French presidential election, 2022

[Death of a Salesman]

The operating assumption is that Édouard Philippe is Macron's annointed successor. All the noises are that he is in the processes of preparing a 2027 bid.

On that note, it seems unlikely that a segment of Macron's electorate will return to left in a post-FBM world. There's plenty of stuff around (ie polling on self-identification or on the perception of Macron's ideological positioning) that seems to suggest that Hollande-Macron switchers have moved durably right - or at least that the Macron effect has principally opened up an acceptable route for those sorts of people to support an economically liberal candidate. Obviously not saying never, the right messing might be able to move things and all... but I would imagine that the inheritance of Macron's movement is that the LREM constellation installs itself as the mainstream centre right for the long term.

Mainstream centre left in the French context, not mainstream centre right. LREM might establish itself as the leading party of French liberals under Philippe, facing MMLP who creates the union des droites. But in that case LREM would be the center-left and MMLP the center-right. The French Left is a fairly marginal force at this point, and seems likely to remain so for the near future, given that a substantial fraction of their former voters have moved to LREM or RN.

[Death of a Salesman]

Well, some of this is the understandable reaction of French liberals who are discontented with the state of their country, dislike their countrymen, and anonymously vent online on a niche forum for anglophone political obsessives. To have conservative Americans look at France in envy will feel like an unforgivable intrusion into a heretofore private club, regardless of the merits of the interlopers' arguments.

[Death of a Salesman]

It really is striking, from an American perspective, how closely French politics resembles the America of the mid-90s.

An incumbent who campaigned as a bold and brave challenger to the established order, as a more moderate but still liberal rising star from the main center-left party, faces re-election. His term has been dominated by conservative rebellions. His party has suffered in the elections held during his tenure. Yet he hangs on, striking a more conservative note than he has previously, but still the leading exemplar of the liberal tendency in national politics.

An old party stalwart of the right, embarking on a probably doomed final chapter. For a time, more liberal and more radical forces within the right seemed poised to undercut them, but as the election nears it becomes apparent that they have prevailed and shall face the incumbent. Public anxieties against immigration put a wind at their back, but the road is long and the incumbent may yet prevail. 

A radical right-wing journalist with a career of provocation. Demagouging against immigration, feminism, and the welfare state, they strike gold within much of the right, inspiring a populist rebellion that nearly threatens to let them surmount the old party stalwart. Then the pitchforks are dropped, as their candidacy burns out before the election has come.

There are more analogies I could sketch, some of them plausible and some less so. Yet the essential similarity of the character of public discourse, of a broadly conservative electorate anxious about the red-hot pace of immigration, of the collapse of old-school left-wing politics, of a rising and radical right-wing, seems essentially familiar.

And yet it meant nothing. Bill Clinton won in 1996. The public mood cooled, the anger dissipated and anxieties about immigration were dropped by the broad center. The rightward turn of the 90s was chilling for American liberals and thrilling for American conservatives, but the liberals have had the last laugh. Will the same happen in France?

[Death of a Salesman]

Let's keep in mind that in still (IMHO) unlikely event that Lepen were to win the run-off, its very questionable whether she would get the usual win for her party in the legislative elections. In fact we could have a situation where she could be president and her party might still have very little representation in the assembly meaning there would have to be "co-habitation" with a PM and government entirely made up of people from other parties...

French posters will correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that the President can still name a PM/government even without a legislative majority. Last time Philippe became PM the day after Macron took office, a full month before the legislative elections when they were without a majority. So Le Pen could appoint a government for a few weeks at least.

The government is responsible to the National Assembly, which may bring it down with a simple majority. In theory Le Pen could try to play ping-pong with the assembly, but I suspect that antics like that would lead to a court case establishing she couldn't do that (whether the law truly justifies that ruling or not). In the likely scenario that RN falls short of a legislative majority, she would likely try to form a government led by a conservative LR politician, Eric Ciotti or someone like him, which would be able to maintain the confidence of the National Assembly by dint of the votes of all the forces on the Right.

[Death of a Salesman]

Zemmour was great for Le Pen because it’s harsher for people to see her as “the extremist” now and that he occupies that position. I don’t doubt she can get elected this time at all.

Would consolidate the end of EU at least in the way we know it. Hungary is one thing even if they’re EU member, but France??

A Union aligned with De Gaulle and Adenauer, not the liberal caste currently in Brussels. Perhaps it shall not come to pass, but the currents flowing that way are strong.