Scandals in Communist Frenchystan
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
I'm trying to find something to mock in this campaign but really, the candidates are not helping me.
So ... German ...
the Union at it's finest: taking over the wrong properties of the other countries
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
I'm trying to find something to mock in this campaign but really, the candidates are not helping me.
For context: it's not because the candidates are so virtuous they can't be mocked. It's because they're all so busy
that there's simply nothing to criticize. Even they don't seem to care about the upcoming elections.
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@Zerosquare Very true.
One thing to note though is that the main opponents (*) of Macron all were fairly sympathetic to Russia until recent events. This means they all got in the uncomfortable (though by no means impossible, nor even unusual, in politics...) position of having to say the opposite of what they were saying just before. Which means they overall don't have a lot of credibility, nor much to say really, on what is the main topic of the day. So they mostly keep quiet.
(*) the far-left Mélenchon was always sympathetic to anything that's opposed to the US, and the far-right Le Pen and Zemmour are typical authoritarian types, so they love a "strong man." The right-wing candidate wasn't particularly pro-Russia but she still got some flak because the last former PM from her party (Fillon) was heavily involved in a couple of Russian companies, so guilt-by-association. The rest of the field are so far behind that no one cares about them.
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@boomzilla said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@Gribnit said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@HardwareGeek eh, try us in a less-partisan era, we used to know what that meant.
Like back in the 1500s?
As if...
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
and the far-right Le Pen
Didn't she recently have to destroy several million of voting pamphlets because they showed a photo of her and Putin?
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Correct.
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@Rhywden yes, she has a campaign pamphlet with such a photo, and it's causing her trouble.
(the story was brought up by a strongly left-wing newspaper who claims she's destroying these pamphlets, but other sources say that's not true and they're still using them, and she tries to weasel out of all this by saying that at the time the picture was OK but since then she has changed her opinion of Putin -- which by itself is a good illustration of how the whole thing is, at best, awkward for her)
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@Kamil-Podlesak said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@boomzilla said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@Gribnit said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@HardwareGeek eh, try us in a less-partisan era, we used to know what that meant.
Like back in the 1500s?
As if...
E_NOT_USA
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
So they mostly keep quiet.
And the world is a better place.
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@HardwareGeek though the reason why they keep quiet being Ukraine... I think I'd prefer yapping politicians to an open war that could very well turn ugly(-ier).
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@boomzilla h'mm. Nah, England and Spain were still at it, so any retrospectively defined US would still be squabbling. I'm thinking of Aug 13th, 1897 probably, unless something bad happened that day I don't remember.
And yeah, G&G is irrelevant, given the total lack of any influence from that part of Europe on American history.
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@Gribnit yeah, I probably should have gone back even further. Oh, well.
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French President Emmanuel Macron's reelection campaign has its own Minecraft server
Features the Palais de l'Élysée and, er, a room filled with boxes
Oui. Whatever les enfants are into these days.
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@Applied-Mediocrity I read in an article that Macron set up a dedicated team in his campaign to "connecting with younger voters," which I guess includes this Minecraft thing, some Tiktok-ing and what-not. The article said that he wasn't very pleased with their success (or rather, lack of), which isn't really surprising -- but doesn't seem very different from what other candidates are doing, or failing to do.
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Also since you've woken up that thread and in case you wondered:
The first round of voting is this Sunday (in 4 days!), and there is still not much happening in the campaign. We should have a complete media frenzy with the election being the only topic in every newspaper, and yet if I check e.g. the main public news website (https://www.francetvinfo.fr/), I have to scroll down quite a bit to find one topic about that, and it's about a minor aspect of the campaign ("what is the position of various candidates regarding assisted-suicide," which is a very minor topic here and now).
In polls, Macron is still ahead but he has been falling sharply for the last couple of weeks. My interpretation is that while Ukraine etc. allowed him to avoid campaigning initially, people are starting to get used to it, and the cost-of-living (in particular fuel prices) is starting to bite, so he gets the blame on that. He's still above 25% or so.
At the same time, 2 of the 3 main right-wing candidates (Zemmour and Pecresse) are apparently tumbling down, probably with all their support flocking to the 3rd one (Le Pen). She's raising in polls and is less than 5 points below Macron now (20-25%).
