French presidential election, 2022

[PSOL]

Unless she has a really good plan to turn things around very quickly, then I really don't see the point in Hidalgo staying in the race. Doing so otherwise will - unless we're seeing a serious case of polling failure - only further damage her image and that of the remnants of her party. She was always a curious choice of candidate given the general field: given that Macron is the incumbent and that there was always going to be a Green candidate, what exactly is the purpose of her candidacy? Other sorts of PS politician could maybe justify themselves under these circumstances, but not her sort. There's no room.

Hidalgo should have waited for 2027, with open seat, Mélenchon rejected after three defeats and with Olympics visibility.

Reading this makes me angry at PS strategists. The PS could have nominated a no-name, then withdrawn to back the EELV (and claimed they were being responsible after 2017), concentrated on the assembly elections then have an untainted and elevated Hidalgo ready to go. It was so obviously a better idea than keeping going now.

if she is a bit of a careerst cadre, the thought was that at least she did have a certain degree of popularity coming out the anti-car stuff in Paris and having a certain degree of an enthusiastic, plus getting comfortably re-elected, that would make that possible.

In a post-Gilet Jaunes France, how is supporting regressive policies like forcing the public transit-deprived exurban dwellers the lack of movement to their jobs a winning electoral strategy. In Francophone Belgium, such policies just led to a collapse of the liberal and machine “left” parties in favor of PTB-PVDA.

The problem outside of espousing bad policies and being unlikable is that the ability for PS to gaslight their opponents and take up all the oxygen is gone with the removal of the PS electoral machinery to Macron, hell, Melenchon, and Taubira in that very order. The average French person does not like for some powerless rando from the Ecolé De bull•••• talk down on them as an election strategy.

The few that are smart here in PS might as well sell themselves to the highest bidder to the eventual woke coalition around Taubira and hope the EELV pays well afterwards.

[Continential]

When will PS dissolve/become a minor party at this point?

[parochial boy]

In a post-Gilet Jaunes France, how is supporting regressive policies like forcing the public transit-deprived exurban dwellers the lack of movement to their jobs a winning electoral strategy. In Francophone Belgium, such policies just led to a collapse of the liberal and machine “left” parties in favor of PTB-PVDA.

The problem outside of espousing bad policies and being unlikable is that the ability for PS to gaslight their opponents and take up all the oxygen is gone with the removal of the PS electoral machinery to Macron, hell, Melenchon, and Taubira in that very order. The average French person does not like for some powerless rando from the Ecolé De bull•••• talk down on them as an election strategy.

The few that are smart here in PS might as well sell themselves to the highest bidder to the eventual woke coalition around Taubira and hope the EELV pays well afterwards.

I mean, I don't disagree with you on the whole. One fairly neat policy that would quite quickly assuage the suffering of a lot of car dependent people in rural areas (and would reverse and originally disastrous decision in the first place) would be to re-nationalise the motorway. But that obviously doesn't figure anywhere.

With the anti-car stuff inside Paris though - that was totally justifiable. Paris has pefectly adequate public transport and it's not just about carbon emissions, but also pollution levels caused by urban driving and the quality of life impact of getting rid of the completely mad expressways by the Seine. So it's not suprising, and fairly reasonable in fact, that that sort of stuff led to a degree of enthusiasm about her.

When will PS dissolve/become a minor party at this point?

I doubt it will even dissolve. I mean even the Radicals and CNIP(!) still technically exist. Likely the PS will follow the same destiny of eventually turning into a minor party of local notables who hang on to a handful of their mandates through alliances with larger and more relevant parties. Though remains to be seen what those parties might be. Of course that also depends on whether France continues down the route it is seemingly of being based around Slovenia-like personal "movements" rather than parties. In which case it is entirely possibly that every, or most, of these movements wind up ephemeral.

Either way it will be a process, not like you wake up tomorrow and suddenly they're no longer relevant. But come back in 20 years and there is every chance the PS play the same role that the PRG or the UDI do today.

[Zinneke]

The thing about the anti-car measures in Paris is, is that whatever way you look at it, whichever side you are on (and I am firmly with parochial boy on the improvement it has or will eventually have) the main issue is that Paris-city as a polity has excessive power over its entire metropolis and its next level of government is île de France, which given that's where Pécresse was President, isn't actually representative of Paris. Key stakeholders weren't consulted and it felt like Hidalgo was being deliberately destructive in that respect.

