What gets inflicted on USians when moneyed elites panic (all over the MSM right now) combines with entrenched Putin-Russia-phobia at The Daily Beast: The Insane French Elections That Could F*ck Us All. This is Freedom Fries level of stupidity. Which coincidentally was only a few months after the 2002 French presidential election when the combined left, including commies and greens, took 21.4% in the first round and Chirac (republican) got 19.9, Le Pen (neo-nazi) 16.9, Jospin (dem/socialist) 16.2%, and Bayrou (center/center) 6.8% (and republican affiliates (combined) got 9.4%, neo-nazi affilate 2.34%, and socialist affiliate 5.3%). It all worked out well that time with the odious Chirac decimating the neo-nazi in the second round.
But horrors in 2017:
…
Let’s be just that blunt. These elections could fuck us all. They have turned into an insane gamble–Russian roulette (and we use the term advisedly) with at least two of the chambers loaded–and the implications for the United States are huge.The biggest winner in the forthcoming French presidential elections may well be Russian President Vladimir Putin, in fact. And while he might have played a few of his usual dirty tricks–indeed, in 2014 a Russian bank funded the party of Marine Le Pen, the current first-round leader in the polls–Putin can now sit back and watch the French themselves try to destroy the European Union and the NATO alliance he hates so much.
…
A sanity concession (rethink on 2016 at home)?
But two televised debates took much of the wind out of Macron’s sails. Compared to Le Pen and Mélenchon, he was both wonkish and vague–a deadly combination. …
The Le Pen and Macron choirs dominate the remainder of the article, a reporter and/or editor choice that assumes these two will go on to the second round. The CW at this point and maybe for once in the past year the CW will be right. (Wouldn’t put money on it being right or wrong.)
No other noteworthy news on this election beyond what has already been posted in this diary and thread. This one can be used for updates and comments from now until the April 23rd election day.
Added – Bloomberg weighs in: French Election Shocker: Pollsters Baffled by Four-Way Contest.
With just a few days to go before Sunday’s first round of voting, every poll for the past month has shown independent Emmanuel Macron and the National Front’s Marine Le Pen taking the top two spots. Macron would then easily win the May 7 runoff, polls show. Yet both front-runners have been steadily slipping over the past two weeks, and Republican Francois Fillon and Communist-backed Jean-Luc Melenchon are now within striking distance.
…“This situation is totally unprecedented,” said Emmanuel Riviere, managing director of Kantar Public France. “The fact that there are four potential finalists makes the situation very complex.”
…
UPDATE 1 FWIW from FiveThirtyEight The French Election Is Way Too Close To Call
In short, the French presidential election is a mess.
Not a mess except for those projecting election winners and losers. None of whom have been accurate in the past year.
Interesting
Second, pollsters may be herding — putting their thumb on the scales so as not to get any result that’s too far from the consensus (by weighting their results towards the average). While herding can make any individual survey more accurate, it makes the average of polls less accurate and increases the chance of a big miss.
Didn’t know that there was a word for pollsters putting a thumb on the scale to increase “external validity.” Don’t know that they actually do this. But Enten is correct that polls in the last two weeks tend to show more variation due to random sampling than we’re seeing in the French polls.
Concur with (and have previously made comments stating the same thing):
One thing I wouldn’t count on to contribute to a polling miss: “shy” Le Pen voters. Some people have argued that survey respondents might be afraid to admit that they support a candidate who espouses what some see as politically incorrect views (i.e. a French Bradley effect). But we can test this hypothesis by looking at how Le Pen and her father Jean-Marie Le Pen (another far-right-wing candidate) have performed in previous presidential elections compared to their polls.
Would add that in both 2002 and 2012, the polls were based on an expected higher turnout than what materialized on election day. And those were the two elections when a Le Pen exceeded the polls numbers by a couple of points. The 2017 polling is based on low to extremely low (for France) turnout; so, a higher turnout could easily lead to Le Pen coming in third or fourth.
“Usual dirty tricks” So now, unfounded unattributed allegations are “usual dirty tricks”.
Russian banks do business with the West. What do Democrats want? A reverse Iron Curtain? No dealing at all with Russia? I can’t think of a better way to resurrect the Soviet Union.
Repeat the propaganda enough, it’s as good as a fact in the minds of rubes.
It’s not just Russian banks but also Ukrainian, Kazazh, etc. banks and oligarchs from all those countries that have facilitated the rise in high-end and income producing real estate values in London, NYC, FL, Geneva, and a few other places. To keep up, the local wealthy elites need more. Desirable cities continue to become more and more playgrounds for the rich.
Um, there is actually concern in France about the coziness of both LePen and Melenchon with Putin, as well as about a widespread fake news operation suspected of being of Russian origin. I’m repeating what I’ve read in the French media. Your choice whether to give it any credence.
Latest polls show Macron in the lead.
Concern “in France” or among the western global financial community that is then parroted by western media? That fear card — collapse of finance in London — was played before the vote on Brexit. It didn’t carry the vote and the collapse has yet to materialize.
Macron is only polling by a point more than Le Pen, but her support isn’t as soft as his is, but don’t expect either to bleed support between now and election day. While still possible, the single digit “no hope” candidates tend not to bleed in the last week either. Thus, if turnout and null voters remain at 30-35% (which is what the polls we see are based on), Macron and Le Pen advance to the final. However in this election cycle, only one of the top two in both the PS and LR primaries advanced to the final and neither won the second round.
Low turnout is Le Pen’s friend. In the past, high turnout has put the UMP/LR and PS candidates that were leading in the polls into the second round. In uncharted territory this time with neither the PS nor LR candidate as one of the top two poll leads. What could result from high turnout is a mystery.
As I wrote above, I got this from French language media. If you want to ascribe nefarious motives to what French sources report, be my guest. I would just suggest that the onus is on you to provide evidence for your interpretation.
I fully agree with your comments about Macron’s and LePen’s bases of support.
Whatever makes you think/believe that western global financial community that is then parroted by western media doesn’t include French orgs/institutions/individuals? Is France not “western?”
I’ve posted links to the most recent articles at WaPo and The Guardian that in tone, information, etc. departed significantly from their prior and other MSM media coverage. Both worth reading because they were fact based reporting and rational assessments not obviously advocating for or against any candidate.
