As the 2024 US election enters its final countdown, University of Melbourne academic Professor Timothy J. Lynch said the two major candidates both have multiple pathways to success and in an incredibly tight race such as this, any slight shift in voter sentiment could significantly tip the scale.
Lynch, whose research focus is US domestic and foreign policy and party politics, said one of the biggest appeals of Republican candidate Donald Trump is his ability to evoke nostalgia amongst voters – in both an economic and social stability sense.
“The further we are away from [when] Trump won, the more Americans seem to view that four-year period [of his presidency] – ’17 to ’21 – through rose-tinted spectacles,” he told the Fiduciary Investors Symposium in Healesville, Victoria, which was hosted by Professional Planner sister publication Investment Magazine.
During this time, Lynch said Trump has prospered in a context where inflation was under control, job growth was strong, and many Americans “seem to want a version of this back”.
“In the disaster of [Covid-19], and we can argue about Trump’s role in that, but certainly the economic ramifications of Covid made Trump’s pre-Covid period look like the happy times,” Lynch said.
“And Americans, about 80 million of them, it seems, are about to affirm their nostalgia for this lost administration – an administration that probably would have had a second term had there not been a virus.”
Another form of nostalgia, despite being somewhat of an exaggeration, is that there will be “world peace” under Trump. Lynch said it’s hard for people to get away from the historical facts that when Trump was in office, Russia seemed “quiescent”; a withdrawal was planned from Afghanistan; and tensions in the Middle East were muted by the Abraham Accords.
“Exaggerations, caricature is very powerful motivation in a voter’s mind,” Lynch said.
Looking for basic competency
But this is not to say Harris has no advantages on her side. For one, Lynch said, many voters are experiencing so-called “circus boredom” – wherever Trump goes, chaos such assassination attempts and “political incorrectness” ensue.
“What made Trump such a remarkable figure six [or] eight years ago has faded, and people just want a return to basic competency,” Lynch said.
“Harris, of course, is running on this notion of her having a to-do list versus his revenge-filled enemies list.”
Secondly, Lynch said economists – not just Democratic party-affiliated but also neutral ones – have often raised that the US economy is not in a bad position. The Federal Reserve has cut interest rates by half a percentage point in September, and ADP Research Institute data suggests than in October US companies added the most workers in more than a year. However, Lynch said the problem is it just “doesn’t feel like” the economy is recovering.
“The problem that the Democrats face is they own the Biden economy,” Lynch said.
“She needs to be able to tell a story, with time running out, that things will get better. If she can do that, allied to these other reasons to vote Democratic, she may be able to do it [win the election].”
Regardless of the election outcome, Stanford University academic and Hoover Institution senior fellow Professor Stephen Kotkin said America’s society doesn’t change as radically or as quickly as elections would indicate.
“In part, that’s because government is often divided,” he told the symposium.
“There’s no Trumpism beyond Trump. Almost every Trumpist candidate has been defeated at the polls, even with Trump’s endorsements. Very few have won, so the idea that there’s some lasting Trumpism remains to be seen.”
Kotkin urged people to not overestimate the election’s impact.
“The federal system, where the states have tremendous power, where government is often divided, and the economy – which is not reducible to the political system and the fact that the political system changes more slowly – indicates to me that as consequential as the election seems, we have to be careful not to exaggerate the consequences,” he said.
“It’s not the apocalypse either way, despite each side’s rhetoric that it is the apocalypse.”
