Observing the Whirlwind

I have a new article up at The New Republic. (There’s a problem with this link, which should be fixed shortly, however.) Here are a few additional thoughts.

In the midst of a tornado, one sees only the debris whirling in the funnel. The devastation becomes visible only after the storm has passed. This post will be filled with debris.

First, the roof blew off Les Républicains. The party leader, Eric Ciotti, announced his intention to sign an electoral pact with the RN. To my surprise, he was immediately repudiated by every other prominent Republican, including Laurent Wauquiez, who had been Ciotti’s choice as the party’s next presidential candidate. One by one, all the ténors of LR–Barnier, Bellamy, Bertrand, Larcher, Pécresse, Pradié, Retailleau, Wauquiez–vied with one another to find new words for Ciotti’s perfidy: shame, dishonor, treachery, betrayal, disgusting, collaborationist. If only American Republicans could find the courage to denounce the shame within their own ranks. But then again, Eric Ciotti is no Trump–except perhaps in his litigiousness: he has gone to court to claim that his colleagues had no right under party by-laws to remove him. He may win his case, but he will remain a leader without followers.

[ADDENDUM: The fine chorus of LR “resisters” has struck a sour note: Bellamy now says he will vote for the RN in the second round if necessary to keep LFI out of power: «Bien sûr», a-t-il répondu à une question de Pascal Praud. «Il est évident que je ferai tout pour empêcher que la France Insoumise n’arrive au pouvoir dans ce pays», a-t-il par ailleurs déclaré, exprimant vouloir «éviter que la France ne tombe dans les mains de cette alliance d’extrême gauche [en parlant du Front populaire]».]

Unless, of course, LR voters follow him into the abyss by voting for Le Pen, and there are many indicators that a substantial number of them will do just that. The LR leadership found its political courage too late, after allowing its rhetoric to drift too far toward the radical right: Had not presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse spoken of “the great replacement” during the campaign? The cordon sanitaire between the center right and far right had been allowed to stand as the ultimate signifier of the insuperable difference between them, even as the actual distance diminished by the day. This was not solely LR’s fault: the RN also moved quite some way toward LR, even enticing a former Republican such as Sébastien Chenu to join its leadership. The center right’s de facto capitulation thus preceded Ciotti’s abject surrender, but the party failed to recognize that it was disarming itself in the midst of combat.

Meanwhile, the left has formed a Popular Front. As it happens, the move came on the 90th anniversary, to the day, of the Blum-Thorez meeting that led to the original Popular Front. Unfortunately, the new Popular Front is a resurrection of the recently defunct Nupes, and it bears all the scars of the Nupes’s fratricidal fracases even before it enters the real battle. Raphaël Glucksmann, whose Place Publique deserves most of the credit for the left’s modest revival in the European Parliament elections, has been overshadowed by the parties, which control the apportionment of districts in which the Popular Front will run its single candidates. La France Insoumise will get the bulk of the candidacies, though not necessarily the bulk of the deputies, and this brings to the fore the insuperable problem that sank the Nupes: Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The irony is that it was Mélenchon’s rival for leadership of the far left, François Ruffin, who proposed the Popular Front, but Mélenchon may emerge as the chief beneficiary, and that alone may give pause to many voters as they weigh their choices on June 30.

[ADDENDUM: The Popular Front may have collapsed. The stumbling blocks were predictable: Israel/Palestine, antisemitism, the character of Mélenchon, gender politics concerning certain figures such as Quatennens and Bayou …].

Yesterday’s other development was President Macron’s news conference. It was vintage Macron. As disheveled journalists haltingly read their fifteen-part questions from their cellphones, the impeccably tailored president fluently replied with fifteen-minute answers, never a comma out of place, touching on each point of the question but expanding from niggling detail to thrilling vista of the bright tomorrow to come once the ingenious presidential vision was fully implemented despite the futile resistance of les Gaulois réfractaires. All would be well as soon as “the presidential majority” was restored to full control by the will of the people, as it surely would be on July 7. The unruffled Macron seemed to be living in an alternate reality, in which his only concession to the politics of the moment was to reject both “the radical left” and “the radical right,” as if the words left and right inevitably came paired with the adjective “radical,” leading to the glorious restoration of the untainted center, located at the precise spot behind the lectern at which the president stood. The performance was breathtaking, but not in a good way. It reminded us of how we got here.