I never hide nor disguise my biases nor political orientations, but I also work very hard not to let that interfere with an objective and rational assessment of political campaigns and elections. Thus, if the facts and a rational assessment had projected a landslide win for Clinton, that’s what I would have written. It didn’t; so, I wasn’t one of the blinded or crap analysts that spouted such nonsense. I also didn’t take a flyer and state that Trump would win because I couldn’t peer far enough into any one of the several states that Trump needed to get to 270 EC votes. I don’t like to make a call based on nothing better than flipping a coin, but if I ever do so, I would state it as such.
Have I made mistakes? Yes, but few (possibly none 2002 through 2012) and not always, as you may think, a negative call for Democrats. I was at the far end of optimistic for the DP in 2006 and 2008 while most endlessly fretted. Also didn’t doubt for a moment that Obama would win re-election in 2012. Several in 2014 — and I did go back and review how/why I had erred. Given the same facts, etc., I would make some of the same wrong calls again. However, most of the errors can be summed up as my inability to perceive that Democrats could do that badly.
I find your not so disguised and spoiling for a fight interjections pushing a neoliberalcon position both irritating and boring. Plenty of people here that share your worldview for you to play with them in that sandbox and leave those with a wider perspective, knowledge base, and different orientation alone. I don’t have to watch/listen to Fox or Rush to know what they say. Same with partisan Democrats and Republicans. If any of it was ever worth considering, I’ve already done so and have no need to hear it again.
OMIGOD! PUTIN! HE RULES THE WORLD!
Voice, did you see this Howard Dean tweet:
Was he always this ignorant or is he losing massive numbers of functioning brain cells at an increasing clip?
I am one of those who believe that the 1st Amendment was intended for political speech, not private speech. Not being a lawyer, I’m not sure of the limits. Deliberate falsehoods are apparently prohibited by libel and slander laws. There are laws prohibiting hate speech, but I doubt their constitutionality, although I am not aware of case law in that regard. Then there were the seven(?) dirty words prohibited on TV. Again, I’m not aware of the legal status.
Should hate speech be prohibited? Who defines it? Libel and slander have provable elements at least.
Does Howard Dean know more than me? About Medicine, yes. About Physics, no. Can Howard Dean overhaul a car engine? (???, I can.) Can I remove a gallbladder? (NO, I can’t, at least I can’t and leave the patient alive.) About First Amendment law? Maybe, but I’m not sure.
Hate speech. Obvious hate speech like the N-word. It was prohibited to me as a Federal employee. I couldn’t be put in jail, but I could be disciplined, even fired. As a private citizen, it would be rather revolting, but IMHO legal.
Now, that was clear as mud, wasn’t it. Sorry for the word salad. It’s late.
Do you go spouting off to a large audience on constitutional or legal questions (or anything else for that matter) without having made sure that you are correct?
Politifact — Howard Dean’s wrong tweet that the Constitution doesn’t protect ‘hate speech’. Not that first time he’s peddled falsehoods.
Of course not.
It’s not a question of what one believes but what the 1st Am says and how the Court has interpreted its parameters and limits over the years. So, the Ct has established that the 1st protects a variety of speech, not just political, though the latter is especially privileged.
On the 7 dirty words, that falls under govt speech prohibitions allowed in the time/place/manner area wrt the publicly owned airwaves. But these prohibitions are not often prosecuted these days as society changes and more profane speech is commonly heard in the public arena.
In the employment area, 1st Am rights usually are reduced as employer concerns about a smooth-functioning work environment are given great weight.
This is my understanding anyway of some of the law in the 1st Am area.
And it would be a huge blow to the robustness of the 1st Am to begin prohibiting what’s deemed “hate speech”. It not only would undercut the spirit of the 1st, but it would create a society of Speech Police among other things. But, otoh, more work for more lawyers I suppose …
But people disagree about what the first amendment says. Lawyers admitted to the bar disagree all the time about what the Constitution says.
Are you saying I don’t have a right to an opinion of what the Constitution means? That’s a typical Democrat “Shut up prole, and mind your place!” response.
Didn’t mean to make that seem so dismissive and cranky (early morning when I wrote that– that’s my excuse I’m sticking with). Sorry. But did want to emphasize there’s generally an established set of interpretations of the 1st Am which have been around for decades. Didn’t intend to imply the Con isn’t subject to interpretation (see, e.g., the 2d Am) or that there are cases in the 1st Am field that don’t always have a clear answer.
So I’m absolutely in favor of free speech about the Con and its free speech clause. I think I was more reacting to Howard Dean than you.
Sorry, Brodie. I’m a little cranky too. And print replies are harder to interpret than face to face conversation. In fact, re-reading this, I see this post could be interpreted as surly. It’s not. The apology is sincere as I’m sure yours is.
I’m curious about the “USian” neologism. I appreciate that in Latin America, the word “America” refers to the hemisphere, not to the United States, and in fact I have long avoided “America” to refer to the US. But there’s no practical alternative to “American” as an adjective or signifier of nationality.
Macron 23
Le Pen 22
Fillon 20
Mélenchon 19
Looks like Macron has taken a virtual lead and Le Pen and Fillon vying for the second spot, eating from the same voting blocs.
Very interesting. Is there a poll for a Macron – Fillon match-up?
○ Younger voters aren’t particularly interested: only 11% of 18-25-year-olds would vote for Fillon
Similar to the WikiPedia tracker:
○ Poll tracker and odds
Pollsters are now doing all six combinations of the four leading candidates. English and French wikipedia has the same polls (as far as I can see).
For what it is worth (polling these days, etc):
Macron wins all (unless he misses the second round that is).
Melenchon wins against Fillon or LePen.
Fillon win against LePen.
LePen wins none.
IOW — no change — anybody beats Le Pen in a second round.
And Clinton (Macron) was a cinch to beat trump (Le Pen).
Of course, here Sanders (Melenchon) was shut out of the first round.
The French presidential election system is similar to ours, but while not intuitively obvious, the differences make it both less quirky and richer, IMO. So, there are four stages:
#1 – more parties but fewer candidates in each party primary seeking the nomination. Ambitious and/or disgusted politicians of a political party when the party elites don’t favor the politician aren’t limited to choosing between a protracted (9-12) primary slugfest or not running at all. They have the option between a short (3-5 month) slugfest or bolting and starting one’s own party. This time, Fillon and Hamon chose the former and Macron the latter.
