French presidential election, 2022

[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)

[Canis]

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)

That's really interesting and a Left-wing Primary is a really good idea its a shame it won't happen because this race will come down to Macron vs either LePen Zemmouror or Pécresse without the left united.

This reminded me of what happened In my congressional race a few weeks ago, my candidate Shervin actually proposed doing something similar he approached the other two progressives in the race about uniting behind one of them after holding a debate and then like a straw poll among progressive voters in the district. One of the candidates whose Yang gang-affiliated said she had absolutely no interest in the idea from what I heard and the other guy said unless she agreed to it he wouldn't do it. This is a shame but because theirs 2 Republicans in the race and we've been having such a successful and aggressive ground game I'm still confident we'll make the runoff and I'm confident we have a good chance of winning this thing, but it just goes to show left-wing disunity is an international phenomena lol. Coalition building is an incredibly important part of winning elections especially in the jungle primary system used in California and France hopefully the left will understand that soon .

[buritobr]

Most recent poll
Odoxa December 7-9th, 2021
Emmanuel Macron 24%, Valerie Pecresse 19%, Marine Le Pen 17%, Eric Zemmour 12%, Jean Luc Melenchon 10%, Yannick Janot 6%, Anne Hidalgo 3%, Dupont-Aignan 2.5%, Fabien Roussel 2%, Phillippe Poutou 1.5%

I don't believe we will see 6 candidates with >5% on April 10th 2022. In 2 round elections, usually the strategic votes are concentrated in few candidates, no more than 4, in the final week of the 1st round campaign.

[Zinneke]

 I think the Left showed in 2002 they are perfectly capable of all running and stepping on each others toes until the final minute for 2 reasons : they need the momentum going into legislative elections to save their individual party mandates, and the candidates are caught in a game of chicken where they wonder why they should sacrifice themselves if the other hasn't yet.

I do expect some consolidation though like Montebourg endorsing Roussel (both have similar platforms save Montebourgs knee jerk to migration policy) or PS and EELV coming to some agreement.

It'll be interesting if some candidates fail to make the signatures though. I do wonder if we'll see right wing mayors prop up a few.

[Zinneke]

Shows Pécresse's strength as an unknown quantity. Remains to be seen if the media pick up on her ideas such as de-marrying gay couples and putting 300.000 public servants on the bread line.

[Continential]

Shows Pécresse's strength as an unknown quantity. Remains to be seen if the media pick up on her ideas such as de-marrying gay couples and putting 300.000 public servants on the bread line.

It should tell a lot when she is tied with Melenchon on how many people strongly approve of her.

[Zinneke]

Taubira announces her consideration for a possible candidacy.

Infamous for essentially being one of the reasons Jospin didn't make it in 2002.

But also has a weird cult following in the Left for her stint in government during the Hollande years because she manages to enrage the far right due to her passing the gay marriage act and also just generally swiping off any criticisms from the Right in a dignified manner, and resigning when she disagreed with the stripping of nationality of certain criminals.

I imagine this will send the right wing media into a new overdrive. It could even be a way to trick them into going into the vortex that is the gay marriage debate (Pécresse once said she'd demarry gays, but yeah religious extremists will be religious extremists -  they hide among us and smile politely but come Sunday are openly conspiring to fulfill authoritarian fantasies while their pastor screws their wife.)

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Taubira announces her consideration for a possible candidacy.

Infamous for essentially being one of the reasons Jospin didn't make it in 2002.

But also has a weird cult following in the Left for her stint in government during the Hollande years because she manages to enrage the far right due to her passing the gay marriage act and also just generally swiping off any criticisms from the Right in a dignified manner, and resigning when she disagreed with the stripping of nationality of certain criminals.

I imagine this will send the right wing media into a new overdrive. It could even be a way to trick them into going into the vortex that is the gay marriage debate (Pécresse once said she'd demarry gays, but yeah religious extremists will be religious extremists -  they hide among us and smile politely but come Sunday are openly conspiring to fulfill authoritarian fantasies while their pastor screws their wife.)

I also have no idea what Taubira thinks about any economic issues, which seems... less than ideal.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Yep. One more candidate is exactly what the left needed to have any relevance in this election. Thanks a lot Christiane.

[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.

[Geoffrey Howe]

With his economic reforms falling by the wayside Macron seems to have tacked Left (in that respect, at least) since a few years ago. This also puts some distance between him and Pécresse, upon whom it now falls to carry the flame of economic liberalism.

[parochial boy]

Well he's never been a fiscal/deficit hawk like the the modern day LR are, and he's also certainly rhetorically trying to do a bit of "en même temps" at the moment.

But at the same time, given the way him and his government have plunged headfirst into the islamophobic and "anti-woke" culture wars of the past year or so (I mean, ask any left winger what they think of Blanquer or Darmanin). Also, given the way that his government has done things this year like cutting benefits to the disabled, tried to get rid of the cash payments part of the allocation rentrée, or been indifferent to lower income students plunging into food poverty, his programme of economic redistribution is definitely still on; even if it has been pushed down the agenda by other circumstances.

So I don't think you can honestly accuse him of tacking to the left in any substantial way.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Wonderful job. Lol.

[Zinneke]

Yep, Macron has many faces, but his fundemental ideology remains corporatism. This report of the French Presidency of the EU and how they allow for big French corporations to dictate policy is an eye opener :

https://corporateeurope.org/en/under-influence-distorted-priorities


And it very much justifies the criticism of the Macron phenomenon in general. His effortless rise seemed to be as sponsored as Zemmour's, just by a different set of billionaires (those who own BFM). This is actually somewhere where the re-introduction of actual, functioning political parties would be a positive, if only because political parties tend to look after their own interests as long as donations are kept to a minimum.

