French presidential election 2017

I don't think we can expect much from Macron regarding Greece or European austerity as a whole. It was the same thing five years ago, where we had Hollande give a series of superficial indictments of austerity but cave in to Merkel basically immediately after he was elected. I may have missed something, but overall Macron is already less outspoken than Hollande in his criticism. He may disagree with the current economic policy in the EU but I don't think he will throw much political capital behind breaking Germany's hegemony on these decisions. Until Germany's voters decide to remove Merkel and Schäuble from office (which seems unlikely), we unfortunately remain stuck in austerity.
 
Enough to get Merkel to openly endorse Sarkozy back then.
 
In other comically nonsensical news, Dupont-Aignan voters have shifted to Macron after Dupont-Aignan endorsed Le Pen. Turns out being a sellout isn't a good way to convince your voterbase, and NDA may have just committed political suicide.

On the day he endorsed her a lot of people from the town he's mayor of made a protest in front of his city hall. It looks like his 2020 reelection isn't going to be easy.
The worst part of it is that at best (for him) he'll be prime minister for a month. Le Pen can't have a majority in parliament due to the geographical polarization of the country, which means that the new majority (quite possibly LR) will insist on a new prime minister from their ranks. And the same thing will happen if Macron wins : his prime minister won't be certain that he'll stay in place after the parliamentary elections.
 
So how do the parliamentary elections work exactly? I've heard from the En Marche camp that they expect to win lots of seats, apparently by a bunch of candidates switching to their party. So how realistic is that?
 
I don't think we can expect much from Macron regarding Greece or European austerity as a whole. It was the same thing five years ago, where we had Hollande give a series of superficial indictments of austerity but cave in to Merkel basically immediately after he was elected. I may have missed something, but overall Macron is already less outspoken than Hollande in his criticism. He may disagree with the current economic policy in the EU but I don't think he will throw much political capital behind breaking Germany's hegemony on these decisions. Until Germany's voters decide to remove Merkel and Schäuble from office (which seems unlikely), we unfortunately remain stuck in austerity.
What you missed is that Hollande actually tried a left-wing "tax and spend" approach at the beginning of his term. It failed miserably, so he replaced his government and, among others, got Macron onboard. The second stage of Hollande (Hollande-Valls) while still mediocre at best, was far better than the first stage (look at any economic or social indicator).
 
So how do the parliamentary elections work exactly? I've heard from the En Marche camp that they expect to win lots of seats, apparently by a bunch of candidates switching to their party. So how realistic is that?

Parliamentary elections are 577 mini presidential elections, one for each electoral district. Every parliamentary election right after a presidential election has been won by the president's party, except for the centrist Giscard in 74 who had to name Chirac prime minister to get the support of the right. Which is basically what is going to happen this time around.

Only 50% of En Marche's candidates will be politicians, which means that even if some of them will be transfers from the PS or various centrist parties most won't have name recognition, and even less will have incumbency advantage. A lot of right wingers voted for Macron because Fillon is corrupt, and they could very well decide to vote for LR again this time around. At the same time it's possible for the socialists to do reasonably good scores (thanks to their strong local party). Therefore En Marche would be crushed and end up with 100 MPs or something.

But at this stage we don't know exactly how many high profile candidates EM will have in june, or how well the traditional parties will resist. Nor how well Melenchon's people and the FN will do (the two-round system is usually very bad for extreme candidates). This parliamentary election will be even more unpredictable than the presidential one (and there's no way pollsters can follow all 577 races to make prediction on what the parliament will look like, so we won't even have polls to help)

What you missed is that Hollande actually tried a left-wing "tax and spend" approach at the beginning of his term. It failed miserably, so he replaced his government and, among others, got Macron onboard. The second stage of Hollande (Hollande-Valls) while still mediocre at best, was far better than the first stage (look at any economic or social indicator).

No, the Ayrault government wasn't particularly left wing, nor did it really try tax and spend. By the fall of 2012 the reports they had commissioned in the spring had come back, and they showed how abysmal the situation was. That's when they went into panic mode and started doing center right economic policies. Valls was the successor of that, and made it even more drastic.
 
In other comically nonsensical news, Dupont-Aignan voters have shifted to Macron after Dupont-Aignan endorsed Le Pen. Turns out being a sellout isn't a good way to convince your voterbase, and NDA may have just committed political suicide.
Percentages: 44-31 with 25 undecided. How does that 25% lean?
 