In the major political parties in France (and it seems to hold as well or almost as well with the smaller parties) and by convention instead of rules, no political resume interlopers aren’t seen. Thus, no Trumps, Carsons, Forbes, Naders, Jesse Jacksons, etc. in established political party primaries.
Such wannabes can start a new party as Perot did. Although the new parties in France are generally started by politicians that calculate that they can’t win the nomination in the party they are a member of. (Perot also made that same calculation.) That was Macron’s calculation with the added incentive that Hollande had trashed the PS and even winning the PS nomination wouldn’t be such a great prize this time. Macron has also never been elected to political office; so, he’s closer to a French Perot than a French Anderson.
#2 can be likened to US ballot access, but with only one set of rules and application instead of fifty. A certain number of signatures are required but some number have to come from elected officials. The hurdle isn’t particularly high, but it does weed out fringe non-entities such as de la Fuente that somehow get ballot access. Also, fringe and overt neo-nazis and KKK players because no elected official can risk signing on to one of those types. The French ballot allows for null (or none of the above) which is a more direct expression of voter opinion than going with an unknown, non-entity. (Nevada has adopted this and reportedly is popular.)
#3 – The period for the official campaign varies and I don’t know why. In 2012 it was from 3/20 to 4/18 (?) with voting on 4/22. This time it was set for 4/10 to 4/21 with voting on 4/23. The TV media has to abide by some sort of equal time provision for all the candidates. No set number of debates. 2017 there was one preliminary debate among the top five candidates and one general election debate with all the candidates. An expected second debate was scraped because a media host and the candidates couldn’t agree on time and place.
#4 – Two weeks. Mercifully short. One debate may be the minimum, but both candidates have to agree to more than that.
Personally, I find a run-off preferable to ranked choice voting because a voter can see and choose between A or B instead of imagining who/what they would choose if their preferred candidate doesn’t get enough votes in the first round.
I’d go with either.
Thank you for an enlightening explanation of the French system. Once again, the French are smarter than us.
Helpful list. Yes, they do some things over there which I wish we would adopt. Especially good are the equal time access for candidates on French media, the limited time period for the official campaign, no ads, and the day off before the election (today) where no campaigning by candidates is allowed.
I’d like to bring all that over here. Maybe add the Brit system of Question Time where the PM is required to answer questions from opposition MPs.
Reagan, GW Bush and Trump could not have handled that, to mention a few recent low-knowledge presidents.
Debates: I’d like to see us have two mandatory televised debates on the networks for all candidates reaching a certain minimum national threshold level of support (2-3%?) followed by two mandatory for those reaching a much higher threshold. I prefer the old League of Women debate format, a panel of questioners from journalistic ranks.
That’s the Opinion Way poll. Not that there’s much variation among the pollsters. None of them seem to have an outstanding prior record; so, any one seems to be as good as another. However, I’ve been paying less attention to Opinion Way polls because they don’t reveal the DK percentage. Plus, within the same polling periods, Fillon has consistently done better in Opinion Way polls than the others (in the past month he’s consistently been at 20%, the high end of the polls, but without the slight ups and downs other pollsters are getting). Also consistently at the low end (or lagging) on Melenchon. My conclusion is that if shifts emerge in the last few days, Opinion Way won’t capture it.
Looks like a photo finish to me. Maybe Macron by a nose, but probably all within polling error. Re Melenchon & Le Pen, I remember Wallace doing better than his polls. People were ashamed to tell a pollster that they supported Wallace.
Thanks for the links.
I have pondered the existence of a “Wallace” and/or “Wilder” effect and polling bias in the French election. In 2002 and 2012 the polls were only a couple of points short for a Le Pen and in both instances slight gains surfaced at the end of the polling period. In 2007 Le Pen’s poll numbers were four points (iirc) better than where he finished in the actual voting. Now Marine has been polling higher than her ’12 vote, unlike her daddy in ’07 that polled short of his ’02 first round finish. So, she’s not yet a discarded old hat; still polling in first or second for a few months, there shouldn’t be a Wallace effect as the DK begins to shrink. She shed somewhere between two and four points after her neo-nazi comment and that seems to have been a permanent loss for her.
The wildcard is turnout. Will it be 68% (like 2002) and the polls are suggesting? 82% as in 2007 or 78% as in 2012? Fillon needs it to get up to 82%. Le Pen needs it to stay down at 68%.
We will know more on the 24th.
The Guardian – Macron faces uncertain first round as French election hopefuls vie for last votes A more informative and non-hyperbolic rational report at a UK publication.
Photo-op faux pas revealed a bit too much of the real man?
Well, at least he didn’t call those without “hope and courage” deplorables; only hopeless cowards.
Ah yes, the dastardly leftie candidate mucking it up for the centrist that all centrists believe is the goldilocks zone that a majority of voters secretly long for.
The polling dip so far in “don’t know/abstain” suggests that voters like this one are returning to their “natural party,” aka Republican party. However, unless turnout is massive, as in 2007 when null/abstain was about 18%, Fillon has to poach DLR voters to make it to the second round.
On the left side of the aisle, “going home” to PS, hasn’t been happening. So far they’ve been going to Melenchon and at a higher rate than conservatives moving to Fillon. Melenchon’s task is that same as Fillon’s.
Sound familiar?
I wonder whether we’re seeing the beginning of a realignment in which the Socialist Party collapses. Time will tell. I’ve also been reading in British media speculation about collapse of Labour and possible realignment in connection with Theresa May’s call for a general election. Labour leader Corwin supports this, but many Labour MPs do not, seeing that the Tories have a huge lead in opinion polls.
Maybe your dream will come true.
Regarding the Daily Beast article, the main destroyer of the EU is the ECB and Eurogroup in enforcing an insane policy of austerity across the eurozone. The US is not helping with wars in the Middle East sending lots of refugees at a time that the EU is ill equipped to deal with it.
Since everything is Putins fault, I guess the Eurogroup, ECB and the Obama and Bush governments are secret agents of Putin. And don’t forget the Hollande government and its minister of Economy for following through on austerity. So if Macron wins and continues austerity and we in a few years see more support for anti-EU forces, I guess that was also a Putin ploy. Truly, he plays 11th-dimensional checkers or something.
