RandomGuy
06-16-2017, 04:09 PM
Le Pen's party imploded. Democrats could take a page from Macron's playbook, I think the country is ready for it.
-----------------------------
This week in Soissons, a somnolent provincial town far from the gaudy cast-of-thousands extravaganzas of the campaign, Ms. Le Pen was greeted by a few dozen somber National Front activists in a drab meeting hall. Even hecklers didn’t bother: Just a handful of weak-voiced protesters quickly dispersed.
Ms. Le Pen’s party, crushed by Emmanuel Macron’s 66 percent in the presidential runoff in May, fared dismally in last Sunday’s legislative elections. The National Front will most likely confirm these losses in a second round of voting this Sunday. And each day brings new revelations of internal backbiting and squabbles over strategy within the Front.
...
But if the champion of France’s populist far right is now contemplating years of political marginalization, she has largely herself to blame, in the eyes of analysts as well as many in her own party. They say she is paying a bitter price for an incoherent message badly delivered.
Support for the far right has close to evaporated, at least at the polls: From an already disappointing 34 percent in the May 7 presidential vote, it dropped to barely over 13 percent in last Sunday’s first-round parliamentary elections.
The Front’s voters stayed away in droves; their abstention rate was well over 50 percent, according to pollsters.
The first culprit is the Macron wave that has swept over France. The president’s field of nonpolitician amateur parliamentary candidates has touched a chord in a country fed up with established parties that brought no solutions to France’s chronic problems.
Their success has seemed to demonstrate that, given a centrist alternative to shake up politics as usual, voters will seize it and shun the extremes. Mr. Macron has blasted into insignificance not only the National Front, but the traditional right and left parties as well.
...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/world/europe/marine-le-pen-france.html?_r=0
-----------------------------
This week in Soissons, a somnolent provincial town far from the gaudy cast-of-thousands extravaganzas of the campaign, Ms. Le Pen was greeted by a few dozen somber National Front activists in a drab meeting hall. Even hecklers didn’t bother: Just a handful of weak-voiced protesters quickly dispersed.
Ms. Le Pen’s party, crushed by Emmanuel Macron’s 66 percent in the presidential runoff in May, fared dismally in last Sunday’s legislative elections. The National Front will most likely confirm these losses in a second round of voting this Sunday. And each day brings new revelations of internal backbiting and squabbles over strategy within the Front.
...
But if the champion of France’s populist far right is now contemplating years of political marginalization, she has largely herself to blame, in the eyes of analysts as well as many in her own party. They say she is paying a bitter price for an incoherent message badly delivered.
Support for the far right has close to evaporated, at least at the polls: From an already disappointing 34 percent in the May 7 presidential vote, it dropped to barely over 13 percent in last Sunday’s first-round parliamentary elections.
The Front’s voters stayed away in droves; their abstention rate was well over 50 percent, according to pollsters.
The first culprit is the Macron wave that has swept over France. The president’s field of nonpolitician amateur parliamentary candidates has touched a chord in a country fed up with established parties that brought no solutions to France’s chronic problems.
Their success has seemed to demonstrate that, given a centrist alternative to shake up politics as usual, voters will seize it and shun the extremes. Mr. Macron has blasted into insignificance not only the National Front, but the traditional right and left parties as well.
...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/world/europe/marine-le-pen-france.html?_r=0