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.
5 Comments
“Glucksmann at the moment appears to be the only left-wing candidate capable of countering Mélenchon” : the probability of this being true is possibly negative. To be positive would require Glucksmann to understand something of France, which he does not. Ok, I never could stand this sort of sententious person and even less his father, an ex-maoist thug who spent the rest of his life giving morals lessons to the rest of humanity, so I can agree to being biased just a little bit.
It is going to be difficult to wait because the media need to occupy our time, but we actually need to wait until January 2027 to have a sense of who is actually running for President.
The only one we are actually certain of now is Mélenchon and he is sure to make a very high score in the first round, possibly in the mid twenties or higher if other candidates from the left remain as pathetically incompetent. One major reason for Mélenchon is that compared to most others he actually prepares himself and organizes his running very seriously whatever one thinks of his politics.
Negative probability–an interesting concept, Bernard, no doubt prompted not by mathematical insight but rather by your rage against the Glucksmanns. I think you rather overestimate the importance of the parties in the post-Macron era. I agree that Glucksmann doesn’t have much of a chance, but I wouldn’t put much money on any other Socialist nominee.
It’s not the parties, it is just that the public funding still goes to parties who can then fund someone. Other sources of funding are elusive and very limited unless one accesses Russian bank loans. On negative prob (I did do serious math in older times), I was joking but who’s counting!
A party gets public funding only if its candidate can attract at least 5 percent of the vote. Hidalgo didn’t meet that criterion for the PS the last time around. Do you think Glucksmann will get less than 5 percent? I think he has just as good a chance as Cazeneuve or Hollande of doing so.
What you are talking about is the public refund of half the moneys spent on a presidential campaign. It is not paid to the party but to the presidential campaign and that can be a crucial issue (see Fillon 2017…). The campaign accounts must of course be in good order and validated as true by the Conseil Constitutionnel (Chirac 1995…).
Prior to all that, there is the problem of finding the cash for actually funding a presidential campaign, which is what I am talking about. A candidate can hardly fund a campaign without access to cash from a party. Alternatives are 1. funding from own funds (Bernard Arnault could, not Glucksmann) 2. bank loans, the banks would need to believe you will get to 5% to get a public refund of half your spending, which leaves open the issue of repaying the other half, very tough without a party 3. dodgy clandestine (any foreign funding is illegal) foreign funding where you have a good chance of ending up in jail later (see Sarkozy’s criminal trial). Last precision, contributions from individuals or companies are limited to a few thousand euros for each contributor. I am unclear whether Glucksmann is generating the kind of enthusiasm where a lot of individuals would contribute…
Party public funding comes mostly out of results of previous legislative elections, which decide the quantity of funds for each party. Of course, if a party did extremely well in a previous legislative election, this insured massive public funding during the legislature as the example of En Marche (Macron’s party then) during 2017-2022 showed. Now, Macron dissolved parliament in 2024 with catastrophic results, but it is these parliament results which have been deciding the amount of public cash going into each party since then.
As for Glucksmann reaching 5% in the election if he actually runs, I personally doubt it as I suspect that he is not quite capable of talking to the French who have many issues that they want to hear from before the Russian issue which is naturally his family’s business. He is of course higher in current polling but I give little importance to polling before late 2026 and little trust in current poling methods which have been seriously damaged by the Internet like so many other things. My suspicion is that the combination of the far right candidate polling very high and of Mélenchon appearing as the only viable candidate on the left could lead most electors of the left to block their nose and vote for him, sort of as a last resort. The one and only other person on the left equipped with the right campaign skills ( as well as governing skills) is Hollande.