French presidential election, 2022

[Continential]

Let's really hope Le Pen can pull this off.

Surprised you aren't supporting Zemmour.

He's too socially conservative. Le Pen supports LGB rights.

I see that you've excluded transgender people from your definition of LGBT.

[Antonio the Sixth]

How is the presidency of Valery Giscard d'Estaing viewed retrospectively?

It's largely... not remembered, honestly. The more historically aware people will remember as that time France legalized abortion and a bunch of other things, but even that isn't super present in public consciousness. And having lost reelection kind of condemns him to a weird spot when it comes to public memory, a problem that even Chirac, with his really paltry and ugly 2002 reelection, managed to avoid.

Let's really hope Le Pen can pull this off.

Keep these kinds of highly insightful contributions to the appropriate boards, please.

[DL]

What is considered to be the main "legacy' of Francois Mitterrand? I know he was President for 14 years so that makes him a symbol of an era - but what did he actually accomplish. I vaguely remember him bringing in a bunch radical reforms in his first year, then becoming extremely unpopular and backtracking on almost everything and then him being extremely UNpopular almost all the time he was President but having an uncanny ability to outfox his opponents when it came to managing co-habitation and getting re-elected...but it seems to me that his only real legacy was that he occupied the post of President - not that he actually did much with the job. 

[Coldstream]

What is considered to be the main "legacy' of Francois Mitterrand? I know he was President for 14 years so that makes him a symbol of an era - but what did he actually accomplish. I vaguely remember him bringing in a bunch radical reforms in his first year, then becoming extremely unpopular and backtracking on almost everything and then him being extremely UNpopular almost all the time he was President but having an uncanny ability to outfox his opponents when it came to managing co-habitation and getting re-elected...but it seems to me that his only real legacy was that he occupied the post of President - not that he actually did much with the job. 

He blew up the Rainbow Warrior.

[MaxQue]

What is considered to be the main "legacy' of Francois Mitterrand? I know he was President for 14 years so that makes him a symbol of an era - but what did he actually accomplish. I vaguely remember him bringing in a bunch radical reforms in his first year, then becoming extremely unpopular and backtracking on almost everything and then him being extremely UNpopular almost all the time he was President but having an uncanny ability to outfox his opponents when it came to managing co-habitation and getting re-elected...but it seems to me that his only real legacy was that he occupied the post of President - not that he actually did much with the job. 

Death penalty abolition, legalizing gay sex and the big decentralisation law? Still support your point, as all of these happened in the first 2 years.

[DL]

What is considered to be the main "legacy' of Francois Mitterrand? I know he was President for 14 years so that makes him a symbol of an era - but what did he actually accomplish. I vaguely remember him bringing in a bunch radical reforms in his first year, then becoming extremely unpopular and backtracking on almost everything and then him being extremely UNpopular almost all the time he was President but having an uncanny ability to outfox his opponents when it came to managing co-habitation and getting re-elected...but it seems to me that his only real legacy was that he occupied the post of President - not that he actually did much with the job. 

Death penalty abolition, legalizing gay sex and the big decentralisation law? Still support your point, as all of these happened in the first 2 years.

Those are also measures that were being passed all over western Europe in the 1980s by government of left and right. Its quite possible those would have still happened under a second term of VGE

[Sir John Johns]

What is considered to be the main "legacy' of Francois Mitterrand? I know he was President for 14 years so that makes him a symbol of an era - but what did he actually accomplish. I vaguely remember him bringing in a bunch radical reforms in his first year, then becoming extremely unpopular and backtracking on almost everything and then him being extremely UNpopular almost all the time he was President but having an uncanny ability to outfox his opponents when it came to managing co-habitation and getting re-elected...but it seems to me that his only real legacy was that he occupied the post of President - not that he actually did much with the job. 

Death penalty abolition, legalizing gay sex and the big decentralisation law? Still support your point, as all of these happened in the first 2 years.

