November 4 - Impacts of Foreign Policy on this Midterm Election; Public Anger in Mexico Over 43 Disappeared Students; Will Obama Get Any Judicial Nominations Through a Republican Senate?

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with how much foreign policy has been an issue in this midterm election and speak with David Rothkopf the CEO and publisher of Foreign Policy Magazine and the author of the new book “National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear”. We discuss how much exaggerated fears of Ebola and the Islamic State might have impacted Tuesday’s election and look into why Americans are prone to overreact to foreign actors like Ayatollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and the Islamic State who can sway elections, and why we take the bait from terrorists whose expressed aim is to terrorize us and spread fear.

Part 2

Then we go to Mexico City and speak with Dudley Althaus, a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal who covers Mexico and Central America and joins us to discuss the capture of the fugitive mayor and his wife who are accused of ordering the police in Iguala, the third largest city in Guerrero State, to fire on students, 43 of whom were then handed over to a drug gang and have been missing since late September. We discuss how public anger in Mexico has exploded as a result of this latest of many drug gang-related atrocities, undermining President Pena Nieto’s assurances that the country has turned the corner in the decades-long war on drugs that has cost over 150,000 Mexican lives with 22,000 missing. 

Part 3

Then finally we go to Madison, Wisconsin for what may be the only good news for progressives coming out of the midterms that the Republicans are expected to sweep, and get an update from a state whose aggressively conservative governor Scott Walker has bitterly divided the electorate. Lisa Graves, the Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy and a former Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General and Chief Counsel for Nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee joins us to discuss the unexpectedly high turnout in this key governor’s race and whether Obama will be able to get any judicial nominations through a Republican-controlled senate.