Midnight Oil

[Powderworks] Re: NMOC Frenchies are not fascist !!!

Tom Davies tdav@wam.umd.edu
Tue, 23 Apr 2002 14:27:08 -0400 (EDT)


my two cents on the whole Le Pen debacle:

it seems to me that what happened in France is a little bit like what
happened in the last US presidential election. In both cases, the more
leftist of the two major-party candidates (Jospin, Gore) was undermined by
protest votes cast by leftists who saw the major-party candidate as having
sold out. The question yet to be answered in either country is what the
respective major parties (Socialists, Democrats) do to respond to these
protest voters. Is it enough to blame them for the bad election outcome in
order to attract their votes next time around, or will the major parties
actually change at all in response to the protest votes? So far, in the
US, it looks like the former option (blame the leftists and don't change
anything) is being tried by the Democrats. Whether it will work remains to
be seen.

I don't think the rest of the world needs to worry about France too
much. Le Pen is going to lose, and hopefully the French left will get its
house in order somehow or other...

later,

tom