On the left, polls also indicate that everyone is jumping ship of the minor candidates and regrouping behind Mélenchon, who is now close to 15%.
So it looks like Macron and Le Pen will come ahead, but there is still the possibility (unlikely, but who knows?) of Mélenchon beating Le Pen. There is also the possibility of Le Pen coming up ahead of Macron. This wouldn't matter in terms of who goes through to the 2nd round, but it would probably be a huge shock in French political life. But we're not there yet.
If the 2nd round is Macron-Le Pen, polls reflect the same dip for Macron/raise for Le Pen as in the 1st round polls. Macron is still more than 5% ahead (53-47 or so), but... who knows?
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@remi Oh, God, please not Le Pen. If that happens we can basically kiss the European continent goodbye for the next 20 years at least.
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@remi Le Pen winning would be
. And not in a good way.
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@PleegWat indeed, it would be celebrated here as 'we've demonstrated the case towards Fexit and look at how well Brexit went!' as though that was a good thing.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
The first round of voting is this Sunday (in 4 days!), and there is still not much happening in the campaign. We should have a complete media frenzy with the election being the only topic in every newspaper, and yet if I check e.g. the main public news website (https://www.francetvinfo.fr/), I have to scroll down quite a bit to find one topic about that, and it's about a minor aspect of the campaign ("what is the position of various candidates regarding assisted-suicide," which is a very minor topic here and now
Yeah. Looks like even the candidates themselves don't bother pretending things are not already settled.
@Rhywden said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@remi Oh, God, please not Le Pen. If that happens we can basically kiss the European continent goodbye for the next 20 years at least.
@PleegWat said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@remi Le Pen winning would be
. And not in a good way.I don't think she'd win, even if the margin between her and Macron will probably be slimmer than it was last time. Her party is still too polarizing.
And in the unlikely case she does win, I'm certain she would quickly backpedal on her campaign promises, like every other politician. Maybe even more so.
On the other hand, if it's Mélenchon against Macron... the fireworks could be fun to watch.
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@Zerosquare said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
I don't think she'd win, even if the margin between her and Macron will probably be slimmer than it was last time. Her party is still too polarizing.
That is also my belief, but again who knows? Though it's worth noting that after a couple of decades of underestimating Le Pen's vote in polls, in the last couple of elections the polls were pretty accurate and even tended to slightly overestimate her share (for example in the last regional elections she was originally predicted as winning at least 1-2, maybe up to 4 regions, but she ended up winning none). If the same holds here, this could mean that the gap in the end will be larger than polls indicate. But of courses, polls are only ever accurate within 1-2% anyway, so...
Also, I received the official campaign propaganda (and yes, it's officially called like this). This is a thing in France: every voter receives (by post), in the days before the vote, a publicly-sent envelope with one (standardised size) flyer per candidate. Candidates pay part of this flyer but it's also partly paid by the state, to give equal exposure, though with complex rules that mean in small elections small candidates sometimes don't bother with a flyer. But for the presidential, they all do.
I may come back to some other bits later (if I can
), but as for Le Pen, the most obvious thing I noted is that her name (Le Pen) does not show anywhere on the flyer. Instead, it's all about "Marine for President" which to me is an obvious attempt at glossing over her name, which is indeed still very polarising.(
her name is visible on a picture of a ballot paper being put in an envelope, and maybe in tiny font in the legal notices, but I didn't see it in the main text)(also for
, her flyer is the only one that has a (small) mention on the side saying "this is not a ballot paper." The only way I can interpret that is that some people are dumb enough to believe so (i.e. to confuse a 4-pages A4 colour flyer with an A6 (A7?) plain white paper with only her name and nothing else written on it...), and that her campaign is aware of it and thinks it's a significant number of people, which makes it sound like they believe their own voters are dumb...)And in the unlikely case she does win, I'm certain she would quickly backpedal on her campaign promises, like every other politician. Maybe even more so.
