Who do you want to win the French election?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

15 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	Francois Fillon
	1 (7%)
	Marine Le Trump
	0 (0%)
	Emmanuel Macron
	8 (53%)
	Benoit Hamon
	0 (0%)
	Jean-Luc Mlenchon
	6 (40%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
Show usernames Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll

[ADX]

1. LMMFAO @ Marine Le Trump...

[meow2u3]

10. Personally, I prefer Marine Le Putin

or La Putain in her case!

[Kentonio]

19. I like what you did there.

[DavidDvorkin]

2. Boeuf Bourguignon

[dchill]

31. Jacques Clouseau.

For a more serious answer.

[Ghost Dog]

3. Macron is a con and a neocon

who desires great power for himself and for 'elite' authoritarianism.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/emmanuel_macron

And his "mentor", Alain Minc, appears to be, amongst other things, a Dominionist. Look it up, my source on this is in Spanish (.pdf):

https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/4553628.pdf

I'd vote Mélanchon.

[retrowire]

4. Yo momma

I hear she's a smart lady.

[grossproffit]

29. La Momma!

[mvd]

5. Jean-Luc Mlenchon

Yes, he is to the left of Bernie - almost radical. But my ideas are closest to his. I support a minimum income for everyone here while keeping protections like Social Security and Medicare along with single payer. That way, the income doesn't get eaten up. Jean-Luc Mélenchon supports 100% taxation for people earning more than 33,000 Euros per month.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

6. Jean-Luc Melenchon wants to pull out of NATO and the EU. I can't abide by that.

Last edited Sat Apr 22, 2017, 11:11 AM - Edit history (1)

Jean-Luc Melenchon wants to pull out of NATO and the EU. I can't abide by that. Bernie correctly in my opinion supports our participation in NATO and favors a united Europe. NATO participation is a non-negotiable issue for me. I believe the European Union is a good thing. Among the many reasons I oppose Trump is his contempt for the EU and NATO so how could I support a politician who shows contempt for the EU and NATO just because it comes from the left and not the right ? On NATO and EU Melenchon is more like Trump and Le Pen and the BREXIT gang.

I support a guaranteed standard of living and all that entails however I oppose 100% taxation. I support progressive taxation, of course, the more money you make the greater percent it you should pay because the less money you make the more of it you have to spend to live, but even in a progressive taxation system that percentage should be well less than one hundred percent.

My order of preference:

Macron
Hamon
Melenchon
Fillon
...
...
...
...

...

...
LeTrump

[mvd]

7. I can live with his stance on that since I agree with..

His overall views more than the others. The others are at best centrists. Just my opinion - my contribution to your poll is voting him.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

8. I respect your opinion.

I just think NATO and the EU are positive institutions. In fact I think we should create even greater ties with our immediate neighbors which include Canada, Cuba, and Mexico.

I understand the need for borders but to me they are social constructs like race. I have more in common with your nominal Canadian or Mexican than your nominal Trump supporter, a lot more...

[mvd]

9. I agree about NATO

The EU I have problems with not due to nationalism but because of the austerity they promote.

How about that other French leftist that is fifth I believe? Hamon. I would vote for him if he is supportive of NATO. I did not see him here when I voted.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

11. I like Hamon. He's my second choice.

I remember when some Americans were flipping out when Mitterand the Socialist won and what it meant for NATO. France was one of the alliance's most stalwart supporters under his government.

Now that I think of it in a perfect world I would vote for Hamon. The fear is that is one less vote for Macron which makes a Fillon-LePen or a Macron-LePen runoff more likely. The goal is to prevent LePen from making it to a run off or to prevent a run off with Fillon (Ted Cruz) and LePen (Trump).


American politics is tricky enough.

[DFW]

12. I'm in France once a week for work, and my French friends tell me

They are frustrated, disgusted and fed up. They all, every last one, have a "this is the best we can do?" attitude. They KNOW they don't want LePen or Mélenchon, and can't really stand the others, either. They know the dangers of staying home and not voting (i.e. LePen), but they REALLY don't know to whom to give their vote.

If there were a candidate named "Aucun de-ces-Tarés," that candidate would win in a landslide.

