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Why This Election Is the Most Crucial Since the Civil War

Matt Bennett, co-founder of national think-tank Third Way, tells The New Abnormal why a second Trump presidency would be a “catastrophe” and leave America “unrecognizable.”

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Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.

You have probably heard people say before that the next election will be “the most consequential of our lifetime.”

Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, a national think-tank that champions modern center-left ideas, tells The New Abnormal that it is an overused term—unless you are referring to the 2024 presidential election.

“It seems like every cycle we say that and we kind of mean it but this time I think we are in a category change where I believe the United States and the way that we think about ourselves as a nation has not been in danger like this since 1865. I think the only comparable moment to this was the Civil War,” he tells The New Abnormal co-host Danielle Moodie.

“I believe that if this election goes wrong—that if we return Donald Trump to power—we are going to live in a country that will become unrecognizable to us in very short order,” he said.

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“In 1968, the hinge swung the wrong direction and America elected a malign character to be president and that turned out very badly for us with Nixon,” he says. “I would argue that while Nixon was a bad president and a bad person, he does not hold a candle to Donald Trump in either respect. I think a second Trump administration would make the Nixon administration look like he was Abraham Lincoln.”

Bennett says the difference is that Trump now better understands how “the levers of power work in the White House” and that he will appoint sycophants around him who will carry out his orders and fail to hold him to account.

“I think most importantly, the sole emphasis that he places on having loyal lickspittle toadies around him, rather than people like General Mattis—that would be the true catastrophe,” he says.

Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.

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