🇫🇷 The French Election Twitter Summit

Macron v. Le Pen, Round Two. Join the Cosmopolitan Globalists today to handicap the race at 5:00 pm Paris time, on Twitter Space

🙋‍♀️Question: Do we have readers who aren’t on Twitter but who’d like to participate in these discussions? It occurred to me that we could do this on Zoom, then release it as a podcast—and if we did, the sound quality might be better. It would require a bit of organizing. But if the demand is there, we’ll do it.

This week, though, we’ll stick to Twitter Space. Today, at 5:00 pm Paris time—here’s your time zone converter—we’re bringing back the A-team—French politics savant Américain Arun Kapil, the gloriously bitchy Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, Franco-gossip aficionado Tim Smyth, patient moderator Jérome Clavel, and moi—for another round of election analysis, handicapping, and Paris scuttlebutt. The discussion will be in English.

➡➡🇫🇷HERE’S THE LINK TO JOIN🇫🇷

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📔Agenda: The runoff election will be held on on Sunday April 24. Today our haruspex will inspect the polls; then we’ll do a first-round post-mortem, explain what the coming week holds, and tell you what to watch if, like us, you want to spend the coming week feeling slightly sick with anxiety. Here’s a quick reading list:

The race isn’t close, according to the polls. But how much can we rely on these polls?

Marine Le Pen called for reconciliation between NATO and Russia and reiterated her pledge to pull French personnel out of NATO’s integrated command.

Le Pen’s comments were one of the strongest indications over the course of the campaign that a Le Pen presidency could fundamentally upend France’s role in Western alliances and pose a major strategic challenge for France’s traditional allies. Although Le Pen has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she was widely seen in the past as an ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

What are the key policy differences between Macron and Le Pen?

Marine Le Pen’s plans are “ignorant, superficial, and completely misunderstanding the basis of France’s cooperations with all her allies,” says the former UK national security adviser and UK ambassador to France, who describes them as “a recipe for disaster for France.”

“ … France under her leadership would be a very dangerous ally for the UK with her plan of leaving the NATO military command structure, renegotiating its alliance with America, being much more nationalistic in its purchase of defence equipment and continuing a strategic partnership with Russia in all sorts of areas. …

“Apart from her relationship with Russia, I don’t see how any of France’s traditional alliances would survive her presidency. It would have been far better if she had been honest in her defense manifesto and replaced the union jack with the Russian flag, because that is the only potential ally she is likely to find.”

Le geste parle de lui-même: Le Pen said talk of her betraying French interests to Putin was “inaccurate and particularly unjust.”

As she spoke, a protester stood up holding a heart-shaped picture of Le Pen and Putin shaking hands at the Kremlin in 2017. The protester was tackled to the ground by [Le Pen’s] security guards and dragged out along the floor.

Idiotic French students strike because they can’t see any difference between Le Pen and Macron. (In French.)

France’s political landscape is now fragmented into three blocs—center, far-right and radical left:

Power alternated for decades until the 2010s between the two main parties—the center left Parti Socialiste and the center right Les Républicains—before Emmanuel Macron took power in 2017 with a centrist platform.

His meteoric emergence—and pillaging of key center-right and center-left figures for his own movement—pushed the political center of gravity on the left and right to the extremes.

Anne-Élisabeth Moutet writes, Macron rules over a political desert:

… As for Emmanuel Macron, he is considering this devastated political landscape, which he wrought, smugly. He has made a desert and calls it peace: the vote utile, he feels, probably with good reason, will favour him. About one third of Zemmour voters are predicted to vote for him rather than for Le Pen; so should one good third of Mélenchon ones, the traditional Socialists, who when push comes to shove can’t face the possibility of her election. (To complicate things, another third of Mélenchonistes—the ones Emmanuel Macron met yesterday in and around Denain, whose parents and grandparents once regularly voted for the Communist Party—say in polls they would rather vote for her and her generous platform of salary raises and benefits).

And finally, nobody knows the abstention rate. Once again the French are faced with what they see as a miserable choice forced on them. If they pass on the isoloir, it will only be a matter of time before they take to the streets—and the true cost to France of the Macron-made desert will finally become clear.

How Marine Le Pen conquered Normandy, by John Lichfield, the best Anglophone reporter in France:

… In my conversations, not one person brought up the war. They spoke of the high petrol and diesel prices caused partly by Putin’s invasion without mentioning it directly. An exception was our mayor, Marie-Christine Danlos. “I think people here do care about Ukraine,” she said. “Certainly they do. We are surrounded by the memories and scars of war from the summer of 1944. I certainly hear no pro-Russian feeling. None at all.”

“But in the end most people here are tightly wrapped in their own lives. They live for today and tomorrow. They feel sympathy for Ukraine but they are very, very angry about petrol and diesel prices. They are angry and worried about rising food prices. Who do they hear on TV talking most persuasively about the cost of living and purchasing power? Marine Le Pen.” …

If you only read one article about Le Pen, Lichfield, I think, will give you the most insight:

… Neglected, rural France? Not really. Not all of it.

What is lacking is a local source of prosperity and pride—the small dairy farms on the hills and the factories and iron-ore mines which once provided jobs down in the valley. We are now a community with no clear raison d’être and no longer any real sense of community.

Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen beset by the same affliction: rejection. (Paywalled depending how many articles you’ve already read.)