I think Paris like Berlin would be allowed to expand politically and annex its surrounding areas, especially as it doesn't have the ethnic dimension as an excuse unlike Brussels. 

[parochial boy]

The thing about the anti-car measures in Paris is, is that whatever way you look at it, whichever side you are on (and I am firmly with parochial boy on the improvement it has or will eventually have) the main issue is that Paris-city as a polity has excessive power over its entire metropolis and its next level of government is île de France, which given that's where Pécresse was President, isn't actually representative of Paris. Key stakeholders weren't consulted and it felt like Hidalgo was being deliberately destructive in that respect.

I think Paris like Berlin would be allowed to expand politically and annex its surrounding areas, especially as it doesn't have the ethnic dimension as an excuse unlike Brussels. 

In that respect, it's a feature of French municipal level administration that the villes-centres are comparatively tiny relative to their urban areas. Paris within is city limits is about 2 million people, as in basically the same size as Brussels and smaller than Madrid or Berlin and yet anchors a metro area of something like 10-12 million people that is the largest in the EU. The same thing exists with the likes of Bordeaux, Lyon, Lille and others where the city proper barely makes up 20-30% of the urban area's populatio and are all surrounded by a multitude of middling sized suburban municipalities.

Things like the Grand Paris and the various intercommunalités have been a way to try and fix these and organise these sorts of decisions on a larger scale. But obviously the democratic deficit and the organisational one are still there, and allocations of resources still aren't being done in a really effective or efficient way (the pendant of this is obviously the multitude of rural communes with a few hundred inhabitants that are far too small to be able to organise and offer the sorts of public services that people want).

There is a need for a reform of how local government works in France, but the French are still very fond of their 36'000 communes and too much energy has been directed at the pointless regional consolidation over really re-structuring who has the competency for what and at which level.

[Continential]

What led to Roussel surging?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Unless she has a really good plan to turn things around very quickly, then I really don't see the point in Hidalgo staying in the race. Doing so otherwise will - unless we're seeing a serious case of polling failure - only further damage her image and that of the remnants of her party. She was always a curious choice of candidate given the general field: given that Macron is the incumbent and that there was always going to be a Green candidate, what exactly is the purpose of her candidacy? Other sorts of PS politician could maybe justify themselves under these circumstances, but not her sort. There's no room.

I hate to say this as someone who genuinely respects her, but I agree. She should just drop out at this point. Spare herself (and all of us) the embarrassment.

[Astatine]

You know it's an election year in France when the President promises the construction of new nuclear power plants: Macron announced the age of a "new nuclear renaissance" today, planning 6 new reactors with the option for another 8 by 2050. The new NPPs are likely to be improved versions of the EPR, a reactor model that has been under construction in Flamanville since 2007 and might finally get into operation by 2023. Voters might thank him, as the mostly state-owned energy company EDF which operates all of France's NPPs employs more than 150,000 people.

Macron had scored another win on nuclear power just recently, when the EU commission included it in their new green taxonomy.

EDF purchased some property next to the Cattenom NPP, which is close to Luxembourg and Germany, as recently as 2018 - Ironic if a new reactor would be built there just to piss off the Germans.

[MaxQue]

Also, Hidalgo was the best of the 2 candidates in the Socialist primary, her opponent was Stéphane Le Foll, Hollande's Agriculture minister, which pretty much want to transform the PS into a En Marche satellite party.

[Biden 2024]

2027 is going to be Mélenchon's time, I can feel it. Metaverse adaptation of Fiskal Kombat + AR goggles will make attending Mélenchon's hologram rallies much easier.

[Zinneke]

Pécresse absolutely bombed her big speech today. Several right wing figures are wondering whether to jump ship.

[JimJamUK]

Is there any indications of how the legislative elections will go? On paper you would think En Marche is less popular than it was in 2017, but the Republicans don’t look any more popular, the Socialists are in disarray (but like the Republicans held up well in the regional elections), the National Rally looks weakened, Zemmour’s Party doesn’t seem to have any organisation etc. Essentially it looks like everyone should be standing still or doing worse in the 1st round except Zemmour’s party, but people are still going to be faced with a narrow choice in the 2nd round (and given there’s a lot more vote splitting between the right wing parties, presumably they could do quite well if there’s more 2nd round consolidation than 2017, particularly if the Republican candidate gets through).

