Lauren Southern was right: once again, the Boomers have ruined everything. As analysis of voting trends shows, the only demographic who voted for Emmanuel Macron over Marine Le Pen were les codgers, the over-60s and 70s. Thanks, grandpere et grandmere.
But, if Le Pen has lost the presidency, she’s very far from giving up on 2022: there’s still the parliamentary elections to come.
(When reading the following, by the way, adjust your horizontal hold: if left-wing Macron is “centrist”, then “far-right” really means centre-right.)
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen gathered her party’s troops on Monday, not to mourn her loss a day earlier in the French presidential election but to plot out how to orchestrate a victory in June’s parliamentary vote and capture a majority of seats in the National Assembly.
Centrist President Emmanuel Macron beat her 58.5% to 41.5% to win reelection Sunday but Le Pen produced her highest-ever level of support in her three attempts to become France’s leader. That gave the 53-year-old nationalist firebrand momentum as she charged into what is called the “third round” of voting, hoping to turn the tables on Macron’s majority in parliament.
Fun drinking game: take a shot every time a legacy media journalist writes “far-right” in a single article. At five shots in this article alone, we’re well on the way.)
Still, ignoring the loaded journalistic language, it’s clear that even the legacy media have to admit that Le Pen is on to something.
Le Pen’s high support Sunday laid bare a European Union nation that is fractured between those she refers to as the “France of the forgotten” — the vulnerable working class that has been hard hit by rising inflation and the fallout from sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine — and what she calls the “elitists” of Macron’s staunchly pro-EU voters.
Whether Le Pen can break through the ceiling of voter fear that has blocked her party in the past is central to capturing enough seats in parliament.
Still, the fear factor played a large role in her presidential loss.
A “fear factor” assiduously ramped up by the same legacy media who brought us Trump Derangement Syndrome and wall-to-wall Remainer propaganda.
Because what the elites for whom Macron is just another Klaus Schwab puppet really fear is the end of the open borders globalist world that has so benefited them, directly in proportion to the punishment it’s inflicted on ordinary people. Consider the issues that the legacy media hacks “fear” so badly: a crackdown on (illegal) immigrants, diminishing the power of the EU.
Her goal was to create a “Europe of Nations,” replacing the current system with a patriotic version that would have returned some powers to EU countries, whose sovereignty she and other populist leaders feel has been diminished.
This is not a matter of “feeling”, it’s a matter of fact. Sovereignty by definition supreme and indivisible: if the EU is a sovereign entity, then its member states are, by definition, not. If the laws of the EU override the laws of the member states, those states are not sovereign.
It’s as simple as that — but the globalists don’t want the French to realise it, any more than they did the British.
Many voters already expect that Le Pen will gain more seats in parliament, the question is only how much […]
The National Assembly currently has 577 seats, with Macron and his allies controlling 313 of them. Le Pen’s party has only 8 seats now but would like to upset Macron’s majority with a broader far-right* movement to hobble his ability to get his agenda passed.
Drink!
But France’s voting system stands a bit in the way of a far-right* conquest in parliament.
The legislative vote comes in two rounds on June 12 and June 19. Candidates who win a majority in the first round are elected. If no one does — a common occurrence in France’s fractured political landscape — those who get at least 12.5% of the vote in a race go into a runoff on June 19.
If Le Pen’s party had enough members to form a group in parliament, it would get more precious speaking time and clout. Had she become president, she would have switched to a largely proportional system that would allow her party to muscle its way into relevancy.
But Sunday’s presidential defeat is still breeding tomorrow’s hope for far-right* militants.
Independent
*Drink!
*Drink!
Like her nearest Australian counterpart, Le Pen is nothing if not a dogged fighter. The EU establishment has thrown everything it can at her, to take her down, but still, she refuses to quit. At just 53, she still has plenty of steam for another stab at the presidency. Her party’s acting president, Jordan Bardella, also highlights the generational divide in the election. At just 28, Bardella has declared that “The movement we created, we’re at the start of the beginning. In reality, everything is about to start.”