from washington, the mx laughlin group, the american original. for over three decades, the sharpest minds, best sources, hardest talk. . issue one. off to the races. >> this november, two and a half months from now, voters will have their say on whether his or her congress member is worth reelecting. all 435 seats in the u.s. house of representatives are up for election, and 36 seats of the 100 members of the u.s. senate. as of today, the republican party controls the house, and as of today, the democratic party controls the senate. and also as of today, polling is giving us an inkling as to

whether these majorities maintain their status quo after election day or whether either the house or the senate will flip. well, get this. according to a new nbc "wall street journal" maris poll conducted three weeks ago, july 28-31, the senate, now democratic, will flip to the republicans. the poll found that 43% of registered voters, that's registered voters, say they want the republicans to control the senate as compared to 41% who want the democrats to retain control. as for the house, 43% want the republicans to retain control. no flip, as compared to 41% who want the democrats to gain control. republicans may preen over these numbers, but they should keep in mind that 50% of registered voters think congress on the hole has been

one big collection of do- nothings. as compared to 3% who say it has been very productive. question, is it likely that the maris poll overstates democratic strength? pat buchanan? >> i think the republicans are going to win the senate, john. very narrowly, they will hold the house, may gain a couple of seats. but what are the republicans going to get? the congress' approval was at 14% in a poll a week ago, nbc poll. they are going to get that. even if they got the senate, they won't be able to overcome a filibuster by harry reid's democrats. they are not going to be able to overcome a veto by the president, so they will have to compromise with him. that's going to come at the expense of republican principals. and finally, john, you ought to remember, you know, remember, 80th congress, republicans took over both houses in 1946. harry truman pounded that to a pulp, the no-good, do-nothing 80th congress and won re-

election, or election in his own right. i'm not sure that republican control of the congress the next two years is going to be a great political boon to the party. are you making a prediction here, or not? >> i think if the republicans control both houses of congress, they will have problems not producing themselves in 2016. yes. eleanor? >> well, i just don't think republicans are making all those calculations. i think right now, winning isn't everything. it's the only thing actually. >> eleanor, winning is everything! >> winning is everything. it's the only thing for republicans going into november. they really want to get the senate, and the way, where the races fall, six of the seven most competitive races are in states that romney won by big margins. so the republicans are really going to have to screw up to not take control. but they are perfectly capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, because they are on this kind of impeachment kick or let's sue the president kick. obama care is turning out to be pretty successful. it's not going to be the silver

bullet. benghazi is sort of frittered away, and people hate congress. so i think there's a chance that the democrats could hold their own, but that it won't be the shellacking that people fear. susan? >> okay. so you've got 10 senate seats, 13 house seats held by democrats that are toss-ups. only two republicans in either the house or the senate are toss-ups. just those numbers alone suggest republicans have a far better chance. but if you look at individual poll numbers, it tells a different story. the leads that these republicans have are small. there's 90 days left and the democrats are outraising the republicans. as eleanor said-- >> outraising? >> they are outraising them. in 14 of the key races, republicans are far outraising the -- as eleanor said, republicans could do something that happens between now and november that makes it harder for them. certainly it wouldn't be unprecedented for that to happen. i also agree with pat. if the democrats lose and

republicans take over the senate, therefore we would have republicans in the house and the senate. it's going to be difficult for them to govern. not only because we have a democratic president, but because there are key issues they don't agree on. they are going to fight and there's going to be a lot of pressure and improvement ratings are terrible as it is in congress. >> you're aware this is an off- year election? >> it's a midterm election, so it's not presidential. >> what's the turnoff in off- year election? >> it's lower, but higher than an off-off-year, the last election, where just a few governors were up. in a presidential election year, there's much higher turnout, but we've been seeing higher turnouts, people becoming more interested in elections. >> mm-hmm. >> it's possible we may see more turnout. however, that's going to hurt democrats if you get just impassioned people turn out, it helps the underdogs. >> in off-year elections, voters will turn out, generally older, more politically engaged, more likely to have an axe to grind against the incumbent party in power. the results are very different