Those are also measures that were being passed all over western Europe in the 1980s by government of left and right. Its quite possible those would have still happened under a second term of VGE

You can add the 39-hour work week, the fifth week of paid leave, retirement age at 60, liberalization of the airwaves (that Giscard didn’t do despite being supposedly a liberal; in hindsight maybe not a that fantastic measure but at the time it freed radio from a strict control of the state and led to the apparition of often short-lived non-commercial radio stations), legislation to control urbanization in the seaside and in mountain areas, institution of the RMI (now RSA, a sort of universal minimum income) passed during his second term in office, laws to give workers and consumers more rights, and, a measure I personally benefited when a kid thanks to that widely derided ‘Ministry of Free Time’ which didn’t lasted long: the chèque-vacances (holiday checks) helping working families to go on vacation. Not sure this is that much positive, but this is often mentioned when speaking about Mitterrand: the Grand Projets with the building of lot of stuff in Paris like the Opéra Bastille, the Arche de la Défense, the renovation of the Louvre and the National Grand Library. Mitterrand has built all of this, Pompidou the... hum.. Centre Pompidou, Chirac the Stade de France and a museum dedicated to non-European arts and Giscard nothing of interest. Plus a more relax and democratic approach in matter of cultural policies that can be criticized but since we have now gave up on having a half-coherent and an even remotely ambitious cultural policy...

Still doesn’t offset the 1983 austerity turn, the Rainbow Warrior, the illegal wiretapping of journalists and personalities, the maneuvers to prevent the revelation about his hidden illegitimate daughter, his past as a Petainist (still sending flowers to be put on Pétain’s grave when president) and his lifetime friendship with well-known collaborators, an erratic foreign policy especially in Africa, widespread corruption and the scandal of contaminated blood, totally useless symbolic measures (like renaming the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Ministry for External Relations and the office of ‘prefect’ into ‘commissioner of the Republic’ in reference to the revolutionary period), the celebration of the money-king in 1984-86 and, especially, in the early 1990s (with the appointment of shady self-made-man businessman Bernard Tapie as minister at one point groomed as a potential future leader of the left) and giving up on reducing unemployment (from ‘changing life’ in 1981 to ‘against unemployment we have tried everything’ in 1993).

An important point is how truly awful the French right was at that same period, relativizing a bit Mitterand’s own awfulness. Giscard’s presidency was also riddled with a lot of political scandals (the infamous diamonds given by Emperor Bokassa, the suspicious suicide of his labor minister Robert Boulin, the murders of two former right-wing ministers, Joseph Fontanet and Jean de Broglie, the revelations on the past of his budget minister, Maurice Papon, as a high official in the Vichy administration who presided over the deportation of Jewish people to death camps) and an inability to fix economic problems despite the appointment of Raymond Barre, sold as ‘the best economist in France’, as head of the government.

Said Barre made also, when PM, some nasty comments, notably on ‘unemployed persons who should try to start their own business instead of receiving unemployment benefits’ and on the deadly bomb attack on a synagogue that ‘was aiming at hit Jewish going to the synagogue and hit innocent French bystanders’ (implying Jewish were neither innocent nor French; fact he years later blamed the controversy on a ‘Jewish lobby’ didn’t helped his case).

And Giscard has always sounds to me as incredibly smug and arrogant (with stuff like his private safaris, the names of his wife and his daughters and his election to the Académie française despite a literary production of dubious quality) who has been never able to connect with working classes and youth.

I think this is a clear difference with both Mitterrand and Chirac (despite them being not that different from Giscard). Especially the later: when Giscard, then the youngest president of Fifth Republic, went in that cringe TV show to play... accordion, a decade later Chirac, then the PM, attended a concert of Madonna. When I grew up, some fifteen years after the end of Giscard presidency, VGE was widely depicted as a complete has-been (the fact he insisted continuing having a political career, and a pretty lackluster one for a former president, probably didn’t helped) and as a deaf old man. Not only in Les Guignols de l’info satirical puppet show but also in the lame and unfunny Bébête Show (to which, typical of the man, Giscard demanded and obtained a change in his puppet design TWICE because it didn’t pleased him). Contrast with how Chirac has been depicted in these recent years, fifteen years after the end of his presidency: a man who had the swag and was seen publicly smoking and jumping over subway gate.