[Oryxslayer]

Is there any indications of how the legislative elections will go? On paper you would think En Marche is less popular than it was in 2017, but the Republicans don’t look any more popular, the Socialists are in disarray (but like the Republicans held up well in the regional elections), the National Rally looks weakened, Zemmour’s Party doesn’t seem to have any organisation etc. Essentially it looks like everyone should be standing still or doing worse in the 1st round except Zemmour’s party, but people are still going to be faced with a narrow choice in the 2nd round (and given there’s a lot more vote splitting between the right wing parties, presumably they could do quite well if there’s more 2nd round consolidation than 2017, particularly if the Republican candidate gets through).

Once again, bet on REM winning a good majority through being the better of two runoff options for left voters vs the right, and visa versa for right voters vs the left - as well as REM just being the party of the winning candidate. That said, is their any good info yet on candidates or the seats the non-REM parties could be focusing on? Cause it seems like Le Pen could sadly, but finally, get a semi-proportional share of seats compared to her vote total. Thanks to the normalization of her politics among the right, RN candidates now can pull from another pool voters in the runoff, but the party has never had a large base of talent to draw from.

[KaiserDave]

Zinneke, what about Poutou? What is your breakdown of him like you did the others.

[Sir John Johns]

* Pécresse is not only criticized for her disastrous performance but also for having used in her speech typical far-right expressions like ‘great replacement’ and Français de papier (‘paper French’, a term referring to recently naturalized French who supposedly are not assimilating; the expression has been forged by a collaborator of antisemitic theorist Édouard Drumont and used mainly against Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in the interwar period and later recycled by Panzerdaddy). Pécresse has announced she would not organize another large meeting, hence avoiding another opportunity to ridicule herself.

* The PRG has decided to withdraw de facto its support to the candidacy of Taubira as its president has stated the party isn’t intending ‘to endorse a candidacy over another one and will no get behind a candidacy’. This means that the elected officials of party are free to use their signature the way they want which is seriously hurting Taubira’s chances of having the 500 signatures.

* The only RN senator, Stéphane Ravier (a member of the party since 1991 and a former mayor of Marseille’s seventh sector, a largely powerless office), has announced on 13 February his departure from the party to endorse Zemmour’s candidacy. Marine Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal, is also rumored to plan leaving the ship and support Zemmour (a not very surprising development which has been announced since months now).

* Meanwhile, the Sarkozyist LR mayor of Calais (a city where illegal immigration is a major issue), Natacha Bouchart, has announced her support in favor of Emmanuel Macron’s reelection. Sarkozy himself hasn’t endorsed anybody so far and there are insistent rumors he is unhappy with the choice of Pécresse and could as well endorse Macron. Pécresse still got the endorsement of Édouard Balladur...

https://twitter.com/vpecresse/status/1493176142097965056

* Temporarily dropping his monomaniac discourse on MEAT, Roussel has explained in a TV interview that Taiwan ‘belongs to China’ and that in regard of the Taiwanese question the ‘one country, two systems, like for Hong Kong, should be respected’. He also said he doesn’t know what the recently banned Memorial Russian NGO is and that he can’t stand Nazism being equated with Stalinism.

* Things are going very nasty between candidates: Le Pen has called out in an interview Zemmour for having ‘Nazis’ in his campaign team; Zemmour’s team has went after Pécresse over her previous endorsement by a famous rapper who had last month called his fans to stop wishing him a happy New Year because he is a Muslim (a pretty dumb controversy previously exploited by junior minister Marlène Schiappa); Pécresse’s team has tried to expose online the ties between Zemmour and Islamist theologian Tariq Ramadan while an EELV municipal councilor has compared Roussel to Jacques Doriot, a PCF leader of the interwar period who ended up as an admirer of fascism and Nazism and a fighter on the Eastern Front in the ‘Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism’.



For the legislative elections, the results will be largely decided by whoever will win the presidential election and by the inter-party electoral agreements themselves determined by the balance of power in the wake of the first round.

[Forum explorer]

https://mobile.twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1493648478806892555

[buritobr]

Which candidate does Olaf Scholz prefer to win?
The candidate of the party similar to him is Anne Hidalgo. But she doesn't have any chance.
Which competitive candidate do you believe Scholz has a preference?

[PSOL]

What ties do Zemmour and Tariq Ramadan have exactly?

