French presidential election, 2022

[parochial boy]

Yeah, my first thought was something along the lines of "this is excellent news for Anne Hidalgo".

Anyway Mélenchon and Zemmour had a debate on BFMTV this evening. I didn't watch because, frankly, I'd rather gouge my eyes out with a spoon. But, given that he has been... everywhere... over the last week or so (this is how censorship works apparently), I'm increasingly convinced that Zemmour's mooted candidacy is mostly intended to make Le Pen look like a reasonable, open minded and inclusive moderate by comparision.

[parochial boy]

Oh yeah, A Figaro journalist man of the people elite like Zemmour and his obsession with the decline of nation is a great fit for a certain stereotypical pretentious reactionary who lives the 16th arrondissement or the 92. Add in his certain fashionista appeal to a certain type of 20-something male graduate who lives in Lyon and spends his free time on sites like fdesouche. Although the latter crowd are much smaller than the publicity they are given.

I guess the point is that Zemmour; as one symptom of the wider Bolloré-ification of the media environment - because it's a whole circus - and because, lets not forget that Zemmour was given his big break by Ruquier on France 2 (a public channel); has massively normalised and made it not just acceptable, but mainstream to hold and express these sorts of opinions.

In so far as he is now a candidate too, and the Méluche is stupid enough to go and have a debate with him and further give him legitimacy as just a guy who is part of the mainstream debate - all that does, down the line, is to make it that little bit harder to hold the comparitively less deranged Le Pen up as some threat the republic and all the rest. How can you honestly present her as a threat while indulging in Zemmour's even more unhinged racism?

(although, that said, maybe we should talk about him less - odds are he doesn't stand, if he does that he winds up in single figures. And the real story is that he is a symptom of a wider issue, the endless publicity that the far right is given basically across the entire media spectrum. Not just the normal suspects but replicated in sources that would consider themselves respectable and even impartial, so it's not so much that he is the source of all evil himself).

[parochial boy]

Yeah, my first thought was something along the lines of "this is excellent news for Anne Hidalgo".

Anyway Mélenchon and Zemmour had a debate on BFMTV this evening. I didn't watch because, frankly, I'd rather gouge my eyes out with a spoon. But, given that he has been... everywhere... over the last week or so (this is how censorship works apparently), I'm increasingly convinced that Zemmour's mooted candidacy is mostly intended to make Le Pen look like a reasonable, open minded and inclusive moderate by comparision.

So are you saying you think Zemmour is trying to help Marine? And if so does it work?

No, I don't think he is tying to help her. There is a definite chance he takes a slice of her vote away and winds up stopping her from reaching the second round. So by all accounts the RN are quite worried about his candidacy.

The issue is in part that as functioning as a more radical alternative, Zemmour makes Le Pen look comparitively moderate and thus more acccpetable. But even more so, that the whole circus surrounding Zemmour makes it quite difficult to make an argument that Le Pen is a dangerous antirépublicaine radical at the same time as indulging in Zemmour when he comes out with stuff like unaccompanied child migrants are all rapists or that every Muslim supports jihadism.

[parochial boy]

Jadot wins the EELV primary with 51,04%

He really didn't make it easy for himself, but in the end it's the guys everybody expected all along.

[parochial boy]

Yeah, my first thought was something along the lines of "this is excellent news for Anne Hidalgo".

Anyway Mélenchon and Zemmour had a debate on BFMTV this evening. I didn't watch because, frankly, I'd rather gouge my eyes out with a spoon. But, given that he has been... everywhere... over the last week or so (this is how censorship works apparently), I'm increasingly convinced that Zemmour's mooted candidacy is mostly intended to make Le Pen look like a reasonable, open minded and inclusive moderate by comparision.

So are you saying you think Zemmour is trying to help Marine? And if so does it work?

No, I don't think he is tying to help her. There is a definite chance he takes a slice of her vote away and winds up stopping her from reaching the second round. So by all accounts the RN are quite worried about his candidacy.