But the Chirac of the 1980s and early 1990s was also a truly despicable politician people seems to have forget. When the head of government in 1986-88, he attempted to get a law introducing selection and competition in universities passed (withdrawn after massive student demonstrations and the racist murder by a police squad of Malik Oussekine who wasn’t even participated in protests), failed to improve the economy, privatized TF1, the flagship of the French audiovisual sector, enabling the constitution overnight of a private quasi-monopoly in television and abolished the wealth tax introduced by Mitterrand.

He also appointed as interior minister Charles Pasqua, the former leader of the SAC (a Gaullist quasi-militia with alleged ties to organized crime dissolved in 1982 by Mitterrand after an internal feud in the organization led to the massacre of a family of 6) involved in lot of shady businesses and corruption schemes (both in France and in various African countries), in which post Pasqua hardened legislation on foreigners residing in France (the beginning of the still ongoing escalation on the tightening of immigration legislation), negotiated the liberation of hostages held by Hezbollah just few days before the 1988 presidential runoff (accusations of the payment of a ransom and even of commissions in favor of Pasqua’s collaborators later surfaced) and ordered the assault on Kanak militants holding gendarmes as hostages that ended in a bloodbath (again, this was just few days before the 1988 presidential runoff).

And once out of office, Chirac made that infamous 1991 speech on ‘the noise and the smell’, a landmark in political racist discourse, referring to migrant families made up of polygamous moochers earning more money than French-born workers thanks to parental allowances, making noise and stinking.

So all in all, Mitterrand was a terrible politician and a truly awful individual but still preferable to the realistic alternatives (Giscard, Chirac, Barre and, eeeh, Marchais).

Edit: for Barre, I forgot to mention he also held secret bank accounts in Switzerland, which made his comments on unemployed and his whole ‘no-nonsense management like a good parent’ schtick even more abhorrent.

[mileslunn]

Macron seems to really be surging over his handling of Russia conflict so barring some major misstep don't see how he doesn't get re-elected.  He may even on second round get over 60% which a month ago seemed near impossible.  He did though say he wants to raise retirement age to 65 by 2032 which is good policy (most of Europe is 66 or 67) but seeing backlash Sarkozy faced over just raising it to 62, this may hurt him somewhat, but doubt enough to cost him election.

[DL]

I heard that when Giscard was President, he was so pompous that when he would visit villages in France he would insist on an elaborate choreography whereby Spring from Vivaldi's Four Seasons would have to be played from loud speakers as the presidential helicopter landed!

[Sir John Johns]

Macron seems to really be surging over his handling of Russia conflict so barring some major misstep don't see how he doesn't get re-elected.  He may even on second round get over 60% which a month ago seemed near impossible.  He did though say he wants to raise retirement age to 65 by 2032 which is good policy (most of Europe is 66 or 67) but seeing backlash Sarkozy faced over just raising it to 62, this may hurt him somewhat, but doubt enough to cost him election.

Yes, this is a ‘good policy’ if you want to further divide the French society and fuel even more the resentment against the boomer generation whose living standards are currently superior to the rest of the population, which is owning most of real estate (while working classes are struggling to pay the inflated rents) and benefited for an exaggerated attention from the political class and mass medias at the expense of younger generations (last year, one student out of two couldn't eat his fill) but also the oldest retirees (there have been a recent major scandal exposing, what a lot of people was aware of but has never been really discussed in medias and politics: the inhuman conditions in privately managed retirement homes where pensioners are left starving and unwashed due to lack of staff and deliberate strategy to maximize profits for the companies managing said retirement homes – the worst part being that such things even happen in retirement homes of Neuilly-sur-Seine where places are charged for €10,000 a month!).

An IPSOS survey (pdf file) from last month found that 71% of French are favorable to retirement age being reduced back to 60. Such measure is supported by 86% of LFI voters, 84% of PS voters, 78% of ÉELV voters, 77% of RN voters but only 47% of LREM voters and 42% of LR voters. Because, to the surprise of absolutely no one, the only age group not overwhelmingly supporting such measure is people over 65 (still 51% in favor of the measure against 73% for people aged 18-24 and 78/79% for other age groups) and the only income bracket opposing it is the wealthiest one (earning over €2,500 a month) with only 35% in favor against 65% for ‘upper middle class’ (€1,900 to €2,500 a month), 77% for ‘lower middle class’ (€1,300 to €1,900 a month), 77% for ‘low-income categories’ (€900 to 1,300 a month) and 85% for ‘poor categories’ (under €900 a month).