for registered -- from registered voters, registered voter polls. >> well-- >> are you calculating that into this? >> that's part of the reason why people think republicans could take over the senate because they are not the incumbents in the senate. older voters tend to vote republican and say you get impassioned conservative voters turning out, that could help them. however, democrats could gain from hispanic voters turning out, especially if the president decides to take a key executive actions in this summer that would help hispanics here in the country perhaps living here illegally. that could boost popularity for the party. >> executive amnesty will set the country completely on fire. i do agree, it might get out the hispanic vote, but you all have red state democrats denouncing the president for doing it, for engaging in unconstitutional action-- >> they are willing to lose those democrats. >> it would poll arrestize-- >> executive amnesty is your word and the word the writer is putting out. but that's not what the president will do. he'll act within his own

constitutional with boundaries. let's see what he does. >> is there deep pessimism about the country and the leadership of the country? >> yes, i think there is. >> is that going to influence how people vote? >> of course it will. the single most influential factor on the u.s. is the economy. and we have a slow-growing economy with a lot of people being hurt, lot of people on part-time work, very, very, very weak improvements in their standard of living compared to where they see the, shall we say the upper 1% as the cliche goes. >> yeah. >> so i think that's going to drive a lot of people and it's going to be held at the -- and the responsibility for it is at the feet of the president and of the democrats. >> which party wants to do something about that and has specific proposals out there? it's the democrats. and if they can get their people to the polls, nancy pelosi said a couple of weeks ago, half of our supporters don't even know there's an election. so you've got to get those

people engaged. some of these issues that we've talked about already could get those folks engaged. >> -- get out the vote-- >> the question is who these people who are being hurt-- >> exec amnesty will get us all engaged. [ overlapping speakers ] >> they look at the president always. >> the president is not on the ballot. >> he's not on the ballot, but he's the leader of the democratic party and that's why the democratic party-- >> he's not helping the democrats, but the republicans aren't representing the republicans. the republican congress has basement ratings. >> the 1000-point drop in the dow in the last couple of weeks i think is going to have an impact on the economy and on this election. >> oh, the 1%ers won't vote! >> 10% -- exit question. please restrain from interfering with the progress of the show. in 2010, obama took a self- described shellacking in the midterm elections. are the democrats in for another shellacking? yes or no, pat buchanan? >> i think -- yeah, i think they will lose the senate.

i think the republicans might pick up a couple of seats in the house because usually they win the house, even when they got a lower, lower electoral turnout. >> yes or no, got to move fast. >> given the nature of the map, i think republicans are not going to do as well as they anticipate and there are some democratic surprises out there. michelle nunn in georgia, allison-- >> no shellacking? >> no shellacking. >> it will be a healthy victory, not a shellacking for the republicans. >> that's right. >> you mean they will win over the senate? >> win the senate and pick up seats in the house, based on the map currently. >> what's the shellacking? >> 40 seats in the house. they won't do that. they will get a majority in the senate. they won't get the 60 votes they need, which would allow them to do whatever they wanted. >> we may be in a problem of nomenclature. shellacking. >> ultimately, this will be seen as a victory for the republicans because they will pick up enough seats, both in the senate and the house to be able to establish that. >> i predicted four months ago the republicans will pick up-- >> your prediction was right on the mark. >> it was insightful?

>> insightful and when you think about how far in advance you predicted this, it was actually -- [ laughter ] >> that's part of the wisdom of age. [ laughter ] don't forget, the mclaughlin group has its own website. you can watch this program or earlier programs on the web at any time from anywhere in the world at mclaughlin.com. could anything be simpler or more enticing? mclaughlin.com. issue two, capital punishment. >> closed his eyes, he went to sleep. then he started gasping and he did. he gasped for more than an hour and a half. witnesses to the lee that will injection to joseph woods last month in arizona said mr. woods gasped over 60 times before dying. usually a person dies within 10 to 15 minutes, but wood was not pronounced dead until nearly two hours after the injection. one hour into the execution, woods' attorneys phoned a judge to file an emergency appeal to stop the execution, but before

