Opinion French Presidential Election

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Forzaport

Forzaport

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May 27, 2004
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Down to 2 candidates and 2 weeks of what will surely be fierce campaigning in the lead up to May 7.

Le Pen is well behind Macron (~37-63) but has just announced that she's stepping down as leader of the National Front party in an attempt to broaden her appeal. Big, bold move.

I'm still learning about the election and candidates but what I've seen so far suggests to me that Le Pen is going to close the gap if not win which will be huge not only for the implications it will have for France, the EU and Europe but also because France is historically a left-wing country. Le Pen appears to be a seasoned politician, hungry and willing. Also, I'm seeing a lot more about Le Pen than I am about Macron in the media.

France elections: Le Pen steps aside as National Front leader
 
Forzaport said:
Down to 2 candidates and 2 weeks of what will surely be fierce campaigning in the lead up to May 7.

Le Pen is well behind Macron (~37-63) but has just announced that she's stepping down as leader of the National Front party in an attempt to broaden her appeal. Big, bold move.

I'm still learning about the election and candidates but what I've seen so far suggests to me that Le Pen is going to close the gap if not win which will be huge not only for the implications it will have for France, the EU and Europe but also because France is historically a left-wing country. Le Pen appears to be a seasoned politician, hungry and willing. Also, I'm seeing a lot more about Le Pen than I am about Macron in the media.

France elections: Le Pen steps aside as National Front leader
Click to expand...
Le Pen family background doesn't bode well, but these times are a changing.
 
Forzaport said:
Down to 2 candidates and 2 weeks of what will surely be fierce campaigning in the lead up to May 7.

Le Pen is well behind Macron (~37-63) but has just announced that she's stepping down as leader of the National Front party in an attempt to broaden her appeal. Big, bold move.

I'm still learning about the election and candidates but what I've seen so far suggests to me that Le Pen is going to close the gap if not win which will be huge not only for the implications it will have for France, the EU and Europe but also because France is historically a left-wing country. Le Pen appears to be a seasoned politician, hungry and willing. Also, I'm seeing a lot more about Le Pen than I am about Macron in the media.

France elections: Le Pen steps aside as National Front leader
Click to expand...

Saw an article in the Independent yesterday suggesting Macron was going to bolt in based completely on the polls and the fact Le Pen doesnt have such a wide appeal, so her stepping down as leader and possibly repositioning herself a little further towards the centre-right is very bold indeed. Le Pen is very intriguing, she's like Trump if he was eloquent and politically engaged, so in some ways could be more dangerous.

As for her closing the huge gap in the polls, its tough to pick. Everyone goes on about the polls being wrong with Trump and Brexit, but noone seems to be able to come up with a reason why the polls might be wrong. With Trump and Brexit it has been largely attributed to people unwilling to admit to a pollster they were voting for Trump/Brexit out of fear of being judged, but that fear seems to have subsidised with those victories and the French are historically less concerned with such matters as what people think. Combine that with the fact that the Dutch election last month swung against what the polls were predicting for the extreme right wing party and there's no actual reason to suggest the polls here are wrong. But its an incredible election that could actually be more surprising and shocking than the Trump/Clinton election, as neither candidate is from a major party and while we obviously know about Le Pen, Macron basically set up his own centrist party last year and planned to run for President while people laughed at him. Its actually not unlike Trump itself in some ways. The whole situation makes me wish I concentrated better in French class.
 

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That went as expected. No surprises. If anything Le Pen's polling overstated her support. Might give her the chance to clean out the National Front. Their branding is cactus as is. Le Pen seems up to it so it'll be interesting to see where she goes from here.
 
The closest Australian analogy would be a Presidential election with Pauline up against Nick X. I know Bradbury-like circumstances cleared the path around Macron but his win IMO has quite a message in it for our Nick. It seems "the centre" can hold, given the right time and place and lack of systemic electoral impediments (the now-gaping US Electoral College small-state bias), that it can be more than just a bunch of opportunistic deal makers... if they're willing and able to lead rather than to just act like, well, cynical politicians and cherry pick policy from both milder ends of the spectrum.

"Depth" is the challenge now. Macron has it, on his CV, but lets see if he and his new party can assemble a field of decent enough quality candidates pretty much from scratch for the upcoming elections for their legislature. He'll get some defectors from the two majors, and the major continental nations have traditions of coalition government anyway, so no matter who ends up as PM, bar FN of course, he'll likely be in a workable situation.