This is in line with previous polls showing that the only groups supportive of the pension reforms proposed by Macron are:
- retirees who will not be affected by such reforms and will not see their pension decreasing
- upper classes that are able to save money, aren’t holding physically demanding jobs (also generally not well-paid) and aren’t affected by job insecurity

The proposal to rise retirement age to 65, be it a necessity from a pure accounting point of view, may not cost Macron his reelection but this is the recipe for a future major social explosion if, as it will certainly happen, current major issues aren’t addressed like the low unemployment rate among persons over 55, the lack of financial and social recognition for the so-called ‘essential workers’ like nurses, cashiers, deliverers, home helpers, cleaners but also for teachers who have seen their salaries stagnate since two decades, the exorbitant rents and the related issues of rising costs for owning and using a private vehicle (still a necessity in the absence of realist alternative outside of major urban centers), the abuse of precarious work by employers, the terrible workplace relations, the contempt of Macronism for working classes and its disdain for labor unions and social dialogue as well as that whole despicable discourse in some medias valuing people only in relation to their financial earnings (‘if you aren’t owning a Rolex at 50 you have wasted your life’ of advertising executive Jacques Séguéla) or belittling workers (philosopher Luc Ferry saying on TV that driving a subway at 52 isn’t stressful because he himself drives Formula One cars at 70).

[Sir John Johns]

Zemmour’s campaign has suffered in the latest days a series of setbacks and, by this point, I can see him ending below 10%.

Firstly, he made an underwhelming performance (judged as such even among his supporters) in a television debate against Pécresse. Haven’t watched said debate but it has been described as tedious catfight during which both candidates spent their time trading accusations and interrupting each other. General opinion is that Pécresse still prevailed by being surprisingly aggressive (maybe too much) and having working at least the bare minimum on issues and platform. Besides of the humiliation for Zemmour, who loves posturing as an alpha male, to have been defeated by a woman, it is worth remembering that the main selling point of his candidacy has been that he would win a debate against Macron unlike Le Pen who, back in 2017, appeared totally amateurish and unprepared to govern when debating with Macron (this is a pretty silly argument considering how Zemmour is lagging in every runoff poll at such extent that a good performance in a debate would be far from sufficient to win the election and how such debate can have unexpected outcome: in 2012, Sarkozy was supposed to totally destroy the uncharismatic Hollande but it was this latter who prevailed).

Secondly, during one of his meetings an attendant was filmed making a Nazi salute. He was expelled from the meeting and condemned by Zemmour but this has been an unwelcomed negative publicity and yet another controversy related to Nazism and German occupation period for the candidate.

Thirdly, a day trip in Moissac ended up in a PR disaster. Firstly, when stepping out of his car, he has immediately an egg crushed on his head by a protester.

https://twitter.com/BFMTV/status/1502592679674269704

Far from being an Antifa activist, the man who thrown the egg is aged of 70 and has explained he wasn’t motivated by political reasons but by Zemmour’s previous comments on disabled children which scandalized him as he is himself the father of an autistic child. Zemmour reacted by saying that ‘we are seeing on which side the violence is’ but a comment he made one year ago after Macron had been slapped by a bystander about how the president ‘deserved it’ has resurfaced.

Then, a supposed exchange on rising fuel prices with car users at a gas station turned out to have been totally staged with the random motorist met by Zemmour being actually one of his supporters, betrayed by a selfie made with Marion Maréchal earlier in the day; he later attended Zemmour meeting in Agen. Other car users met by the candidate were also members of Reconquête.

Actually not the first time this is happening in a presidential campaign: back in 1995, Édouard Balladur, in a well-publicized episode, hitchhiked on a country lane after his helicopter ‘incidentally’ broke down. The inhabitant of a neighboring village then stopped her car and enabled the candidate to get into her vehicle to continue his journey. It emerged shortly thereafter that the driver was actually the cousin of a RPR bigwig raising strong suspicions over the incident being totally staged to help Balladur appearing as close to the people and break his image of a snob coming straight back from Louis-Philippe's period.