[Sir John Johns]

This is ‘explained’ in this thread of 'Pécresse 2022' pretending to reveal the ‘real nature’ of Éric Zemmour:

https://twitter.com/avecValerie/status/1488984882994946050

* Zemmour’s supporters are using the same tactics that the supporters of Ramadan (‘numerical fatwa’)
* in 2014, Zemmour had a lunch with a disbarred lawyer (with an Arab surname) who sued Charlie Hebdo over its front page on Quran
* Zemmour’s phrases on him ‘respecting people dying for what they are believe in’ and ‘we should be admiring rather than dismissive’ when speaking about Jihadists
* Zemmour having hinted that Ramadan (who is sued for rape) has ‘fallen into a trap’ as part of ‘an invention of feminists to criminalize males, the eternal persecutors’ (in line with him defending the right of the male elite to rape without consequence – Zemmour previously described the arrest of DSK ‘a castration of every French man’)
* allegations of Zemmour and Ramadan having exchanged SMS messages
* Alexandre Benalla having said that Zemmour is ‘respected for his courage by Salafists’ in the banlieues.
* a member of Zemmour’s inner circle has frequented Dieudonné, an Anti-Semitic humorist (with documented ties with the Iranian government) and some ‘Islamist activist’.

This is not particularly convincing but considering that Zemmour said one day, when still a pundit on CNews, that it’s not a coincidence the color of EELV is green, just like Islam... (yes, this is the level of political 'analysis' on French television).

* Nicolas Bay, a MEP as well as a spokesperson of Panzergirl’s campaign, is suspended from his duties in the RN over accusations he’s actually a mole for Zemmour. The RN executive bureau is denouncing the alleged ‘totally immoral attitude’ of Bay which it compares to ‘sabotage’. Note that previously Panzergirl had denounced the ‘taqiya’ (yes, that's the term she used) of undercover pro-Zemmour members in her party.

* The Constitutional Council has also today published a new wave of elected officials signatures, so the total is currently the following (excluding the various total nobodies and the lonely signatures obtained by François Hollande and Michel Barnier):

Valérie Pécresse 1,824
Emmanuel Macron 1,260
Anne Hidalgo 1,007
Nathalie Arthaud 509

---

Fabien Roussel 492
Jean Lassalle 471
Yannick Jadot 450
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan 360
Jean-Luc Mélenchon 332
Marine Le Pen 331
Éric Zemmour 250
François Asselineau 210
Philippe Poutou 188
Anasse Kazib 116
Christiane Taubira 73
Hélène Thouy 70
Georges Kuzmanovic 35
Gaspard Koenig 28
Nicolas Miguet 12
Antoine Waecher 1
Florian Philippot 1 (lol)

Don’t think she has been mentioned previously, but Hélène Thouy is the candidate of the Animalist Party which polled relatively well for a one-issue party in the 2019 European elections (2.2%, which was more than the lists headed by Arthaud, Philippot and Asselineau).

[H. Ross Peron]

* Things are going very nasty between candidates: Le Pen has called out in an interview Zemmour for having ‘Nazis’ in his campaign team; Zemmour’s team has went after Pécresse over her previous endorsement by a famous rapper who had last month called his fans to stop wishing him a happy New Year because he is a Muslim (a pretty dumb controversy previously exploited by junior minister Marlène Schiappa); Pécresse’s team has tried to expose online the ties between Zemmour and Islamist theologian Tariq Ramadan while an EELV municipal councilor has compared Roussel to Jacques Doriot, a PCF leader of the interwar period who ended up as an admirer of fascism and Nazism and a fighter on the Eastern Front in the ‘Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism’.

What was the context of this comparison to Doriot?

[Pick Up the Phone]

Which candidate does Olaf Scholz prefer to win?
The candidate of the party similar to him is Anne Hidalgo. But she doesn't have any chance.
Which competitive candidate do you believe Scholz has a preference?

Certainly Macron. Stable leadership + ideological proximity.

[Zinneke]

Zinneke, what about Poutou? What is your breakdown of him like you did the others.

I like Onfray's takedown of the NPA and Besancenot : "You only have to look at how the Trotskyite symbology has changed over the years. Previously you had a hammer and sickle to represent the factory workers and the peasantry. Now you have a loud speaker.''

[PSOL]

Why the f••• can’t Melenchon get any good endorsements.