What you missed is that Hollande actually tried a left-wing "tax and spend" approach at the beginning of his term. It failed miserably, so he replaced his government and, among others, got Macron onboard. The second stage of Hollande (Hollande-Valls) while still mediocre at best, was far better than the first stage (look at any economic or social indicator).
You're talking about French domestic economic policy. I did not miss it, I only did not mention it because it is not immediately relevant to the Eurozone austerity economics of Hollande I was talking about.
 
I brought up Varoufakis earlier, but Kyriakos is convinced that Macron is as evil as a fascist since he's a banker, so it's a lost cause.
Kyriakos and Innomatu are completely fanatical in their hatred of the EU. Just avoid the subject with them, it won't go anywhere :p
 
Varoufakis is a walking failure, his whole approach to negotiate with the EU" was demonstrated a failure in history: he got nothing of what he claimed he would achieve, it was a total loss. And Macron fooled him, if Varoufakis's claims were taken seriously: the supposedly promised support by France didn't materialize. Macron is an adept liar, telling everyone what they wish to hear while negotiating, caring nothing for the fact that he's making contradictory promises. Sad choice for the french.

I don't think we can expect much from Macron regarding Greece or European austerity as a whole. It was the same thing five years ago, where we had Hollande give a series of superficial indictments of austerity but cave in to Merkel basically immediately after he was elected. I may have missed something, but overall Macron is already less outspoken than Hollande in his criticism. He may disagree with the current economic policy in the EU but I don't think he will throw much political capital behind breaking Germany's hegemony on these decisions. Until Germany's voters decide to remove Merkel and Schäuble from office (which seems unlikely), we unfortunately remain stuck in austerity.

Austerity is not a german thing. Germany, important as it is in pressing for it, is a fig leaf for a wider array of interests across the EU. Hollande did what his political and financial backers in France demanded of him. Ultimately, because we still have universal suffrage instead of some kind of corporate parliament, he became unable to run for office again. But I'm sure he'll be well rewarded by his services, and the clone is ready to take his place.
 

A huge load of BS. Right wing journalists have been engineering a Fillon vs Le Pen matchup and the far left journalists have been engineering a Melenchon vs Le Pen matchup. Of course the unnamed center/center left journalist has been engineering a Macron vs Le Pen matchup, it was the easiest path to victory.

The article says Chirac immediately aknowledged that the votes he was going to get were not votes of support to his policy, yet it fails to mention that it didn't change anything to Chirac's eventual policies. Chirac is never a good example for someone doing the right thing, the only exception being the Iraq war.

There is no unified "deep state", and unlike what the article suggests the election wasn't staged by that "deep state" to put Melenchon aside.

Also Melenchon alone isn't responsible for taking 7 points off of MLP, first because IMO most of the people who weren't counted in the polls 6 months ago because they were not certain of their vote were hesitating between the non-Le Pen candidates, which meant that the actual Le Pen vs non-Le Pen numbers in the first round polls at that moment were closer to 23/77 than 28/72. Secondly because NDA and Asselineau took some votes away from her, when they weren't really in the equation in polls from January. Thirdly because on the other hand the Melenchon + Hamon vote has been mostly stable during this election, oscillating between 23 and 26%. It ended up at 26% which means Melenchon did convince some additional people, but clearly most of his rise was from taking voters off Hamon. At most he took 2 or 3 points off Le Pen. It's nice but Melenchon's supporters need to tone down on the self congratulations.
 
Do you hate the whole idea of a European Union, or merely how this particular one has been implemented?

On the balance I think the broader EEC which has since morphed into the EU has been a remarkable success in doing what it was created to do - avoid another major war on European soil. So I'm extremely wary of wholesale denunciations of the idea of the EU, but it certainly has some major flaws that absolutely must be addressed for its survival.
 
Do we have no clear reason to be so against it, in your view? :jesus:
You do have many totally valid reasons to dislike parts of the EU, and I actually agree on several of them.
The problem is that they have become religious dogma that have made you single-minded, and blind to the many great things that the EU created.
 
You do have many totally valid reasons to dislike parts of the EU, and I actually agree on several of them.
The problem is that they have become religious dogma that have made you single-minded, and blind to the many great things that the EU created.

I don't think so. Both myself and afaik Inno have noted that the pre 2003 eu did still function with more progressive and democratic sentiment (despite what would happen behind the scenes). :)

@metalhead: the issue is that austerity is literally destroying societies here, and Greece is a good example of that. I am always thinking of having to migrate in the near future. And i am not seeing the eu changing to something better, though i would want it to.
 
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