Thank you France
This is not over. We have to continue to fight. Not only against the far right but for the people, for social justice for everyone. I’m so proud of France today. I’m so relieved but this is not over, what’s scares me now is that the country is deeply polarized. This was a wake up call for me. These last years of politics have made me apathetic. But what happened today gave me hope. I’m gonna do something, I don’t known what yet but I will. I’ll vote as I always did but I’ll do more. I will fight.
My hope is that Leftwing implements policies that undo large parts of the Money-is-King and Screw-You-Plebes Neoliberalism, thus removing at least part of the popular discontent and distrust (people feel poorer and yet the mainstream keeps telling them the Economy is Growing) that the Far-Right feeds on with their “the blame is those other people that are even worse of than you (not at all the super rich)” scapegoating.
Reduce the pain by making the State more supportive again and getting more “from those who can the most, to give to those who need the most” and you take the wind off the Far-Right’s sails.
Without the majority in the Parliament that is very unlikely to happen. Worse, I fear that a government formed by the NFP would accept a coalition with the Macrony just so they can barely apply their program and thus give more ammo to the RN in the next presidential election.
What is a good news today could be a very bad news in 2027. Depends in how the left will handle it.
I see a lot of the nay sayers as a vocal minority. They yell the loudest, but only because the media gives them a platform to generate clicks. Just like how Republicans believe everyone in the nation, who doesn’t worship satan, is pro-birth. Kansas, a deep red rural state proved otherwise with a vote to add abortion rights into their constitution a couple years ago, something their conservative supreme court just upheld.
Honestly, the recent ruling on the Kansas ballot initiative, which quite frankly surprised me to begin with, shows that in some places judges still do their job even when their personal beliefs may differ from the law they are entrusted with interpreting. Kansas voters, you showed us the way and stood out against the backdrop of “conservative status quo.” Kansas showed, in the last two years, that when given a chance, even deep red states see the writing on the wall.
I have a feeling the outcome of this election is going to be a “silent storm” event and wake-up call to the GOP that they are out of touch with what the people really want. They’ve drank the loud-mouth’s Kool-aid for far too long and won’t believe it when it happens.
Think of it like the silent majority (maybe 80% of nationwide voters) is the massive tornado that took out the drive-in theater in the movie, Twister. In the movie, no one saw it until a random lightning strike shed light on the sheer girth of the monster bearing down on them. The GOP is the drive-in. The night of the election will be their lightning flash. We, the voters, will be the tornado.
That would be amazing but it doesn’t require playing chicken with Biden’s age issue and the political maneuvers the French left and center pulled off were possible because of polling, not in spite of them.
Kansas, and other red states are deeply poisoned against democrats by about 60 years of propaganda. This shows in the polling where they’d rather vote for the new RFK with brain worms and vaccine conspiracies than vote for Biden. That’s not just a joke, Biden loses to RFK in Kansas if the election was held today. And RFK is competitive with Trump. He’s expected to lose but nobody’s really studying the non battleground states very hard.
It would be hilarious if RFK managed to siphon enough EC votes to throw it into congress. (Even though that would also mean a Trump presidency because they vote as state delegations, 26 of which are firmly controlled by the GOP)
Also, don’t get overly proud of this. The idiotic notion of “there are two extremes polarizing everyone,” where they put the left and the right on equal danger-footing, is all over this article. I mean, it’s a few quotes from a few people, but still. That kind of shit is poisonous. It not only likens what the left wants to what the fascists want, but it also shields the far right from the view that their opinions are as dangerous as they are. “We want everyone to be cared for and we think nationalism is wrong” is not the same as “nationalism.” Still a pretty scary article. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s great that the RN didn’t take the election, but they are still a huge portion of that govt. and that is very fuckin scary.
If these numbers hold, it will come down to Macron’s faction to decide who to align with. And counting on neoliberals in that scenario is…scary.
This is The Guardian, a Liberal (not Left, Liberal) newspaper in Britain, a country whose only left of center (by European standards) party is the Green Party which has all of 4 seats out of 300 in Parliament now (and it used to be just 1, even though they had 1 million votes out of 40 million).
(Labour was once leftwing, before Blair’s Third Way, and when recently it’s members voted for it to go back to being Leftwing there was a massive smear campaign which included this very newspaper to bring down the leftie leader and put the neoliberals back in control of it).
From the point of view of the journalists, editors and board of The Guardian, even Social Democracy if “far left”.
Britain is maybe the most “like America” (but not on the good things) country in Europe, with a very similar voting system (First Past The Post) and with and Overtoon Window far more shifted to the Right than almost any other country in Europe (basically the Tories are a posher version of Orban) and their Press is one of the least trusted in Europe, and that includes The Guardian.
Think of The Guardian as a British New York Times.
If you want to see coverage of the French elections that’s not been twisted by a British hard-Neoliberal Private School Attending High Middle Class journalist in a newspaper that prides itself of being “opinion makers”, try Le Monde.
