Is Francois Hollande secretly the greatest chessmaster of our time?

[Kingpoleon]

Not trolling.

He is one of the most unpopular politicians in the world, and yet somehow not only is the probable next president essentially his protege with exactly the same policies, but his internal enemies (the left of PS) managed to get the stigma of being associated with his administration. Not to mention the premature destruction of his rival Valls' career.

Depends on if his "protege" can actually pull it off rather than fall into the exact same trap as Hillary, which gives it to Le Pen. This does seem likely though.

Also, he didn't stop the far far leftist candidate from going up by 8 whole points. I mean I s'pose you argue that Hamon not getting completely destroyed for the sake of keeping the party still funded which stopped Melenchon from pole-vaulting over the competition via vote-split is a feat in and of itself.

That said, you might be onto something.

That's the beauty! If he was interfering in the primary he would have first ousted his old frenemy Valls who wanted to be the one to 'modernise' the French left (although in a different fashion to how Hollande/Macron-Fillon wanted it) then his other big enemy Montebourg; allowing PS to be in the hands of the nice guy but ultimately uncharismatic Harmon. Exactly the guy, Hollande would have realised, who would be overshadowed by the returning loudmouth Melenchon especially if he loosened the lips of centrists in his party that could cross over to his guy Macron and create disarray in PS that would act in his favour.

But then he had to ensure the right weren't a problem. First he played a squeezing game with Sarkozy, using the French states resources to drip drip allegations against his old enemy. With Sarkozy's reputation in tatters, the primary was split. A political genius like ive already established Hollande to be at would have realised that Juppe was at risk of hoovering up his macron's niche. So he got the PS machine to do a Claire McCaskill - scaremongered about Fillon's Thatcherite agenda and ultra Catholicism, forcing the whipped up LR voters deprived of their Sarko to plum for somebody far to the right of the French mainstream (and by pure serendipity, I'm sure, a gigantic crook and terrible campaigner).

As the Left imploded three ways between Harmonites, Macronites and Melonmaniacs; Hollande could scarcely have been more pleased tonight. He chose his protege wisely - he had known the media were too stupid and superficial to really examine the candidate beyond superficial details (omg he's a banker)  especially with the wealth of juicy stuff coming from Fillon The Disaster and the left (which super genius Hollande had all planned). The collapsed left means that Flanby has down what many PS centrists wished they could have done long ago and abandoned the old socialist trappings. The left dregs would be in no state to fight back, with Melenchon too divisive and Harmon too weakened. FN is the next target for Francois, with Hollande gambling that Marine would underpoll as she did in the regionals and start a war with her niece's wing. And all the while a centrists group surrounds his guy and his policies. Surely future historians will mark this era (the sixth republic from 2017 onwards) as the Hollandist republic.

I thought that Valls was closer to Macron than Hollande was.

[Kingpoleon]

If he was such a great chessmaster, wouldn't he orchestrate such a Rube Goldbergian sequence of events for his own personal benefit, rather than that of a co-ideologue?

Wait for it. The police will storm voter booths, and he will suspend the legislature and presidential election, marry his relatives into the Bonaparte family, and claim the throne of France alongside a half dozen Napoleonic nations.