France 2017: Results Thread

[Filuwaúrdjan]

These results could have been a lot worse but are still very bad.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Perhaps keep the Grade E level #analysis about GLOBAL TRENDS elsewhere and concentrate on the actual thing happening now?

Oh but who even cares.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Places like Vendée and Haut-de-Seine voting for the de facto "left-wing" candidate while doing terribly every working class area.

Not sure if it makes sense to think of Macron in such terms. He's the latest centrist huckster, except that in its current incarnation centrist hucksterism takes a higher share from the left than in its previous one (but not all previous ones).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Macron was and is a candidate of the Centre and has never pretended to be anything else. It is as Alain once said; when someone says that the difference between Right and Left is not so very important your first thought should be that that person is not on the Left.

I suppose that if the "left" in France splits into a quasi-PCF Melanchon-led Front de gauche as well as a more Third Way style social democratic En Marche party led by Macron...

What, is Macron advocating using market policies to achieve socialist goals now? No, I didn't think he was either...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Look, the Left got crushed. Utterly crushed. And the legislatives will be another grim defeat as well. But this isn't the end; it will recover, in some form, eventually.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

And does the defection of large parts of the PS to the New Centre Party prove that actually the New Centre Party is on the Left? Non... it just proves that large numbers of people on the Left are defecting to the Centre.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What a sh*tty f**king choice we have. I think I'd rather have Chirac again.

Only because you don't remember how bad Chirac was...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

No, EM will not be part of the Left even if many of its members will formerly have been. This is France: traditions, symbols and rhetoric are what defines your political camp, not anything so gross and vulgar as policy. But anyone prophesying the death of the French Left is being completely absurd. An awful defeat has just happened and another is coming, but it will be back, even if it takes a while (they've been out for decades in the past). All I can say is that you people have been winning too long; has warped your minds and expectations for the future.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So I see that the World has not ended. Jolly good.