the judge could rule, woods was dead. he was convicted for the 1989 shooting deaths of his estranged girlfriend and her father. wood was on death row for 23 years. >> everybody's more worried about did he suffer. who really suffered was my dad and my sister when they were killed. >> wood died from a lethal combination of two drugs that sedate and stop someone's breathing. the drugs were injected 15 times during the execution before woods died. the two drugs are a mixture, also used in ohio earlier this year on convicted killer dennis mcguire who gasped for nearly one half hour before dying. both the ohio execution and now the arizona execution have caused the governors of those states to launch reviews of the execution process. for years, the drug pentobarbital was used in lethal injections, but now is in short supply after its

european manufacturers decided to stop selling it to u.s. prisons. the eu does not have the death penalty. despite say the moratoriums issued in the wake of some so- called botched executions and others due to people found innocent after being executed, 32 u.s. states have the death penalty as compared to 18 states and the district of columbia where it is outlawed. in the states that have the death penalty, they continue to execute. convicted rapist and killer michael worthington was put to death in the state of missouri, making him the first inmate to die by lethal injection after the botched execution of joseph woods. question, is it disingenuous for capital punishment foes to lobby to bar the production of the lethal drugs used in executions and then to take advantage of the resulting botched executions to garner media attention? do you follow that? >> i think you got a point, but

look, that's not the main problem here. look, the fact that some of these people convicted and sentenced to death take a few minutes to die, lot of people, john, take an awful long time to die who are innocent and good people. that doesn't bother me. the point of it is, do you want to have this death penalty on the books? i do agree it ought to be decided at the state level. i do agree that there ought not to be -- you ought to do everything you can to avoid aspects of torture. but the real problem with the death penalty for people, john, isn't the minutes it takes to die. it is the months and years of anticipation that they are going to die by a date certain and that the society and the community has willed their death. it is that on a person's conscience and belief system that is far more problematic in terms of suffering than the act of -- than putting a needle in their arm and letting them die in two minutes or 10 minutes. mort? >> look, i agree with what pat is saying. i think it is the anticipation of death normally by the people who have been convicted, but by

all the people associated with them. that is a very difficult thing to do. it's a terribly difficult issue for an american public to deal with. this has been a part, like it or not, of the american way of dealing with people who have killed other people. and the question is, are we at this point beyond that kind of behavior? i think there are a lot of people who are feeling we don't need the death penalty frankly. >> there's a profound sense of unease about putting another human being willingly and willfully to death. >> yes, exactly. >> and that shows up in the way we handle all of these sort of cases, the botched executions. and it is a state by state, reflects the culture in the valleys of the political establishment in the various states. and so i think it's going to continue to be fought. you're not going to have a federal ban. that could never get through. and then you have in tennessee where they don't have the proper, you know, dosages and they are not comfortable with that. they have now written into the law that they are bringing the

executioner's chair back, which some-- >> electric chair? >> electric chair, right, which seems rather barbaric. >> do you remember michael dukakis? >> yes. >> do you remember the debate? >> i sure do, bernie shaw asked him if your wife was raped and brutalized and murdered, would you favor the death penalty? and he gave a disquestion cigs on his opposition to the death penalty and it was a death penalty for his candidacy. >> he said no. >> he said no. >> right. >> that killed his election possibilities? >> i don't question-- >> well, he was going down anyhow! >> i don't question that he, he would have felt a great deal of emotion if this happened in real life, but he was responding as a potential presidential candidate. you know, not as a husband. turns out, it was a political mistake. >> would you have liked to see dukakis president? >> yes, i would have actually. >> would you? no. who remembers dukakis? >> i knew him well. >> would you have voted for him? >> i was not old enough to vote

at the time. >> okay. stephens, supreme court justice, retired, who wrote this book, by the way, six amendments and why we should change the constitution? >> john paul stevens. >> okay. stephens is swayed. let's hear him. 8th amendment of the u.s. constitution reads, quote, excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted, unquote. many believe the words "cruel and unusual punishment" apply to the death penalty, which is a reason in and of itself for its abolition and former supreme court judge john paul stevens is now one of the abolitionists. stevens, nominated by president gerald ford, served on the high court from 1975 until 2010, 35 years. in his new book, six amendments, how and why we

