This is what France calls a right-winger and a centrist? Have I mentioned I LOVE the Atlantic Ocean?
Cannoli Send a noteboard - 25/04/2017 03:32:54 AM
I also get why Germans sang hymns to the Rhine a hundred years ago. But really, could they find a single significant candidate in this election who has never been part of some organization with the word "socialist" in its decent-human-language name?
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For the first time in modern French history, neither major party has made it to the run-off of the presidential elections, and hence the new president won't belong to either party. Due to the terrible presidency of Hollande, the traditional splintering of the left-wing vote and Fillon's 'fake jobs' scandal, it's not only Marine Le Pen who makes it into the second round, which was more or less expected, but also Emmanuel Macron, running as a centrist with a party created on the spot.
For the first time in modern French history, neither major party has made it to the run-off of the presidential elections, and hence the new president won't belong to either party. Due to the terrible presidency of Hollande, the traditional splintering of the left-wing vote and Fillon's 'fake jobs' scandal, it's not only Marine Le Pen who makes it into the second round, which was more or less expected, but also Emmanuel Macron, running as a centrist with a party created on the spot.
In many ways you could say this is a good thing, forcing both of France's major parties to stop taking their power for granted and pay more attention to the many French who feel their voices aren't being heard. But Macron's background is about as elitist as they come,
Is he the French equivalent of an Ivy League billionaire? Because they NEVER win elections anymore, what with being so out of touch...
and considering he never held elective office before
Strike two.nor has much in the way of a party behind him
Next you're going to be saying he's facing off against a woman in the election to his country's highest office, and hoping her male relative's baggage can drag her down some more...
Seriously though, I honestly thought Le Pen was the Trump analogue in this race...
There's a lot of comparisons being made between Trump and Le Pen, but I don't think that's very accurate, and in fact it's unfair to both of them for different reasons (Trump's views are less borderline racist and less economically unsound than Le Pen's; but on the other hand, she is an actual politician with established principles and policies, and she can actually relate to the people she represents, not being a billionaire).
What does that have to do with anything? I feel like I'm having an Elayne discussion on the WoT MB where people only note the subject's economic status and plug in assumptions. Whether he gets it deep down or not, Donald Trump does a far better job of relating to working class people that most politicians. In stark contrast to Clinton, all the word about him from casual encounters and stories of low level employees is that he's friendly and gracious, as opposed to "Clinton 45" who had people diving into doorways to avoid crossing her gaze, and was infamous for her temper tantrums and tongue lashings. Money has nothing to do with relating to people - for that you need empathy (which, BTW, is much more likely to come with comfortable lifestyles, education and all the rest of that - suffering people get jaded fast, they do not grow ginormous hearts bleeding with empathy), and there are enough stories of Trump's spontaneous acts of generosity that makes it much more easy to believe he is capable of empathy, rather than a calculated facsimile with a fluctuating regional accent behind it (a trick Clinton shared with her prior employer).
Cannoli
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*
So it will be Macron vs Le Pen after all
- 23/04/2017 09:42:37 PM
1019 Views
Is this April 2002 or April 2017
- 23/04/2017 11:56:40 PM
664 Views
Do you understand the difference between economics and diplomacy?
- 25/04/2017 03:40:34 AM
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Sigh do you understand treaties that Germany has sign over 60 years, and not a single treaty but
- 27/04/2017 11:35:40 PM
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Macron will win.
- 24/04/2017 03:17:32 PM
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Yeah - win the presidential election, but the real question will be the parliamentary ones.
- 24/04/2017 06:12:43 PM
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He won't win that, thank God.
- 26/04/2017 08:57:20 AM
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I don't think so either, but I've seen surprisingly few polls on that so not quite sure.
- 26/04/2017 11:22:03 PM
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France might make history, here
- 24/04/2017 08:15:55 PM
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Argentina did this first in the 1970s
- 24/04/2017 10:58:13 PM
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Are you disregarding parliamentary governments ? *NM*
- 24/04/2017 11:26:46 PM
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I am disregarding anyone who does not call their president a president, in saying Argentina was the
- 25/04/2017 01:07:50 AM
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I find that example amusing: Argentina also had a Nip as head of state before we tried a mulatto *NM*
- 25/04/2017 03:43:20 AM
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Did you just say what I think you said? Cancel that...I really do not want to know. *NM*
- 26/04/2017 12:31:32 AM
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Peru, not Argentina. If you don't mean Fujimori, I'm curious to know who it is. *NM*
- 26/04/2017 10:11:22 PM
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This is what France calls a right-winger and a centrist? Have I mentioned I LOVE the Atlantic Ocean?
- 25/04/2017 03:32:54 AM
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Your statements about wealth and empathy go against pretty much everything I've seen.
- 25/04/2017 04:03:41 AM
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Those are relative things, yes.
- 25/04/2017 07:49:01 AM
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Re: Those are relative things, yes.
- 25/04/2017 05:54:51 PM
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Well it is confusing - you're more effective at defending him than most, however you voted.
- 25/04/2017 11:30:44 PM
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I expect to the populist/anti-establishment trend to continue
- 25/04/2017 09:24:38 PM
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It will. This is the shakey start.
- 27/04/2017 09:31:57 AM
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Start? The start over here was back in 1991.
- 27/04/2017 07:13:46 PM
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I know what you mean, and I am not up on all my modem history
- 27/04/2017 08:30:11 PM
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3 podcasters from America try to make sense of France and their system and do analogies to the US
- 27/04/2017 11:27:52 PM
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