Former opponent but fellow sovereigntist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan has made a deal with Marine Le Pen, they have thrown together their platforms (which were similar in any case) and Le Pen has promised to name Dupont-Aignan prime minister. Something which is never done in French politics, we don't vote for a US style "ticket".

Le Pen used this to backtrack on one of her most important promises, on which her whole platform hinges : leaving the Euro. She now says that the Euro would be kept as an "international trade currency" and the New Franc for internal trade. Cuba style.

More than 70% of French people don't want to leave the Euro, so she had to do something to reduce their fears. I guess proposing something totally unworkable and in the end far worse than just leaving the Euro is the way to do it.

I've just seen the debate.

Marine Lepen was really bad, even according to her supporters.
She was smiling (and even laughing) all the time (with a scary smile) and didn't answer the questions. She looked very embarassed and was constantly looking for answers in her papers. More of that, she was very vague on several subjects and even lied on different occasions.

I guess it's not for this time. And I hope she will disappear, but I suspect it will not be so easy.

I watched the first hour, after that I had my Marine Le Pen ration for the next few years.

She is really painful to watch. The Front National will probably want to replace her with the much more appealing (and scary for it at the same time) Marion Maréchal Le Pen. The problem being that Marion is too young to be a candidate in 2022 with the current rules.

sebolino wrote:

I've just seen the debate.

Marine Lepen was really bad, even according to her supporters.
She was smiling (and even laughing) all the time (with a scary smile) and didn't answer the questions. She looked very embarassed and was constantly looking for answers in her papers. More of that, she was very vague on several subjects and even lied on different occasions.

I guess it's not for this time. And I hope she will disappear, but I suspect it will not be so easy.

Perhaps she doesn't want to be president. When a populist comes to power, the voters will see that things aren't as simple as they are projected by the populist and populist can't change anything for the better that fast. Geert Wilders did the same in The Netherlands, he didn't want to be the biggest. Perhaps LePen just wants to keep shouting, without changing anything. Or she wants to become president, but just had a bad day after weeks of campaigning.

As an outside observer (listening to what is said here) I get the impression that Ms. Le Pen very much resembles a recent candidate in the USA who was surprised to find himself being given the keys to the White House. Does she have a Twitter account?

No, landslide will be at more than 70 % in that particular case. The main problem will be the voting numbers.

Olddog wrote:

No, landslide will be at more than 70 % in that particular case. The main problem will be the voting numbers.

A landslide in the US means the president elect has the majority in most of the country. For example George H. W. Bush's victory in 1988 is described as a landslide, the map was almost all red with 40 states won by him, yet that was only 53,4% of the vote.

Macron will certainly make more than that so yes by all accounts it will be a landslide.

BobPatterson wrote:

As an outside observer (listening to what is said here) I get the impression that Ms. Le Pen very much resembles a recent candidate in the USA who was surprised to find himself being given the keys to the White House. Does she have a Twitter account?

Yes she has a twitter account like all candidates but it's a classic "managed account". She had some outbursts some years ago, in fact she's indicted because of a tweet where she posted images of decapitated people (assassinated by Daesh). So now she's more careful.

There are common traits with Trump for sure, in fact she was delighted when he won and tried to meet him in the Trump tower, unsuccessfully. Like him she appeals to basic instincts, xenophobia, Islamophobia, pretends to be representing "the people" when in fact she's part of the elite. The way she debated is very similar too, always attacking, all sorts of baseless accusations. She has more vocabulary than Trump, though, and doesn't appear deluded, her platform just doesn't make sense, it's all about spending without ever explaining how to pay for it, while leaving the euro, crashing the economy in the process.

On the other hand there are key differences, she's only known as a politician, she was born into it, her father created her party, and was a National Assembly member already in the 50's. She has zero economic/business credibility. And her party is one of neo-nazis and fascists, not even rebranded, those ugly people are barely hidden and regularly come out of the woodwork, she himself avoids showing antisemitism but there is always a doubt, a couple of weeks ago she tried to minimize French implication in the Holocaust.

What made all the difference for Trump is that he was the candidate of a mainstream party.

There cannot be so many bigot, idiotic, narrow-minded, hatred-driven people in our great neighbour country that a semi-Nazi like Le Pen could become head of state. Or is the current brain-eating maladie francaise so great already? That would be a desaster worse than Trump.