Usually, the presidential election generates, if not hope, at least a semblance of enthusiasm. Every five years, in the caesarist tradition of the Fifth Republic, the French try to believe in the myth of a providential candidate who could succeed where predecessors failed. A more or less long state of grace sets in after his victory, then the magic fades away. This tale seems to have become inaudible. The incumbent vs. the far right – this is what the debate has come down to. Animosity reigns, rather than enthusiasm.

Marine Le Pen and her voters, by Arun Kapil. Do read the whole post, which is much longer and very useful, but here’s an anecdote:

… I had my own interaction with a Le Pen voter recently, which is worth recounting, as I think her story is not atypical. Before I tell it, I need to preface it with a mention of Cluster 17,* an opinion research laboratory and polling operation founded and directed by a political scientist at the University of Montpellier, which divides the French electorate into 16 opinion “clusters,” some of which can be situated on a left-right axis but others not so much. To find out what cluster one belongs to, one answers a questionnaire (of 33 questions), which then yields the result, and with a detailed description of the sociology of the cluster, its opinion system, where it’s situated in the left-right spectrum, attitudes of those in the cluster towards the Gilets Jaunes, its electoral orientation, and its stakes in the 2022 presidential election. The algorithm is sophisticated, with everyone I know who’s taken the test, as it were, saying that the cluster in which they are situated is entirely accurate (not surprisingly, I’m in cluster 2: Les sociaux-démocrates). The satisfaction rate is 100 percent.

So the Sunday before last, an in-law, whom I’ve known for thirty years but hadn’t seen since last summer, came for lunch. She’s in her mid 70s, was an office secretary during her working years, and lives in a middle-class banlieue (near her grown children, who are doing well for themselves). She is what I would call a low information but highly opinionated voter, who doesn’t read newspapers or follow the news closely (her preferred radio station is Radio Classique) but will pipe off on any issue of the day if asked. I’ve never really discussed partisan politics with her, though do remember that she voted for Trotskyist pasionaria Arlette Laguiller in 1995 and 2002, as she liked her spirit and verve.

N.B. I’ve always seen my in-law as leaning somewhat to the right; she’s absolutely not on the left and certainly has no idea what Trotskyism is. So I invited her into my study and asked if I could administer the Cluster 17, with me reading out the questions and entering her responses, to which she agreed. Her cluster: Les Éclectiques. In other words, she’s all over the place, with some positions on the left, others (more in fact) on the right. In the final question, which asks where one situates oneself on the left-right axis, her response: centrist. When I read to her the detailed description of the Éclectique cluster, she said it accurately described her.

I then asked whom she was voting for. The first round: Nathalie Arthaud of Lutte Ouvrière (Arlette’s successor). Bon, d’accord. And the second round? As she doesn’t like Macron, she would be voting for Marine Le Pen, no problem, as in past elections.

I was a little surprised, needless to say, as I had no idea. Her reason: there are too many Arabs in France—even though she’s half Arab (Algerian) herself, lived in Algeria for 15-20 years, and her ex-husband is Algerian (Kabyle).

But while she’s opposed to Arabs “invading” France and wants tough border controls, she’s all for France welcoming refugees (and not just Ukrainians). Eclectic. When I told her that Marine Le Pen hadn’t changed an iota and was still on the extreme right, her response: “Really?! You think so?!” (Ah bon?! Tu crois?!). Low information. I mentioned Eric Zemmour, to which she reacted: “He’s an extremist!” On that, she’s well-informed.

There are many Le Pen voters, like my in-law, who hold contradictory views, are not well-informed, don’t process information in the same way as we (or at least I) do, but while they have their prejudices, cannot be labeled as political extremists. Many are open to changing their minds—I think I’ll be able to persuade my in-law to flip from MLP to voting blanc—but those who work on them generally have to be people they trust. And the people they trust tend to think the way they do. There’s a big reservoir of votes out there for Marine Le Pen.

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*Cluster 17

À propos Cluster 17, it’s fun. I’m among the friends Arun mentioned who took it and yes, it got me dead-to-rights. Try it here. (It’s in French, but if you don’t speak French, use Google Translate.) Tell me what cluster you belong to. I’d be curious.

I am, they say, “a centrist.” What do I believe?

Centrists are characterized, first of all, by a general attitude: moderation. Centrists reject all radical options, whether they come from the left or the right. Nothing displeases them more than populism or dégagism.¹ A figure such as Didier Raoult almost immediately disturbed them, or even put them off.² This is why they are the cluster most opposed to the “dismissal of elected representatives by referendum,” and one of the most opposed to paying the median salary of 1,700 euros per month to deputies.

The questionnaire asked me nothing about my views about Raoult, nor even about pandemic quackery, but it managed independently to pinpoint him as the kind of figure I loathe.

I don’t have strong feelings about the median salary for deputies. But yes, that’s otherwise me. The result surprised me in its accuracy; it was much more apt than, say, my horoscope.

How about you?

This, by the way, is the music they say my cluster likes. I’d never heard of them. I can’t say it does much for me. I don’t hate it, but it’s awfully derivative, and I got so bored after thirty seconds that I didn’t listen to it through:

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French students occupy universities in protest of the choice between Macron and Le Pen.

1. What is dégagism? The neologism originated in Tunisia and is associated now with Mélenchon; it means, “Get-lost-ism,” and involves shouting “Resign!” at people in power without proposing any better solution.

2. Didier Raoult is the French physician to whom the world owes the idea that hydroxychloroquine is a Covid miracle cure.