The Guardian has a pretty broad ideological base stretching from centre/centre-right all the way out to moderate left. Unless you think George Monbiot and Owen Jones are neo-liberals too? (Sample articles Things are not going to get better as long as oligarchs rule the roost in our democracies and Natalie Elphicke is a hard-right Tory. Her defection sums up Labour’s contempt for progressive voters )
I feel like “the right gets a big showing early on but ends up losing” is a regular feature of modern French elections. It seems like it’s happened multiple times in my lifetime.
Still, they are way too cocky all over the world. But great work, France. Thank you
I definitely wouldn’t extrapolate anything about the rest of the world from this. I just remember “Le Pen is going to be the next president of France” being said more than once in my lifetime.
Conservatives just lost the UK in a big way. France on course to do the same (not to the same extent). Tons of money (and Russian manipulation) are pushing hard for far-right politics, but they keep losing. Remember, abortion has won every time it’s on the ballot since Roe was overturned. I’m still cautiously optimistic about the US’s chances
The background trend, unfortunately, is of the far right slowly but surely gaining votes. We pushed them back to third place today, but they still almost doubled the number of representatives they’ll be sending to parliament (from 89 to the projected ~130 for today’s elections).
- In 2002, Jacques Chirac won against the far right with 82% (to the far right’s 18%).
- In 2017, Macron won against the far right with 66% (to the far right’s 34%).
- In 2022, Macron won against the far right with 58% (to the far right’s 41%).
IMO it’s largely a consequence of the center-left and center-right (Hollande, Macron) completely abandoning the working class, and demonizing the left whilst cozying up to the far-right (mostly Macron, though Hollande definitely slid right over his term).
IMO it’s largely a consequence of the center-left and center-right (Hollande, Macron) completely abandoning the working class, and demonizing the left whilst cozying up to the far-right (mostly Macron, though Hollande definitely slid right over his term).
A tale as old as time.
I believe we have it in us but this Democratic Party is a finely oiled machine designed to blunt our progress, not lead it. Goddamn Biden said in the beginning that he wouldn’t seek reelection and he should have stuck to that. Now he’s in danger of actually losing to Shitstain L’Orange.
In their presidential elections at least it’s pretty much by design. It happens because they have 2 rounds.
The first round the far-right option gets a relatively large amount of votes. Then the round after only 2 options remain, so anyone who doesn’t want the far-right option just votes for the only other option. Not sure what happens in general elections, but presumably it’s somewhat similar because there’s still 2 rounds.
As far as election systems go it has quite a lot of obvious flaws, but it’s perhaps not quite as bad as first past the post. At least it makes the tactical voting a bit more straightforward.
UK: done
France: done
US: please don’t let us down.
When was the last time all 3 had general elections at the same time?
I know we’re not on people’s radar like the three you mentioned, but South Africa also had general elections this year.
The long reigning party lost their majority for the first time since 1994, so the coalition talks were a big deal for a few weeks.
Don’t forget Mexico!
Yup…and she still won! I am not from Mexico personally, but that has to irk the cartels just a wee bit.
Unfortunately true, but at least Poilievre is nowhere near as batshit crazy as the republicans are. Still fucking sucks that the cons are most likely going to win though. At best things will continue to get slowly worse like they already are, and at worst, things will degrade faster.
Either way the average Canadian isn’t getting any help from whoever wins the next election.
I just love the people who go crazy when the government passes a law that people are sure will be unconstitutional, and of course the latest time the Liberals did it Poilievre was all over it, then when says he will not only pass unconstitutional laws but will use the Notwithstanding clause to keep them, they are suspiciously silent.
Poilievre isn’t an idiot, for all his other failings. Just because he hasn’t outright said how far he’s willing to take things doesn’t mean he doesn’t have plans to. It has the potential to be very bad.
Yup, and all they have to do is change leaders to win. There was that story last week about Biden thinking of stepping down, but Trudeau refuses to step down, if he, guilbaut, and freeland fucked off we could easily get another liberal government. So now we’re going to a Conservative government.
As an European, I’m just happy that the cultural influence of the US has faded so much in the last couple of decades that even with massive amounts of American billionaire money trying to pump-up the Far-Right in Europe, it’s still but a pale shade of what’s going on in the US and, as we see, even that far-right wave seems to already be breaking: notice how already in the European Elections the Left grew in various Scandinavian countries (in my experience Northern European Countries, especially the Nordic ones, tend to be ahead of the rest of Europe in social and political terms).
There is hope on the horizon for Europe.
I am, however sad for Americans with leftwing principles, since even with a Biden victory the US will continue to be an ever more dystopic late-stage ultra-Neoliberal experiment bound for a Fascist takeover sooner or later (if not Trump now, some other Fascist will sooner or later ride the wave of misery - that the Democrates too, as hard Neoliberals, gleefully keep feeding - into the Presidence and ever more authoritarianism)
even with massive amounts of American billionaire money trying to pump-up the Far-Right in Europe, it’s still but a pale shade of what’s going on in the US
The influence of Russia and China are what are inflating the rise of the far-right in both Europe and the US, when you misrepresent this fact you’re helping provide cover for them.
