Voilà AWAV’s annual end-of-year list (posted a couple of days into the new year) of movies that opened theatrically in France or the USA (for the 2024 list, go here). Seeing that 2025 was, for me, an annus horribilis—briefly described in my previous post—during which I saw relatively few movies (< 50), missing many that were well-reviewed and/or that I bookmarked, I thus did not see a sufficient number to draw up a traditional AWAV end-of-year list. I thus offer here an abbreviated one. I do intend, however, to see more movies this year, including some that I missed in 2025, and to post more often on cinema (particularly as so many movies I see, including those below, have political themes). (N.B. movies below that have an asterisk I rated ‘excellent’ on Allociné, France’s indispensable cinema website).
This is AWAV’s first post since March 2nd. Precisely 9½ months ago. AWAV’s silence over the course of this otherwise drama-filled year, in America and so much of the world—which, in past years, would have seen AWAV piping off almost daily on the latest outrage or insanity in MAGAland or some other benighted corner of the earth—has been noted by friends and readers, who have written or asked what’s going on. I’m not going to delve into detail here, except to say that this has truly been an annus horribilis for me and my family in the US.
In my case, I underwent a surgical operation in February to correct an increasingly debilitating arthritic condition in my right ankle—broken once in my life and operated on twice—which had rendered me a near-invalid by this time a year ago. There were days when the mere act of walking had become so excruciatingly painful that I would renounce being mobile for the day, a consequence being the narrowing of my own cognitive world. Not a way to live. I was assured by every medical professional with whom I spoke that, at the end of a long recovery period, with a regimen of physical therapy, I would walk again more or less normally. Inshallah.
The leg in a cast and with strict doctor’s instructions not to put any pressure on it, I was confined to my home for the subsequent two months, during which time I ventured outside twice, both times for medical appointments (and transported by ambulance). Given my condition, I asked my stateside family—mother, sister, brother (informally adopted), all in Raleigh, North Carolina—to please not have any health emergencies during my home confinement, as I would not, under any circumstances, be able to travel before the last week of May.
Alas. As fate would have it, not only did one family member have an emergency but all three. By mid March and over the subsequent two months, all three found themselves in hospitals or rehab facilities in Raleigh/Durham, with very different afflictions, and me 4,000 miles away and feeling helpless. And as fate would have it, the three emergencies concluded with two deaths: brother Aziz on May 18th (utterly unexpected when he entered the hospital) and my 95-year-old mother on September 22nd (who will be the subject of a forthcoming post).
This is not the way it was supposed to happen. Since late May I have made three trips to North Carolina for thirteen weeks all told, and the voyages will continue in 2026. I’ve had a lot on my mind during this annus horribilis and many things to deal with, one consequence being that I have been less focused on the news and politics than I normally am, and less able to concentrate on a given subject for a sufficient amount of time so as to produce AWAV posts that would be interesting to AWAV readers. Le cœur n’y était pas.
So given all the above, why a post on a contemporary Turkish-German Anatolian folk-rock chanteuse whom few AWAV readers have likely heard of? Speaking for myself, I did not know (the sublime and terrific) Derya Yıldırım before this summer, hearing her for the first time on Spotify and probably thanks to the algorithm. And the algorithm will know that I occasionally listen to Turkish music, which is familiar to me, having lived in Turkey (Ankara) for four years in my early teens (1968-72). These were good years for my family, particularly for my mother, who was never happier than when she was professionally engaged in projects such as the two-year study of rural-urban migration—the case study: migration from a town in Çorum province to Ankara—she directed under the auspices of the Turkish ministry of finance and USAID. She returned to Turkey for months at a stretch in the late 1970s and 1980s, as a consultant for UNICEF.
Aziz likewise had a special tie to Turkey, where he did his entire undergraduate education, at METU in Ankara and Boğaziçi in Istanbul—both Anglophone universities but with Aziz—an Ithna Ashari Khoja from Somalia—attaining near fluency in Turkish. So at the memorial service I organized on September 28th, at the family’s house in Raleigh, for my mother and Aziz, I played Derya Yıldırım and her Grup Şimşek’s excellent album Yarın Yoksa (check it out on Spotify or one of the other music platforms, particularly the first two tracks). My mother and Aziz knew nothing of Derya Yıldırım but I’m sure they would have both approved of hearing her beautiful voice at their memorial service. And yesterday, December 18th, would have been Aziz’s 75th birthday.