It 's not the far right the main problem. The problem is the centre right and left with macron is narrower and the extremist from both sides are more and more ready to forget they are republicans and let the "system" crumble. They hope of course they will get some gains in the process.

An interesting article about the office of president of the French Republic, and its failings : http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/02/fra ... elections/

Aesma wrote:

An interesting article about the office of president of the French Republic, and its failings : http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/02/fra ... elections/

That article is very interesting. It can mean who wins can do some serious damage.
It has come out that that Marcon's campaign computers have been hacked, it happened a few weeks ago and sound suspiciously Russia/Putin is involved to prop up LePen. That as of midnight Friday going into Saturday, there is pretty much a full shutdown of campaigning so little chance to deal with these disclosures.
Another article I read (via Yahoo.com) also brought up an important source of votes for LePen - much like with the USA as to Trump's win - 'security moms', fearful of terrorism and of the Muslim faith taking over French culture. They are fearful for their children of 'Shira' taking over, or victims of terrorism or violence.
The voters of France have a terrible choice to make in their next President. Choose the radical and hateful LePen or the pro-corporate Macron. Even if Macron wins, it may be by a narrow margin, so no real mandate, he may have to trend closer to LePen as to immigrants, dealing with the EU and France's position in it, and come up with a way to placate the riled up LePen supporters to get anything done. Choose LePen and they go in a direction not seen since the Vichy as to hate and division.

The campaign is now over, there is a blackout until the results, so that people can regroup, read the manifestos they got in the mail, and vote tomorrow.

It is often said that second round presidential debates don't make a big difference, but it appears this one did, Le Pen was gaining some momentum during the first week after the first round, going from 38% to 41% or 42%, but she crashed and burned during the debate and now is polling at 38% or even 37%, Macron is at 62% or 63%.

ltbewr : Macron has propositions on all the subjects, they're just very different from Le Pen's "solutions", so there is no way he will pick them. In some ways he's closer to the far left candidate Mélenchon, who asked him to remove a central promise of his platform so that his supporters could vote for him, Macron said "I'm not changing my platform".

Breitbart.....
This site is an insult to human intelligence.

Olddog wrote:

Breitbart.....
This site is an insult to human intelligence.

It's no worse than other American media sites. Nearly all Western media sucks, it's just the form of bias that varies.

Sebolino :
"I've just seen the debate."
In many ways the most un-French of all : I've been following elections since 1974 and this one one stinking sky-high.
I stayed awake because it became, very quickly, apparent that her excesses were in fact leading her to a rather drastic form of social / political suicide.
I wonder whether she'll survive it and we'd see someone new at the head of France's fascist party.

Olddog wrote:

Breitbart.....
This site is an insult to human intelligence.

Well, if it makes you feel any better, read about the attack at the WAPO:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ma ... 4f179d1e3e

You can bet being a French in France I have heard about the attack and all the media reported it. It is the fact that they pretend that Macron's team can't tell what is fake that is laughable. That attempt was made just in time so Macron could not answer with details as our electoral rules forbid him to talk until the election is done.

Aesma :
"An interesting article about the office of president of the French Republic, and its failings"
Bloody Hell, man !
You're French, if I remember well, so can't you find an article published by people who really knew - and cared - about their country, instead of an article more interested in hype and sensationalism ?
1/- The French president can be impeached, and the procedure is quite a bit easier than the US constitution :! See Article 68 : the reasons for impeachment can be only about failing in his duty to exercize his function. Please note that the former Article 68 was only applicable to feats of high treason.

2/- There will in all probability be a "Macron surge" and it's not miraculous : It is quite possible - in the sense of 'likely' - that he could get an outright majority to back him... Otherwise, there will be a coalition parliament and the views of Macron's on a lot of subjects are not far from the centre LR. What killed the LR at these elections was a perceived party incapable of renewing its leaders., although France is still v ery much a center-right leaning country.

3/- The socialists seem on the verge of being laminated... and the FN will again be struggling against the France voting system and will not constitute a credible opposition.

Of course, I may be dead wrong but contrarily to most foreign observers, in French, Macron seems that he'll have a boulevard in front of him, meaning quite a lot of freedom to lead his own policy.

ltbewr :
"choose the radical and hateful LePen or the pro-corporate Macron. Even if Macron wins, it may be by a narrow margin, so no real mandate, he may have to trend closer to LePen as to immigrants, dealing with the EU Chand France's position in it, and come up with a way to placate the riled up LePen supporters to get anything done. Choose LePen and they go in a direction not seen since the Vichy as to hate and division."

