2022 French legislatives

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

The Parti Radical de Gauche have rejected any alliance with LFI saying that Europe and the Republic are non-negotiable. Logical decision.

Somehow I doubt Mélenchon is going to lose any sleep over losing this particular bunch of fraudsters and losers.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

'NUPES'. Jesus, and I thought 'Belle Alliance populaire' was silly.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

What's this about the Interior Ministry not allowing the name NUPES to appear on the ballot and counting all the left-wing parties' results separately instead? Does Mélenchon have an actual complaint here or did he just screw up the paperwork?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Interesting that RN doesn't seem to have been overestimated in the polls then. They very much were in 2017.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Valérie Rabault, PS incumbent in Tarn-et-Garonne-2. Leads with 33.3%, runoff against RN (22.4%). President of the PS group in the National Assembly since 2018, claims to have refused the prime ministership in May. Officially labelled as NUPES by the MOI, but basically dis-endorsed by LFI and the PCF, who refused to support her. She did not use the NUPES logo in her campaign lit or posters, but did use the V in her first name stylized exactly like the V in the NUPES logo...

Do you know why this happened? Everything I can find seems paywalled.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Very bad, but probably not unsurprising when the FN's strong performance in round 1 had already shown they seemed to be getting better at turning their vote out in legislatives. Will definitely be interesting to see if they overperformed in run-offs against NUPES, especially seeing as Mélenchon seemed to go full hippie/FREE ASSANGE in the last week in a way that I can't imagine was necessarily the most appealing to the sort of voters who decide those run-offs.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

The thing about the French left - and this isn't just a Mélenchon thing, even if that may not help with a lot of people - is that it has so few recent positive achievements and so many black marks on its record that it's gotten to the point where you can say literally anything bad about it and lots of people will happily believe you. This is how the 'islamo-gauchisme' smear stuck so well and Macron wouldn't have been able to toxify NUPES to the extent his voters are willing to go for the FN over them in large numbers if it weren't the case.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

All those clickbaity nonsense polls right after the presidential election with those striking 33-33-33 splits or whatever... actually had kind of a point? There is a possibility now that France ends up with a three-bloc system where large numbers of each bloc's voters completely despise the others. Needless to say, this isn't the sort of situation the two-round system was designed for. We just need LREM and LR to finally consummate their natural alliance already and to see what happens with PS and EELV now.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Outside of a few delirious months in 2017 I've never actually seen Jean-Luc Mélenchon as the saviour of the French left, but I can see why the people who do, do. He's probably one of the most powerful and inspiring speakers in Western politics today, even if I think he's using those talents to sell a load of crap for ultimately self-serving goals (not that that's unusual for French politicians...) - it's not hard to see why, with the PS of old dead, he's going to have a grip over the majority of the French left for as long as he wants it.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Is there any chance of the other parties under the Macronist specter betraying Dear Leader or are all of them basically non-entities?

Horizons is the personal vehicle of Edouard Philippe and there are definitely rumours that Macron's political vehicle were very reluctant to give the ex-PM a political space. I highly doubt they leave the majority but they follow their own Dear Leader, not Macron's inner circle.

Macron doesn't seem to have noticed he can't run in 2027.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

meanwhile the Nupes intergroup designed Eric Coquerel (LFI) as their candidate over Valérie Rabault (PS)

Oh, did they now. Of course Rabault could actually win a vote, so there's no martyrdom to be found there.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

I guess 33% less rapists in government is an improvement...

Macron is the real progressive, which is why he's aiming for net zero rapist ministers by 2030.