[Sir John Johns]

* So, there was an internal consultation among Les Patriotes members about which candidate the tiny party should endorsed after Philippot had dropped out from the race. The name of Zemmour prevailed with 40.5% of the membership voting in favor of supporting the former TV polemicist. Therefore Philippot has logically announced the party would endorse... Dupont-Aignan, hence deciding to not give a sh**t about (what is remaining) of Les Patriotes membership. Marine Le Pen subsequentely lectured him on the values of internal democracy indicating she ‘doesn’t understand’ Philippot's decision and that ‘in term of respect of internal democracy, this is at the least puzzling’. Of course, she haven't herself such problems as there is zero internal democracy in the RN. This is also particularly rich coming from Philippot, a man who spent his time criticizing in hyperbolic terms the authoritarian drift of Macron (he said in last July that Macron was 'turning more and more into an odious dictator').

This is also demonstrating once more that French politicians have a major problem with respecting party democracy: back in 2017, Valls signed a pledge to endorse whoever won the PS primary only to support Macron over Hamon; the organizers of the ‘popular primary’ similarly decided to ignore the results and disrespected their own voters by unilaterally endorsing Mélenchon (who placed third behind Jadot) once Taubira had dropped out; some LR bigwigs are already planning dumping Pécresse (there is Sarkozy who has so far refused to endorse the candidate of the party he had refounded; there has been also Michèle Alliot-Marie who has been very careful not expressing support to Pécresse during her last TV appearance); Sandrine Rousseau had a hard time acknowledging her defeat in the ÉELV primaries and spent the following weeks to undermine Jadot’s candidacy; and so on, and so on...

Dupont-Aignan’s campaign has announced the platform of the so-called ‘Gaullist’ candidate will be ‘enriched with proposals inspired from the project of Les Patriotes’, notably a constitutional prohibition of lockdown (I'm glad it took an énarque to elaborate such silly proposal and another énarque to include it in his presidential platform) and a referendum on Frexit.

* There will be no debates opposing all candidates and there will (probably) be no debates between more than two candidates. And Macron will not participate in any debate, at least not before the first round, a choice his supporters are defending by using such argument and with that legendary humility associated to Macronism:

https://twitter.com/S_Tronche/status/1503276127455956992

LREM deputy Jean-François Eliaou justifies the fact that Macron will not debate with other candidates: ‘the quality of the running personalities isn’t justifying we should stoop discussing with them’

Instead, the candidates will take turns in a succession of individual interviews conducted by journalists. The first of such broadcast is happening on TF1 this evening with the private channel having made the controversial decisions of dedicating the whole interviews on the sole Ukraine issue and of not inviting four candidates (Arthaud, Poutou, Dupont-Aignan and Lassalle).

* The French justice has formally opened an investigation over the accusation made against Roussel of having hold a fictive job when a parliamentary assistant, complicating the defense of the PCF candidate who tried to portray the whole scandal as an exaggeration of the journalists of Mediapart aiming at undermining his candidacy for the benefit of Mélenchon.

* Violent riots are currently taking place in Corsica in the wake of the physical aggression of Yvan Colonna (Corsican nationalist sentenced to jail for life for the murder of Prefect Claude Érignac in 1998) by a fellow prisoner himself sentenced for Jihadism; Colonna has been left brain-dead by the attack that happened in the prison of Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône). Corsican nationalists, whose political influence has significantly increased in last years (holding the presidency of the executive council of Corsica since 2015 in the person of Gilles Simeoni, a former lawyer of Colonna), have demanded for years the transferring from Colonna and other jailed Corsican nationalists from prisons located on the mainland to prisons on the island. Ironically, the current justice minister, Éric Dupont-Moretti has previously served as a lawyer of Colonna jointly with Simeoni.

https://twitter.com/BFMTV/status/1503366857558040587

The clashes of last night between police and nationalist protesters in Bastia have left 93 people injured (including 70 policemen) with over 650 Molotov cocktails having reportedly (police numbers) thrown on the police, a post office damaged by an explosion and a tax office set on fire.