As for Nick and Pauline here, their record so far shows that Nick's mob are able to identify relatively down to earth "normal" people, where PHON's selection processes are regularly attracting and admitting quite a few with... well let's just call it "borderline rationality disorders" and leave it there because I'm not qualified to use the other term. As things work here rather than in a fantasy land of "presidential" campaigning, Nick has moved ever so slightly to the right in his long term build to a chase for disaffected voters in traditional seats from both majors, probably correctly seeing no point in chasing the Greens down a rat hole for the sake of just one or two House seats. Just not interested in challenging a few "sacred cows" like our "bipartisan" asylum seeker disgrace.

The games have already begun between Trump and Macron. Trump's State Department issues a blanket, non specific travel warning for the whole European continent, taking a cynical shotgun to Europe's entire travel industry; Macron issues a grand and somewhat grandstanding invitation to the US's "refugee scientist" community to move to France where "they are welcome". Also, he speaks English better than Trump does ;)

 
That is a fantastic video!

If there is any single issue that has the power to keep Trump to a single term, it's climate change. Trump may not be a climate change denier per se but he has hired very vocal climate change deniers. Why would he do that? One reason is the correlation between economy and CO2. Increased economic output usually means more CO2 and other pollutants in the atmosphere. The kicker though is that more economic output should make more money available to invest in renewable tech so there can be a strong, carbon neutral economy. On a cost basis, we're getting close to the tipping point where renewables can directly compete with fossil fuels. In any case, surely we can't be that far from the day where trains, planes and automobiles are hydrogen/electric powered. Even today, if you own an electric vehicle, it is becoming cleaner to run because the electricity used to charge it is increasingly being sourced from renewable energy.

Macron is smart, innovative and speaks well. He did have a "deplorables" moment near the end of the election campaign but his lead, his history, his policies all buffered him. It also helps that the National Front are, in fact, deplorable. Le Pen is too interesting a person to go quietly away though. She does have support and if she's smart enough, she will be much closer to the centre and have another go of it.

I'm not sure if our system allows for our political leaders to be centre. Nick has his work cut out to grow his party and he needs quality candidates to do it. Probably needs a name change as well. Turnbull is probably the closest to centre we'll see from a major party and he only got there because Abbott was such a disaster for the coalition. Bernadi's exit though is a big win that reduces the internal pressure on Malcolm
 
Forzaport said:
On a cost basis, we're getting close to the tipping point where renewables can directly compete with fossil fuels.
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It's nowhere near. Government funded innovation is never a winner but it's so France to go this route of virtue signalling big government. He might make the lefties around the world feel good with this video but he just advocating wasting more money France doesn't have to spend on a non problem instead of dealing with the actual ones.
 
Also, I'll add two things.

1. Anyone who things Macron's a centrist have been dropped on their head. It's akin to Tony Abbott quitting the Libs, starting a new party 12months out from the election and pretending he was never a liberal but is a centrist and here to break the system. With the help of the entire media and political class being on his side and having collective amnesia about his past everyone sits around just wondering how amazing it is he has gone so far in so little time.

2. No one of any note is going to go to France on their ridiculous tax rates. The brains all fled.
 
StrappingTape said:
It's nowhere near. Government funded innovation is never a winner but it's so France to go this route of virtue signalling big government. He might make the lefties around the world feel good with this video but he just advocating wasting more money France doesn't have to spend on a non problem instead of dealing with the actual ones.
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I guess it depends on who you're listening to.

The renewable energy future will arrive when installing new solar panels is cheaper than a comparable investment in coal, natural gas or other options. If you ask the World Economic Forum (WEF), the day has arrived.

More: https://qz.com/871907/2016-was-the-...cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-just-wait-for-2017/
 

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StrappingTape said:
We live in South Australia, we live the observed real high and rising costs of "green" energy.
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Renewables are the future and will be cheaper in the long run.

upload_2017-5-10_8-6-58.png
 
Forzaport said:
Renewables are the future and will be cheaper in the long run.

View attachment 368641
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That's the problem for the argument, you are basing the cheapness on estimates and modelling much akin to AGW. Then when actual reality hits it out the park the opposite way then we just project in 10 years time it'll be cheaper etc. People living the green dream and huge uptake of these technologies like Solar right now especially us in SA know in reality the costs are astronomically higher. Off top of my head but I don't think it's the cost of producing the solar panel it's the cost of manpower in getting that 1MW of energy is something like 40 - 50 people vs 1 for coal and 2 for gas and it's unreliable. I'd argue if it's already so cheap then remove all subsidies and let it eat the other ones up and that includes removing costs imposed on the gas and coal to make them more expensive to make the renewables more competitive.
 