If you're using a computer translator, don't take their translation of "nerds" as what the French mean with "tarés." In modern day speech, it means somewhere between "retarded" and "deranged"

[DemocratSinceBirth]

13. I know Obama is tacitly supporting Macron. I trust his judgment.

[DFW]

14. Usually, so do I. Maybe Obama knows Macron. I don't

I haven't seen Obama since he left office. Macron baffles most of my French friends. He's the only one they can't pin down, and that makes them suspicious.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

15. So the "smart money" is that Macron and LeTrump end up in a run off which Macron wins?

[DFW]

16. No one is being smart, at least not in Paris

I haven't traveled out into the countryside lately. But the does seem to be what most people are resigned to, and since everyone hates LePen in Paris, that's how they see it there. But LePen is from the south. That's where her base is, and it could look different from down there. I only have a Paris perspective, I'm afraid.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

17. The urban/rural divide is universal.

[DFW]

18. True, but I was thinking about France's other big cities

Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, they all have their local issues. Being a Mediterranean port, Marseille is especially susceptible to anti-foreigner rhetoric, because it's where boats from North Africa have been heading since before 1962, when Algeria won its independence from France. It's no accident that the LePens have a comfortable base there. When you hear them talk when the media is watching, they try not to have a Marseille accent, which is recognizable to anyone from France after about 3 seconds.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

20. That is about where all our staff in Toulouse is at

I would say most of them swing a little further to the right fiscally than the mainstream, but they're mostly supporting Macron because they don't want to see a run-off between LePen and Melenchon as far fetched as that is.

They believe that were Jacques Chirac not in such poor health he probably would have been pulled back in.

[DFW]

22. They probably have it right

Chirac, from what I hear (and this is NOT first hand) is experiencing serious dementia, and is far enough gone to be unable to make a coherent speech (Trump comparisons aside for the moment, please).

Sarko's antics put him out of the running before it even got started. With Macron, they're getting a surprise package of what's behind door number four, but the sentiment seems to be, "we don't know what he really has in mind, but it can't be worse than any of the other three, so why not risk it." That is one terrible set of choices when being asked to vote for the presidency of your own country, but who are we to jeer? We had the clearest of choices, won the vote, and yet still let the loser into the Oval Office. We are hardly in a position to point fingers if France makes the "wrong" choice.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

24. I think what they want is their very own Angela Merkel

Effective, Stable and Boring.

[DFW]

25. The French would kill to have "effective, stable and boring."

In late 2000, they asked me if they could have Bill Clinton, since he was prohibited from havig a third term in the USA. They weren't joking. They said they same about Obama last year.

The Germans are immune to stupidity, either. The SPD is trying to run a smear campaign on Merkel n the media, all of them repeating that she is "alt und verbrucht (old and used up)." It's just a stupid slogan, but I heard it used by and old friend of ours who was German radio news station chief for Moscow for 5 years and should know better. Merkel is anything BUT "used up." She knows full well that, except for Norway and Switzerland (not coincidentally, two European countries that did NOT join the EU), the Germans have it best in Europe. The Danes have the reputation for being the happiest in Europe, but the ones I know always complain that it's hard to either starve or get ahead there, and many leave to escape the monotony.

There is no bigger critic of France than a Frenchman, and yet they STILL don't seem to get a president who exudes confidence AND competence. The last one was Giscard, and he left office in 1981. He used to phone almost daily with his friend, the German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt. They were both fluent in English, and spoke together in that language. It was sort of like cloning Justin Trudeau, giving the clone an American accent, and installing him in the Oval Office. It gave both France AND Germany a good feeling knowing that they had two guys who were pragmatists, internationalists, knowledgeable about economics and foreign policy, and liked working with each other. Both the French and the German miss that kind of Europe.

In 1973, I remember my first trip through Yugoslavia. In Zagreb, I heard that young people gathered in the evening in Marshal Tito Square. So I walked over and struck up a conversation with some Croatian college students. One of them jokingly said he was almost a foreigner, as he was a Serb. Everyone laughed, and took it as a lighthearted joke. They were all friends. Twenty years later, they would be slitting each other's throats for real. No wonder so many Europeans long for "stable and boring."

[tammywammy]

21. France is in a position with no great candidates.

Since Obama supports Macron then that's who I hope wins. Le Pen is just shit.

[Starry Messenger]

23. I would like to support Mlenchon, but I've read he is anti-immigration?

I'm also suspicious of the left-wing Euro-skeptic position. As an internationalist, anything that enables right-wing globalist fantasies seems like strange thing for the left to ally itself with.

[grossproffit]

26. Macron

[grossproffit]

27. Hell no to both Melenchon & Le Pen

[Warpy]

28. I don't care for any of them, probably very much like the French, themselves

but the center left under Hollande has collapsed to the point that he refused to run again, so they're stuck between the center right and the absolutely lunatic far right because no one else really has a chance. I know exactly how they feel, it's been the US's choice since 1969.

[WinkyDink]

30. Sanity, in whatever form that will take.

[roamer65]

32. Definitely Macron.

He's the sanest of the bunch.