Through the French presidential elections in April and the parliamentary elections in June, I'll be posting here the latest updates, my ruminations, and a sense of just where we are and where we might be going in this landmark series of votes—landmark for the French, for Europe and for the entire western alliance, especially the United States. Follow along with me….stay tuned! And of course, be sure to read the background in my latest book, A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen.
"The last chance for the left is unity." Christiane Taubira was the lead guest on France's highest-rated evening news program this week. She'd just thrown an enormous monkey-wrench into France's hardly uncomplicated presidential sweepstakes barely 12 weeks before voters go to the polls by announcing her own candidacy at a much-anticipated event in Lyon.
Taubira has been a true darling of the French left since her years as Minister of Justice under France's last Socialist president, François Hollande. Of course, Hollande had himself been effectively ridden out of town on a rail with a single-digit popularity rating that persuaded him to retire from the lists in 2017, leaving the route clear to Emmanuel Macron to form his own centrist party and sweep to an overwhelming victory as president. The Socialists were so trounced in that vote that their subvention—payments by the government to political parties based on the number of members of parliament—shrank from 25 million euros to 7 million euros as they managed to eke out just 6.1 percent of the vote and elect 31 MPs (down from 284 when Hollande was elected president). To stay alive, the Socialists were forced to auction off their lavish headquarters on the rue de Solferino in Paris's elite seventh arrondissement.
Now, the Socialists have again nominated a candidate who is ill-positioned to do much better—Paris's roundly disliked mayor Anne Hidalgo. Hidalgo herself, recognizing that the left-wing vote risks being divided between herself and a host of others proposed a "primary of the left" to choose just one candidate to represent the left. Indeed, the left is far more deeply divided than even the far-right this year. The Green Party's Yannick Jadot and the perpetual leftist Jean Luc Melenchon with his France Insoumise (France Unbowed) both are polling well ahead of Hidalgo, though still in the single digits. And then, further back is a panoply of others—Fabien Roussel of the Communist Party (yes, they do still exist), Nicolas Dupont-Aignan of Debout (Stand Up) France, Philippe Poutou of the New Anti-Capitalists, Jean Lassalle of Résistons (Let's Resist), Arnaud Montebourg with no real party, and bringing up the rear with 0.5 percent in the latest polls Nathalie Arthaud of Lutte Ouvrière (Worker Struggle).
Interestingly, that whole stewpot combines numerically to 30 percent of the vote. If they could ever unite, persuade their highly disparate voters to come to the polls and vote for a single candidate, they'd surpass even the two far-right candidates—Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour with a combined 29 percent. And certainly they'd outdistance the center-right Valerie Pécresse, standard bearer of the Les Republicans with 17 percent, even Macron himself, currently at the top of most polls with 24 percent.
Meanwhile, the path toward a plurality in the first round of the presidential voting and a clear route to the second round where, it is generally conceded Macron will be the other candidate to survive, just became ever more tortuous for Valérie Pécresse. This anointed candidate of the center right Les Republicains is having to thread an increasingly narrow needle between the traditional center-right which has attracted a number of independent French voters, and the far-right candidates who are dividing the third of the electorate that has been prepared to support Le Pen in the past. Now, however, the number two in Pécresse's party has announced that he's embracing Zemmour as 'the only candidate of the right" and no longer has any "confidence" in Pécresse.
And then there’s Macron
Macron is hoping for a repeat performance this year of the overwhelming victory he managed in 2017, though he has still not formally announced his candidacy. That event is expected to come shortly after he formally assumes his role as president of the Council of the European Union in a major address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg on January 19. France will hold the honor as official leader of Europe for six months, through June 30. Macron is anxious to make his mark there as real as well as de facto leader of the continent, filling the vacuum left by Angela Merkel when she stepped down as chancellor of Germany on December 8.
As it happens, Macron will need all the help he can get with respect to his image and his ability to resolve a host of problems at home and abroad. At the top of the agenda is covid, particularly the omicron variant which has swept France as it has most other nations. Macron has decided on a tough-as-nails response, which he seems about to pull off thanks to an all but unassailable majority in the parliament. This revolves around transforming the passe sanitaire into a passe vaccinal, meaning French residents who want to use this pass to enter restaurants, cafes, museums, theaters, virtually any public space, will need to show they’ve been vaccinated and not simply passed a covid test. The pass has proven overwhelmingly popular, though Melenchon has threatened to test the measure before the Conseil Constitutionnel (France's supreme court). The big test in the presidential election is whether, combined with broad mask-mandates, Macron’s plan will succeed in bringing omicron sufficiently under control by April that he will be in a position to ride to success over the entire field, many of whom have expressed at least some limited skepticism.
Which brings us back full circle to Taubira. Back in December, before her formal declaration of candidacy, she told a small group of reporters following her that vaccination was "our best weapon against the pandemic." In contrast with others on the extreme right and left, she failed to brand the idea of passe vaccinal as an infringement on personal choice or personal liberty, but rather as a means of showing "respect for our medical teams and those who protect and save lives." Still, without a real and enforceable primary of the left, it seems unlikely that she will be little more than another small voice shouting into the void.
Vive la France.