should change the constitution, justice stevens proposes adding five words to the language of the 8th amendment. quote, excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments such as the death penalty inflicted, unquote. >> he wanted to revise the constitution, which now reads excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments. constitution stops there. he wants the following words included, such as the death penalty inflicted. question, could an antideath penalty constitutional amendment such as former justice stevens, who had enormous experience, proposed, could that pass today? >> no. >> pat, exit question? >> it could not get through either house of the congress of the united states and it needs three fourths of the senate. >> quickly? >> 32 states still practicing the death penalty, do the math, i don't think you could get victories on capitol hill. >> quickly.

>> it's being decided on the state level anyway, so it's not even necessary. >> right. it will thought be passed at the level that he wants it to be passed. but it is going -- his recommendation is going to continue this dialogue now in a very serious way. >> it's a good idea. >> when will it be passed? >> never. >> never. >> it will be decided on the state level. >> never? >> state by state will decide it. it will never get through three fourths of the state. >> within one decade: okay. of the 195 nations in the world, 58 still retain capital punishment. here's a sample from that list. afghanistan, belarus, china, egypt, indonesia, iran, iraq, japan, jordan, lebanon, libya, malaysia, nigeria, north korea, oman, pakistan, saudi arabia, singapore, south sudan, sudan, syria, thailand, uganda, united arab emirates, united states of america, vietnam, yemen, zimbabwe. >> any surprises, pat? >> no. >> no surprises?

>> ones that outlaw the death penalty are western countries which no longer believe in fighting, dying and killing, two horrendous wars so they outlawed that. the rising countries, islamic countries all of them, they believe in these types of finality for their enemies and we'll find out who wins this century. >> those countries don't believe in it after due process of law either because you have a lot of these renegade groups which are rising, which is the scourge of the early part of the-- >> you sound like a republican. >> that's not sounding republican. that's talking about what reality is out there and they are inflicting these penalties, chopping off hands, and we saw that in the last part of the last century as well. >> thanks for clearing that up for me. okay. [ laughter ] exit question, is capital punishment like abortion, one of those political divides, so tinged with religion and claims of justice on both sides that it will always be contentious? >> it's about religion and morality. you're right. >> eleanor? >> it's about politics. >> it is, but it becomes less

contentious because more people are opposed to it because our legal system has made mistakes? >> how many? >> a lot. >> a lot. >> a lot have had death penalty convictions overturned, and there are cases where the person has already been put to death. >> i shouldn't say this, because i'm not sure, but the number is in the 40s. >> i don't know the exact number. >> the number of cases overturned, some of which-- >> i think there are a enough of them, let me put it this way, overturned to make this a viable issue and a real issue for a lot of people. >> do you think that you can see the future when it will go away? >> yes, i can. >> i can, too. >> society-- >> you know in the future when it will go away? >> i don't know the exact day, but i'll give you the year. >> what year? [ laughter ] >> what year? [ laughter ] >> will it go away before the end of the century? >> it's going to be 23 years after i die. [ laughter ] >> a majority of -- [ overlapping speakers ] >> majority of states have already stopped -- [ overlapping speakers ] >> what? >> majority of states, even though you say 18 states

prohibit it, 36 states now have either long prohibited it or now prohibit it because the governors have decidedded to stop it. >> right, right. >> that's growing. the number is growing. >> i think within 15 years. >> it was reinstated in 1976, so it was gone before then. issue three, high-tech car hacking. >> and as our cars become more connected to the internet, to wireless networks, with each other, and with our infrastructure, are they at a risk of catastrophic cyber attacks? in other words, could some 14- year-old in indonesia figure out how to do this and just shut your car down, shut a whole bunch of cars dune because everything is now wired up? today's leading automakers are incorporating computer control features into new model cars to help drivers navigate, maintain lanes, avoid collisions, park, and back up. all these features are vulnerable to hacking. researchers at the university of california and the

