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With the third and final Presidential debate of the election season now complete, pollsters around the country are scrambling to determine how the American public will vote in the upcoming election less than two weeks away. While most mainstream analysts felt that Obama won Monday night’s debate, others were left trying to distinguish between the two major party candidates who have come to sound more and more alike as election day nears. The last debate, centering around foreign policy, was especially indicative of how far to the right the discussion has swung in this election year.

Both Obama and Romney agreed to continue sanctions on Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear capability, despite the devastating effects the sanctions are having on the Iranian people.

On the issue of drone strikes in Pakistan which are causing large numbers of civilian casualties, Romney lauded the Obama Administration by saying, “I support that entirely and feel the president was right to up the usage of that technology and believe that we should continue to use it to continue to go after the people who represent a threat to this nation and to our friends.”

At one point in the debate there was a brief mention of the Arab Spring revolts with Obama mentioning Egyptians needing to “make sure that they take responsibility for protecting religious minorities…(and) recogniz[ing] the rights of women.”

GUEST: Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College in Connecticut. His most recent books are Arab Spring, Libyan Winter and Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today