As it happens, Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek played at La Marbrerie, a club in Montreuil, on November 11th. We of course went. The club, which recalled CBGB of the 1970s, was packed. Derya Yıldırım, who spoke to the audience in English, was great. Seeing her live, how can one not love her and her music?
[Once again I am publishing a post that is far from finished; I will complete it in the next day or two]
The awards ceremony is late tonight CET, in a few hours from the moment I write. Until two days ago I had it in my mind for some reason that the date was March 12. As I’m getting a late start on this—and have yet to complete Friday’s Césars post—it will be short and to the point. The list of nominees is here. I’ve seen all the films in the top categories except for three: Nickel Boys (released just the other day on Amazon Prime; I’ll see it soon), Wicked (a 2 hour 40 minute fantasy musical sounds like cinematic torture in my book, or, alternatively, an occasion to take a long nap), and Dune, Part Two (I didn’t see Part One and a 2 hour 45 “epic space opera” is, in view of my cinematic tastes, a guaranteed succession of naps punctuated by scrolling through my phone in the back row). Of the seven Best Picture nominees I did see, I rated none ‘excellent’ (4.5 on Allociné’s 5-star scale) and only three ‘very good’ (4.0). Here they are, rank-ordered.
BEST PICTURE: Conclave. This was a coin flip, not an obvious choice, but which I found to be a thoroughly entertaining, well-acted thriller—the casting is tops—with humorous or absurd moments, entirely set in the Vatican’s College of Cardinals, which has been summoned en catastrophe to elect a new pope, the departed one having suddenly died in dodgy circumstances. What ensues is intrigue, back-stabbing, double-dealing, scheming, shameless lying, and you name it, reminiscent of a 1980s meeting of the Chicago City Council, and with significant political differences among men who otherwise share the same ideology, as it were. That the holy men at the summit of the Catholic Church are no better or more moral than anyone else is hardly new and the dénouement of the film one sees coming, but that’s okay.
The other side of the flipped coin is director Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, set in early 1970s Brazil, during the military dictatorship, whose initial central character is the publisher and former left-wing deputy, Rubens Paiva, who is arrested at his well-appointed home in Rio de Janeiro, in front of his family, and is never heard from again. From that point, the film’s main character shifts to Paiva’s wife, Eunice, and her quest to find out what happened to her husband.
[This post is far from finished but I am posting it on this Friday evening anyway; I will strive to complete it this weekend inshallah]
Voilà my annual Césars post, on this 50th anniversary of the French movie industry’s answer to Hollywood’s Oscars (or, rather, its carbon copy). Writing on the Césars affords AWAV the occasion to weigh in on French movies seen the previous year—at least those deemed the most meritorious by Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma (as several meritorious films invariably receive no César nominations). The ceremony is this evening, at the Olympia hall. As with the previous year, 2024 was, from AWAV’s standpoint, not a bad one for French cinema, though, from a strictly commercial perspective, it was a downright excellent year, with five French films selling over 2 million tickets at the box office (which is a lot for France), three of which were veritable blockbusters and one topping the roost (including Hollywood) at nº 1. Cocorico! The list of nominees is here (et en français ici). Those that received multiple nominations are here. I’ve seen all but one of the films—in the theater or on VOD—in the non-technical categories, those I vote in, as it were. So here goes.
BEST FILM: L’Histoire de Souleymane (Souleymane’s Story). The best French film of the year, hands down, and the only one to make the 2024 AWAV Top 10. I will discuss this important film in a separate post in the coming week, so suffice to say here that it is a documentary-like chronicle of 48 hours in the life of a 25-year-old Guinean migrant who has requested political asylum in France—but who, knowing nothing about politics, is not a political refugee—and works illegally as a meal delivery biker (genre Uber Eats, Deliveroo) in Paris’ northern arrondissements. The new sub-proletariat.
