Let’s not panic over headlines that miss the truth of what is playing out in elections around the world
Sound the alarms. For the third time in 20 years, a far-right leader named Le Pen has made it to the runoffs in France’s presidential elections. In 2002, it was old Jean-Marie Le Pen against Jacques Chirac. Now, for the second election in a row, it’s his estranged daughter, Marine Le Pen, who has come in second to Emmanuel Macron, the centrist incumbent.
Having said that, we’d also do well to remind ourselves that theatrical panic over the spectre of another upset can sometimes seem forced or rote. Macron has often been an unpopular president, often seeming brittle and self-satisfied. He made the near-catastrophic decision to not even bother campaigning until only weeks before the vote. That aloofness tended to confirm the impression that he thinks he’s too good for the line of work he’s chosen.
Re-election should never be automatic, but it does bring the temperature down if voters find they can at least occasionally settle on somebody they like more than the prospect of seeing the door hit that guy on the backside. My goal here isn’t to trivialize. It’s to make a real point that can be lost in the panicky headline re-writing: the democratic impulse in voters is often resilient and stubborn. Voters aren’t looking for parties that reject mainstream values — openness, alliances, the rule of law. They’d much prefer to find parties that embrace those values — and can demonstrate that those values still work for the greater good.
As a very sweeping generalization, voters only betray the parties of openness and solidarity when they feel those parties have betrayed them. They turn to radical options, in numbers sufficient to ensure their victory, only when they feel the people who claim to protect the notion of common citizenship have sold it out.
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