Having had nearly a forty year run in the US and UK (20-25 years in France), the anti-socialist/neolibs expected to remain the permanent majority. More than 10% (the fringe discontent) rousing themselves to say, “This hasn’t and isn’t working well for us.” and beginning to place the blame where it belongs, was never supposed to happen. So, they’re freaking and in search of a scapegoat they can peddle on the masses. They have yet to figure out how to discredit the messenger, Thomas Piketty.
Like:
AG
Is Washington DC getting nervous?
○ Can Brussels budge Britain? | DW |
○ On the French election campaign trail in the Le Pen ‘laboratory’
○ Macron uses high-tech door-to-door campaigning | France24 |
○ Growing anti-Muslim rhetoric permeates French presidential election campaign | WaPo |
No shortage of desired narratives constructed from tea leaf reading: The Guardian – François Fillon moves back into contention in French presidential race A Macron v. Fillon final may not be as satisfying in the moneyed set as a Macron v. Le Pen final because the latter is a slam dunk, but Macron v. Fillon final will do and also not make France look as unhinged as the US. The key now is to stop Melenchon’s momentum with undecideds and trust that it is now complete with PS voters.
Mission accomplished? The Guardian – Euro hits three-week high as French election looms – business live
If Melenchon and Le Pen make the second round the Euro will crater.
I have been long the Euro for a while…
It LOOKs like Marcon has moved up a couple of points in the last few days.
A message from Soros?
The Guardian 6/20/16: The Brexit crash will make all of you poorer – be warned:
George Soros
Odd that you weren’t with HER from day one. TPTB are always forewarning of doom and gloom is the people/voters don’t go along with their agenda. Yet, somehow on the rare occasions when the people defy the forewarning, TPTB find work arounds for themselves. Sometimes not as good as if they had gotten their way. The people are going to be screwed if “they” get their way and probably screwed if “they” don’t, but sometimes in the near term, the latter isn’t as bad for them as the former.
○ Terrorists shooting on the Champ-Elysées in Paris
Appears that French authorities and the MSM are running way ahead of the story. If Fresno LEOs can keep their heads in working and reporting a shooting incident that could easily have been labeled Muslim terrorism, no reason others can’t do the same. A racist thug in the Fresno case and appears to be an anti-cop thug in France.
… appears to be an anti-cop thug in France.
Suspect identified as Karim Cheurfi, a 39-year-old French born citizen with a criminal record, lived in Chelles, an eastern suburb of Paris. He was released after a conviction for attempted murder of a cop in 2001, likely radicalised during jail time. Attack has been claimed by IS. The Amaq statement identified the attacker as Abu Yussef al-Balgiki (from #Belgium. No proof or conclusive evidence of link yet.
OT The bus attack on the Dortmund football (soccer) team with IS claims in letters found at the site.
○ Police arrest man suspected of scrapnel pipe bomb attack on bus | DW |
Whether or not he was “radicalized” in prison, his rage MO — targeting police to kill — predated the existence of ISIS. He made no attempt (and he could have) to harm other than cops at the scene.
money-money-money:
Everybody and anybody politicizing and cynically exploiting a violent act by one murderous thug, who has been seeking to kill police for at least sixteen years, is irresponsible. Doesn’t matter if a thug uses Islam, Christianity (McVeigh, Brevik, or those that have killed physicians), or voices in his/her head from Martians as an excuse for his/her violence. They’re loser thugs.
Perhaps French voters will see through the politicians and MSM and others engaged in this current exploitation. IOW act like Norwegians instead of kneejerk Americans.
wrt Obama’s recorded call to Macron — also irresponsible — but doesn’t reveal anything new about Obama except to the willfully blind who love neoliberal economics and neocon FP but are too chickenshit to say it out loud and hide behind supporting politicians that do it for them.
Soros was dead right in a way. The Pound did collapse in the immediate aftermath of Brexit.
But then is has been mostly stable against the Euro – confounding many (including me).
Soros also has enough bucks (from decades of amoral currency trading) to hedge his bets. So, he can afford to be wrong on his doom and gloom pronouncements but he makes more if others heed them.
Unlike 9/11 and to a lesser extent, the 2008 financial meltdown, Brexit isn’t an overnight event. The Brexit train is very slow moving and technically, nothing has yet changed. (Sort of like that Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and CFMA that collapse the US economy and other than the left that USians still fail to recognize it as the economic shock that it was.) At least Brits were able to vote on Brexit whereas, GLBA and CFMA were done without our awareness and approval.
So, you’re confounded by the pound not collapsing as it was supposed to do and confounded by Hillary not winning by ten points, but confidently predicting that the Euro will crater if Macron isn’t elected? The French economy, even today, is more socialistic than the US. So, Melenchon isn’t as big a leap there as he would be in the US. Hamon, who will be lucky to hold his 7.5%, would have been a smaller step back. Sort of like Sanders even though it’s likely too little too late. (And explains why Sanders sees nothing wrong with joining Perez’s unity tour while it horrifies many that supported Sanders.)
Sanders was still a lot better than nothing. (As Hamon would also probably be). Here’s Sanders with Nothing
I said I thought Clinton would by 10. I was also pretty clear here that she could lose – far clearer about that then most.
And I never suggested I knew who was going to win Florida.
Soros was right about Brexit’s effect on the pound. His prediction was June 20th. When he said the the Pound was 1.45. The Brexit vote was on June 23rd. On July 8th it was 1.28.
It has hovered around 1.25 since, though it has gone up in the last few days against the dollar.
I am long the euro because I believe the predictions of Euro disaster are overdone. I believe a win by anyone but La Pen will cause the Euro to rally. I believe Europe’s medium term economic prospects are better than the US.
I never mentioned Marcon’s name – I don’t think his win is necessary for the Euro to got up.
I also believe that Brexit is snake oil in the end, and that it will damage the UK economy, and as a result damage the Pound more than it has.
I think the market is over-stating the odds La Pen will win. If she makes the second round the Euro will likely go down all things being equal until it becomes clear she will not win.
Notice that dollar has rallied and the stock market is up since Trump was elected? Horrible politicians aren’t bad for economic indicators is CEO’s and bankers like their policies.
Note that I said economic indicators, not the economy.
Thanks for adding this. Wasn’t the public forewarned that a Trump win would crater the US markets and the dollar?