N.B. This post does not consist of short film reviews such as I have done on AWAV from time to time. This past Sunday I tuned into Claire Berlinski’s weekly online Zoom class, Middle East 101, as the subject was Morocco and with a special guest—a former foreign service officer and Washington lobbyist for the Kingdom—present to speak about the country and answer questions. As it happens, Claire and a dozen students in the virtual class—who vary in age, professional background, and nationality (Americans, Canadians, and Germans predominating)—will be meeting in Marrakech next week—travelling long distances for a week of tourism and getting to know each other in person. I would possibly join them were I not laid up with a cast on my right leg and confined to my home to mid-April (more on which next time), as it’s been twelve years since I was last in Morocco—and have only been to Marrakech once, at age 18 (the summer between high school and college), arriving in that then-exotic city on the night train (3rd class car, with wood planks) from Tangier (via Sidi Kacem), staying in a hotel in the medina for one dirham a night (I won’t describe the sanitary conditions), and when there were snake charmers and camel caravans from Timbuktu in the Jemaa el-Fnaa. Almost as it was when Doris Day and James Stewart visited in ’56. My travelling companion, who was born and raised in Milwaukee, had never seen anything so exotic. I imagine it’s somewhat less so nowadays.
While Claire has been to Morocco, the others in the group have not. As cinema can provide insights into cultures and societies, I told the Zoom class on Sunday that I would draw up a list of good Moroccan films for those interested. Just about all are serious art house-type films that take up burning social issues, such as gender relations and patriarchy, social class cleavages (Moroccan society is highly stratified, far more so than neighboring Algeria), Islamism and jihadism, and corruption. So here’s the list of the Moroccan films that I have seen—almost all in the theater—since Y2K, in reverse chronological order (beginning with the most recent), with links to their IMDb page—with trailers and information on streaming platforms (Amazon Prime Video looks to be the main one)—and brief descriptions.
Queens. In AWAV’s ‘Best (and worst) movies of 2024’, I called this one the “Best feminist road movie from Morocco about a bad-ass jailbird mother and her pre-teen daughter with attitude.”
Everybody Loves Touda. By Nabil Ayouch, Morocco’s premier film director of the past two or three decades. I’ll see anything he does. In this one, a headstrong, intrepid village girl goes to Casablanca to realize her dream of being a chaabi music diva.
The Blue Caftan. By Maryam Touzani (Nabil Ayouch’s partner, both professionally and personally). An excellent film, set entirely in the Salé medina and with a subtle LGBTQ theme. Debuted at Cannes in 2022 and won numerous awards on the film festival circuit.
Casablanca Beats. by Nabil Ayouch. On aspiring hip-hop singers (N.B. homegrown hip-hop is a thing in Morocco). I have actually not seen this one, which came out during the pandemic, but as it’s available on streaming (in France at least), I will in the coming week.
Zanka Contact. An over-the-hill rock ‘n roller tries to make a comeback in Casablanca’s heavy metal scene.
Adam. By Maryam Touzani. I considered this one, which takes place almost entirely in a house in the Casablanca medina, to be the best film of 2020. No less. It debuted at Cannes and won awards on the festival circuit.
Sofia. By Meryem Benm’Barek. Very good film. Highly recommended.
Razzia. By Nabil Ayouch. Very good film. Highly recommended.
Much Loved. By Nabil Ayouch. On sex workers in Marrakech. The film, which debuted at the 2015 Cannes festival, was banned in Morocco following a virulent Islamist-led campaign against it, and with the lead actress, Loubna Abidal, fleeing to France after being physically assaulted in public.
Exit Marrakech. This is actually a German movie, entirely set in Morocco. I saw it at the 2014 German Film Festival in Paris and thought it pretty good.
Tinghir-Jerusalem, Echos from the Mellah. A ninety-minute documentary on one facet of the substantial Jewish presence—now all but vanished—in Morocco. See AWAV’s discussion of the film here (scroll down). The film may be watched for free, e.g. here.
Rock the Casbah. By Laïla Marrakchi. An entertaining dramedy set in an upper class family in and around Tangier, with a multinational MENA ensemble cast, including Omar Sharif. AWAV’s review is here.