On this note, it seems like polling is now suggesting that Le Pen and Zemmour are basically tied.

So there's a decent chance now that she doesn't make the second round, and even if she does, if Zemmour's almost tieing with her, I think it will show her off to be pretty weak within her own party, which is not a good look for a runoff.

I think in part that's down to the blanket coverage Zemmour has been getting over the last week or two. Remains to be seen if that holds up over the coming weeks and months. I would imagine not (memories of the brief Fillon and Hamon surges in 2017), but I genuinely wouldn't know how to predict what will happen. Up until this week the polls have looked more or less steady for ages, but remembering what happened over the final few months in just about every presidential election in recent years, with the added factor of an even more volatile electorate - there is relatively little I would rule out.

Think you're right about Le Pen's position in the party though. A certain clique including the likes of Marion Maréchal have been baying for a more hard line/traditionalists and economically liberal* line for a while now. And if Zemmour is genuinely threatening her in that way, then they will read it as meaning they were right all along. Especially as the "front républicain" seems to have slipped against Zemmour - as if the only real problem was only ever the surname, rather than the programme.

* In the european style - right wing

[parochial boy]

As the old saying goes, there are two types of people in the world, people who have never heard of Manuel Valls and people who think he’s a wanker.

A man whose sole contribution to Barcelona was this viral hit

He’s not really a relevant political actor any more. Precisely because literally no-one likes him.

As for the front républicain and zemmour, the debate with jonluk is an example. But remember that he is a pure creation of the media establishment. There is much less interest in freezing him out, especially because he can be relied upon to generate a reaction and therefore clicks and therefore advert revenue than there was back when the key outrage generator was Le Pen père but back when the media business model and environment was different. So in that respect, any other candidates have no choice but to be seen engaging with him and on his favoured themes.

For Jadot, at the end of the day, either him or Hidalgo will have to demark themselves or it’s a bust. The worst outcome is that both just sit on roughly equal mid single digit scores in to the spring.

[parochial boy]

Bit rich for a man who doesn't know the difference between péché and pêché

[parochial boy]

You know, it's easy to say you hope Le Pen gets elected when you wouldn't being one feeling the consequences. A Le Pen presidency would be a horrific experience for the French, and downright dangerous for migrants and ethnic minorities and people who don't conform to the standard type of what a French person should apparently look like. Just because there are people who are worse who are now polling worse doesn't make the real threat presented by Le Pen any less frightening.

The whole "the big right shift" thing is also a classic case of is it the media driving the agenda or responding to a real demand?

Remember also that all the big social movements of recent year, even the gilets jaunes, were not actually at all motivated by migration or security as a theme. Which indicates it's not actually the main preoccupation really and does make it seem like the current narrative as much a media creation more than reflective of a great demand for unhinged racism of the part of the average French citizen.

Can someone explain how anyone running for President for "Les Republicains" would distinguish themselves from Macron? Seems to me like Macron has governed very much like an LR moderate cut from the same cloth as someone like Alain Juppe. Is there ANY issue that actually separates Macron from people like Bertrand or Pecresse or is basically just offering the same thing with a different label?  

A sort of trite answer would be that Macron has moved on to the traditional right's turf -and that the LR and associated acts have moved into the turf of the RN.

Beyond that the old right do play up the conservative values stuff (both Pécresse and Bertrand were against marriage equality etc...) and the Macron administration does have the occasional progressive hints. So for instance they extended the right to IVF treatment to lesbian couples; Olivier Véran (the health minister) recently announced that female contraception would be covered by health insurance and snapped back against the proposals going round to get rid of the allocation de rentrée scolaire (money to cover school expenses). These are all things that you would never see coming from the traditional right. So even despite the xenophobic turn, there are still visible elements of the progressive/social liberal image he presented in 2017.

And
https://twitter.com/mathieugallard/status/1444220359566413824

Yes I know it's only crosstabs - but seems to confirm points made earlier about Zemmour's potential electorate being rather more middle class than the Le Pen one. And also very, very male.