Business/finance/economic big voices should know better than to make Chicken Little pronouncements to sway voters. It’s extremely dangerous for them to use their public platforms in this way because nobody will listen when they see and report on a real gathering storm. They damn well know the danger of panic (ie market crashes after 9/11) to the general economy. They also know that the election of boob A over boob B doesn’t instantly change anything in the real economy. It’s what the boob does in office that leads to the changes that materialize over a number of years — long enough that the boob usually escapes his/her responsibility for those negative changes. And when the destructiveness of those changes finally becomes obvious, these “experts” are also nowhere to be found or make excuses and have no viable solutions other than more federal debt.
I often make th3e analogy between the rich with their tax cuts and government subsidies with kids and candy. Both want it bad and gorge themselves when they can. But it isn’t good for them and it makes them sick. But they want it anyway. A good parent will strictly ration them.
heh — saw where Bill Gates didn’t allow his children to have their own cells phones until they were fourteen years old. Considering how nutso adolescents can be, age 25 might be more appropriate.
Financial regulation was based on the same principle. Without strict limits, banksters recklessly gorge until they crash the whole system. Some how that simple lesson that’s been demonstrated over and over again doesn’t get learned by the general public.
Politicians forget everything when they are high on the colitas of folding money. They can’t help it. They are addicted to envelopes with green paper inside.
Well shame on us for not fixing that:
IOW — the entire cost of the French Presidential election is less than what a single candidate in a large state spends to win a US Senate seat.
I said I thought Clinton would by 10. I was also pretty clear here that she could lose – far clearer about that then most.
And I never suggested I knew who was going to win Florida.
Yes, Clinton by 10 isn’t in the landslide territory that some here were predicting, but it’s much to far into can’t lose territory for you to claim that you had doubts and were clear about those doubts before the election.
How the hell does anyone here learn not to repeat errors if they deny errors were made? Here’s my 2016 error list: topline: MI, PA, and WI. Senate: NH and WI.
I could rationalize MI, PA, and WI as so close as to be a coin toss, but then would have to acknowledge that my correct NH call was no better than a lucky guess. The NH Senate race still seems to me to have been the most difficult one to call. The worst error was the WI senate race — the state flipped in 2010 and Democrats remain in denial. The pro Feingold lost to the novice Johnson and then lost a rematch.
wrt FL, confidence or doubt comes through in more than the words we post here. With doubt, one would never run with a “Hillary wins FL” diary from early and selective returns.
On Florida:
I wrote the following on Florida on November 5th:
Florida Early Voting Projection: Clinton +2.05 (+126K) : Will be VERY Close
http://m.dailykos.com/stories/1592006
Steve Schale who ran Florida for Obama had the identical reaction I did to the numbers out of Broward and Hillsborough on election night: he though she had won.
On whether I thought Clinton could lose.
I posted in this thread that I thought the odds being circulated were way too high.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2016/11/7/103254/612
I was pretty clear in a post I wrote here on November 5th that Clinton could lose.
I even said: “THIS RACE CAN BE LOST”
I even noted the impact of a possible late swing on the Electoral College.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2016/11/5/101626/819
I posted more than 1 diary here in September and October about how close this race was.
My prediction – and it was little more than a guess – was based on a misread of the under 30 vote. In polling there was very high undecided among that group, and because that group hated Trump I believed in the end they would break to Clinton.
In fact they did not. Among those under 30, particularly in swing states, Johnson and Stein held on to a far higher percentage of vote than I thought they did.
I also underestimated the degree to which base Republicans would in the end come back to Trump.
Make no mistake I was wrong. But I was also very clear when I wrote here that she could lose.
In 2012 and 2008 I calculated odds for each state.
This is from May of 2012
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/31/1096251/-State-Polling-Summary:-Obama-has-a-96-chance-of-be
ing-re-elected,-BUT-
This is from November 5th (I missed one state in 2012, Florida, and I had Obama with a 40% chance to win that state).
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/06/1156224/-Obama-gains-ground-in-8-of-10-battlegrounds-clear-
evidence-of-Obama-Surge
I stopped calculating the odds when I concluded that they were misleading. I never presenting them anywhere in 2016.
I was actually really clear here that Clinton could lose.
Virtually everything I said about Trump from October 2011 to the end of February was nonsense. If I got something right about him it was by accident. I was right about the rise of Cruz, and right about Bush being dead meat (as far back as midsummer of 2015).
My biggest miss in the GOP primary was that Trump would win as big a percentage of the Evangelical vote as he did.
I was wrong about Sanders in Iowa: even though I was there. Sometimes being involved in a campaign distorts your perspective. I went door to door – and the reaction wasn’t great.
If forced to make a prediction on a state by state basis I would have been wrong about:
MI
WI
In truth I know no way anyone could have seen those 2 coming based on the evidence.
PA
I thought Florida was a dead heat. I thought NH was too – though I think I wrote Clinton would win but so would Ayotte. I think based on EV I thought Clinton was going to win NC.
You’re still making the same mistake Clinton’s campaign made. Sticking too closely to the numbers and too far from narratives. Didn’t matter if the outcome in FL was going to be close once it had flipped which I thought was easy enough to see before October. (What was the narrative for NC flipping back from the 2012 result? There was none.)
AG gets kudos for calling the election — a 100% narrative call — but other than seeing strength for Trump in PA, he was calling the national popular vote, in which case he was wrong. Still, he did identify one 2016 ground zero state and I was too much of an idiot to recognize it.
Hardly ever is there a single narrative, but evidence exists to inform several of them and assess which are most likely to have the most power. Democrats made the same mistake in 2016 as they did in 2000 — giving a lot of weight to the approval rating of Bill Clinton and Obama. It’s irrelevant in open seat presidential elections except when it’s extremely low for the incumbent (ie 1952 and 2008 but that wasn’t the only one operational even in those two elections). A third or fourth WH term for one party doesn’t favor the incumbent party. Less so when that party has suffered losses in the most recent midterms.
I’m much more critical of Dukakis (or maybe Democrats for choosing such a lame nominee) than I am of Gore because in ’88 the GOP entered the race with three strikes against them and in 2000 there was an entering strike against the Democratic nominee. 2016 Democrats entered with two strikes against them.
WATCH: Obama calls French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron to wish him well. Not as blatant as his effort in the UK on behalf of Remain, but still highly inappropriate and most definitely calculated by the money folks behind Macron.
