September 18 - Could the Last Election be Contested or Even Done Over? The Last-Ditch Repeal of Obamacare Could Squeak Through the Senate; How Would Trump Handle a Terrorist Incident?

Full Program

Part 1

We will begin with the possibility that the 2016 election could be contested following a question by NPR’s Terry Gross who asked Hillary Clinton “would you completely rule out questioning the legitimacy of this election if we learn that the Russian interference in the election was even deeper than we know”. To which Hillary Clinton replied “No, I wouldn’t rule it out.” An expert on the history of presidential elections and election chicanery, the author of “Down for the Count: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America”, investigative journalist Andrew Gumbel joins us. We will discuss how at least two presidents Samuel Tilden in 1876 and Al Gore in 2000 won the popular vote and the Electoral College but lost their elections, and look into the possibility of a do-over if the Special Counsel Robert Mueller were to find compelling evidence that the combination of Russian active measures, voter roll hacking and campaign collusion was sufficient to swing the election, given the narrow 77 thousand vote margin Trump won the Electoral College by.

Part 2

Then we will assess the chances of the effort underway to repeal Obamacare with the Graham/Cassidy bill that is being pushed through the Senate ahead of a September 30 deadline. Michael Hiltzik, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist with The Los Angeles Times, joins us to discuss this wolf in sheep’s clothing that is being cast as a moderate common-sense alternative to the Draconian repeal bills that have floundered so far, and his latest article at The Los Angeles Times “The GOP’s last-ditch Obamacare repeal bill may be the worst one yet”.

Part 3