Hey Hubski, seems like the media is focusing on getting paid by the click instead of giving you unbiased informations. I've been following quite closely the election so if you have any questions, I would gladly answer you.
Since Marcon is so new to politics, and his party only started last year, how will he build a coalition when he beats LePen? Have established politicians joined his party? In the US, the Tea Party came from behind to put a bunch of neophytes into office... who then totally failed, because they had no connections with other politicians, no relationships with any of the people on key committees, and generally unable to get meetings with the actual people who get shit done. Is Marcon seen as someone that people can get behind, or is he simply "not LePen"?
Hi goobster, The coalition will be created – or not – through the results of the legislative election (mid-june). Basically, there are 577 seats at Parliament that will be contended between the different political parties. Macron will present one of his guy for every seat (with a rule: he wants 50% men and 50% women, and he also wants 50% persons from civil society and 50% from already elected guys). If he gets 50% seats, he will be able to apply his politics easily. But it’s probably not going to happen, so what we are going to probably get is a President who will ally with the right-side of the Parliament when he wants to pass laws which involves reducing workers right to improve liberty of companies; and ally with the left-side government when he wants to pass laws which involves increasing egality (gross generalization but you get the idea). --- Some established politicians joined his party, the first that come to mind is François Bayrou, who is a center-guy who tried to be elected president in 2012 (9,13% of votes in the first round) and in 2007 (18,57% of votes in the first round). He decided to join Macron this year instead of trying to get elected. After that, you have a lot of elected politicians from left and right who joined him. You also have Manuel Valls (ex-prime minister), who lost the party socialist primary election who instead of supporting Benoît Hamon (which he was supposed to do after signing the convention of the primary), supported Macron – He didn’t join his party yet, but Macron has some traction from established politicians. What’s more, Macron worked for two years at the Rothschild bank, where he made millions and got some nice contacts, notably with the media. Here’s in yellow some of his close contacts/friends (mostly billionaires, the number at the center indicates in which position their wealth is in France, e.g. Bernard Arnauld is #2, the second richest person in France) who owns the most “attention-span” of French citizens. I believe he will know where to go to get shit done. France is now ranked 45 in a freedom of press ranking from 2016 (we were 38 in 2015): https://rsf.org/fr/classement ; in the last 5 years, there was a lot of acquisitions and consolidation from big companies & billionaires. --- Well, he is not Le Pen in the sense that people will get behind him for the second round (99% confidence), but not by adhesion. France is extremely divided: Macron 24,01% LePen 21,30% Fillon 20,01% Mélenchon 19,58% And it will be complicated to get behind him because he represents the symptoms of why shit hits the fans for the middle class and those who struggles – or more than half the population. He is the poster child of neoliberalism, which is more or less the reason why LePen is so high in the first place. The French stock market opened +4% the day after the first round. The economy is going to get better, but at what price socially? Probably more inequality, a greater divide, and who knows what at the end of the tunnel. He still has some good ideas though, it’s not as binary as that, but it’s going to be… complicated.
Wow. That was fascinating. Thank you for going into so much detail! (And for using the European comma in numbers! I miss that... it's so exotic to see "9,3%" rather than the American decimal point, "9.3%". I know. I'm a simple man, with simple pleasures. lol) Now I shall cross my fingers and hope LePen gets crushed in an anti-Trump landslide of French pride.
Thanks ! She should be crushed, but the population is really divided, what’s going on in many heads is something like this: --> I really don’t want Le Pen --> I don’t want Macron, I don’t want to make him think I support his program by voting for him, I don’t want him to think that if he wins by a landslide it’s because there is a lot of support for him --> Should I abstain? --> If too many people think that way we are going to get Le Pen --> Let me die. So it’s probably going to be something along the lines of 60% Macron – 40% Le Pen, where 30% of people who voted for Macron did it despite not adhering to his ideas. And there should be around 20%-25% who either abstain or vote “white” which means neither candidate.
Debatable in the sense that failure is a win for them a lot of the time. Competence isn't the main goal. The irony of the Democrats threatening to shut down the government over The Wall is that shutting down the government is like 95% of what the 'Baggers hope to accomplish. The whole idea of competent government is anathema to the ideals of these people.In the US, the Tea Party came from behind to put a bunch of neophytes into office... who then totally failed...
A lot of people are pretty happy to see government "Shut Down". The truth is much isnt actually shutdown but its good PR, and people think waste is slowed down during that time. I think it would be different if food stamps stop coming out, government pensions stopped, social security stops or wars get put on hold. Instead we shutdown parks and pause research which just inconveniences people and is rather annoying.
Is this just for the president or is France having regional and local elections as well? If you are having elections for "smaller" positions, are they just as heated? Also, why the delay for the next vote. Why don't they do it all in a week and get shit over with?
It is just for the president. Regional elections will be held in 2021, and local elections in 2020. The presidential election is the one which gets people crazy the most, but there are still some tensions in regionals and local elections. What’s going to be up soon after are the Legislative Election in June (first round: 11 june, second round: 18 june), which will let the people vote for members of parliament. It will also be a very interesting election (as Trump said about this one) as it will tell if the President will be able to execute his program easily or if there is going to be a lot of opposition if he doesn’t get the majority. The delay of two weeks between the two rounds is due to the delay necessary by the Constitutional Council to check if there is any complaint, to announce the official results, and to let the possibility of one candidate to withdraw.