Cenk Uygur: The Power Panel tonight is Megan Carpentier. She is the reporter for Raw Story. She is in New York City. And Alyona Minkovski is the host of the Alyona Show on RT, Russia Today. Alright, great to have you guys here.
First question is do the American people believe that President Obama is the lesser of two evils. Now why does that come up? An interesting new Bloomberg poll show he’s up by 13 points. I hope that’s true; I’m a little worried that it’s an outlier. But look at the trend, right? So two important graphics here.
One is, is the US headed in the right direction? The answer is overwhelmingly, no. Actually 62% say that we are on the wrong track.
But who has the better vision for the economy? Interestingly enough President Obama wins that handily: 49 to 33.
So, Alyona, let me start with you there. It seems that the country is saying we are on the wrong track but Romney would put us on an even worse. So what are we going to do? So we got to vote for Obama. Is that a fair assessment of the poll?
Alyona Minkovski: Yeah, I would say that it’s a pretty fair assessment of the poll, and I think that it is a pretty fair way to say that Obama is the lesser of two evils. And that’s really unfortunate these days, right, when you start to think about what’s actually less evil? Less evil these days is a president that chooses to execute U.S. citizens without ever giving them a day in court. Less evil is somebody who wages a very aggressive war on whistle-blowers while at the same time his administration is leaking a lot of information. It’s a scary place.
But, yes, I think that Americans actually see that President Obama wants to invest in the future: that he actually cares about investing in infrastructure, in education, and a lot of social programs, and that’s not where Mitt Romney wants to take us. But it’s still very, very highly disappointing that here’s a guy that at the same time can’t get his Justice Department to scrounge up enough evidence to try to go after the biggest white-collar criminals in history. And that’s kind of what we have to deal with.
I don’t want to have to choose between the lesser of two evils. I actually want a good leader.
Cenk Uygur: Now, Megan, is that a fair assessment or can some democrats say, no, that’s not right. President Obama actually has done a lot. We will take it. It’s not a lesser of two evils. It’s actually quite good.
Megan Carpentier: I think there is certainly a number of democrats that believe that Obama’s presidency has been really good. But I think that there are a lot of disaffected democrats, there are a lot of disaffected independent voters, who, I think, expected certain things to happen in the course of this administration and to happen fairly quickly given what was at the time a majority in both Houses of Congress.
So the ‘lesser of two evils’ is almost a way of saying that a lot of the people that were really excited after ‘Yes, we can’ and ‘hope and change’ didn’t get everything that they were looking for.
Cenk Uygur: Right, and more than civil liberties, and especially with this poll, I think, that has to do with the economy, and the problem is that President Obama has gone a little in the right-wing direction, if you ask me, and people are saying, go the other way. Don’t go towards Romney; go the other way. Right?
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Alyona Minkovski:
“…I think that it is a pretty fair way to say that Obama is the lesser of two evils. And that’s really unfortunate these days, right, when you start to think about what’s actually less evil? Less evil these days is a president that chooses to execute U.S. citizens without ever giving them a day in court. Less evil is somebody who wages a very aggressive war on whistle-blowers while at the same time his administration is leaking a lot of information.
…I don’t want to have to choose between the lesser of two evils. I actually want a good leader.”