News Analysis: Trump tries to revive failing campaign, but facing uphill climb

U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump is trying to resuscitate his dying campaign, but he is facing a tough job due to a civil war with his own party and new accusations against him for groping women.

Trump, the Republican nominee, managed to beat the odds at the second presidential debate with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on Sunday despite taking a pounding from all sides after the release of the 2005 tapes containing his outlandish sexist remarks and graphic description of how he groped women.

But while some experts thought his campaign was finished, a defiant Trump blasted Clinton on the debate stage over and over with charges of corruption related to her scandals and alleged missteps.

While Clinton appeared to put up a fight in the first half, she seemed to run out of steam and appeared to have difficulty hitting back against Trump's repeated allegations of her corruption.

But Trump's lewd remarks about women led to his continuing slide in nationwide polls, which showed Clinton leading by 6.2 percentage points on Wednesday.

Moreover, some of donors who've donated 10,000 U.S. dollars or more to Trump are asking Trump team for their money back, given the release of Trump's lewd comments about women.

This and other developments beg the question of whether Trump can turn things around less a month away from the election.

"Before the debate his political obituary was being written, and now he managed to resuscitate a campaign that was on life support," Republican strategist Ford O'Connell told Xinhua.

"So he lives to fight another day. But with (less than a month) left, he's going to need a game changer, because she (Hillary) is still slightly favored in the Electoral College," said O'Connell.

Though Trump did better than he was in the first debate, "he's still down in the race," O'Connell said.

O'Connell added that if this election is about change and not about Trump's fitness to be president, then he might win; however, if the election is about his fitness, then he will lose.

The release of the tapes about Trump's lewd sexist remarks about women ignited inner bickering within the Republican Party. While Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and several other lawmakers immediately withdrew support to Trump, some others decried their moves while threatening to withdraw their support to Ryan's reelection bid in January.

Trump has slammed Ryan and other Republicans opposing his campaign for making a "sinister deal" against him.

But it seemed that the nightmare for Trump, a former TV celebrity and owner of American beauty pageant, is far from over.

In a story published by the New York Times, two women accused Trump of making unwanted sexual advances years ago, though the billionaire dismissed it as total fabrication.

Several former pageant contestants also revealed that Trump used to walk into backstage before a show when many of the women were half naked and in the process of changing clothes. Enditem