Horses of God. By Nabil Ayouch. One of the best movies made—anywhere—on the circumstances and conditions that turn otherwise ordinary young men into jihadi terrorists. A must see. AWAV’s review is here.
Goodbye Morocco. A not bad thriller set in Tangier. AWAV discusses it here (scroll down).
Death for Sale. A slick crime thriller set among society’s lower orders in and around Tetouan. AWAV’s review is here.
Le Temps du terrorisme. A worthy film on secularists and radical Islamists in a neighborhood in central Casablanca. I saw it at the famed Tangier cinémathèque in 2013. As it looks not to have screened outside Morocco, it may be hard to find. AWAV’s brief review is here (scroll down).
Zero. A not bad film about a lowlife cop, but with a heart of gold, who works the night beat on the mean streets of Casablanca.
On the Edge. A very good film about four women in their 20s in Tangier, who live on their own (unusual in Morocco’s conservative society), work difficult, low-paying jobs, and do what they have to to get by and get ahead. AWAV’s brief review is here (scroll down).
The Source. By Franco-Romanian director Radu Mihăileanu, this film—by far the biggest box office hit, relatively speaking, of all those on this list—is not, stricto sensu, Moroccan or even explicitly set there, though it was entirely shot in a village in the High Atlas (some 50 km south of Marrakech) and the members of the A-list ensemble cast, all with ethno-cultural origins in MENA, had to learn Moroccan dialectical Arabic to play their roles. The film, in short, is a fable, about patriarchy and the reality of the dreary lives of drudgery of women in villages such as the one here; but with the women, fed up with their useless husbands playing cards in the café while the womenfolk toil away in the fields, deciding to collectively strike back. For more, see AWAV’s review here.
Casanegra. Two lowlife buddies making ends meet on the mean streets of Casablanca. Not a bad film so far as I recall.
Française. A very good movie about a Moroccan immigrant girl in France—played by the Franco-Tunisian-Algerian actress, Hafsia Herzi—whose family suddenly moves back to Morocco, and the identity conflicts that ensue.
Where Are You Going Moshé? Director Hassan Benjelloun tells the story of the sudden departure of the Jewish community in his hometnown, Bejaâd, in 1963. See AWAV’s discussion of the film here (scroll down).
Marock. By Laïla Marrakchi. This is the movie to see on the world of Moroccan upper class teenagers—where Muslim and Jewish kids mix no problem—who are concentrated in Casablanca’s upscale Anfa arrondissement. I have been reliably informed that the movie’s depiction of this stratum of Moroccan youth is dead-on accurate.
Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets. By Nabil Ayouch. The subject of this one—which is more sober of a film than the above one—is street urchins in Casablanca, whose world is 180° from that of the spoiled kids of Anfa. The film reminds one of Héctor Babenco’s ‘Pixote’ (Sao Paulo) and Luis Buñuel’s ‘Los Olvidados’ (Mexico City). N.B. Orphaned children living on the street was/is a sight in cities in Latin America, Africa, and South Asia, but in MENA only in Casablanca was/is this a phenomenon.
I have a couple of posts on politics (US, naturally) that have been underway for a week or more—which I will wind up and post in the coming days inshallah—but today I want to promote to AWAV readers this up-and-coming chanteuse, whom I saw in concert last night at the municipal theater in my banlieue on the Marne. Clara Ysé is a relative newcomer on the French musical scene, releasing an EP in 2019 and her first, and so far only, album, the sublime Oceano Noxx, in 2023, at age 30. A published novelist and poet, she was pursuing a graduate degree in philosophy (writing a thesis on Alain Badiou) when, in 2017, her mother, a prominent Paris psychoanalyst and philosopher, drowned while trying to rescue two children in rough waters on a Mediterranean beach. Subsequent to her mother’s tragic death, Clara, who had been singing since childhood but not publicly, gave herself over to music, writing lyrics and valorizing her exceptional voice.
And her voice is indeed exceptional, highlighted in all the reviews by music critics. Listening to her, she immediately reminds more than a few—my wife and a friend included—of the beloved chanteuseBarbara (1930-97), a comparison Ysé embraces. A 2019 review in Libération of her EP thus concluded:
Juggling between French, English, and Spanish, Clara Ysé explores uncharted territory, literally bombarding us with her moving songs inhabited by a poetry of the real. And then there is, above all, the original power of her voice, which allows her to approach those iconic figures who, too, imagined their own path without ever seeking to get closer to any fleeting hype. A voice is born.