[Sir John Johns]

* Things are going very nasty between candidates: Le Pen has called out in an interview Zemmour for having ‘Nazis’ in his campaign team; Zemmour’s team has went after Pécresse over her previous endorsement by a famous rapper who had last month called his fans to stop wishing him a happy New Year because he is a Muslim (a pretty dumb controversy previously exploited by junior minister Marlène Schiappa); Pécresse’s team has tried to expose online the ties between Zemmour and Islamist theologian Tariq Ramadan while an EELV municipal councilor has compared Roussel to Jacques Doriot, a PCF leader of the interwar period who ended up as an admirer of fascism and Nazism and a fighter on the Eastern Front in the ‘Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism’.

What was the context of this comparison to Doriot?

The comparison between Roussel and Doriot has been made by Pierre Serne, an EELV municipal councilor in Montreuil (seat in the opposition to the PCF mayor of the city), in a since deleted tweet.

Is Roussel the new Doriot? In any case, we’re getting closer and closer. When you are falling into petty populism by attacking your side when at the same time fascism is just around the corner, the biggest fears are legitimate...

That is excessive hyperbole and Serne later clarified he didn’t thought Roussel is comparable to the 1940 Doriot nor even the 1938 Doriot.

Still this is indicative of the discomfort of parts of left (EELV and LFI to mention the relevant ones) with the campaign of a left-wing candidate that is using topics (defense of meat consumption, hunting, individual car model, productivism and – debatable even if Jadot has recently, ridiculously imo, associated it with ‘far-right’ – nuclear energy) essentially in order to distinguish himself from his left-wing rivals with arguments verging on anti-intellectualism making here, ironically, the PCF candidate closer to Pierre Poujade (reportedly the author of the joke on how a scientist, after having cutting legs to a flea which previously jumped when asked to do so, concluded that when cutting legs to a flea it become deaf) than Maurice Thorez (who despite his working class background and lack of secondary education was an avid reader and an amateur latinist and geologist).

Even more, it seems that Roussel is far more retweeted when touching upon the said topics and not missing criticizing the rest of the left, than when he elaborated on economic matters, nationalizations, social inequalities and fiscal policies. Rising the (unfounded but these people are unable to explain the world without resorting to conspiracy theories) suspicions among LFI that he is deliberately playing the useful idiot of Macronism by undermining the candidacy of Mélenchon and preventing the strongest left-wing candidate to go to the runoff.

Still, there are the disturbing reports on Roussel regularly communicating with Sonia Mabrouk, a host on the Bolloré-owned CNEws television station and Europe 1 radio station. Accordingly, Mabrouk, an apologist of the supposed common sense of French popular classes (while ironically coming herself from one of the wealthiest families of the Tunisian oligarchy tied to the Bourguiba regime), is considering the PCF candidate as the representative of the ‘true left’, that one which, according to the widespread narrative, hasn’t abandoned economic claims in favor of cultural wars.

Ignoring that Roussel’s proposals are always mentioned through the prism of cultural identity and ongoing moral panic over a supposed war on meat and, even more ridiculous, a war on wine (just recently the government refused to subsidize and support the ‘Dry January’ campaign while at the same time trying to prohibit the sale of cannabidiol, evidencing the persisting influence of the powerful wine lobby).



Now, and that is my personal opinion, but one of the issues with Roussel’s campaign is the following one. Who is Roussel? The son of a Communist apparatchik and printed press journalist who was employed as a reporter aboard by a public-owned TV station, became a ministerial adviser at only 28 and is currently the deputy from a Nord constituency where only 0.2% of the population is employed as farmers.

Who is Ian Brossat, the director of his campaign? The son of a university professor and a sociologist who is currently serving as municipal councilor of Paris and a deputy mayor to Anne Hidalgo in a PS/EELV/PCF coalition. Brossat is the caricature of the urban bobo, as routinely vilified in the right-wing press, having been notably criticized for having supported an increase in kerosene tax and having labeled an actress standing in the defense of environment a hypocrite for regularly using international flights, when he himself regularly go on holiday on the other side of the planet.

While, I have nothing against left-wing parties being led by people with a bourgeois background (Jean Jaurès, Léon Blum and Pierre Mendès France were respectable left-wingers; conversely, despite their popular background, Maurice Thorez, Georges Marchais, Guy Mollet and, well obviously, Jacques Doriot, have proved to be politicians ranging from pretty mediocre to truly horrendous), I’m not pleased and even feel offended when politicians coming from a privileged background are cosplaying as the champions of the poor by using such lazy clichés and reducing the people™ to dumb symbolic.

