The morning after Wednesday night’s Republican debate, Jeb Bush flew to Portsmouth, N.H., where he stood on the waterfront outside a picturesque chowder shop on which his staff had tacked a large sign proclaiming, “Jeb can fix it.”

It’s not clear that he can.

The one-time front-runner in the Republican race, Bush has suffered a steady eclipse for months, first at the hands of Donald Trump and more recently from his fellow Floridian and one-time protege Sen. Marco Rubio.

The enormous fundraising success that Bush showed in the first half of the year has long since subsided, with new donors slow to join a campaign that has languished. The campaign has had little success with grass-roots fundraising, leaving it highly dependent on wealthy donors. And the establishment figures who flocked to back him in the spring have grown jittery as winter nears.

A week after opting against entering the Democratic primary, Vice President Joe Biden visited with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at his Naval Observatory residence on Thursday.

Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist, who has tapped into strong support from the party’s liberal base in his quest for the Democratic nomination, said in a statement that the two discussed key policy platforms to his campaign. Those include education reform and the need for changes to the 2010 Citizens vs. United decision, which allows donors to make unlimited contributions to certain political groups.

An endorsement from Biden will certainly be courted by Sanders and Hillary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner for the party’s nomination. Sanders and Biden spent nearly two decades together on Capitol Hill.

Biden, who for several months weighed a decision on whether to enter the primary, vowed last week that he will have a voice in the 2016 presidential campaign.

In his statement, Sanders lauded the work of Biden and President Obama.

“I look forward to working with President Obama and Vice President Biden to tackle some of the major issues facing our country,” Sanders said.

Exxon Mobil has been under an unwelcome spotlight in recent weeks after journalists unearthed company documents suggesting the firm knew – for decades – much more than it let on about the threat of global warming. And the spotlight just got brighter amid Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign swing through New Hampshire.

The findings, first reported by the nonprofit Inside Climate News and covered in depth by the Los Angeles Times, so disturbed Clinton rival Bernie Sanders that he called for a federal investigation into the company last week.

Sanders warned of “a potential instance of corporate fraud.”

On Thursday, Clinton voiced her own concerns. As she chatted with voters following a town hall event in New Hampshire, a local environmentalist asked her whether Exxon Mobil should be investigated by the Department of Justice.

“Yes. Yes, they should,” Clinton said. “There’s a lot of evidence that they misled.”

California Reps. Ted Lieu and Mark DeSaulnier, both Democrarts, also have asked Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch to investigate whether Exxon Mobil broke the law by engaging “in a campaign to deceive the American people about the known risks of fossil fuels.” And four Democratic senators sent a letter Thursday to Exxon Mobil, calling for it to disclose whether company money was used to fund groups that question whether climate change is real.

Fresh off a debate performance where he was at center stage, but not the center of attention, Donald Trump sounded nonetheless content.

Trump, who still holds an edge in national polls in his quest for the GOP presidential nomination, spoke Thursday about the scuffle between two of his challengers – Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio – while rallying supporters in Nevada.

“They don’t like each other,” he said. “Last night, the heat came out. A lot of anger and a lot of hatred between those two.”

When he focused on his own performance, he looked to the Internet for positive measurements.

“We won every online poll. … We won CNBC. It kept saying, ‘Trump won.’ I loved it. It kept going higher and higher,” he said of the network’s online debate poll. “Pundits said, ‘Trump was a little off his game.’ … Really?”

Trump tends to cite polls that show him doing well, regardless of source. Online polls, particularly in the immediate aftermath of a debate, are generally considered unreliable barometers of who performed well.

Trump acknowledged that some his opponents, including Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, did well in the debate.

Though some Republicans, including Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, criticized CNBC for how it handled the debate, Trump said he was not surprised.

“I’m immune,” he said. “I’ve seen so many bad things from the press, I’m immune.”

The Republican presidential debates continued their run as a TV ratings hit, delivering an average of 14 million viewers for CNBC on Wednesday.

The audience was the smallest of the three GOP candidate showdowns so far, but the debate still delivered the highest ratings number ever in the 26-year history of NBCUniversal’s niche cable channel covering business and finance. CNBC typically averages about 343,000 viewers in prime time.

Have just a few minutes? The Times' Cathleen Decker and Seema Mehta will get you up to speed on the winners and losers from last night's debate.

There is a new game show in town, or back in town, called something like "Presidential Debate," in which players are asked questions, and possibly answer them, while attempting to demonstrate by the force of their personality that they are qualified to lead the free world. It's a little like "Jeopardy" without the buzzer or correct answers (there may be money, eventually); a little like "America's Got Talent," without the singing, comedy or magic; and a little like a beauty pageant, without the swimsuits.

As to the answers, it's not necessary, as far as I can tell, to stick to facts as long as you believe or seem to believe everything you say. It's not even necessary to answer the question you were asked; you can pick some other question entirely to answer, or make a speech you've prepared in advance. It all counts. Accuracy doesn't seem to affect one's standing in the game, which will end in a contest between the Donkeys and the Elephants right around the time of the next World Series. The winner gets to be president -- for four years, like in the Olympics or the World Cup.

Like more than a dozen other stragglers in the Republican presidential race, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida has been counting on widely viewed televised debates to lift him into the top tier of candidates.

His sure-footed performance in Wednesday’s CNBC debate was Rubio’s strongest so far, with a withering retort at the ready when his archrival Jeb Bush assailed him for skipping Senate votes while running for president.

But in a volatile and unpredictable nominating contest, the question for Rubio remains: Was it enough?

The third Republican presidential debate was supposed to be one that winnowed the field. Instead, it is likely to revive several faltering candidates, while harming only one – former front-runner Jeb Bush.

The event Wednesday night suggested that, even as the Democratic contest is narrowing, the race for the Republican nomination remains wide open, with months to go before the first states to vote -- Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina -- finally force some consolidation onto a field that still includes more than a dozen candidates.

Prognosticators had predicted a fight between Donald Trump and the man who only recently leapfrogged him in national and Iowa polls — retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. But those two were bit players for most of the evening. Oddly, perhaps, neither Trump’s business background — nor the CEO experience of Carly Fiorina — let them dominate a debate focused sharply on the economy and budgetary matters.