Senate The European Politics Thread

Even dead.

 

Dead McCain > Alive Le Pen & Alive Trump

 

LePen can still pull a victory.
Remember, most pundits seem to think it was the debate last time that destroyed her chances. She's probably devoted the most time and energy preparing for this - to showcase her "moderate" new self while simultaneously humiliating Macron.

 

It looks like, in 2017, the final result was 12% wider than it had been at the polling, so using that as a measure of how much the election could swing based off of the debate, that would mean this isn't a done deal. Though it does require a very solid break for LePen.

 

Damn. Well, LePen's odds certainly lessened after that. Not the disaster of the previous time, but the mask slipped too often on her end and she never managed to land a decisive blow on Macron.

 

Which gets to the single biggest problem in American politics. Republicans have managed to successfully hijack and twist our words and language to rewrite reality, such that fascists can portray themselves as patriots, and theocrats can portray themselves as champions of religious liberty, etc. They've been doing this for decades, and liberals have never caught on.

 

Macron outperformed his public polling in 2017. We'll have to see if as the incumbent it happens again.


https://www.ipsos.com/en/2017-french-election-macron-615-still-leads-le-pen-385-may-5

 

Le Pen demolished herself in the public debate in 2017. She was still bleeding voters by election day, which was only a few days later, as people talked about how bad she'd been.

 

What was your take on the recent debate?

 

I don't watch circus politics. I can only tell that according to the press coverage this morning, this one wasn't a live slaughter, but Macron did get an edge over le Pen and forced her to walk back on some of the "appeasing" moves she did this past week.

 

Vive la France!

 

Excerpted from the Guardian:

If you conveniently ignore a minor politician named Charles de Gaulle, he's right. You know, a guy who may have been involved in a scuffle against a few far-rights...

And in this, Beaune is in the image of his master: arrogant, self-centered, uncaring, and incapable of realizing that this is a time to be contrite, a time to humbly apologize for having elaborated a political strategy that brought the far right to heights it never had reached, and laid the ground for a 2027 duel between far left and far right. But no, they are quite satisfied of themselves.

The least bad guy won. And I hate that he managed to deliberately create a situation in which the only alternative was to elect a dangerous president, I hate that I had to vote for the evil bastard because the only other choice was an eviller bastardess.

 

Hey, we aren't so different!

 

Thank god. And thanks France. As I said Macron has a lot of problems. A lot. But he’s not a far right politician. Put a Neoliberal against anyone to the right of them and if that is the only two options. I’ll want the neoliberal to win.

 

The election being between Michael Bloomberg-type and a Donald Trump-type didn't exactly bring a lot of people out to vote in France apparently but they at least kept the far right out of power. For now, for things can be tougher in elections ahead.

CNN - Emmanuel Macron projected to win French presidential election: Live updates



Large drop in turnout / absentia from 2017 and every presidential election since the 1960s.

 

To explain the low turnout in 1969: the runoff was between two traditional right-wing candidates who had dominated the first round, both great Résistants; one de Gaulle's longest serving Prime Minister and the other the President of the Senate.

 

I don’t disagree. But Macron is a better option not just for France, but all of Europe than Le Pen. That’s all it comes down to. That’s my point. Or are you saying it’s better to have someone like Le Pen win now so we don’t get someone even worse and she poisons the well so to speak for right wing candidates?

 

The problem isn't that Le Pen is inherently worse for France and the rest of Europe than Macron. It's Macron's strategy, and Hollande's before him, that make it inevitable that before long - maybe as little as half a decade away from now - we will have that truly terrible winner. It's coming within the next ten years.

 

Oh okay so we are basically on the same page. Those are two of the major reasons for me as well. I’d still personally take a neoliberal over a righty any day of the week.

 

Yes. Mitterrand and Chirac both took a solid couple of decades to get elected; and in the end, they got there. Macron won't be eligible, and he's cut any possible successor at the knee so they wouldn't be a concurrent, and he'll refuse to let any successor step out of his shadow. Whoever succeeds Mélenchon on the far left will be an unknown quantity - he, too, "killed" all his competition. If she manages to keep her "camp" compliant, le Pen is ideally placed for 2027.