Well, the obvious constant from all the flyers I got is that they all promises tons of money with absolutely no funding for it (except the far-left who funds it by stuff like "nationalising large companies" but at least one of them is so far up Revolution Creek that they aren't really campaigning for president, just... I don't know, giving us a lecture on revolutionary Marxism, I guess?). Or if it's not more money, it's empty words. Le Pen's is no different than others here.
(perhaps the one who's a bit less prone to that is Macron, i.e. the only one that has a serious chance of winning and having to put that in practice!)
But a quite a few, including her, have bits that are probably against the Constitution (because, roughly speaking, they are discriminatory against one group of people, which thankfully is still a big no-no). Depending on their side it might be against foreign-born French (if they're French, doesn't matter how they got so, they have the same rights as all French!) or against rich people (e.g. confiscate all income/wealth above some threshold, which was already tried by Hollande 10 years ago and ruled against the Constitution).
Now the obvious work-around is that many candidates also propose to change the Constitution, but whether they would actually manage it is a different matter. Most likely, they would have to water down their promises so much that they'd become essentially meaningless, except for a few bits.
So yeah, Le Pen would have to backpedal on quite a lot of things (like all candidates would have to), or just ignore some bits of her program (oh, another fun on from Macron this time: his flyer says something like "reducing men/women inequalities were the Number One Topic of the 2017-2022 mandate, and will be the Number One Topic of this mandate," which really reads as "we haven't done anything about it but we pinky-swear that this time we'll do!"). Still, some highly contentious measures and her general ideas would cause massive rifts in politics.
On the other hand, if it's Mélenchon against Macron... the fireworks could be fun to watch.
For one thing, Mélenchon is a far, far better orator than any other candidate, so the main TV debate would be fun to watch. But that aside, polls say that, even with the recent dip of Macron/raise of Mélenchon, Macron would still win by a landslide (60/40), because most of the right would back him (except for maybe some slices of the far-right, but probably not that much). So it would make for a fun 2 weeks (between the 1st and 2nd round), but probably not much more.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
which really reads as "we haven't done anything about it but we pinky-swear that this time we'll do!"
Politics 101:
Lesson 1: You won't disappoint with a promise.
Lesson 2: You don't need to solve anything, just convincingly look like you are solving it.
Lesson 3: In fact, you shouldn't really solve it, because then you'd have to search for a new topic.
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@Bulb Well the obvious "lesson 0" from all those flyers is that if you have no chance to be elected, you can forget about all other rules and promise absolutely anything.
At least one of the far-left revolutionaries, for all their... let's say "idealistic" thinking, clearly says "elections won't change anything" (which is why they want a revolution... yeah, I didn't say they were sane). Which I find kind of refreshing and honest, compared to all the other that make-believe they are actually serious.
Along the same line, I heard an interview of one of those far-left candidates and when asked the usual "what would be your first act as president?" answered with "let's not try and fool anyone, I won't be elected" (before continuing with whatever). That's much better than Zemmour (far-right) who, when asked if he would back Le Pen for the 2nd round, adamantly refused to reply in any way other than that he would be in the 2nd round (with polls giving 25% to Le Pen and 10% to Zemmour, with the first one on a raising trend and the second one a downward one... yeah, fat luck).
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So the results (of the 1st round) are in!
French elections: Macron and Le Pen to fight for presidency
Emmanuel Macron wins the first round, but the run-off against his far-right rival may be far closer.
On the face of it, this looks like Groundhog Day as it's the same as 2017. Though of course as with anything in politics, the past doesn't really repeat. For one thing in 2017 none of them was the incumbent whereas now Macron has some history -- both to highlight what he achieved, and what he failed to, so it goes both ways.
What next?
Polls for the 2nd round predict a short victory for Macron, but too short to be a certainty (whereas in 2017 it was a done deal). So Le Pen isn't the favorite, but could win. It'll in part depend on how the next 2 weeks until the 2nd round go. Le Pen was on an upwards trajectory these last few weeks, but that doesn't mean she'll keep on doing that as the 2nd round dynamics are very different from the 1st round.
Everybody will be watching the traditional TV debate (date not yet fixed, my guess is it'll be next week). Le Pen thoroughly lost it last time, and even she admitted to it later, but despite all the hype historically those debates don't seem to have ever truly changed things. I don't think it'll be any different this time.
