Lefties and left-of-center people: Who do you support in the French election?

[Crumpets]

Inspired by Antonio's criticism of Macron, I'm curious how the different leftist factions in the US see the different left and center-left and centrist candidates in France. I'm not including Fillon, Dupont-Aignan, and Le Pen for obvious reasons.

Personally, I like Macron for three main reasons: 1) He's polling strongly against Le Pen, which is basically the only thing I really care about. 2) He has enough populist appeal to have some political capital should he get into office, while Hamon will be saddled with Hollande's legacy, no matter how much he tries to distance himself. And 3) Basically everyone to the left of those two has to practical chance of winning and is generally too far to the left for my comfort zone. I suspect if I tried to chart the candidates political positions compared to my own, I'd be about equal distance from Macron and Hamon, but I have more confidence in Macron to win and govern than Hamon.

[Crumpets]

Hamon (normal)

2) He has enough populist appeal to have some political capital should he get into office, while Hamon will be saddled with Hollande's legacy, no matter how much he tries to distance himself.

God this is dumb. Macron was a Government Minister who thought up and enacted Hollande's policies and his whole economic program is to triple down on nice pragmatic managerial post-ideological neoliberal centrist bullsh*t. Hamon resigned from tsaid government because he disagreed with basically everything it was doing economically. But somehow Hamon is "saddled with Hollande's legacy"?

I don't care if you're an American who barely ever hears anything about French politics, try to learn a little more before making posts like these.

I admit I don't watch French news closely enough that I would feel I was actually making an informed vote in their election, and I trust that you are probably much, much more familiar with the candidates than I am. But let me elaborate as to why I said that. The policies that Macron helped enact as Minister of the Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs aren't exactly the ones that are the source of Hollande's unpopularity. Meanwhile, Hamon comes across (at least to me) as an even more naïve version of Hollande only with some "but I can get it done!" thrown in. If a major selling point of your candidacy is that the current president from your own party has no idea what he's doing, you're kind of in a lose-lose situation. If you argue he does know what he's doing, despite his unpopularity, you're also in a lose-lose situation. That's what I meant by him being saddled.

Perhaps you could help dispel with fiction by pointing out what someone who disapproves of Hollande would find promising in Hamon's candidacy, apart from the fact that he resigned from his position.