My vote will be going to the lesser of the two evils but (a) between my state’s Gerrymandering and the composition and voting habits of my district it won’t matter and (b) until the US electoral system is meaningfully reformed (first-past-the-post, two-party system and how it affects voting in many states, Gerrymandering, lack of ranked choice, outright voter suppression, etc.), the US will continue to slide further right anyway
Not American but I agree. Fptp and gerrymandering is the biggest bullshit. But how will it change? Why would the two ruling parties shoot their own foot?
For FPTP, we need to get more local and regional elections to move to something like ranked-choice voting and have it go from there. IIRC, some states are trying to ban it “because it’s confusing” since they realize it opens up more than the traditional two parties. Voters can vote for other candidates in their primaries as well (many people do not seem to vote in primary elections).
More people also need to be voting, even as powers try to make that more difficult. We also need more young people to run for offices, but I fully understand why they wouldn’t want to.
Alright! Now if France and Britain’s new left-of-center leadership can just… PLEASE not fuck it up… there may actually hope for the rest of the planet.
Britain left of centre ? . . . these are blairites, “labour” in name only , they literally propped up the second homes buy to let market through the 2000s. and they’d gladly privatise every public service we have left if they can. I’ve already heard shit like “individualised healthcare” being mentioned in their “think tanks”.
They’re probably not worse than the tories, and they probably will fuck it up less, that’s about all you can hope for them.
They aren’t going to tackle anything fundamental like bank regulation, promoting domestic investment, industrial strategy or developing public services.
I hope France gets a lot better.
100% agreed. Weirdly, Starmer was very left-leaning during his time as a prosecutor, and a lot of people assumed that he’d be a rising force of the left when he moved into politics. Sadly, he seems closer to the right than even Blair did…
to be determined in my opinion. he’s been in office two days atm.
give him a chance
It’s a a democracy, representatives aren’t supposed to impose what they want onto the people. They’re supposed to represent what the people want. It’s likely Starmer is still more left leaning than the consensus of the public. But his job isn’t to impose his will on the people but to do what the people want.
Yeah, by European standards, I don’t think New Labour are even just Center-Right: they have far too much love for “businesses”, privatisation and deregulation to be an inch left of the traditional Right - in many ways they’re pretty much were the Tories were back in Thatcher’s day.
This was not a vote for leadership. It was a vote for one of our houses. Unless the president decides to play nice (spoiler: he won’t), we won’t have a prime minister from any left party, causing things to be difficult for the right but not impossible, as there are provision to force some laws to pass for the prime minister, and outright impossible for the left to do anything because they’re unlikely to get support from a right-oriented prime minister, and are unlikely to get an actual majority vote on anything.
Basically, unless something really unexpected happens, this will result in a stalemate for a while. Which is, admittedly, the lesser of two evils, but kinda sucks anyway.
Well done france
That might look like good news, but it’s just delaying the problem. Far right has only gained votes for the last 20 years, and it’s only through jolts like the first round of these elections that other candidates unify to not let them pass. Nothing is done to address the underlying problems that make people vote for these fuckers, so it’s only a matter of time before they end up accessing power.
The far-right in Europe, with money from both Russia and American billionaires, has been ridding the wave of insatisfaction that’s the side effect of the very problems created by Neoliberalism (which is now in its natural end stage were wealth is far more concentrated than ever since the early XX century and social mobility is pretty much non-existent, hence why most people feel poorer and hopeless) which itself was created with billionaire money pumped into Think Tanks and buying politicians mainly in America in the late 70s, early 80s.
As I see it, the best way for the Left to disarm the the Far-Right is to undo most of Neoliberalism - go back to higher levels of State support and State control of strategical assets, free Education, Progressive taxation with excessive wealth heavilly taxed, and so on - thus removing the very cause of the popular insatisfaction that the Far-Right feeds on using a litany of “blame everybody but the rich” excuses.
At least some of this actually seems to be what the NFP has announced it will do.
Now, Macron (and his party) being hard core neoliberals will fight this tooth and nail, as will the EU because most of the governments there are neoliberals and things like the ECB as as pure neoliberal as it gets, so for starters, they will most definitelly try to help the ultra-rich in France more evade tax even more than now.
The other problem is that part of the NFP is the old centrist “left” party (the Socialist Party, which has nothing at all to do with Socialism) who were part and parcel of the Neoliberalization of French politics (a typical corrupt as hell mainstream “centrist” European party of the last 2 decades) and eventually suffered massivelly at the polls for it. That said, the fear of being made even more irrelevant will probably put a break on their corrupt neoliberal tendencies.
The good news is that, if the French Left manages to overcome the forces in France that will be arrayed against any undoing of Neoliberalism, that country is big enough to pretty much ignore EU pressure.