[parochial boy]

Yes, yes we get it. Us continental Europeans are just a bunch of barbaric racists who should bow down to the moral superiority of the anglophone world and it's oh-so-progressive debates about whether or not poor people and black people should be allowed to vote or whether or not trans people are rapists.

Could we go back to talking about the French election please? Instead of the pop-sociology?

Anyway, France's decline is steady. I actually think someone like Onfray (before he became a caricature of himself, which is what TV exposure does to you) holds views that are more in line with the general population's views than Zemmour. Increasing disassociation from the democratic exercise in France, belief that France is at the center of a vortex of Western civilizational decay that is irreversible, belief that the only way to go through it is to stay dignified in light of what Americans jere would call the "clown world".

That Europe 1 interview the other week, among other things, did sort of serve to make him look like a reactionary nutter ranting about people having late term abortions for fun and whatever. Onfray seems very much to have gone the BHL TV-philosopher route of dissapearing into a hole of his own pretentiousness and over-inflated self perception. The real cultural question is to why exactly France seems to produce quite so many of the insufferably smug "intellectuals"?

[parochial boy]

Zemmour is Algerian Jewish in origin, so it's a bit complicated (and Méluche is Moroccan born, there are loads about).

What's particularly, umm, weird is that Zemmour is also an ardent defender of Pétain and Maurice Papon and reckons they didn't merely do nothing wrong, but were actually in the right vis-à-vis how Jewish people were treated by the Vichy régime. Which would already be frightening enough in it's own right.

[parochial boy]

To illustrate a point (fwiw, BFM is the usually slightly more restrained of the 24 news hour channels - full tweet is here but the numbers are all pretty similar. Cnews is, unsuprisingly, significantly worse).



I mean, no wonder he's polling well

[parochial boy]

To illustrate a point (fwiw, BFM is the usually slightly more restrained of the 24 news hour channels - full tweet is here but the numbers are all pretty similar. Cnews is, unsuprisingly, significantly worse).

]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBRoTcRWQAUzV8f?format=jpg&name=900x900

I mean, no wonder he's polling well

So polls are mostly name recognition at this point? Even so people like Macron (duh) or even Melenchon and Le Pen should be polling high given they have been running for a decade and a half by now?

I'm not sure it's name recognition so much as the guy who is getting mentioned six hundred times a day so when Ifop calls up then of course he is going to be one of the first names that people have in their heads; he is one of the few candidates who the average french person is even aware of as a potential candidate; and in so far as all publicity is good publicity then pretty much every single person who might be tempted by his rhetoric has been exposed to it enough to be on board.

Jonluk's bad numbers are to a very large degree his own doing. As has been mentioned, he is overall a pretty smart campaigner who generally is pretty good at putting his finger on the pulse - which is in party why he is the only left candidate who has managed two digit figures - but he has also seemed to have suffered from a nasty case of foot in mouth disease over the last couple of years which has meant a few pretty bad outings that have put people of (and lead to pretty imo legit accusations of antisemitism among other things).

Also bear in mind the the LFI brand outside of Méluche is basically nothing - the Europeans, municipals and departmental/regionals all demonstrated that well enough. That and that his 2017 success was at least in part down to the inertia where he emerged as the principle left candidate in the final weeks. In that respect, it is perfectly possible he surges under similar circumstances this time (although it could just as well be a Jadot or Hidalgo who does, just hopefully not Arnaud "well people who are worried about the great replacement have a point" Montebourg). Even in that eventuality, one left wing candidate emerging above all others still doesn't really resolve the problem of them only having a 25% share of the electorate - in which case it's perfectly possible that no one surges because no-one at any point manages to look like a viable candidate.