You're wrong, whatever the scenario turns up to be :
1/- Calling Macron "pro-corporate" is a very silly shortcut of what the man is.After reading his book " Revolution, Our combat for France" just out of curiosity, the man is anything but. and his ideas are creally, for this country quite revolutionary as they are doing away with 43 years of social democracy.

2/- Don't be so taken with the idea of Le Pen as an opposition figure : she's already being severely criticized in her own party for thowing away the opportunity of a lifetime to present a score of ov er 40% of the votes, which would have served as a platform for near-future success at the parliamentary elections next month... Once again, small parties have a hell of a difficult time producing MPs due to the system which favors the big parties or a big coalition... In these next election, it seems that Macron's "En Marche" ( what a fricking silly name ) and LR are destined to fight form majority.

DIRECTFLT wrote:

Macron Campaign Hacked, Huge Cache of Files Dumped Online



The incident is embarrassing for the campaign, which had previously denied reports that staff emails had been hacked. They were also unable to point out which documents were false.

Links to the documents were posted to the internet chat site 4Chan shortly before midnight in France, just as the Presidential election entered a mandated media blackout. Traditionally no public discussion of the election takes place on the eve of polling day, nor on the day itself, to give voters time to make their own assessment of the campaign and vote accordingly.

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/05 ... ed-online/

There is a big lie there, the campaign didn't deny they were hacked, on the contrary, they announced weeks ago that they had been hacked and that it came from Russia.

They didn't do any damage control after that, presumably because there is nothing damaging to explain.

I guess we'll see tonight how much of an influence on elections social media really has, I'm betting not much.

Will be interesting to see whom the next president of France will be and how this person is going to govern since he or she doesn't have a real party backing at the national level.

We will know in june after the general election.

Well Macron result is better than announced. I has hoped for more but not bad

65.5-65.9% (ranges I've seen in reports) of France cast a vote for a little-known, but mostly inoffensive politician because they were voting against a horrible alternative. So basically, 65+% of French citizens cast a vote against Le Pen and her FN. Strong work, them.

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz ... -americans

Funny, no comments about sexism tonight...

It's not that simple. According to pollsters, Macron would have won against all the other candidates too. He's very middle of the road, and that means many can't love him nor hate him.

As for being inoffensive, well, if that means not changing things that people don't want changed, sure, he won't change everything, some of his promises are pretty novel though, like a complete rewrite of the national pension scheme, or the replacement of union controlled unemployment insurance by a state controlled tax funded system.

DocLightning wrote:

65.5-65.9% (ranges I've seen in reports) of France cast a vote for a little-known, but mostly inoffensive politician because they were voting against a horrible alternative. So basically, 65+% of French citizens cast a vote against Le Pen and her FN. Strong work, them.

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz ... -americans

I wondered how long it would take for some pundit to distort the reality of the situation. From the link you posted:

"On Sunday, the people of France annoyingly retained their traditional right to claim intellectual superiority over Americans, as millions of French citizens paused to enjoy just how much smarter they were than their allies across the Atlantic."

There seems to me to have been a huge difference between the choices the voters were offered in France and the choices American voters had.

In France there was (I think) a somewhat middle of the road candidate, largely inoffensive, running against an extreme kook bordering on being neo-Nazi. Clear cut choice.

In the USA we had two extremists, left and right (some will argue that Mrs. Clinton was not "extreme"), neither of whom came across as trustworthy or honest. Neither got a majority of the votes cast, and Mr. Trump got lucky with respect to the electoral college.

The USA did not have a decent candidate in the race after the early primaries (I didn't consider Sen. Sanders to be a decent candidate, too bad Mitt Romney didn't run).

Nevertheless, if it helps to make them feel good, let the French people enjoy a good laugh at our expense.

Cheers.

BobPatterson wrote:

There seems to me to have been a huge difference between the choices the voters were offered in France and the choices American voters had.

There is also a huge difference in how the election systems work, had the US used the French system the result might have been different.

Merci, La France! (still shocking that 33% voted for the Nazi Light party)

Macron has a huge task ahead, and his situation reminds me a bit of Obama: clean the mess the former president(s) had accumulated, with a parliament not exactly on his side.

I hope, no, I expect that Mrs Merkel now joins Macron in reforming and stabilizing the EU without national egoisms.

It looks like we just avoided Voldemort ...