[President Johnson]

Macron just presented second term agenda:

https://twitter.com/breakingnewsie/status/1504528002780065800

[parochial boy]

- Raising the retirement age
- cutting income support for people who who don't work at least 15 hours per week
- no income support for under-25s
- cutting inheritance tax (which most people don't pay anyway)
- a €7 billion tax cut on corporate (especially larger) business turnover that will mostly hurt local government budgets

As well as all the predictable stuff in immigration and whatever.

All in all a delightful project of wealth redistribution from society as a whole to the wealthy. If this is something you would be minded to vote for it is because you are right wing.

[Sir John Johns]

You forgot:

- the generalization of the civic service for youth
- the suppression of the audiovisual license fee
- a European metaverse (lol, there is money for that kind of bullsh**t)
- additional ‘new missions’ for teachers in exchange of salaries increase (‘it is difficult’ to better pay teachers ‘not doing more efforts’ according to the guy whose education minister was in holiday in Ibiza instead of organizing the return to school in the middle of Covid-19 resurgence)
- competition between education establishments (compared to the No Child Left Behind Act)
- renaming the national employment agency Pôle Emploi (‘employment center’) into France Travail (‘France Work’)

And the two token vaguely left-wing measures:
- making gender-equality a ‘great cause’ of his second term (this was already a ‘great cause’ of his first term, lmao) and this would probably just be limited to gender-quota in large companies managing boards
- a citizen convention on legalization of euthanasia (not brave enough to openly support it and as anyway we already know he doesn’t care about the results of such citizen conventions...)

Also, an inter-party commission to ‘renovate the institutions’ (meaning no change to be expected in the next five years) and, few days ago, Darmanin mentioned the government is ready to go ‘until autonomy’ for Corsica.

More arrogant and contemptuous towards lower classes than ever...

Meanwhile, in the last three weeks:

- a very recent Senate report has been made public, revealing the excessive and expansive (€894 million in 2021!) recourse of the government to private consulting firms in public policymaking with strong suspicions of tax evasion concerning one of such firms (McKinsey)

- the state secretary for priority education we learned at the same time the existence had been fired for harassing and bullying the ministry’s staff and hiring her partner in the said ministry

- the president of the neo-liberal Institut Montaigne think tank, very close to Macron, has resigned last month after the opening of investigation over accusations he has drugged a collaborator to, presumably, sexually abused her (the victim is now also suing the police and justice magistrates in charge of the case over allegations they deliberately discarded documents to prevent an indictment for intention of sexual assault).

[Canis]

https://twitter.com/ElectsWorld/status/1504933737489997827
Melenchon in third place. only 3.5 points behind Lepen now

[Sir John Johns]

Hidalgo and Pécresse have apparently decided to definitely sink their own candidacies, just in case:

https://twitter.com/MarieGentric/status/1504787075761123378

‘I’m not a cougar’ declared Anne Hidalgo in Closer. ‘Unlike others, I would have been unable to fall in love with an adolescent.’ A barely veiled allusion to the wife of Emmanuel Macron – who is 24 years older than him’

Classy... Also why the hell gave she an interview to such garbage magazine?



https://twitter.com/JulienNeny/status/1505188292865761282

Valérie Pécresse announces in the 13 p.m. news broadcast of France 2 she is contemplating appointing Gen. Pierre de Villiers as defense minister, Teddy Riner as youth minister and Leïla Slimani as La Francophonie minister

Contacted, Teddy Riner and Leïla Slimani weren’t aware. Answer of the judoka from Brazil: ‘lol emoji’. Answer of the writer: ‘I find this inelegant. Nothing would more horrifying me. That said, it could be a good idea for a roman!'. No comment from Pierre de Villiers [former army chief of staff who resigned after disagreements with Macron; and yes he is the brother of Philippe de Villiers].

This campaign is such a complete disaster...

[Frodo]

Trickle-down in drips and drops: The French economy after five years under Macron

French President Emmanuel Macron finally hit the campaign trail in March, vying for re-election after a crisis-laden five years for France, Europe and the world beyond. After poring over Macron's record on foreign affairs last week, FRANCE 24 now takes a look at how the centrist has measured up on economics over the course of his tenure.

To listen to Macron's supporters, the economy is where the incumbent's record shines brightest. The French economy's attractiveness to business, its competitiveness, its performances on growth, employment and purchasing power – it's all coming up roses, Macron told French voters in an open letter on March 3 declaring his bid to seek a second term in April.

