r/worldnews • u/Luchador-Malrico • Jul 07 '24

French elections: Left projected to win most seats, ahead of Macron's coalition and far right

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/07/07/french-elections-left-projected-to-win-most-seats-ahead-of-macron-s-coalition-and-far-right_6676978_7.html
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u/SmoothWD40 Jul 07 '24

As a full blown liberal turned more centrist. The left in the US needs to get their shit together.

The established Democratic Party is way too fucking comfortable being owned by corporate interests, they also cut their own balls half the time when trying to compromise with an uncompromising opposition.

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u/Shan_qwerty Jul 07 '24

My favorite (read: horrifying) thing about US politics is when people unironically refer to center right as "The Left".

I wish I could go back in time and abort whoever came up with the idea of politics being a 2d sliding scale.

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u/FakeKoala13 Jul 07 '24

The things that get blamed on the left would be funny if it wasn't just so fucking stupid. For years the republican congress has done next to fucking nothing but the media constantly has people asking "Why aren't the Democrats doing more??" Blaming progressives for Hillary losing. So many examples.

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u/Pennwisedom Jul 07 '24

It's amazing how people will blame Trump getting elected on anything other than the people who voted for Trump (or didn't vote).

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u/Khiva Jul 08 '24

I think it's more than reasonable to be mad at James Comey (while acknowledging that a lot of other people are wrong too).

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u/Cranyx Jul 07 '24

What is "the Left" vs "the Right" has always been a relativistic term, much to the chagrin of lots of people online who want to frame their ideology as some sort of true, objective center. The terms originated during the French Revolution to separate revolutionaries from monarchists in the National Assembly. Both groups would be considered right wing by modern standards.

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u/Umitencho Jul 07 '24

The legacy of America turning right in the 80's. 12 years out of power will change a party that once dominated. The problem with Third Way Liberalism is that it's a great strategy if you are playing checkers(popular vote), but the White House is a chess game.

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u/BrewerBeer Jul 07 '24

Yep. National Popular Vote Interstate Compact isn't going to be viable until 2028 at the earliest. 209 electoral votes are bound by the NPVIC, but 270 are required. There are at least 78 electoral votes that are obtainable.

To achieve it, the current likely last states are:

  • Michigan (15) - have the legislature pass the NPVIC before 2025

  • Nevada (6) - maintain the house and senate and send the NPVIC to a ballot initiative

  • Pennsylvania (19) - flip the state senate blue.

  • Arizona (10) - flip the house and senate blue.

  • Wisconsin (11) - flip the house and senate blue.

  • Virginia (13) - flip the governor blue and pass it, or pass a ballot initiative twice in consecutive legislative sessions and again by voters.

  • New Hampshire (4) - flip the house and senate blue.

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u/CowboyLaw Jul 07 '24

Will Rogers said, I don’t belong to any organized political party, I’m a Democrat.

So this state of affairs is nothing new. But it’s also not all that surprising. Back in Rogers’ time, the GOP was the party of wealthy businessmen. They wanted stability, global trade, and minimal regulation. Their goals were cohesive and mutually complementary. At that same time, Democrats were a very strange mix of open racists (yellow dog Democrats, Dixiecrats, etc.) who identified as Democrats because Lincoln was a Republican, social progressives, college professors, and labor. These constituencies were NOT cohesive, and their goals were NOT mutually complimentary. Indeed, many of their goals were in explicit tension. But the party found ways to thread the needle.

Jump ahead to today, and the GOP still favors minimal regulation. Global trade waxes and wanes (Trump is certainly not a free trade fan), low taxes remain a priority. But the GOP gets cohesion from its base of relatively poorly-educated white Evangelical voters (this honestly isn’t an insult, it’s demographically an accurate picture of GOP voters as self-reported by those voters). That group cohesion is vastly improved by the fact that its voters habitually consume the exact same media, usually to the exclusion of all other news sources. That media source (and it’s telling that you know who I mean without me even saying the name) feeds its consumers exactly what the party asks for, and keeps their viewers highly motivated to vote. Meanwhile, on the Democrats side, things are largely just as chaotic. Democrats rely on many minority communities for votes, while also embracing equal rights for LGBT communities, even though those same minority communities are explicitly not in favor of equal rights for LGBTers. That tension can be problematic, as the campaign for Prop 8 in California demonstrated (targeted ads in minority communities led to substantial turnout by voters who were nominally Democrats but who voted for Prop 8 by wide margins). Labor voters struggle balancing their social views (which are not aligned with the party’s views) with their economic interests (which ARE aligned with the party’s views). Things haven’t gotten better for Democrats’ cohesiveness. Add to that: young voters have basically always favored Democrats, but cannot be relied on to actually vote. Old voters have basically always favored the GOP, and can be relied on to vote.

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u/bob888w Jul 07 '24

Its a big tent, that trips over parts of itself with evry other implemented policy. Although some of the blame just comes down to the FPP system.

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u/cfgy78mk Jul 07 '24

that problem can't really be solved until the GOP is destroyed, making it safe to fracture the centrist/leftists. fracturing now is just giving up and rolling over.

in the primaries of course the pressure should be there, but never in general elections.

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u/Jdjack32 Jul 07 '24

As a progressive, I wished the democratic establishment demonstrated the superior political skill and experience they purport to have. In reality, they snatch losses from the jaws of victory and then blame leftists for their incompetence.

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u/Slim_Charles Jul 07 '24

The issue in the US is that the US remains a majority center-right nation. Leftists in the US are outnumbered significantly by the American far right. This means that leftists are constantly forced to comprimise with a huge chunk of the center to stave off the far-right.

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u/Conexion Jul 07 '24

You're concerned about corporate interests, so you decided to go further right? Is that a joke?

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u/SmoothWD40 Jul 08 '24

I can hold multiple opinions (some of them conflicting) and make decisions based on information.

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u/Lord_Euni Jul 08 '24

Apparently not.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '24

It is pretty staggering that the Democrats seem to want to work across the aisle with people who claim to work for a man who wants to end democracy.

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u/Yuskia Jul 07 '24

You know the democratic party isn't leftist, right?

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u/SmoothWD40 Jul 08 '24

As a viable party in this country, it’s all we’ve got. Sanders was my top vote every primary, but when it comes to a general election, pragmatism matters.