Some comments on the 1st round:
Polls got the overall ranking right (Macron/Le Pen/Mélenchon/etc.), but they were somewhat off on the scores (even remembering that polls always are within a couple of points). Macron was slightly underestimated (he got almost 28% but polled at 26%), Le Pen slightly overestimated (23% against polls of 25%) but those are within the margins of error. Though if that trend holds, that would give a slightly larger 2nd round advantage to Macron, but really that's just a random guess at that point.
More significant, the polls largely underestimated the 3rd-place result, Mélenchon (far left, though he ran a campaign on a much more moderate left-wing platform). He polled at 17% or so but ended up with 22%, barely 1.5% behind Le Pen! The obvious analysis, from the rest of the results, is that all the left rallied behind him. What that does say for the future, though... every analyst (and everyone is an analyst the day after an election!) has a different opinion.
Some analysts bunch together Le Pen and Mélenchon (no, it's not as stupid as it looks) and a couple other minor ones to say that there is about 50% of voters who support platforms that want significant changes to the institutions -- Mélenchon wants a "6th Republic" (whatever that means...), Le Pen wants major changes to international (EU!) treaties and the like. Whether that's truly a relevant and significant way of seeing things... again, everyone's an analyst today.
The other obvious thing is that apart from those 3, the rest of field totally collapsed. Now this wasn't unexpected for, say, the fringe far-left candidates. But it was a complete catastrophe for the 2 main center-left/right parties: the socialist (Hollande's party) got less than 2%, which is dismal even compared to their 2017 result (7%) which was already dismal. And the Republicans (Sarkozy's party) got just below 5% (which is a significant threshold as it triggers some public funding, btw), which looks very much like how the socialists catastrophic slide started 5 years ago.
Based on that, one reasonable extrapolation is to say that the political landscape is now clearly formed of one far-left party, one wide centre/centre-right party, and one far-right party. Which is a big shift from the last 40 (50? 60?) years that were dominated by one centre-left and one centre-right party.
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And of course you have the segment of the UK that is willing Le Pen on primarily because it will legitimise their Brexit.
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@Arantor Meanwhile Le Pen is very careful to not say she wants a Frexit, given how 1) it cost her a lot in 2017 as many people disagree and 2) Brexit is seen as a total shit show and not really something you want to replicate. Also meanwhile, her platform is to "renegotiate all EU treaties."
I heard this morning someone from her party questioned on that and whether other EU countries would agree, their answer was more or less the same as the UK negotiating the trade treaty with EU ("we're so big, they need us more than we need them"). Yeah, that worked so well for Britain...
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@remi there are people here telling us how successful it’s been. There are some people with some very interesting views on the subject.
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@Arantor When do we ever consider a divorce an unmitigated success? Now imagine divorcing one of those newfangled free-love communes. Oh, wait, we don't need to imagine. We can just look at Brexit.
But give it 100 years, and no-one even remembers it anymore. Uless there's a war over the canal. Then it'll be remembered.
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@Arantor The keyword in my post was "seen as."
Regardless of the actual success or lack thereof of Brexit, in France the very widely dominant view is that it was (is) a shit show. Some people may think that in the long term it will end up good for Britain, and some people may think that the shit show is at least as much the EU's fault than Britain's, but I suspect that even those ones would say that it's a shit show. And perception is all that matters in an election campaign.
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@Arantor said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
there are people here telling us how successful it’s been
Measuring success in terms of the length of queue on the M20 is perhaps not the most common approach, but it works for some of the wingnuts.
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@remi oh, I’m perfectly happy to agree with the current trending view on Twitter that it is an unmitigated shitshow. I am also however being tactful about my choice of wording because I’d rather not invoke the spectre of that place I cannot see and am glad not to.
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@Arantor Fear not; no-one disagrees. Whether it was beneficial or not, only time will tell. But everybody can agree that the execution has been an unmitigated shitshow.
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@acrow I'm normally a believer in paying my fair share and contributing to the social good, etc. and by external not normally about the here and now, but to me the downside costs for the current generation are such that it's hard to believe the upside cost would ever be worth it.