So he is not President, but revealing nonetheless.
I don’t know enough to know if Melenchon’s proposals make sense or not. Big picture I think the issue within Europe is less about minute policy differences than about big picture decisions. The Germans are enforcing a straight jacket on Europe. Melenchon reflects a principled left opposition to the Germans.
The left has not been terribly successful at articulating a liberal/left vision of economics in the age of globalization.
So Sanders did well, but did not win. Corbyn leads Labour, but he personally is incredibly unpopular and Labour looks like it is going to get killed.
Hopefully Melenchon does better: because I fear a politics in which the only voices defending tolerance and diversity are those that have bought into some for of neo-liberal or conventional economics.
This is a pretty good defense of Melenchon
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/19/jean-luc-melenchon-french-president-europe
It’s never been an inability to articulate a liberal/left vision of economics, it’s been an inability to get seen and heard. And when one such speaker commands an audience of more than three people, she/he gets mocked, derided, etc.
This is correct in the US as well:
Enough of that was the scream of 2016 US voters regardless of how they chose to express it. For Sanders in the primary and for Trump, Johnson, Stein, or abstaining in the general election. And a goodly portion of those that voted for Hillary felt no differently but chose to keep quiet one more time.
Why and how has Corbyn become the most loathed politician in the UK? Sanders has the highest approval rating in the US (+60%) and Melenchon has the highest in France, 68%. Of course the Tories and Blairites have had a year to focus exclusively on pummeling Corbyn. The Trumpsters saw no gain for them by dumping on Sanders (he has become to well known and too well liked) and the Clintonistas have to divide their trashing attention between Trump and Sanders.
Link to the article you referenced: Jean-Luc Mélenchon should be French president. Here’s why.
Those are just excuses for Corbyn. He was clueless during the Brexit debate and he is a weak and ineffectual leader of the Party.
He has a 22-62 unfavorable rating.
No matter how much I sympathize with him, and I do, he is a bad politician.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jeremy-corbyns-approval-rating-slides-into-net-negative-for-ev
ery-demographic_uk_589d9c95e4b094a129ea0a87
I don’t want to engage in discussions or debates about UK politics/politicians until after I’ve studied up on the developments over the past year. So, I neither accept nor reject your opinion of Corbyn.
While I do enjoy our discussions, your election projections sort of suck. You were naysaying Trump for the GOP nomination longer than almost anyone else here. Maybe you neglected to set aside your opinion of the nincompoop and merely compare him to the doofuses he was running against.
In the abstract and IMO, Hillary is one of the worst candidates ever. However, such bad candidates rarely have huge campaign war chests, party elites and media totally with them, and an equally bad or worse opponent. So, against Trump she appeared to be just competitive enough to win; that she lost is a minor detail.
He’s a private citizen fer chrissakes. Perhaps you ought to publish a list of whom he’s allowed to call.
A very famous American private citizen. One that for months has accused Russians of interfering in the US election (although no video/recording of chats between Putin or any other Russian government VIP and Trump exist, much less used as a promo for his campaign) but Obama feels it’s just fine for him to interfere in foreign elections. btw — it’s also inappropriate for Trump to tout Le Pen.
Guess you didn’t get the hint from my last long response. Your interjections in my diary threads are tiresome and take away from what are usually constructive conversations. I ignore your diaries — it would be polite of you to ignore mine.
Taibbi: Yikes! New Behind-the-Scenes Book Brutalizes the Clinton Campaign I tend not to make a big deal about campaign insider back-biting and disfunction because look closely enough at any campaign — winners and losers — there will be loads of this type of fodder. The following, in and of itself, isn’t unique as Taibbi concedes in the last sentence:
Why this was particularly thorny for Clinton is only partially revealed in the following:
No, they were only talking to some Democrats. The ones that in ’92 heard, “Eight years for Bill and then eight years for Hill” and thought that was a smashing idea. Not the ones that thought it was a joke and later were horrified to discover that it wasn’t.
She and her campaign did go with “It’s her turn” which they reworked into “I’m with HER.” It was the raison d’etre of her campaign and the electorate was not in doubt. No reason to real through her well-parsed policy papers because it was gobblygook that she had no investment in. Her whole campaign went further than “I want to be President” and exuded “I shall be President.”
For some reason I never managed to figure out, liberal/Democrats were perplexed as to why Trump was running. When I said, “Because he wants to BE President — the same as almost all candidates,” the response was, “no, there has to be more to it than that.” There never was, but that doubt gave Trump an edge over his “I shall be President” opponent.
“To BE President” is why we keep ending up with lousy to disastrous ones.
Related:
The Telegraph: Putin would welcome Labour victory because Jeremy Corbyn is ‘gutless’ on defence, Michael Fallon says (Recall: nutcase Fallon was on team Hillary). Matt Turner reaction:
When Hillary testified before Congress in 1993 about health care, my response was, why can’t she be president instead of Bill? She was impressive. A lot changed in the next twenty-some years, and no, I’m not interested in a play by play narrative, my memory is still intact. Maybe one day you’ll figure out how to get by day to day without Hillary as an object of fear and loathing.
Because Bill was likeable and Hill is not.
Two more days. With most of the French and foreign MSM offering fear pieces about the two populist/change candidates, the Guardian UK has a good, fair piece w/video, by reporter Angelique Chrisafis of one economically distressed rural area in central France, Burgundy region, where jobs have disappeared and the towns look sad and lonely. Formerly a lefty area politically and home to Francois Mitterrand, the remaining voters seem mostly pro-Le Pen, even ex-commies.
It’s possible MLeP will show stronger than her recent polls suggest, as some voters are shy about admitting their far-right preference, and go on to the next round.
A complete Change/Populist Election final round between her and Mélenchon would obviously be the most interesting outcome and would greatly upset the political and media establishment. Which is why I’m hoping for that.
Or we could see the opposite — the usual Establishment candidates offering tinkering, more austerity to various degrees, more status quo — Macron and Fillon facing off in a depressing finale, one setting up to be a younger and more dynamic Hollande, the other a re-hash of Sarkozy/Chirac.
I make no predictions except to note that I’m confident both finalists to emerge will have a name ending in “n”. And at least one of the finalists will have a name ending in “on”.
Same story we’ve seen and heard from the US “heartland.”
