French Legislative Election 2017

[Velasco]

La Gauche shoots herself in the foot. La Droite looks like an irrelevant bunch. L'Extrême Droite licks her wounds in a corner. La République... En Marche?

[Velasco]

Out of the 428 REM candidates there are 214 men and 214 women.  This is so typical and smacks of quota politics that I deplore.

You are not bound to endorse La République En Marche. Personally I adore gender quotas and hope that all the 214 women get elected.

Merci, Monsieur Macron.

[Velasco]

In 2012 PS obeyed the law and nominated 49 % women, while UMP, from what I know, preferred to pay the fine.

I looked this up.  It seems this law mandating 50/50 in terms of gender which I totally oppose only is in play for PR seats.  So REM was under no obligation to nominate 50/50 for these district seats.  The fact they did so was part of their political message and brand, which in this case I oppose.

So it seems that nominating an equal number of men and women was the express wish of the beautiful and flawless president-elect. This is wonderful!

As far as I know, REM is the acronym of "Rapid Eye Movement". Also, there is a band from Athens (GA) with that name (Greatest Hits: "Losing My Religion" and "Everybody Hurts", among others).

As for La République en marche, apparently the correct acronym is LREM. Please note down.

[Velasco]

If I understood correctly, the situation of the three is the following:

Manuel Valls is a candidate "sans étiquette" (neither the PS nor LREM nominated him). Marisol Touraine was nominated by the PS, but it seems that after this affiche came out the party wants her expulsion. Patrick Mennucci claims that the affiches saying "un député de gauche pour Macron!" are the product of a manipulation orchestrated by the Mélenchon's sect. Wonderful!

[Velasco]

Progressively starting up, Valls et alii. Wow.

[Velasco]

The fundamental problem is, imho, the link to the Nation. The PCF is historically internationalist and they tend to prefer referencing class struggle rather than French identity. Mélenchon has chosen the opposite way; his rallies were full of tricolor flags and he sung the Marseillaise with the crowd, something a PCF candidate would never do. Both are building their discourse around historical references; the Labor movement for the PCF, and the French Revolution for la France Insoumise.

Guess which strategy works best?

From what I 've read the sources of inspiration for Mélenchon and la France Insoumise were certain Latin American political movements (such as Rafael Correa's "civic revolution" in Ecuador), Bernie Sanders and Podemos in Spain. There are obvious differences between countries and FI is neither Podemos nor Correa's party, of course. Anyway that appeal to the French Revolution and its symbols concurs with the appeal of Latin American leftwing populism to the "people" and the "motherland". There is some influence of leftwing populist theorists Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The latter wrote a book with Ïñigo Errejón from Podemos which title translated into French is Construire un peuple.

https://www.editionsducerf.fr/librairie/livre/17946/construire-un-peuple

And there was that March for the VI Republic with the presence of Chantal Mouffe

http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2017/03/18/entre-bastille-et-republique-melenchon-reussit-son-pari_5096932_823448.html

While in 2012 Mélenchon made calls to assemble "the people of the left", in 2017 appealed to "the people" without additives and the red flags were much less visible. It's obvious that people in the PCF couldn't be happy with that, but FI got seven million of votes.

Another question is how arrogant Mélenchon is and how stupid and suicidal has been for the Left running separate lists in the legislative elections (it looked that it saved face somewhat by winning 17 and 10 seats, but it's indisputably a poor result). Even Pablo Iglesias (who is a bit of an arrogant prick in my opinion) pales in comparison in what regards personality cult and sectarianism.