Maybe in another 50-80 years? But I'll be dead long before that. The rate we're going, so will the planet, rendering all of this moot.
I'd be more sympathetic if it didn't feel like the entire campaign was a sham of lies - not one single, solitary benefit has been shown yet, despite the 9-figure-and-counting downside costs.
But it's been an excellent demo for the EU why not to do it.
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@Arantor If it were all peaceful time, with the status quo continuing, sure. But it's not. We live now in "interesting times". WWIII starting, deep inflation and maybe a recess coming, pandemic lockdowns in several places, and global supply chain failures. In short, things are moving faster now.
WWII took what, 6 years? 7? And we have faster cars and planes now, so WWIII may go even faster. I bet the political and economic landscape will be unrecognizable in 10 years.
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@acrow said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
WWIII may go even faster.
It used to be predicted that WWIII would last ~30 minutes.
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@HardwareGeek said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@acrow said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
WWIII may go even faster.
It used to be predicted that WWIII would last ~30 minutes.
It may be resolved that quickly. But the war would always have started well before the pushing of the button. Nobody presses that button unprovoked.
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@dkf I’m not sure anybody sane would push the button first, provoked or otherwise.
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Random song of the day:
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"I've only rarely sung this song since it was written. And I never though that it would be relevant again."
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@PleegWat I hadn't seen that. Nice.
Regardless of the lyrics (which, let's be honest, are well-intentioned but quite cheesy), I've always liked that song. I don't know why, maybe it's because it's based on some classical music (Wiki say Prokofiev), maybe it's because the radio I listened to as a teen used to play it a lot and thus I associate it with some special memories. Anyway, I like it.
Also I don't know how much of an artefact of recording/post-processing it is, or the effect of 40 more years, but I get the impression that Sting's voice is quite different between the two versions. Lower, but also richer, though maybe slightly less confident. Not a bad change, overall.
Filed under: random musi
ngsc
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
Also I don't know how much of an artefact of recording/post-processing it is, or the effect of 40 more years, but I get the impression that Sting's voice is quite different between the two versions. Lower, but also richer, though maybe slightly less confident. Not a bad change, overall.
I think it's a combination of things. Instrument choice plays a part as well - the part played by a cello in this version was played by a trumpet in the original, and that's a very different instrument. But most of all, it's recorded in a different context, which leads to putting different emotions in it.
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@PleegWat said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
But most of all, it's recorded in a different context, which leads to putting different emotions in it.
I suspect that's the main thing. Though the tessiture of the voice is probably less affected by the recording setting/effects, and also honestly I'd be surprised if his voice had not changed at all in 40 years.
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A fun one:
Candidates' campaigning costs are partly reimbursed by the state (within limits and with complex rules), but it depends on their result. Below 5%, they get much, much less money than above it. And at least 3 candidates (centre-right, centre-left and greens) were either seriously expecting, or at least hoping, to get 5% but failed to do so. So now they need money since they expected the state to pay, and they're launching various fundraisers.
(Smaller candidates never expected or hoped to get to 5% and thus planned their campaigns accordingly, and of course larger ones are above that. So it's only those who realistically thought they would get to 5%, but didn't, who are in trouble.)
Now the fun bit is that another minor candidate (Jean Lassalle, the most folkloric of them all, with no clear political ideas or positioning) publicly announced that he will personally send money (10 EUR each... but the symbol is enough) to the 3 candidates above.
Of course he probably hasn't got any money problems himself as he was probably happily surprised to get something like 3x more votes than predicted, giving him a whooping... 3%.
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Also the big 2nd round debate (Macron / Le Pen) has been confirmed for next Wednesday. It'll be big news everywhere, but analyses done outside of campaigning (i.e. not right now) always say that these debates actually matter relatively little. So watch out for soundbites and snappy exchanges rather than anything that matters.
Polls seem to be getting more stable at 53/47 (for Macron).