Pecresse has overtaken Le Pen in first round polls for the first time. Again Zemmour is litterally going to just be a spoiler candidate at this stage. Which makes me think another set of billionaires, those who own Figaro, are encouraging him just to get Pecresse through. His campaign is run by twentysomething ENArques dropouts (including his mistress who he refused to talk about on ground of his private life yet once teased Hollande for his affair with Julie Gayet - good old catholic family values for you!) which leads me to believe either he is just doing this for fun or he is the genuine political outsider he claims to be.

All of the right-wing politicians are also doing some sort of pilgrimage to Armenia because its a core constituency.

[parochial boy]

We might have actually stumbled across very similar articles about Zemmour's campaign. Implications that the last person in Zemmour's entourage to realise he was standing was, Zemmour himself. There definitely seems to be some indications that he was manipulated into going for it, especially once that crowd realised that the originally preferred Marion Maréchal wasn't going to.

For Macron, well one comment I saw recently was something along the lines of "when Deliveroo and Uber eats talk about Macron, you can see the stars in their eyes". As in, he has been the single biggest stumbling block in the EU reforming the bogus "independent" status of the delivery service workers.

[xelas81]

All of the right-wing politicians are also doing some sort of pilgrimage to Armenia because its a core constituency.

Do you mean America? Why would French politicians care about Armenia?

[MaxQue]

All of the right-wing politicians are also doing some sort of pilgrimage to Armenia because its a core constituency.

Do you mean America? Why would French politicians care about Armenia?

It's a Christian country who was oppressed/slaugthered by the evil dirty Moslem Turkish Ottomans, you see.

[Lord Halifax]

All of the right-wing politicians are also doing some sort of pilgrimage to Armenia because its a core constituency.

Do you mean America? Why would French politicians care about Armenia?

Third largest Armenian diaspora community.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenians_in_France

[DL]

All of the right-wing politicians are also doing some sort of pilgrimage to Armenia because its a core constituency.

Do you mean America? Why would French politicians care about Armenia?

Third largest Armenian diaspora community.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenians_in_France

Including Charles Aznavour!

[The Mikado]

This is one of the greatest posts in this forum's near-20 years of existence.

[TrumpBritt24]

Any Zemmour fans?

[Continential]

Any Zemmour fans?

Umengus is one, even though he lives in Belgium and not in France.

[Sir John Johns]

* Look like it is over for Dupont-Aignan’s campaign. Several key members of his staff have resigned after it has been revealed that Dupont-Aignan concealed them having got COVID-19 and instead continued his campaign as usual, hence putting his team at risk of also being infected. According to Libération, he also participated in several meetings in the National Assembly while knowing been a COVID-19 contact case, deliberately ignoring the self-isolation rules.

This latter fact is denied by Dupont-Aignan but, anyway, by now he has virtually no campaign team, no party infrastructure (a sizable of it having already defected to the RN in late 2019 and late 2020), no money and not much electoral space.

Debout la France appears now doomed to join Villiers’s MPF and Pasqua’s RPF in the political graveyard of parties which tried to exist, sometimes with some success, in the political room between the mainstream right and the entrenched Le Pen dynasty’s party but ultimately failed to survive on the long run.

* For Taubira, she once again dodged questions over her positioning on vaccination policy and, concerning her (quite mysterious) economic stances, when a presidential candidate in 2002, she advocated some kind of third-wayism (abolition of income tax and most social contributions and their replacements by a moderate ‘progressive tax’ as well as a limited funded pension system). Nothing particularly leftist, but remember she started her political career in metropolitan France as a deputy from Guyana seating in the ‘République et Liberté’ parliamentary group. This one was a motley crew of non-inscrits (independents; members of minor parties) legislators from right and left with no political consistency. It included notably Bernard Tapie (aka the French Berlusconi wannabee before he ended in jail for the fixing of a soccer game when at the head of the Olympique de Marseille), Jean-Louis Borloo, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, Jean-Pierre Soisson (a super-opportunist who served as minister in both Giscard’s UDF and Mitterrand PS governments before getting elected president of Bourgogne regional council with the votes of the FN), and Paul Vergès, the leader of La Réunion Communist Party. And it was, of course, presided by the legendary Jean Royer (the arch-conservative mayor of Tours very much opposed to pornography). Taubira then voted in favor of the swearing-in of the Balladur government and was later a candidate in the 1994 European elections on the ‘Radical Energy’ list, the list headed by Tapie (there was also Noël Mamère on it) whose main purpose was seemingly to enable Mitterrand torpedoing Rocard's position as head of the PS.

Nevertheless, by this point, Taubira is probably a better candidate for the PS than Hidalgo, at least for the first round; in a hypothetical runoff, this will be different but as Hidalgo isn’t going to the runoff anyway...

* Reportedly, Nathalie Arthaud (LO) is confident having her signatures and being on the ballot on next April; meanwhile, the competition between Philippe Poutou (NPA) and Anasse Kazib (ex-NPA) sounds as a brilliant strategy to ensure none of them get their signatures.

[Zinneke]

Great post but a bit harsh calling Tapie a Belursconi wannabe. There are obviously a lot of parallels but Tapie was famously the guy who wanted to take on the far right frontally rather than compromise with it.