How close to reality does that campaign pitch run? As is often the case in economics, it all depends on one's perspective. Macron won office in 2017 with an overarching economic objective: to "liberate work and the spirit of enterprise", as his platform pledged, in order to encourage growth, reduce unemployment and boost French consumers' purchasing power.

To get there, Macron – a former investment banker who had served as economy minister under Socialist president François Hollande – promised deep economic reforms, to effect concrete change within France and to transform foreign investors' perceptions of the country's economy.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://twitter.com/ElectsWorld/status/1504933737489997827
Melenchon in third place. only 3.5 points behind Lepen now

This poll tempts me to switch to Melenchon if I was a French voter. Reason being: Le Pen is actually in danger of not reaching the second round. Macron entering looks guaranteed, so if you want to shut out Le Pen, hope for Melenchon to do well - he would keep the far-right out of the runoff.

[Zinneke]

Anybody who thinks putting Mélenchon up in the second round is in any way beneficial for the French Left is smoking something powerful. It'll be the final nail in the coffin. A personalist paternalist, hyperactive, hyperangry, more megalomaniac than not one but 2 fascist candidates standing kind of guy is going to be seen as the face of the Left for years to come.

[Conservatopia]

Hidalgo's campaign (and Pecresse's) is like when you're playing a computer game and you start doing badly so just for a laugh you deliberately do all the worst moves to see just how badly you can fail.

Hats off to her - it's hilarious.

[PSOL]

Melenchon will eventually die or remained infirmed in old age, but the remnants of LFI is quite literally France’s only hope. Do it for the movement.

[Sir John Johns]

Hidalgo's campaign (and Pecresse's) is like when you're playing a computer game and you start doing badly so just for a laugh you deliberately do all the worst moves to see just how badly you can fail.

Hats off to her - it's hilarious.

Yes, this is Losers’ Run but, to be honest, it was far better back in 1994: the playable characters were Chirac and Rocard, games were longer (putain, sept ans ‘holy sh**t, seven years’ instead of the current five ones) and Gaullist and Socialist characters had more than one poor single life:

https://twitter.com/LesGuignols/status/1499791794137092098

(miss so much the parodies of Les Guignols de l’Info; I don’t think there is something comparable nowadays)

[Sir John Johns]

https://twitter.com/pierre_plottu/status/1505996489394372612

A former professional rugby player, Federico Martín Aramburu, has been shot to death Saturday night in the center of Paris, having received six bullets in the back, after a quarrel in a night club for a frivolous motive. The murderer and his accomplice, on the run, are both former members of the student organization Groupe Union Défense (GUD), a fascist group with a long tradition of arch-violence refounded in 2017 as Bastion Social and dissolved by the government in 2019 for violence and hate speech; one of its successors, Zouaves Paris, has been also dissolved in last January after its members physically assaulted anti-racist activists in a meeting of Zemmour. The murderer was under court supervision for his participation in 2015 to the barbarian torture and beating of a fellow GUD member (truly a bunch of savages) and barred from meeting his accomplice as well as going to Paris. The murdered, who has also launched a far-right masculinist clothing line, has ties not only with various far-right Internet influencers but also cadres of the RN.

But I’m glad we have been explained by Cnews, Le Printemps Républicain, Brice Couturier, Michel Onfray and all these fake intellectuals that the biggest threat in France is wokism – I mean, just before Putin invaded Ukraine, they were all debating about dwarfs in the next Snow White. Relatedly, Charlotte d’Ornellas is still on air on Cnews despite her association being now investigated for complicity in war crimes in Syria in connection with massacres committed by pro-Assad militias. But I guess this is because she is a great professional; after all, she made a drama over a sentence she misattributed to Manuel Valls while it was actually pronounced by a comedian impersonating Manuel Valls in a radio comedy show.

[xelas81]

How many people are actually watching Cnews?

https://www.ozap.com/actu/audiences-fevrier-tf1-leader-egale-son-plus-bas-historique-f2-et-f3-boostees-par-les-jo-les-chaines-info-au-top/614181


This source say CNews has only 2.2% viewership share