March 17 - Republican Obstruction Means the Supreme Court is No Longer Supreme; The Populist Explosion; The Motivated Versus the Alienated

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Merrick Garland’s strange trip to Capitol Hill today and speak with Elizabeth Wydra, the President of the Constitutional Accountability Center who frequently participates in Supreme Court litigation and has argued several important cases in the federal courts of appeals. She joins us to discuss whether simple courtesy was on display today and if Republican senators were able to bring themselves to shake the nominees hand in spite of the dictate from the Senate’s Republican Leader Mitch McConnell who on day one vowed to destroy Obama’s presidency and vowed to block a replacement for Justice Scalia within an hour of the announcement of Scalia’s death.

Part 2

Then we speak with John Judis, a senior writer at The National Journal who has a recent article at The Washington Post “After 2016 Will Political Parties Ever Look the Same”? He joins us to discuss his forthcoming book “The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession has Transformed American and European Politics”. We examine the rise of populism on the right and left in both Europe and the U.S. and assess whether Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders will be the main beneficiaries of populist anger at those who have rigged the economy and downsized the American Dream.

Part 3

Then finally we explore the electoral landscape ahead in terms of who is motivated and who is alienated, and speak with Katherine Newman, the Provost at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of twelve books on poverty, the working poor and the consequences of inequality and joins us to discuss how much the enthusiasm deficit on the Democratic side will depress the vote while Trump is activating Independents and so-called Reagan Democrats on the Republican side.