Raphaël Glucksmann, who still has not officially declared his candidacy, staged a campaign launch rally yesterday at Les Docks de Paris in Aubervilliers. Although the stated capacity of the venue was 2,500, estimates put the overflow crowd at 4,000–a good enough showing to allay fears that the event would pale in comparison to Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s open-air launch event in St.-Denis, which drew over 20,000. Since Glucksmann at the moment appears to be the only left-wing candidate capable of countering Mélenchon, yesterday’s (relative) success was crucial to Glucksmann’s viability. He seems to have passed this first test, at least in the eyes of sympathetic media outlets such as Libération and Le Monde.
The event itself was standard fare in the US-inflected, media-driven era of French political campaigning. Pounding music, A- and B-list guests of honor, preliminary speeches from a rainbow coalition of supporters extolling the candidate, a longish speech by the candidate himself hitting a few high points that he hopes will define the campaign, extensive TV coverage, and follow-ups in the media including numerous radio and TV interviews with the candidate and key supporters.
Glucksmann, though not a natural orator or a natural extrovert, acquitted himself honorably. After an opening eulogy to Lyhanna, the unfortunate fillette whose murder–and the police and judicial lapses that may have contributed to it–has occupied the front pages for several weeks, the (non-)candidate shifted onto more comfortable ground. A consistent and vocal supporter of aid to Ukraine, he evoked the Russian threat. He appealed to leftier elements of the left by adding that France was also under economic threat from both China and the United States. “The French are not really sovereign,” he proclaimed, because they are dependent on “fossile energy,” “Chinese products,” and (American) “algorithms.” Harking back to François Hollande’s famous 2012 denunciation of “the world of finance” as his number one enemy, Glucksmann said that “our enemy has a name. He has a face. His name is Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Zhang Yiming [one of the founders of ByteDance].” Naming names, for all it lacks in analytical precision, is a rhetorically effective shorthand, and Glucksmann, whose reluctance to resort to some of the cruder tricks of the podium has saddled him with the reputation of being something of an intellectual unsuited to the cage match tactics of contemporary politicking, seems to have taken the advice of media consultants to sharpen his dagger a bit.
He also took a (deserved) swipe at Macron, to whom he has sometimes been compared: “I’ve always thought that Macron understood nothing about ecology.” Glucksmann needs the support of Greens and of younger voters, many of whom are more concerned about global warming, pesticides, and other ecological issues than their elders. The problem, as the Yellow Vest protests revealed, is that many voters outside the major cities hear only “higher fuel prices” when the talk turns to ecology. Glucksmann’s dilemma is that he is perceived as the candidate of the center-left “urban elite,” what used to be called la gauche caviare, and he must find a way to change his image among rural and ex-urban voters. His call to “take back the patriotic flame from the party that usurps it today,” namely, the far-right Rassemblement National, is unlikely to do the job despite the call to “take care of poorer workers, both male and female.”
The other dilemma Glucksmann faces is how to make himself the sole candidate of the unified non-Mélenchoniste left. His rivals include the ex-Mélenchoniste demagogue François Ruffin, the ex-president François Hollande, the ex-Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, and perhaps the Socialist leader Olivier Faure. Some, including Faure, are flirting with the idea of a primary of the left. Glucksmann no doubt hopes that yesterday’s rally will have damped down calls for such a primary and thrust him into the pole position, but it may equally well have incited the efforts of his rivals to cut him off at the pass.
Of course all this agitation on the center-
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left could be for naught, since the most likely consequence of a strong challenge to Mélenchon will be to ease the path to the second round of a center-right candidate such as Édouard Philippe. At this stage, however, there are still too many candidates and too many contingencies to predict the shape of the race. The most one can say about yesterday’s event is that Glucksmann’s candidacy remains viable. He could have crashed and burned on his first outing; the Mélenchonites were clearly hoping that he would. That he did not is further evidence that a Bardella-Mélenchon face-off in round 2 is far from inevitable, and that has to count as good news.