The big question, following the 1st round, is how the voters of the 3rd place man (Mélenchon, far-left) will react. On a left/right scale they'd be closer to Macron but on a socialism/liberalism scale they're closer to Le Pen. Polls on Sunday evening (just after the 1st round results) said they would go about 1/3 each way (and 1/3 abstention). More recent polls show them shifting a bit more towards Macron.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
Jean Lassalle, the most folkloric of them all
True. But only because Jacques Cheminade, aka the guy whose campaign promises included things such as "colonizing Mars", wasn't running this time.
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@dkf said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@PleegWat said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
Nobody sane presses that button unprovoked.
What's this weird reconjugation of the adjective for health?
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
I'd be surprised if his voice had not changed at all in 40 years.
Less so with a voice less heavily affected than Sting's, I have to say.
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Yesterday evening was the "Great Debate," a traditional feature of the 2nd round of the presidential election. It never changed much in terms of votes, but it's the definitive high point of the campaign.
We had the same two people as in 2017, which was very notable as maybe the only time there was a clear looser (Le Pen), who nowadays even publicly admits so. It also likely cost her a few points, but she didn't have any chance that time anyway. She was unanimously judged far too vindicative and pointlessly aggressive, lost in her notes and completely under the water on all topics.
This time both sides had clearly learnt from that and the debate was much more civil (though by no means tame). On the whole... newspapers are struggling to pick one snappy retort that might stay (*), but there wasn't much in actual content either.
Of course each side claims their candidate was better, but the consensus seems to be that Le Pen, while far better than in 2017, did not show a real mastery of technical topics, being a bit lost in numbers and facts. OTOH, Macron has been struggling since at least 2017 to get rid of his image of arrogance and superiority, and he failed at that, sometimes sounding (or looking) condescendent, or like a teacher correcting a pupil.
So yeah, no winner, probably no real impact on anything, not even a fun clip for future historical programs. A big nothing-burger, but that absolutely everyone watched and will comment for the coming days.
In the polls, Macron now seems to be stable at around 55%, so it seems extremely likely that he will win on Sunday.
(*) one such snappy retort was Mitterrand (incumbent) against Chirac (then-PM, and yes, from the opposition) in 1988. Chirac tried to break the obvious power-relationship by saying something like "in this debate it's not the President vs. the PM but two men/ideas/programs/..." to which Mitterrand showed he was a master
by replying, without batting an eyelid, "you're absolutely right, Mister Prime Minister." Though Mitterrand wasn't always the winner, in 1974 his opponent (Giscard) famously countered his accusation of being out-of-touch with "you haven't got a monopoly on heart matters."
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@remi It's a bit disappointing that her extreme positions were seemingly taken in stride rather than challenged.
Also her "National law should trump EU law" wasn't labelled as what it actually is: The end of the EU, her protestations to the contrary nonwithstanding.
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@Rhywden said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@remi It's a bit disappointing that her extreme positions were seemingly taken in stride rather than challenged.
Macron did go on a tirade/rant about that at some points, but yeah, mostly he attacked her views as just another point of view, which clearly shows how widespread they have become. OTOH, she (and her close ally Zemmour) got about 30% in the 1st round and she's on course to get 45% or so in the 2nd, so at that point it becomes difficult to argue that it's a fringe view and dismiss her voters as just a bunch of deplorables.
Also her "National law should trump EU law" wasn't labelled as what it actually is: The end of the EU, her protestations to the contrary nonwithstanding.
Macron was pretty clear on that, though, stating several times that her program was only feasible if France left the EU (and in pure
style, stating that either she was hiding her true colours, or she knew that 80% of her program was impossible to put to action). And she didn't sound very convincing on her idea of replacing the EU by an "Europe of Nations" as she couldn't give any details about it, apart from the name.On one hand I'm not sure how much that has registered with the public. On the other, there is a strong anti-EU sentiment in France so perhaps there aren't so many people who are still fooled by her stance. On the third, it's also possible that she (and some others) genuinely think they could find a middle way (kind of like Cameron, and then Johnson, genuinely believed they could reform, and then get a good deal, with the EU -- and yes we all agree that Brexit is a shit-show but opinions are split as to who is to blame most, so using it as a precedent isn't as dumb as it sounds).
Guelphs and Ghibellines - Wikipedia