The facts are that solar and wind are the cheapest forms of energy production now, when the sun shines and the wind blows.

We here in SA pay the prices we do not because solar and wind are expensive but because we are in the awkward transition phase of fewer non-solar generating customers paying the fossil generators and network operators to maintain an antiquated grid network and provide the same peak power for everybody for a few hours after sunset.

As i understand it, it would be cheaper for the govt to subsidise household batteries to use the day's generation after sunset than it is to maintain the status quo big centralised generator and dilapidated network.

The business model of the generators and national electricity network operator is busted and we the public are paying for it. Unfortunately the federal government doesn't see the votes in reforming the regulations and incentives around the national market so this is what we're stuck with.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk
 
Last edited:
Fifty said:
The facts are that solar and wind are the cheapest forms of energy production now, when the sun shines and the wind blows.

We here in SA pay the prices we do not because solar and wind are expensive but because we are in the awkward transition phase of fewer non-solar generating customers paying the fossil generators and network operators to maintain an antiquated grid network and provide the same peak power for everybody for a few hours after sunset.

As i understand it, it would be cheaper for the govt to subsidise household batteries to use the day's generation after sunset than it is to maintain the status quo big centralised generator and dilapidated network.

The business model of the generators and national electricity network operator is busted and we the public are paying for it. Unfortunately the federal government doesn't see the votes in reforming the regulations and incentives around the national market so this is what we're stuck with.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk
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Is that you Jay Weatherill? No wonder SA is ****ed
 
Portology said:
As for Nick and Pauline here, their record so far shows that Nick's mob are able to identify relatively down to earth "normal" people, where PHON's selection processes are regularly attracting and admitting quite a few with... well let's just call it "borderline rationality disorders" and leave it there because I'm not qualified to use the other term. As things work here rather than in a fantasy land of "presidential" campaigning, Nick has moved ever so slightly to the right in his long term build to a chase for disaffected voters in traditional seats from both majors, probably correctly seeing no point in chasing the Greens down a rat hole for the sake of just one or two House seats. Just not interested in challenging a few "sacred cows" like our "bipartisan" asylum seeker disgrace.
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Actually a quick look at the various candidates Nick has endorsed, or actually gotton elected through his own popularity is a scary one. It's like a line up from the loony toons convention, fluoride deniers, anti-vaxxers, and other general whackjobs who have no business being on the same side of the street as a government building nevermind inside it. It's actually being probably his greatest trick yet to somehow give the state collective amnesia regarding these candidates. Luckily it appears he may be past that, with that Skye Whatsherface he got into the House at the last election seeming to be a solid bet.
 
Ando39 said:
Actually a quick look at the various candidates Nick has endorsed, or actually gotton elected through his own popularity is a scary one. It's like a line up from the loony toons convention, fluoride deniers, anti-vaxxers, and other general whackjobs who have no business being on the same side of the street as a government building nevermind inside it. It's actually being probably his greatest trick yet to somehow give the state collective amnesia regarding these candidates. Luckily it appears he may be past that, with that Skye Whatsherface he got into the House at the last election seeming to be a solid bet.
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Ah that's really disappointing. I'll have to go poke around in detail. I know a few casual Mr X voters, classic old school moderately socially conservative blue collar Labor dudes.

Going back, at the State level I do remember thinking that Ann Bressington's picnic basket seemed to be missing a few standard items. Did turn out to be mad as a Katter, and one of her "advisors" that I know personally turned out far worse than that. Really disappointing if the rest of Mr X's crew are as nutty as PHON, just minus the very specific issues that energize/characterize PHONies.
 
Portology said:
Ah that's really disappointing. I'll have to go poke around in detail. I know a few casual Mr X voters, classic old school moderately socially conservative blue collar Labor dudes.

Going back, at the State level I do remember thinking that Ann Bressington's picnic basket seemed to be missing a few standard items. Did turn out to be mad as a Katter, and one of her "advisors" that I know personally turned out far worse than that. Really disappointing if the rest of Mr X's crew are as nutty as PHON, just minus the very specific issues that energize/characterize PHONies.
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Well the hope is that now he's more national, he'll attract a better class of candidate. But I'd approach with caution tbh. There's also the other issue I have with him which is he's never actually achieved anything politically. Very strange considering in SA he commands arguably a third of the vote.
 
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