“Young people screw the National Front.”

 

    The French pundits who said Macron was taking a huge risk and making a big mistake with the snap French Elections are looking and sounding about as stupid as the American pundits telling Biden to drop out. 

     The British people told the right wingers of their country that they could stuff it and last night it was the French peoples' turn to tell their right wingers where to go. At this juncture, with the French polls having closed just hours ago, the haul for each party is in wide estimates. But so far, it looks as if the New Popular Front will get between 172-192 seats while Macron's centrist Ensemble Party will get 150-170 while Marine Le Pen's ultra right wing party, the poorly-rebranded National Rally, came in a dismal third with a projected 132-152 seats.

      Now, I'm an expert in American politics (I have, after all, been writing about it for two decades) and I generally steer clear of commenting on the politics of other nations. But between the British and French election results over the past three days, we're seeing a seismic global shift that the political class here in the US need to observe more closely and take under advisement.

     Since we're talking about two different political systems, there isn't as much overlap as one may hope for. But on an abstract level, the outcome between the British and French election results show that their people are sick and tired of the right wing agenda and tossed them to the wayside. Let's look at the UK:

     Labour, the center/left party, acquired about 412 seats in the 650 seat British Parliament. That's about a 174 seat majority that gives them a commanding mandate for at least the next five years. The Tories, or the conservatives, however, lost 252 seats, leaving them with about 121, making them a glorified rump party. The Liberal Democrats, the mainstay third party in the UK, went from 11 to 72 seats and will surely have a voice in the new coalition government.

      Now, the biggest difference between the UK and French election results was that the UK boasted an anemic 60% voter turnout and Labour earned just 34% of that popular vote (the Tories, on the other hand, got just 24% of that). Hardly what one would call a mandate from the British people. Labour assumes a more commanding swagger in the lower chamber simply because of the peculiarities of British election laws.

     France, however, enjoyed near record turnout, or 59.71%, very comparable to the UK's. And, while neither the New Popular Front, Ensemble or National Rally came anywhere close to a majority in the French National Assembly, after the second round of voting, Le Pen's neo-fascist National Rally (which actually came in first after the first round), crashed and burned. And this was because the French people went on the offense against fascism and took the bull by the horns.

     In this context, the biggest difference between France and the US is that France had lived under Nazi occupation and the French people certainly know their history. But we shouldn't need that history of occupation to inspire us to fight fascism. Our grandfathers and great grandfathers fought the Nazis alongside the French so they wouldn't have to fight them here.

     Democrats need to take some lessons from their British and French counterparts. Granted, gerrymandering isn't an issue in the UK and France (In fact, in the UK, it's illegal) and there's no widespread effort to restrict the vote or make voting more difficult. The American electoral system is so staggeringly corrupt that we've grown accustomed to it. Right wing courts here in the US give a sympathetic ear to other right wingers who hoarsely scream about widespread voter fraud that simply doesn't exist.

     But your vote still counts. France and the UK both changed out their Prime Ministers and gave the fascists and right wingers the boot. We need to do the same thing and the president needs to get more aggressive in the last four months before our own general election. Yes, of course the president should run on his admirable record but that's not enough.

     As in 2020, 2024 is once again the most consequential election perhaps in US history. Trump sicced a mob on the US Capitol and got people killed because he didn't like the results of the election. And in the three and a half years since then, he's only gotten angrier and more unhinged (not to mention more demented).

     As Willie Stark quickly discovered in the beginning of All the King's Men, you're not going to win over the people by simply giving them facts, figures and numbers. The corrupt MSM in this country is, as always, bound and determined to present the fiction that there's really not much difference between the candidates and they're equally qualified.

     They are not. One has given us a stable, effective government that's given us a strong, robust economy, record lows in unemployment, a rebuilt infrastructure, reduced student loan debt and restored international prestige.

     The other promises rack and ruin, revenge and Project 2025, the most evil agenda ever drawn up since Nazi Germany's Enabling Act.

     And. if we're not careful, we'll wind up electing Willie Stark and fall for his populist bullshit.