The people outside of the large urban centers are right and wrong. Wrong: As they seem to acknowledge that immigration isn’t prevalent in their communities, they nevertheless cite it as a root cause of their communities dying economically and their kids having to relocate to cities (where immigration is a factor) for employment but is less prominent in driving voter behavior. Right: politicians throughout the west have led on trade globalization which effectively shrinks the blue collar, the trades, and farming employment sectors while growing white collar, professional, and low wage service jobs.
Why would any nation choose to leave behind its non-urban residents and those that do tangible work?
As I said in another comment, I’ve pondered that reluctance to admit voting for Le Pen. But we did see that in the 2017 US election. States such as Iowa and Ohio that were heavily polled early on while Clinton had a solid lead didn’t just go right early on but heavily right. There were no surprises, except for those that were willfully blind, in the states that were heavily polled up through election — FL, NC, NV and to a lesser extent CO. It’s also easier for people to admit to a non-PC voting preference when the non-PC candidate is in the lead as Le Pen has been throughout much of the election cycle.
The black box in the French election has long been the undecideds. As that number declined — ever so slowly and slightly — Le Pen lost ground, but not by as much as her decline from 26-27% down to 22-23% suggests. It’s possible that some of those potential voters have had second thoughts and moved into “DK” while other “DK” moved to one of the candidates. If so, they could return to Le Pen on election day. At the risk of being very wrong, Le Pen won’t finish with 25% unless the abstain/null votes are high.
The most intriguing, to me, aspect of this French election is the higher level of honesty from the candidates as to who they are and what they stand for. Of course a large proportion people don’t always listen and project their own fantasies onto candidates or are easy targets for slick marketing. And unlike in the US, there’s a viable choice for the four major political orientations.
Good overview from Diana Johnstone – The Main Issue in the French Presidential Election: National Sovereignty. Clarified for me why Hamon, who appears to be decent and experience, is so weak and unacceptable for those that see a break with neoliberalcons as the only progressive way forward.
So much of this could be applied elsewhere:
The social democratic left hasn’t figured out how to respond to globalization. The basic instincts that lead it to distrust nationalism make it blind.
I detest analogies to Nazi Germany, but it was the failure of the SDP to address the crisis of the Depression that gave Hitler (and the Communists) their opening. Longer term the failure of social democratic parties is a very bad thing.
Not just Hamon remains too wedded to the EU. At one of his final campaign stops yesterday, Emmanuel Macron* stood at the podium holding a EU flag — not a French one. Many in the crowd also held EU banners.
Depressing because, a) he’s the most likely to emerge as the next President and b) being so hamstrung by the EU, primarily in the economic sphere, goes squarely against French tradition of independence in its affairs.
As I recall at this early hour of the morning, Le Pen holds the most firm position, calling for an immediate invocation of Rule 50 to Frexit the EU. Mélenchon, iirc, favors exit but prefers a referendum on the matter first. I’ve forgotten Fillon’s position — probably stay.
* it appears some in my circle have been closely reading one poster here, and tend to call him “Marcon” … (sigh)
Is it the EU itself that is the problem, or is the ideology that it is governed with?
There are really two different issues: one is the idea of a common government and the other is a common currency. The former is a very good idea, the second has resulted in imposition of austerity.
It is worth remembering that France rejected the EU in the referendum in 2005.
The ideology – neoliberalism – is entrenched in the structure, in particular the structure of the eurozone. It’s not worse than that the rules could be made to work – Varoufakis has written a lot about that – but there’s no election to replace the crowd in place. And constitutional change takes unanimity among state governments.
Thx for posting that. Counterpunch — not quite on my radar, but I’ll begin reading it more often.
I particularly appreciated her discussion about how we rather loosely toss around terms like “racist” and “fascist” to refer to pols like Le Pen who may be reflecting or representing slightly different attitudes (though undoubtedly she is attracting solid r’s and f’s and anti-semites). Concerns over a massive influx of immigrants for instance, many of whom do not believe in western values. I share those concerns as to what’s been happening in Europe.
That said, if I were French, and as a liberal, I would be considering a vote for Mélenchon and definitely not LeP.
Need to choose two parties: VVD and PVV in addition choose polls per quarter (kwartaal) in linked website:
○ Ipsos Dutch polls – trend
The party of Geert Wilders used to have an underscore in the polls before the election due to hesitation of persons to affiliate themselves with the anti-immigration party PVV of Geert Wilders. In the last few years, this has not sustained. The Dutch are very open about their views and backing of Geert Wilders.
In the last general election it was the other way around. Due to a conflict with Erdogan of Turkey, the voters broke in favor of PM Mark Rutte of the VVD, the so-called benefit of being prime minister. Geert Wilders was left holding an empty bag.
How wealthy US Zionists turn millions in political donations into billions for the only land and people they care about.
The ‘Gate’ DC politicians are too cowardly to probe.
Posted link about Israel’s influence earlier …
○ It’s Time for the Left to Take Questions About Russia, Trump, and Hacking Seriously | The Nation |
○ Israel, Not Russia, to Blame for Hillary’s Election Loss?
Unlike Carter and to a much lesser extent Obama, Israel has no beef with Hillary. Generally, they work both US political parties and get them to the point where there’s not much difference between the two candidates in any election. That’s the bulk of their interference; then it’s up to the wealthy US zionists to weigh in with their money and split hairs on which one is preferable. Clinton got more of that than Trump in 2017 but maybe not as much more as she got from the MSM, including print, entertainment, and finance.
Politicians, journalists, educators, celebrities, etc. that don’t toe the Israel first line are subjected to attacks and marginalization. As Parry pointed out, Rep Paul Findley and Sen Charles Percy were the first two scalps that Israel got.
Hillary lost for a variety of reasons; mostly that dynastic Presidents are contrary to US standards/conventions and Hillary is/was a weak candidate. She’s rode in on Bill’s coattails and subsequently has no successes and many screw-ups of her own. Tone-deaf and vision-less and indistinguishable from a circa 1970 Rockefeller Republican woman. Some time ago I mentioned that as a political figure, she reminded me more of Nixon than anyone else, but I didn’t extend that to Nixon’s paranoia even as I understood why she’d set up her private server to avoid a paper trail not fully in her control. “Shattered” details that I was wrong on her level of paranoia — reading through staff emails in search of a traitor to her.
