Weekend Dossier on Monday, version bref
It’s an idée fixée of the French press and television : French radicals, the anti-capitalists, the Socialists, the ecologists, all of them and more, once an inspiration to the entire world, are undergoing some sort of existential crisis, outflanked by the wild-eyed right which gets all the attention. Blame it on the disintegration of the Socialist Party which ruled France for thirty years, blame it on the centrist president who constantly refashions extreme rightwing policies on immigration and the social safety net, blame it on new generations of voters with little or no knowledge of their hard-won rights and privileges, who find Rightwing scare tactics (Muslims, immigrants, etc.) perversely appealing. Whatever the reason, or perhaps because of all of them at the same time, the Left is perceived as out of it. Articles and news programs constantly reiterate that their campaigns are not catching fire, no one is going to vote for them. Even Le Monde got into the act last week, describing the socialist candidates as beleagured and hopeless. That article provoked an outburst from Jean-Luc Mélenchon, one of the candidates profiled here. He likened it to voter suppression.
Nevertheless they run. The players discussed in the two short articles here are putting on a brave face as they appeal to voters. Readers can see the latest polls in a previous Riffs article here. They are Yannick Jadot, Ecologist ; Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris, the Socialist candidate ; Fabien Roussel, running on the Communist party line, and Mélenchon of la France Insoumise. While Insoumise and the Ecologists flirted with the idea of a united left front last year, the only candidate pushing it now is Hidalgo.
Meanwhile, it’s a fact that an election featuring a Macron-Le Pen rematch is not in anyone’s interest. Zemmour-Mélenchon would be a bigger draw. Will the ladies set the house on fire ? Christiana Taubira, one-time government minister and independent presidential candidate, seems an unlikely choice. Madame Hidalgo has a high opinion of her program, largely borrowed from les Insoumises, but has no national support and faces an increasingly vociferous revolt over her governance of the world’s most beautiful city. 30% of France can’t make up their minds. Who can blame them ? Maybe they’re waiting for an old-fashioned miracle or are just keeping their opinion to themselves. The first round of the Presidential two-step is a few days short of three months away.
Perhaps the safest thing to say is that if all the different medias are saying the left is dead, it can’t be true. But how will they come back from the dead ? Triumphant or spoiler or also-ran ? No one is saying their programs don’t have value; much of the country agrees with a stronger safety net and renationalisation. Try telling that to a talking head.
The two short articles translated here appeared in Libération last week, one by Charlotte Belaich and Paul Quinio (interview with Jean-Luc Mélenchon).
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For Yannick Jadot, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Fabien Roussel, the talk about a primary for leftwing candidates takes up all their time and disheartens voters. On the left, everyone accuses everyone else of not playing to win. Those who want a united front on the left reproach those who reject it of running for president not to win but to be seen, while those who don’t want it say the others want to drag everyone else down with them.
In the first camp, Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist candidate and Christiane Taubira, an independent supported by the small Parti Radical de Gauche, are pushing for the primary, on the condition that Jadot takes part.
Opposed are Yannick Jadot, Fabien Roussel, the Communist candidate and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has from the start said that the union made no sense. Too many essential disagreements, on the European Union for instance, with few benefits, the different voices, like so many logos, adding up to nothing. This logic leads him to reject a primary. ‘It’s not my business,’ he repeated again on television last weekend. He then opens the way to an joint assembly after the first round of voting. ‘My commitment is, if I make it to the second round, the day after is open for a discussion about forming a government.’
Life Preserver
Yannick Jadot prefers to duck the question entirely. The ecologist thinks that Anne Hidalgo made the proposition because her candidcaicy is in its death throws. She never really wanted to join forces. He doesn’t hesitate to recall that severals months ago, she created the division on the left by questioning the Greens dedication to the Republic. ‘So what does the Socialist Party offer me today?’ He asked out loud while surrounded by journalists in Bordeaux on Wednesday. ‘It’s a let down that’s more trouble than it’s worth.’ People in his camp believe that it eats up the left’s ability to get its message out, depressing voters with the message that the left can’t win unless it holds hands. ‘Social Democrats are grabbing for a life vest while trying to sink everyone else’s campaign,’ says David Belliard, the ecologist in Paris City Hall. ‘People talk about this instead of their program.’
Socialists say other things off the record. ‘Jadot is the closest to us, but we don’t have the strength to get our ideas out.’ Some inside Socialist headquarters disapprove of Hidalgo’s strategy. ‘She really can’t go on talking about the primary. There are 200,000 new cases of COVID a day and she says nothing about hospitals, research or a vaccine, preferring to go on about a primary organized by pimple-faced kids ?’
Fabien Roussel, the Commiunist candidate, promises that he’ll go on to the end, alone. ‘Christiane Taubira has decided to be one more candidate. All right,’ he shrugs. The Communists, who in 2012 and ’17 supported Mélenchon, are pleased they have a candidate this time. Their mantra is that a party which doesn’t participate in the presidential elections doesn’t really exist. They know they won’t win but they want to make their voice heard. ‘The Left can’t win with 25% of the vote,’ says one representative. ‘Together or apart, we lose. And even if we qualify for the second round, we lose everything against le Pen ! There’s a ideological battle to win, we have to reconquer our constituency.’ (Charlotte Belaich)
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the steadfast radical
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, candidate of the Rebellious France party (La France Insoumise) has always put his ‘revolutionary’ side forward, far enough to create division with other groups on the left, over whom he enjoys a comfortable lead in the polls. But the working class electorate that he wants to represent appears to be in part tempted by other extremes.
During our interview, Jean-Luc Mélenchon choose to talk about ‘consistency, a useful quality.’ Hard to fault him there. After his departure from the Socialist Party in 2008, and even when he was still a member, the representative for Bouches du Rhône was the embodiment of the radical left. The program may have changed with the times, notably his adoption of environmental concerns. The ‘revolutionary’ base remains constant. Jean-Luc Mélenchon is a presidential candidate for the third time, not to ‘repair the system but to replace it,’ to break ‘with the dictatoriship of the market.’
A part of the public responds to his radicalism. In 2017, he received just under 20% in the first round, putting him in fourth place. Now leading left candidates in the polls at 10 %, Lionel Jospin’s ex-minister believes his radical line is in sync with the social and environmental emergencies of our time, the only approach capable of attacking the inequalities undermining French society. Getting to the second round is within reach. Five years ago, three months before voting, he was in the same position he’s in today. It’s very hard to say how the left-wing voter is going to act, given the way that side of the ledger has fallen apart.
To get there, the France Insoumise candidate favors another quality, that of speaking in the name of the People. Problem: working and middle class voters have for years been looking the other way. Another concern for Jean-Luc Mélenchon: his radical consistency makes him more than ever a lonely figure. He claims to be his own man. ‘Am I divisive? Yes,’ he concedes, consistent with his radicalism. He keeps the rest of the left at a safe remove, including ex-communist allies. Jean-Luc Mélenchon bets that dividing people is the best way to bring them together. (Paul Quinio)
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For those interested in Anything Else (Than Politics), Charlotte Belaich published her first articles in Libé a few years ago, getting her start profiling personalities on the back page. One Sunday she found a vélo-taxi driver on rue d’Arcole near Notre Dame and squeezed a few lines out of him, enough for the back page. She didn’t believe a word he said but it made a good story.