university of washington have used music cds to introduce viruses into car computer systems, taking over their controls. in one test, research teams using a laptop in an adjacent vehicle wirelessly disabled the electronic braking system of a car traveling at 40 miles per hour, and that's just today's technology. the ultimate in vehicle automation is google self- driving car, now legal for road use in three states, california, nevada, and florida. google employees have road tested the cars, commuting to work in silicon valley. advocates say driverless cars, that is vehicles directed by a smartphone app, will cut down on accidents, reduce traffic congestion, and allow people with disabilities like blindness to drive, so to

speak. but the fbi's direct rat of intelligence warns these benefits come up with a downside. quote, autonomy will make mobility more efficient, but will also open up greater possibilities for dual use applications and ways for a car to be more of a potential lethal weapon. for example, driverless cars could be used for stalking or surveillance or get-away vehicles, leaving criminals free to shoot at pursuers. who poses the greater risk for hacking cars? mist which he of us teenage geeks or cyber criminals? >> john, if you're talking about how many attacks, it would probably be the geeks. but if you talk about some make leaf vent attack, disabling the brakes on somebody's car when it's going on the highway and doing it deliberately, i would say an enemy of some kind of

other, domestic or foreign. but i do think, look, every time you make one of these advances, no doubt, there are problems with it. but you disable somebody's brakes, do you it mechanically or you do it by cyber warfare, that is really -- that's a murder, if those people die in that. so it's -- i mean, i don't see what really the basic difference is between if you're going to disable a person's brakes. >> but you love to drive. you sit up there in that -- what is that big vehicle you drive? >> it's a big navigator, john. >> big navigator. you sit up there, look like you're in command of the universe. >> i am. it's 6000 pounds, john. 6000 pounds. >> we want objectivity. can you speak to this, mort? >> i actually think it's quite dangerous. it renders too many people in a position to create accidents that really are not responsible in the sense that they are driving the car, and that seems to me to give you a level of recklessness that i would be uncomfortable with. so the one thing i would do, if you're going to have that, you have to find some way to

protect the car from any kind of independent people, you know, hacking away at it. >> this is a whole new area for lawyers here in terms of liability. but, you know, if you're talking about the 14-year-old in indonesia, there are so many ways you can disrupt life in this country, you know, power grids and so forth, and they are not doing that. i choose to look at the positive side of this. most of 60 to 70% of accidents are caused by driver errors. >> right. >> this gets rid of that. you can also buy cars today that park automatically. i wouldn't mind having one of those. >> quickly. >> people don't realize how automated their cars already are. steering, brakes, that's computers at work there. people don't realize. they don't realize it. i think people like to feel that they are in control so these google self-driving cars i think will be slow to catch on and it will be more of a younger generation thing. and i don't think it's going to be big any time soon. people like to feel like they are controlling their own cars and they won't-- >> google has found a possible big niche and that's disabled people. 6million disabled people. >> sure, of course.

prediction, pat? >> president obama will do some kind of amnesty for the illegal aliens by labor day. eleanor? >> win or losses for the democrats in the senate in 2014, they will win the majority in 2016 because the map favors them like it favors the republicans this time. susan? >> foreign policy issues are going to be the dominant problem for the president in the next two years. mort? >> yeah, the economy will continue to create more jobs at better wages and that will reduce the concerns that the democrats have over the elections. i predict that gz ping's corruption investigation into former minister of public security ju young kang, china's internal czar, will back fire, causing descension within the communist party ruling circles. there will be a power struggle unlike anything seen, since the gang of four in the 1970s.

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this week on "moyers & company," nobel laureate joseph stiglitz. >> our democracy is now probably better described as one dollar, one vote than one person, one vote. we have a tax system that reflects not the interest of the middle. we have a tax system that reflects the interest of the one percent. >> announcer: funding is provided by -- anne gumowitz, encouraging the renewal of democracy. carnegie corporation of new york, supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement and the advancement of international peace and security at carnegie.org. the ford foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. the herb alpert foundation, supporting organizat w