Had she made her own way in politics as a Republican, she may well have become the first woman president. At least as a Republican she would have appeared more authentic and had less need to parse and measure her positions and statements.
Do you need to be a Democrat for six decades or just five in order to overcome being raised in a Republican household?
Less than one if you are sincere. Eternity if you just want to be on the winning side with no thought of fairness or morality.
Depends on the how, when, why for the conversion.
It’s an odd book in a way. Most political books are based on interviews with consultants, and it seems to me they are always more than willing to through the candidate under the bus.
We would have won, but the candidate was too stupid to take my great advice. But there isn’t a lot of that in the book.
My major take away was they really had no idea what the true state of the race was. The head of the Colorado campaign was screaming for resources, Brooklyn saying no, you are wrong, we will the state easily.
The miss was so large, and so basic to everything the campaign did, that the story is rather basic. Mook applied the lessons from the 2012 Obama campaign about analytics.
Those lessons turned out to be disastrously wrong.
But they did know that they weren’t connecting like they should. The book contains several instances where Hillary herself gives a speech and expresses frustration. And they knew that even though the won the debates that the effect wasn’t very deep.
The part about the convention was pretty interesting. I wrote here at the time about just how split the Party was, and the book does a good job in describing how the Sanders and Clinton campaigns worked together to try and minimize disruption on the floor. But then the Washington Post had good pieces that week about how Weaver and Mook had been working for a month to avoid disaster.
Looking back on it, I guess the Convention could have been more of a disaster than it was. My main reaction when I was there was shock how much hate there was between the two factions. I have been to close Conventions before (’84,’08). This split ran far deeper. In retrospect the Obama’s saved the convention. They were the only figures who both wings of the Party liked, but Mook and Weaver deserve credit as well.
The book doesn’t live up to its title. There aren’t any real villains. The campaign made tons of mistakes, but all campaigns are littered with them.
They got their numbers wrong. And everything followed from that.
I’m not finding which book about the Clinton campaign you mean.
Sounds interesting though. Looks like centralized money control, top-down structure and over-reliance on big data. Ironically, if the Clinton campaign had been raising money for the state parties and left them there instead of using them as vessels to funnel money for central control, the state parties would have had a greater ability to put it to use where they saw fit, and with this small margins, it could have won the election.
○ Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign By Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes
They got their candidate wrong. And everything followed from that.
In a change election year, gotta have a new candidate and/or a new message that resonates with those “change voters/”
I might read this one because it’s based on real time access to the campaign and reportage that was essentially embargoed until after the campaign. Thus it’s not based on faulty and biased recollections of the players on the campaign (which I don’t find worth reading). This sort of embargoed access is rare, and while it may now seem odd that team Clinton allowed it, in decision was based getting attention for the winner’s awesome campaign team. IOW the arrogance in the campaign started at the top and went all way down.
“Shattered” and “Doomed” can be interpreted in various was. Both seem apt for Clinton’s campaign even without all the inside stuff, most of which weren’t that hard to read in real time.
Why do you keep harping on CO? That CO team, and you, got that one wrong as to the need for more resources — and Brooklyn got that one right. So, do you bring up CO to compliment Brooklyn? As Brooklyn (and iirc you), proceeded to blow it in five other states (or seven if wastefully dumping resources in AZ and OH is included) and barely survived in NH (where adequate resources had been deployed), they aren’t going to get kudos for CO.
The uncomfortable fact is that Clinton was vulnerable in too many states. It wasn’t about getting “their numbers wrong.” They got the narrative wrong and couldn’t change it. Not with the worst imaginable opponent and money, experience, and so-called expertise up the wazoo.
If you think a 3 point win means that they were right to think they were safe, then I was wrong.
I know no one who thinks that margin would lead you to pull resources from the state.
I argued they were not protecting their base. I was right about that.
I was wrong about plenty in 2016. But not that.
Need to choose two parties: VVD and PVV in addition choose the box polls per quarter (kwartaal) in linked website:
○ Ipsos Dutch polls – trend
The party of Geert Wilders used to have an underscore in the polls before the election due to hesitation of persons to affiliate themselves with the anti-immigration party PVV of Geert Wilders. In the last few years, this has not sustained. The Dutch are very open about their views and backing of Geert Wilders.
In the last general election it was the other way around. Due to a conflict with Erdogan of Turkey, the voters broke in favor of PM Mark Rutte of the VVD, the so-called benefit of being prime minister. Geert Wilders was left holding an empty bag.
Another major variable in the first round will be the turnout! Often more important than the polling error and trend analysis.
Before the Dutch election, the media expected a similar populist move as was seen in the UK referendum and the weirdest US presidential election ever. It did NOT happen! The populist anti-immigration party PVV of Geert Wilders disappointed.
I expect a similar counter-move in the France election 2017. The FN of Marine Le Pen has peaked too early and she may hope to beat Fillon for the second spot for the run-off election. With the excentrics of Donald Trump in the first 100 days, the disappointments of high expectations and in the UK a conservative PM May who chooses party politics over the interest of a divided nation after the Brexit 2016 vote.
○ ‘We are all Brenda’ : Hilarious video of shocked woman reacting to General Election news sparks empathy
○ EU hopes snap election will boost May’s mandate | Politico |
○ Theresa May’s election ‘power grab’ slammed by EU’s Guy Verhofstadt | The Guardian |
Exit poll result at noon after 28%
Macron 24%
Le Pen 22%
Fillon 20.5%
Mélanchon 18%
Total voter turnout expected to be 80%, similar to 2012.
IOW — no change from 2012. Using ’12 as the baseline, my back of the envelope calculation has it at:
Macron 23.4
Le Pen 21.9
Fillon 21
Melenchon 20.3
DLR 4
left other 2.1
The faux socialists should have skipped Hollande and gone directly for MoDem in ’12 to get their inner neoliberalcon hearts up and running. But at least this way they get a premier Madame — Lady Mac.
○ A watershed moment in French political history, “le 21 avril” in 2002
That’s how US projections on election night were once done. The switch to exit polls and through 2000 retained the use of identified representative and/or predictive precincts but was faster than waiting for the vote count from those precincts. Exit polls have become so unreliable that the pollster embargoes the results until after vote tallies begin to roll in and then adjust their exit polls to match the tallies.