This is also partly the strategy followed by Pécresse (being French is watching eating foie gras, the Tour de France, and voting for Miss France, an incredibly low bar if you want my opinion and you can be sure the bourgeois she is only do the first part) and even by Macronists like when Schiappa said that criticizing her participation to a talk-show host by Cyril Hanouna (the overpaid animator on a TV station owned by Bolloré of trash TV shows where TV celebrities are mostly clowning and discussing other trash TV shows; he has been recently promoted to legit political interviewer) was ‘class contempt’.

So, I’m sorry but these people are not only sounding to me as profoundly insincere and hypocrite but their vision of the rural France and of popular classes feels to me as a largely fantasized and romanticized vision and, let’s say it, as bordering class contempt. As being myself the resident of a small rural commune (in the process of suburbanization though) and coming from a modest family, I’m really tired of that whole discourse presenting popular classes as a bunch of unsophisticated big meat eaters and heavy wine drinkers, obsessed with their cars, totally insensible to environmental issues and consuming only lowbrow cultural products and considering the French countryside as some idyllic place struck in the 1960s (more precisely in a largely romanticized version of the 1960s) where everybody is either a small farmer owning only a dozen of cows or a small craftsman manufacturing the same traditional products since generations (pretty much, and I’m not exaggerating, the way it has been represented in the TF1 13 p.m. ‘news’ program anchored for decades by the recently retired Jean-Pierre Pernaut).

This is just the same story than with the Yellow Jackets movement few years ago, when we ended up with, as self-proclaimed leaders of the ‘forgotten France’, people driving expansive cars (Éric Drouet and his Jaguar; Jacline Mouraud and her SUV), a barely literate idiot with a criminal record who was spreading just every conceivable conspiracy theory (Maxime Nicolle), a woman making a living as a ‘hypnotherapist’ and ‘ectoplasm researcher’ (Jacline Mouraud), a misogynist, alcoholic and incredibly vulgar humorist (Jean-Marie Bigard), a singer often see on TV whom nobody is able to name a single of his songs (Francis Lalanne).

The ‘forgotten France’ deserves better than that and the issues raised by the Yellow Jackets are worth debating but people like that ultimately acted as the useful idiots of Macronism, helping it portraying popular classes as a bunch of trashy, illiterate and moronic loudmouths having money problems only because they are living over their means. No surprise this led to absolutely nothing. But this is repeating with Roussel and, very recently, with Mélenchon who has decided that idiot anti-vax boomers who have the time and the money to burn fuel to go to Paris and Brussels in their expansive campervans are worth being supported as the vanguard of a popular movement.


The few polls on the subject, to be taken with lot of salt considering the small size of the samples and honestly I don’t following this stuff very closely, are suggesting that Roussel isn’t gaining 2017 Le Pen voters as hoped nor even 2017 Mélenchon voters but mostly 2017 Hamon voters. He is also apparently progressing, not among workers, but among middle-class and a poll was indicating he was polling over Mélenchon among upper classes. He is also polling better among retirees than among youngest voters.

Possibly, he may end like Chevènement, another left-wing candidate who campaigned on rather right-wing themes and attracted support from right-wingers politicians and pundits but ultimately contributed to the defeat of the main left-wing candidate and whose supporters (some coming from the right, some coming from the left) almost exclusively ended up in right-wing and far-right parties: Emmanuel Macron and Guillaume Vuilletet in LREM; Florian Philippot and Bertrand Dutheil de La Rochère in Les Patriotes; the late Max Gallo endorsed Sarkozy in 2007 after having been a minister under Mitterrand; Élisabeth Lévy is currently screaming insanities on Cnews; while Natacha Polony is the managing editor of Marianne, an insufferable ‘I-told-you-so’ anti-establishment populist magazine lecturing readers on the evilness of Europe and the contempt of Macron for ‘the people’ while Polony is herself making dubious jokes on Twitter on the clothes of a woman begging in the metro station and her husband, also working for Marianne as editor-in-chief of the ‘wine and gastronomy’ section, has been elected a regional councilor last year on, you have guess it, the Modem-LREM list.

But we'll see.

[Sir John Johns]

Why the f••• can’t Melenchon get any good endorsements.

Well, he has received the endorsements of the PCF mayor of Dieppe (conversely, Mélenchon’s own alternate as deputy from Bouches-du-Rhône has endorsed Roussel), of anti-speciesist activist and TV pundit Aymeric Caron and just a few hours, GAME CHANGER, of...

Ségolène Royal

(she said that he is the only 'useful' vote on the right).

I'm not sure however, this is counting as 'good endorsement'.