A Rerun in France

Once again, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen will face each other in the French Presidential runoff, with Macron getting 27.4%, Le Pen getting 24.3%, and unabashed left wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon getting 22%.

In my perfect world, I would have preferred seeing Le Pen and Mélenchon making the runoff, because it would not be the choice of the lesser of two evils.

Also, I think that it would have been nearly certain that we would have seen the spectacle of Brussels and Berlin would have attempted to intervene in Le Pen's favor, ripping the mask off, and revealing their Neoliberal agenda.  (I have a perverse sense of political theater)

Unlike the last time though, Macron has shown himself to be contemptuous of the average working Frenchman, pro-police brutality, pro anti-Semite traitor Philippe Pétain, and aggressively Islamophobic.

If you have noticed that most of this description, except perhaps for the first bit, sounds a lot like the positions of Marine Le Pen, you have been paying attention.

I'm glad that I don't have to chose who to vote for, because it's a remarkably close call:

President Emmanuel Macron will face Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, in the runoff of France’s presidential elections.

With 92 percent of the ballots cast on Sunday counted, Mr. Macron, a centrist, was leading with about 27.4 percent of the vote to Ms. Le Pen’s 24.3 percent. Ms. Le Pen benefited from a late surge that reflected widespread disaffection over rising prices, security and immigration.

With war raging in Ukraine and Western unity likely to be tested as the fighting continues, Ms. Le Pen’s strong performance demonstrated the enduring appeal of nationalist and xenophobic currents in Europe. Extreme parties of the right and left took some 51 percent of the vote, a clear sign of the extent of French anger and frustration.

………

More than half of French people — supporters of Ms. Le Pen, Mr. Zemmour and Mr. Mélenchon — now appear to favor parties that are broadly anti-NATO, anti-American and hostile to the European Union. By contrast, the broad center — Mr. Macron’s La République en Marche party, the Socialist Party, the center right Republicans and the Green Party — took a combined total of about 40 percent.

………

If the two runoff qualifiers are the same as in 2017, they have been changed by circumstances. Where Mr. Macron represented reformist hope in 2017, he is now widely seen as a leader who drifted to the right and a top-down, highly personalized style of government. The sheen is off him.

On the place of Islam in France, on immigration controls and on police powers, Mr. Macron has taken a hard line, judging that the election would be won or lost to his right.

Addressing his supporters after the vote Sunday, he said he wants a France that “fights resolutely against Islamist separatism” — a term he uses to describe conservative or radical Muslims who reject French values like gender equality — but also a France that allows all believers to practice their faiths.

Sorry, but this bit is complete crap.  It does not matter whether he has governed as a religious bigot because he thinks that this would be to his political advantage, or because he actually believes the hate that he spews, Emmanuel Macron is a Islamophobic bigot.

He is running against an Islamophobic bigot with Marine Le Pen.

The difference is that Macron is likely to be slightly less Islamophobic, and Le Pen is likely to be slightly less eager to cut taxes on the rich and social benefits to the rest of France.

Like I said, this would a though f%$#ing call were I a Frenchman.