as they’re concerned if you had no window it would be a lovely thing,” Trump accused in another tangent. “This is the craziest plan that anyone has ever seen. It wasn’t done by smart people. Frankly, I don’t know how it could be good politically.”
But perhaps the most interesting point was when the candidates were asked what they would do for people – often people of color – who are living next to polluting gasoline refineries and petrochemical plants.
Trump pressed Biden: “Would you close down the oil industry?”
And Biden, who might typically steer clear of such a politically controversial question, said he would.
“I would transition from the oil industry, yes,” Biden said.
“The oil industry pollutes significantly,” he added. “It has to be replaced by renewable energy over time.”
Trump shot back that Biden “is saying is he would destroy the oil industry”.
“Would you remember that Texas? Would you remember that Pennsylvania? Oklahoma? Ohio?”

The moment was notable, including because it was the opposite of what he said about natural gas. He would not commit to any kind of end to the second half of the industry which has a fast-growing role in causing climate change.
“We need other industries to transition to get to ultimately a complete zero-emissions,” Biden said. “What I will do with fracking over time is to make sure we will capture the emissions from the fracking, capture the emissions from gas. We can do that by investing money.”
Speaking to reporters after the debate, Biden insisted the fossil fuel industry wouldn’t “be gone” until 2050.
“We’re not getting rid of fossil fuels. We’re getting rid of the subsidies for fossil fuels, but we’re not getting rid of fossil fuels for a long time,” Biden said.
Those kinds of statements illuminate why American environmental advocates have quietly worried whether Biden will do enough on climate, even as they have endorsed him and backed his plan.
While Biden is pitching large-scale spending to both help the economy recover and put people to work in green jobs, some fear climate could get lost among his priorities or that the political roadblocks to working with Congress and getting climate efforts past a conservative supreme court would prove too difficult.
A Trump win could be devastating to both US and global climate action, but a Biden win is not assured to significantly address the challenge either. More

The Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden assailed Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic during Thursday night’s final presidential debate, as the president attempted to reset a race that shows him trailing his opponent in opinion polls less than two weeks before election day.
The evening in Nashville began relatively calmly, with the rivals making their closing arguments to the nation amid a pandemic that has killed more than 220,000 Americans and infected millions more, including the president. In part due to the pandemic, more than 40 million Americans have already cast their ballot, shattering records and leaving Trump an increasingly narrow window to reset the debate around his handling of the coronavirus crisis and its economic fallout.
But Trump continued to downplay the severity of the public health crisis, defending his response and predicting that a vaccine was imminent, even though his own public health experts have said one would likely not be widely available to the American public until next summer.
“It will go away,” Trump said, offering a rosy assessment of the pandemic’s trajectory even as cases have started rising again across the US and public health experts warn that the US is on the precipice of a dangerous new wave.
“We’re rounding the corner,” he added.
“We can’t keep this country closed. This is a massive country with a massive economy,” Trump said. “There’s depression, alcohol, drugs at a level nobody’s ever seen before. The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself.”
In contrast, Biden opened his remarks by acknowledging the grim toll of the coronavirus pandemic and warned that the nation must prepare for “a dark winter”.
Biden said: “220,000 deaths. If you hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this. Anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States.”

The 90-minute debate was a far more coherent and civil affair than the first presidential debate last month, which devolved into a chaotic brawl with Trump incessantly hectoring his opponent and sparring with the moderator. The shift in tone was probably due to a rule change that required a candidate’s microphone to be muted while his rival delivered a two-minute response to the opening question on each of the six debate topics.
On Thursday, Trump largely abided by the rules, allowing Biden to speak uninterrupted, and even complimenting the moderator, the NBC News correspondent Kristen Welker, who he spent the last week criticizing.
Biden, too, was more restrained. When Trump made a false claim about his opponent, Biden looked skyward, as if calling on a higher power to keep him from reacting. But it didn’t always stop him.
When Trump said Biden called his decision to impose Covid-19 related travel restrictions on China “xenophobic”, the Democrat shot back: “He is xenophobic, but not because he cut off access from China.”
The stakes were high for both candidates, even if the debate was unlikely to dramatically redefine the contours of the presidential race. Despite the cascading public health and economic crises, Biden has maintained a steady lead over the incumbent, according to public opinion polls, while Trump has struggled to outline his vision for a second term and grapple with voters’ disapproval of his response to the pandemic.
Despite the increasingly ugly and personal nature of the campaign, the evening featured a substantive policy debate as the candidates diverged sharply on the issues of race, immigration and climate.