[parochial boy]

I think its right that the LFI brand is essentially Mélenchon but that doesn't necessarily mean the anti-austerity Left project would die with Mélenchon/LFI. I think he is the single person holding them back from doing at the very least well in the legislatives, and a left-wing presence in the second round if Zemmour completely cuts the knees off the hard right. One because he is actually one of the few on the Left who still has a Robespierrist conception of the state, whereas increasingly the Left could actually get votes by focusing on the center-periphery relationship a bit more. And Two because he is washed out by now, completely paranoid and out of touch despite having natural political nous. Which come to think of it is also very Robespierrist. If he didn't cosplay as a mix between Robespierre and a latin american caudillo and was genuine about his "reprenez le pouvoir" slogans he'd be with in a shot at actually doing well especially in such an open field.

And that brings up another issue for the French Left, which is that at this point they are in survival mode and virtually all the parties - save for the massive egos running for President - care more about the legislatives than they do about the Presidency. But they also know that while they can't win the Presidency, if they want to have any kind of presence in the legislatives they have to run a candidate. Jadot was the only one who put ego aside and the EELV paid the price for being team players despite large swathes of the population maybe looking for a way to hamstring Macron.

Probably, probably in most respects - and one of the problem's with LFI and that wing of the left more widely has been it's inability to develop any sort of personalities outside of Méluche. For all that there are a bunch of figures who a popular with activists, they are precisely that, popular with activists and without really any hold beyond that. Then the other wider problem that the left has is that most of them seem to have no tactical nous whatsoever. As you say, there are themes around that they could work on - but seem to get held up on reproducing ones that are natural vote losers for them. There is of course a degree to which you can't really control which way the agenda goes, but at least on part of being a canny political operator has got to be being able to get attention to the themes that people trust you on. Jonluk has, or at least had, the ability to do that in the way none of the others seem to.

As much as any thing else right now, a lot of the fights seem to be about jostling for position within the left with an eye to the post-22 world. As in, it is hardly a secret that for both Hidalgo and Jadot the actual principle ambition is not a second round, but to finish in front of each other in order to position themselves/their parties as the main left wing force for the legislatives and the run up to 2027. Especially on the assumption that the harder left will crash after Méluche (as you say, not a guarantee - but Jonluk's current and 2017 electorates differ from the PS/EELV one in that it is a much more socially disparate and diverse coalition - with the seemingly inherent risk of being more prone to disintegrating, but the seeming advantage that his line seems to be the only one able to win people who aren't CSP+* living in regional capitals).

That as much as anything is why I still feel pretty hopeless about this one. The self-perceived incentive to collaborate seems to be absent; because the intra-left fights are taking priority because they all seem to be operating under the assumption that getting an extra one or two percent over each other will set them on the road to being the natural leadership in the medium term.

* CAP, BEP, SMIC, TGV. Gotta love the French obsession with finding an acronym where everyone else just makes do with a word

[parochial boy]

He wants to grand remplace the penguins. Sad.

[parochial boy]

He seems to actually be getting quite a big negative reaction from the online left over this. Including kind of very visible frustration from some fairly high profile types who would have been firmly in his camp until a few months ago. I'm not going to say that he's well on the way to KO'ing himself with these repeat outbursts, but he's a long, long way from being able to galvanise the enthusiasm of 2017.

I mean, who's he trying to win over with this sort of stuff - it's not even about Palestine, and the Alain Soral and Dieudonné fans club are never going to vote for you Jonluk.

[parochial boy]

Speaking of which, feels like a good time to mention the two LR debates where they spent a grand total of 6 hours arguing about who could be the nastiest to immigrants and muslims, interspersed with short breaks to argue about who could be the nastiest to criminals and muslims (Éric Ciotti won).

Remember when they used to be a serious party?

[parochial boy]

last ifop poll

Macron: 25 =
MLP: 19 +3
Z: 14 -3
Bertrand 13 =
Melanchon 7,5 -1
Jadot 7 =
Hidalgo 6 +1

Macron: 54- (-2)
MLP: 46 (+2)

So another poll confirming the decline of zemmour, who just had an eventful visit to Marseille, which ended in a middle finger to a leftist who had done so previously. That would have been disqualifying 20 years ago. Today, not so much.

