2017 French Presidential Election

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

For the left Melenchon is basically a destructive troll and for the same left his Presidency would be even more disastrous than Hollande's to PS. I'd certainly take him over Le Pen or Fillon, but I'm not sure I wouldn't pick Macron instead if the choice boiled down to the two.

Mélenchon is a terrible person, but at least his program isn't a bunch of vague yet distinctly harmful neoliberal platitudes. He'd definitely do less harm in terms of policy, at least.

"Whatabouter" spotted

"This candidate is a worse person than that candidate but has less harmful policies" isn't whataboutery, it's a normal political calculation.

Yeah, Antonio has clearly stated he'll vote for Macron in the run-off when if Macron faces off against Le Pen so he can hardly be compared to someone who voted Jill Stein or stayed home in a swing state.

Don't get me wrong. I think Antonio is delusional for preferring Mélenchon over Macron, but that's because I think Socialism in general is delusional.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

So it looks like my dream might very well come true. That's not a good thing.

It's more and more shaping up to be a mirror of the Austrian 1st round ...

Le Pen = Hofer (or even closer: Strache), the established candidates from the Far-Right
Macron = Griss (the unused centrist candidates)
Melenchon = Van der Bellen (the rising leftist shootingstars)
Fillon = Khol (the used candidates from the disgraced center-right)
Hamon = Hundstorfer (the used candidates from the disgraced center-left)
Dupont = Lugner (the weird right-liberal candidates)

There is one major difference between Austria 1.0 and France 1.0 though:

Fillon has a better standing than Khol did (17-20% vs. 11%), so Le Pen will not reach 35% like Hofer, but will top out at 28% at best.

Except for the fact that the far-right candidate will come in first to loose in the second round it's barely anything like the Austrian presidential race. You just always need to find a way to bring Austrian politics into everything.

The fact that you put an equal sign between the far-left demagogue Melenchon and the respected centrist Green Van Der Bellen show how far-fetched you have to to be make it "the same", and even then it doesn't work because Melenchon is no where close to come in second at the moment, still polling around 15-17% in most polls and thus in fourth place.