FRENCH ELECTION HAS 2 FINALISTS, BOTH FROM NON-TRADITIONAL PARTIES

…Above are the top 5 of France’s 2017 presidential election candidates, from left: François Fillon, Benoît Hamon, Marine Le Pen, Emmanuel Macron and Jean-Luc Mélenchon

 

Both finalists in the French election are from former "fringe" parties.

 

Prior to Sunday’s election, President Trump had “sort of endorsed” the far right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.  She is the candidate that is representing the former “fringe Far-Right party” that her farther ran as the French presidential candidate and as a Holocaust denier.

 

There were some interesting characters in this election and everyone expects the Russians had hacked into it, and that they will get involved with the German presidential election later this year.

 

When I say "interesting characters", what I mean is that of the four top contenders bunched together within a few points of one another, only one of them is a member of a traditional, major political party.  That was François Fillon from France’s main conservative party.   And all but one, the center-left independent candidate and current frontrunner, Emmanuel Macron, was to one degree or another, anti-European Union and of all things, pro-Russia.

 

The way of the French election is similar to the latest election replacing the US GOP Representative from Georgia, Mr. Tom Price, now the HHS Secretary.  What I mean is that in France, as in Georgia, if no one gets over 50% of the vote, there will be a run-off in two weeks between the top two finishers.

 

The Brexit vote in the United Kingdom stunned most political observers.  That was not only because the polls had misjudged the popular sentiment, but also because of what it told us about today’s “global populist sentiment”. So just what is this, “sentiment” that seems to be exploding everywhere , including here in the US.  Populist Sentiment is a political doctrine that proposes that the common people believe they are being exploited by a privileged elite, and the common people are seeking to resolve this problem.  Brexit was a populist movement and its impact on the British government caused a conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron to resign.  For the future of Europe, it was the first significant rollback in the European continent’s economic integration which is still being played out.

But if you thought that Brexit was earthshaking, just look at the results of the French presidential election Sunday.  This will arguably have an even bigger impact on the United States and the West than the Brexit vote.  As of now, it will be Emmanuel Macron versus Marine Le Pen in the run-off.

 

As is happening in the United States, France’s traditional parties have all basically shattered, and a fractured, polarized electorate has undone all the old party alliances. 

 

Before the election, Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front party, was expected and will now get to the second round with a platform very much in keeping with today’s Trumpism.  Yes, she is anti-immigrant, anti-alliances, and pro-Russia.  Little wonder then that President Trump briefly waded in, although as expected, his tweet in her support was extremely vague, as The Post has reported.

“Another terrorist attack in Paris,” Trump wrote in his Tweet. “The people of France will not take much more of this. Will have a big effect on presidential election!”

 

The French election was a critical test of strength for Le Pen and her National Front party at a time when nationalism has overshadowed all other votes in the West, including Trump’s victory and last year’s Brexit vote to leave the European Union.

 

Le Pen’s election in the run-off has send shock waves through Europe, threatening the existence of both NATO and the E.U. But contrary to Trump’s assumption, it is not clear that she will benefit from the recent terrorist incident on the Champs-Élysées. Yes, she has been running on fear of Islamist terror and the vow to protect France, but she has been accused of over-reacting when, during a debate on the night of the attack, she blatantly attempted to exploit the attack. The BBC reported: “The far right’s Marine Le Pen pledged to expel radical Islamists while the center-right’s Francois Fillon talked of fighting Islamist totalitarianism”.

 

The current French Prime Minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, accused Mr Fillon and Ms Le Pen of cynically exploiting the attack.

Ms Le Pen, Mr Fillon and independent centrist Emmanuel Macron all cancelled their final campaign events as a mark of respect for the policeman killed on Thursday.

 

Le Pen’s fiery message has found resonance, to the surprise of some, with younger voters. As Trump has done, Le Pen has manage to stir fear that is disproportionate to the number of foreigners:

In fact, France has received far fewer migrants per capita in recent years than many European nations. The foreign-born share of France’s overall population has risen relatively slowly, amounting to about 12% of the country last year — compared with 10% in 2000.

 

As in the US, the European economists cast doubt on the idea that immigrants undercut the ability of the French to find work, noting that new arrivals often do the jobs that native-born workers refuse.

 

But the perception of an influx that is harming French workers, especially the young, as they try to get their footing in an economy still badly bruised from the Great Recession.  This has persisted and is a key component of the Le Pen’s National Front’s rhetoric.

 

The comparison to the United States is striking. But France is France, not the United States. Moreover, since Brexit, the far right in Europe has been dealt some major setbacks.

 

 

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party recently won regional elections, and in the Netherlands, the right-wing, anti-Muslim gadfly Geert Wilders was beaten soundly. In Austrian and Italian elections, the far right also did poorly.

But confronted with the reality of possibly leaving the E.U., the French voters have to come to terms with the possibility that “Le Pen’s dreams of leaving the E.U. and the euro [zone] would wipe out all French voters’ savings and it would devastate the economy,” The Associated Press has reported.

 

As AP explained: Independent  centrist Emmanuel Macron is framing himself as a bulwark against the nationalism and protectionism of Trump’s America and Putin’s Russia. “The world around us is changing. War, terrorist threat, the uncertainty on the other side of the ocean [a reference to Trump], the threat at our borders of several authoritarian regimes. Yes, we will have to be strong, & uncompromising,” Macron had told a big campaign rally.

 

Moreover, it’s far from clear that Trump’s stumbling performance in his first 100 days serves as a positive inducement to go down the same road of his xenophobic nationalism. In the real world, the Stephen K. Bannon/Le Pen approach just doesn’t work that well: The Trump presidency has shown that implementing populist promises isn’t as easy as it seems. And Trump’s own reversals have sorely frustrated Le Pen.

 

“We have seen that Trump’s latest positions are so contrary to what Marine Le Pen had hoped,” said Thierry de Montbrial, president of the French Institute of International Relations. “Nationalist candidates no longer recognize themselves in Trump anymore.”

 

Le Pen has distanced herself from Trump after the US missile strikes on Syria earlier this month, she is angry that he is trying to be “the world’s policeman.”

 

Trump’s reversal on NATO, to now find it necessary, when he once called it obsolete, this completely frustrates Le Pen.   She wants to pull France out of NATO’s command structure and sees the alliance as an unnecessary threat to Russia, now that the Soviet Union is defunct.  This is a big mistake for Le Pen, as Putin and Russia have shown that they are just continuing to act as belligerent as did the Soviet Union.

Sunday’s voting has narrowed the field to these two final candidates, and the runoff will come on May 7.

 

Joshua Muravchi, and Jeffrey Gedmin of the World Affaires Institute recently wrote: “The sky is not falling yet. But were today’s E.U. to break apart, expect a surge of protectionism, illiberal nationalism and anti-American sentiment in pockets across the continent. Count on even greater Russian assertiveness in Europe in backing anti-democratic forces. Moscow is the source of none of these unfortunate trends, but it has shown itself eager to support and promote all of them.”

 

Americans and citizens of other NATO countries who believe that the West’s future rests with the transatlantic alliance, democracy’s norms, basic tolerance, free trade, free press and the opposition to rogue states such as Russia, they had much at stake in Sunday’s election.

 

But as it is with Donald J. Trump: the media, in the eyes of him and the right-wing populists are, not as Stephen Bannon had said, just the “opposition party,” they are the enemies of the state.

 

We are in serious trouble if the longest and most successful democracy in history takes this attitude toward our free press and the media in general.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017