Emmanuel Macron hacked.

Or the case of Notes on a Scandal.

[quote]Unveiling his manifesto in March, Mr Macron said he hoped to entice British business and banks to relocate to Paris, promising a substantial reduction in corporation tax to 25pc from its current 33.3pc.

More Blair than Thatcher, staunch Europhile Mr Macron has pledged to reduce public spending by €60bn and cut 120,000 public sector jobs.

He has also vowed to get tough on unemployment benefits for those who repeatedly turned down job offers and wants greater flexibility on the retirement age, currently 60, and the statutory 35-hour working week, allowing employers and staff more latitude to negotiate.

In a headline-grabbing sweetener, he said 80pc of households would be exonerated from a property tax known as the “taxe d’habitation”, which is comparable to council tax. . . .

He wants more freedom for school governance and has suggested checks on the competence of government ministers and more proportional representation.[/quote]

A wealthy investment banker who has never held elective office and who ran as head of his own politiical party? Lower taxes? Reduced government spending and smaller government? Proportional representation? Egads! That’s what got Trump elected. Well, he’s no David Duke but with all the career politicians and long establishd political parties to choose from in France why him?

I don’t see any real connection between him and Trump.
Try again.
He’s more like Barack Obama…hope and change.

Well, the three main candidates were :

Macron: young, politically correct, supported by all the pro-EU media and corporations

Melenchon: basically a communist

Le Pen: she had some semi-socialist plans in her agenda, but the new strategy from Europen media is to give the tag FAR RIGHT to anyone they don’t like because it brings back Fasci-Nazi ghosts and people want to dissociate from that label (even if not accurate). Ffs, even the Democratic Swedish party has ben labeled FAR RIGHT, they’re basically socialists -_-

It would have been very hard for him not to win.

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He was supported by around 67% of the voters, he gave her a right drubbing. France is no UK or US.

You Trumpers have to face it, Europe is not the US.

Marcon made it clear before the election that he is pro EU, pro helping asylum seekers, and even pro a common financial household in the EU.

67% gave him their vote which is a real majority of voters, not like in the US.

With outsiders like Macron and extremists like Trump and Le Pen winning or showing well in the polls these days it seems premature for fans of the establishment to be celebrating their imminent return to power.

If Macron is an outsider well…what is somebody who isn’t the son of two doctors, who didn’t go to all the elite schools and who didn’t work for Rotchilds bank and wasn’t an economics minister in the last government called?

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Refresh my memory: when did the Donald say he was going to abolish the Electoral College?

I don’t understand proportional representation well but isn’t it a system in which many small factions end up being represented in government as opposed to only the person who gets the most votes?

Either way the broad strokes of En Marche! seem to be a scaling back of traditional French statism. Coupling that with the fact that a far right political party like the National Front garnered such a high percentage, 34%, of the French vote in a national election hardly seems like reason to celebrate to me.

The Electoral College is one version of “first past the post” (FPTP), which is usually considered the Antichrist of electoral systems by people who support PR.

If you had PR in the US, depending on which version and what threshold you used, you would probably have the likes of Johnson and Stein in Congress, but your president would be either Hillary or (if you went with a more Westminster type system) whoever managed to form a coalition outnumbering the Democrats.

France, of course, does not use a Westminster type system, but if you used the French system you would have had a second vote with only Donald & Hillary, no other options, and the winner of that vote would be president.

(French people, please correct me if I’m wrong.)

In other words, a highly skilled bullshitter?

For better or for worse, the Obama presidency made the Trump presidency possible. If democracy in France survives, who or what will follow Macron?

They’ve already had DeGaulle.

Thank you Trump!
Without your support, Le Pen could have won the election, eventually.
You are an eye opener, except for trumpsters.

Open your eyes a little wider and you’ll note that a majority of 18-34 year olds in France apparently prefer the neo-fascist National Front party so don’t thank Trump just yet.

False. Le Pew was most popular in the 35-49 age group, but even then the majority wanted Macron. She was least popular among the elderly, who remember what life was like under fascism.

By the way, “National Front” was the name of an outspoken racist group in the UK in the 1970s.

Racism is bad, m’kay.

Right, a plurality rather than a majority and in the first round of voting only, not the final round. Still, one wonders why Clintonistas are claiming moral victory when the racist National Front has such support among millennials in France.

[quote]An election-day survey of more than 9,000 voters in the first round of France’s presidential contest found that National Front leader Marine Le Pen won a larger share of support from women and young voters than any other candidate.

The poll, conducted by Opinion Way, revealed Le Pen earned the support of 23.9 percent of female voters. By contrast, Emmanuel Macron, Le Pen’s opponent in the next round of voting, came in second with women, earning the support of 21.3 percent.

According to the survey, Le Pen outperformed the other candidates with younger voters as well. Opinion Way found the National Front leader won 25.7 percent of voters aged 18-34. Jean-Luc Melenchon and Macron won 24.6 percent and 21.6 percent of that demographic respectively.
Macron, an independent centrist, earned the most votes overall, winning 23.8 percent to Le Pen’s 21.4 percent. The two are set to face off in the second round of voting on May 7.

Opinion Way’s survey was conducted online April 23 with a .5-1 point margin of uncertainty.[/quote]

News flash: the elderly are gonna die. There’s this bug going around. It’s called old age.

And all they remember was how they caved before fascism. Or, on a good day, where they left their reading glasses.

I thought we weren’t supposed to trust opinion polls now, Comrade Smith. Or is that just in the US, for cultural reasons? :idunno:

I think I have to agree with Brianjones here. Hollande sullied the Socialist Party so bad that Macron wouldn’t have made the first round under that awful title. He needed to separate himself in the eyes of people, and it worked.

It’s still symbolic that the people don’t want anything to do with the main parties and that Macron knows that and has to sneak around it.

I think you’ve got me misfiled under “Commie”, “Mistrusts Opinion Polls.”

I should be filed under “Libertarian”, “Generally Trusts Opinion Polls.”

Thank you for your cooperation.:slight_smile: