These days, it's tough to remain popular while governing.
In France, the government's unpopularity seems likely to produce chaos.
The British Labour Party is expected to rout the Conservative Party in upcoming elections. This prospect has led some American liberals — Fareed Zakaria, for example — to suggest that Labour offers Democrats a model for winning in the United States.
But Labour’s impending victory stands only for the proposition that the prevailing widespread discontent in major Western countries is hazardous to the health of whichever party has been in power for long.
If you don’t believe me, ask Emanuel Macron. Or Joe Biden. (I know Biden has only been in office for only three-and-a-half years, but it seems much seems longer.)
In Britain, a center-right government is about to fall. In France, a centrist government is about to fall. In America, a left-liberal government might well fall. Its hope for salvation rests on the unpopularity of a repugnant opposition candidate who himself served as president for a while, and on the possibility that Biden will step aside.
If the Dems want to emulate Labour, they should step aside and let the GOP govern for twelve years.
The British race seems devoid of suspense. The American race has an abundance of it.
In France, most of the suspense pertains to what will happen after the election. The likely answer is, chaos
France’s “right-wing” National Rally (NR) has come out on top in two consecutive recent elections. It finished first in the EU parliamentary elections. Then, after Macron called snap parliamentary elections for France, it finished first in the initial round of this contest.
In the EU elections, NR won 31.5 percent of the vote and collected 30 of 81 seats. Macron’s party won only 14.5 percent and 13 seats, the same number of seats the socialist party won with about the same share of the popular vote.
In France’s first-phase parliamentary election, NR increased its popular vote to 34.5 percent. A coalition of left-wing parties, the New Popular Front, came in second with around 28.5 percent. Macron’s party ran a dismal third with around 21 percent.
These elections are to select a legislative body, not a president. The winners of local races head to the National Assembly. They will be selected this weekend in run-off elections.
The fact that a NR candidate led in a particular race — as a great many did — doesn’t mean he or she will serve. Unless the candidate won a majority of votes, he or she will have to win the run-off. Candidates who captured more than 12.5 percent of the vote in the first round are eligible to participate.
To prevent NR candidates from winning a parliamentary majority, many candidates from other parties who met the 12.5 percent threshold are dropping out of the run-off race. They expect their supporters to coalesce behind a more popular non-NR candidate.
As of yesterday, with the deadline for withdrawing hours away, 218 candidates eligible to compete in the second round had pulled out. 130 of them were on the left and 82 came from the Macron-led centrist alliance. Thus, the anti-NR strategy seems to be tilting some races in favor of non-NR candidates who finished second in the first round.
Indeed, most observers now believe the ploy to deprive NR of a majority will succeed. For example, the Eurasia Group, a political consulting firm, projected the final seat count for Le Pen’s party at somewhere between 240 and 270. To gain a majority, it needs 289 seats.
Thus, there’s a very good chance that no party will have a majority in the new parliamentary body. Of course, it’s not just left and center parties that can make deals. If NR gets close to 289, Le Pen might be able to deal her way to a working majority. But the odds seem to have turned against her and in favor of a National Assembly with no party in the majority.
How would such a body behave? Most likely, it would be at sixes and sevens. As the Eurasia Group puts it, France seems heading for “deadlock and confusion with an irreconcilably blocked National Assembly.”
If policies do emerge from such a National Assembly, they might be quite a salad. On some matters, Macron’s party might vote with NR. On others it might vote with the left.
It’s possible that on some matters, NR and the leftist coalition would vote together against Macron’s party. After all, both NR and the left coalition oppose Macron’s attempts at austerity, including the raising of the retirement age to 64, and favor more government spending. That’s why I think it’s incorrect to view NR and the hard left as at opposite ends of the spectrum.
To complicate matters, the leftist coalition is an uneasy alliance of greens, socialists, and communists. Once elected, its representatives might not act as a true bloc.
To further complicate matters, Macron will continue to serve as France’s president. He has vowed to stay on until his term expires in 2027.
One thing seems certain. The less able NR is to influence policy due to deal-making by its less popular opponents, the more alienated the French people will become.
Add it all up, and you have a recipe for chaos and possibly for disaster.