Eventually, as in every election, the parties must stop dithering and hoping, Micawberlike, that “something will turn up.” Gouverner, c’ est chosir, dixit Mendès France, and before one can govern, one must be elected, which demands other choices. The Socialist Party, that perennial procrastinator, has finally made up its mind, rejecting the wishes of its ostensible leader, Olivier Faure, who wanted to choose the party’s presidential candidate by way of a primary open to other parties of the left, perhaps even including Mélenchon’s France Insoumise. But the party rejected his wishes and voted instead for a closed primary. Or, rather, a semi-closed primary, since it is open not just to card-carrying members of the PS but also to adherents of Raphaël Glucksmann’s Place Publique, whose ambiguous relationship to the PS has been a source of hope for both Glucksmann and the party. The limping symbiosis between PP and PS has kept both alive, although it’s hard to see which is the host and which the parasite.
In any case, the die is now cast, except that Glucksmann, not content to have won the decision he wanted from a party whose support he needs if he is to have any chance of a viable candidacy, is now insisting that the PS put in place a mechanism to keep out pesky vanity candidates who might taint or tilt the outcome–people like Ségolène Royal and Philippe Brun. This might seem ungrateful on his part, and it has to be said that any candidate who is not capable of handily dispatching those two is not likely to prove a juggernaut of the left. But Glucksmann would like the shape the primary as an opportunity to declare the champion of the social-democratic left, in which he will pitch his idealistic version, full of lofty ecological, humanitarian, and international aspirations, against the political pragmatism of an Hollande or a Cazeneuve (or a Faure, Vallaud, or other player yet to be named). We shall see what develops.
Meanwhile, there is one curious poll (by Cluster17) from last April that shows Ruffin, of all people, as the candidate best-placed, right or left, to win in the second round against Le Pen (assuming he can get there, which no first-round poll anticipates). One can make a plausibility argument for this otherwise outlandish result: Ruffin, having split with Mélenchon, stands somewhere in the no-man’s-land among the warring left-wing factions: LFI, PS, PCF, Greens, etc. Hence it is just conceivable that he could draw votes in the second round from both the LFI to his left and the PS to his right. But I don’t think this argument can withstand scrutiny. On closer examination I think it would be more likely for Ruffin to be repudiated by LFI voters as the traitor who prevented their champion from taking the prize and by Socialist voters as the wolf in sheep’s clothing who is attempting to smuggle in LFI positions on many issues under the guise of a more amiable personality than Mélenchon’s.