The racism, the anti-semitism, the misogyny, the authoritarianism... all of that is no problem but it is a middle finger that it is outrageous. Pretty good demonstration of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the French media and political elite.

[parochial boy]

Germany: "Oh no, we have a far right party winning seats in parliament!"

Flanders: "only one? We have two far right parties!"

Netherlands: "Pathetic, we have three far right parties in our parliament"

France: "hold my beer..."

[parochial boy]

Sure, yeah - 4 million votes in overall in 2016, 114 thousand this time. Doesn't really say very much except that the traditional right's electorate is smaller and has considerably radicalised even in the space of the last 5 years.

(yes somewhat facetious given it wasn't an open primary this time, but the ecologists had almost as many votes an no-one went around saying Rousseau getting 49% was a great results for the woke left)

[parochial boy]

Well, if you want, er, news - Zemmour launched his campaign in a predictably unpleasant style. Journalists from the independent news outlet Mediapart and TV show Le  Quotidien (both firmly anti-Zemmour, although the former has rather more integrity than the latter) were apparently harrassed and threatened. Then, anti-racist campaigners were beaten up after they revealed t-shirts with the slogan "no to racism".

All in all, about what you'd expect really.

The slightlier scarier side was that in response to this, the newly crowned LR candidate, and her defeated opponent - clearly outraged by the events - both agreed something more or less along the lines of "the protestors got what was coming to them" (provocation you see). Pécresse then added some both sides stuff about the "extreme left" being violent too. For context, recent weeks in France have seen a spate of far right terrorist plots foiled by the security forces; there have been numerous documented cases of aggressions against migrants and left wing activists - notably in Lyon, of course, some traditions never change.

In any case, yes, it is obviously the extreme left and it's "iel" pronoun that is the problem here.

[parochial boy]

https://twitter.com/mathieugallard/status/1467972038858264577

The guy is a research director at Ipsos. Goes on to point out that both Fillon and Hamon had similar double digit surges - after surprise victories and consequential media buzz - before falling back dramatically over the course of the campaign. Even Hollande, who had been the favourite since DSK getting arrested back in 2011 still lost ground after his primary win.

Point being - I wouldn's say this as a cast iron prediction - but it seems highly unlikely that Pécresse holds at this level all the way until April. Honestly, I really don't think she has any particular wow factor that would seem to indicate an alternative trajectory

[parochial boy]

Yes, her honeymoon period after her suprise primary win. That was literally the jist of my post.

Other than that, she is an unexceptional RPR heritage career politician. Her campaign up to now has been regurgitating the same old identitarian anxiety mongering mixed with some vaguely populist ultraliberalism aimed at the LR's ageing right wing base. Youn know, the "I'm going to fire 600 million fonctionnaires" and that sort of stuff. In the grand scheme of things it's all fairly turgid and predictable and there's not really a lot there that would really keep people outside of the base on board.

You know, the Pétainiste hatemonger has already lost 5 off points, and despite everything else, he does actually have people out there who like him.

[parochial boy]

The guy who assaulted Zemmour is a Les Républicains member. And more to the point, I haven't exactly seen anyone, and certainly not any left wing political figures, trying to justify it. So rather different in that respect.

But good to know that excuses violence against non-violent anti-racism protestors.

[parochial boy]

On that note, Hidalgo did propose a left primary last week. And everyone pounced on her to say that she way only proposing it because her polling numbers were so bad (which isn't untrue) and that no way were they going to take part and that the only acceptable left unity candidate would be themselves.

Which alltogether shows how unserious the left actually is about even trying to win this thing, and the degree to which their only objectives would be about setting themselves up as the leader of the rapidly diminishing left for the legislatives.

(an in, a primary would probably require some pre-emptive agreement about seats; as opposed as to the position of force of being "the biggest left wing force" on 9% of the vote or whatever Jadot or Mélenchon will end up getting)

[parochial boy]

She was also a Guyane separatist back in the day. So you can already smell the rest of the poltical spectrum enthusiastically preparing their attacks about her "républicain" credentials.