They were asked to speak directly to the black and brown Americans about racism in America. Biden said plainly that institutional racism exists and that combatting racial inequality would be a priority of his administration. Trump, ignoring the prompt, assailed his opponent for playing a central role writing the 1994 crime bill that many experts and critics say laid the groundwork for mass incarceration that disproportionately affected Black communities. Shielding his eyes to peer into the audience and concluding it was too dark to see properly, Trump was nonetheless confident that he was the “least racist person in this room”.
Biden was incredulous. “This guy has a dog whistle about as big as a foghorn,” he said, accusing Trump of being “one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in modern history” and a leader who intentionally “pours fuel on every single racist fire”.
In an exchange on immigration, Trump attempted to defend his administration’s decision to separate thousands of immigrant families at the southern border, even after revelations that 545 children have still not been reunited with their parents after two years apart. The president said the White House was working on a plan to reunite the children and their parents but insisted the blame lay with the Obama administration, which enforced a record number of deportations.
Biden forcefully denied that the previous administration was responsible for Trump’s family separation policy, decrying the situation as “criminal”.
But pressed on why voters should trust him to deliver immigration reform when the Obama administration failed to deliver on this promise, he conceded: “we made a mistake. It took too long to get it right.”

The final moments of the debate were devoted to a discussion on climate change. Biden stressed the need to expand sources of renewable energy – while again disputing Trump’s claim that he intended to ban fracking, which he does not.
“I know more about wind than you do,” Trump retorted, drawing an exasperated laugh from Biden. “It’s extremely expensive. Kills all the birds.”
But at one point Biden said he would “transition from the oil industry” and replace it with renewable energy over the next several years. “That’s a big statement,” Trump said.
Departing Nashville after the debate, Biden sought to clarify the remark: “We’re not getting rid of fossil fuels. We’re getting rid of the subsidies for fossil fuels.”

The candidates also clashed sharply on their finances and family business entanglements.
Citing revelations in the New York Times that Trump only paid $750 a year in federal income taxes while maintaining an undisclosed bank account in China, Biden implored Trump to “release your tax returns or stop talking about corruption”. Trump, who has not yet released his tax returns, claimed his accountants told him that he had “prepaid tens of millions of dollars” in taxes.
In turn, Trump repeatedly leveled unsubstantiated claims about the former vice-president’s son Hunter Biden. The Democratic nominee defended his son and categorically denied the accusations as he sought to turn the conversation back to policy.
“There’s a reason why he’s bringing up all this malarkey,” Biden said, speaking directly to the camera. “He doesn’t want to talk about the substantive issues. It’s not about his family and my family. It’s about your family.” More

She began with a plea for civility. “Please,” Kristen Welker instructed the men standing before her, “speak one at a time.”For the most part on Thursday night, Ms. Welker got what she wanted.In a high-stakes debut overseeing a presidential debate — taking charge of a candidate matchup that proved a bucking bronco for the previous moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News — Ms. Welker, an NBC anchor and correspondent, managed to restore order to a quadrennial institution that some believed could not be tamed.No doubt, she benefited from Trump 2.0: A calmer president arrived onstage Thursday, a contrast with the candidate who derailed the proceedings in Cleveland last month. And she had a technological assist in the form of muted microphones, a novelty installed to keep the exchanges between Mr. Trump and his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., from going from civics to chaos.But in a poised and crisp performance, Ms. Welker, 44, succeeded where Mr. Wallace was walloped. Battle tested by years of covering the Trump White House, she parried with the president and cut him off as needed; Mr. Trump, eager to shed voters’ memories of his unruly performance last month, mostly acquiesced.Ms. Welker, the first Black woman to moderate a general-election presidential debate since Carole Simpson of ABC in 1992, entered the evening facing an onslaught of attacks from Mr. Trump, who this week called her “terrible.”His aides dredged up her parents’ political donations in an effort to accuse her of bias; a photograph of her with Barack Obama at a White House holiday party emerged on right-wing websites. (Her attendance at Mr. Trump’s equivalent party in 2017 went unmentioned.)Little of the pressure showed onscreen. Ms. Welker was polite but firm in guiding the discussion, offering chances for brief rebuttals but also taking control when the candidates threatened to go on a harangue, repeatedly urging, “We need to move on.”When Mr. Trump descended into unverified accusations about the business dealings of Mr. Biden’s family — a key but unsubstantiated element of his closing campaign argument — Ms. Welker let the discussion play out, to a point. When the president compared Mr. Biden’s siblings to “a vacuum cleaner, sucking money,” Ms. Welker firmly cut him off: “OK, President Trump, thank you. We do need to move on.”Mr. Trump granted Ms. Welker, or “Kristen” as he called her, a rarity in his dealings with journalists: some praise. “By the way, so far, I respect very much the way you’re handling this, I have to say,” he told Ms. Welker at one point — only a few hours after he disparaged her to his millions of Twitter followers.Whether the president is as friendly to Ms. Welker in the days ahead is a very open question. But her achievement on Thursday night may be that viewers came away focused on the candidates and what they had to say (muted microphones and all) rather than on the moderator’s performance.“First of all, I’m jealous,” Mr. Wallace said when asked for his thoughts on Fox News immediately after the debate ended. “I would have liked to be able to moderate that debate.” More