I was turned on to Clara Ysé early last year, by my friend Alice, a semi-retired mid-Boomer academic comme moi, who, in turn, learned of Ysé and her music via France Inter. Public radio—France Inter, France Culture, FIP—has been promoting Clara Ysé over the past five years, and been instrumental in putting her on the map. I started listening to her on (the indispensable) Spotify, finding her excellent. So when I learned in mid-December of her concert, and practically in my neighborhood, I bought tickets for me and my wife—and in the nick of time, as the show was almost sold out.
The concert, in short, was terrific. Clara Ysé did not disappoint. Her voice and songs are beautiful. And moving. Her band—electric guitar, drums, piano, saxophone—which dished up serious rock n roll in a few songs, is also very good. The only thing I regretted was that the concert only went an hour-and-a-half. The audience, which filled the 675 seat theater, was enthusiastic. It was also an older crowd, which was striking. While the chanteuse is a late Millennial, her fans are Gen-Xers and Boomers. I’d be interested to know how common, or unusual, that is.
Here are some of Clara Ysé’s songs from her aforementioned album, culled from her YouTube page.
And here’s the video of Clara Ysé’s concert last year at the Cigale, a hallowed music hall in Paris’s 18th arrondissement, broadcast on France Culture and France 4.
Voilà AWAV’s annual list, for the 15th straight year (up a couple of days late, into the new year), of movies seen that opened theatrically in 2024 in France or the United States (for the 2023 list, go here). I saw plenty of movies as usual, over half of which I gave 3.5 stars (good) and above on the Allociné scale, but, generally speaking, did not find 2024 to be an exceptional year for cinema. I am, however, in a minority on this and on both sides of the pond, with, e.g., culture critics in highbrow US publications I look at proclaiming the year to have been an excellent one for movies (though I will note that most of the movies in their ‘best of’ lists have not yet opened in France). And here in France, there’s been a lot of patriotic chest-thumping about 2024 having been the best year for French cinema since 2008, which may be the case for box office receipts but may or may not be when it comes to movies worth seeing. And if French cinema did well, it was partly due to the dearth of Hollywood movies, owing to the 2023 writers guild strike. So in my top 15 below, not a single one is American (as for the three that take place in the US and have mostly American casts, they are, in fact, Danish, Spanish, and Belgian productions, and with directors from those countries).
N.B. Stateside friends have been telling me for years that they have never heard of most of the non-American movies I mention in these posts and have no way of seeing them in any case. So I have now embedded the links to the IMDB pages for the top 15, which have trailers for most of them and say where/how they may be watched (most appear to be available on Amazon Prime Video)
BEST MOVIE FROM HUNGARY: Explanation for Everything (Magyarázat mindenre)
BEST MOVIE FROM DENMARK: Sons (Vogter)
BEST MOVIE FROM FINLAND ABOUT A HELSINKI POWER COUPLE WHO DECIDE TO DABBLE IN POLYAMORY AND HOW IT WORKS OUT FOR THEM: Four Little Adults (Neljä pientä aikuista)
BEST MOVIE FROM ROMANIA WITH AN LGBTQIA+ THEME: Three Kilometres to the End of the World (Trei kilometri până la capătul lumii)
BEST MOVIE FROM ENGLAND WITH AN LGBTQIA+ THEME: All of Us Strangers
BEST CROWD-PLEASING MOVIE FROM ITALY WITH A FIRST-WAVE FEMINIST THEME: There’s Still Tomorrow (C’è ancora domani)
BEST MOVIE FROM CORSICA: The Kingdom (Le Royaume)
SECOND BEST MOVIE FROM CORSICA: Borgo
THIRD BEST MOVIE FROM CORSICA: In His Own Image (À son image)
BEST MOVIE FROM CAMEROON: Mambar Pierrette
BEST MOVIE EVER FROM GUINEA-BISSAU: Nome
BEST FEMINIST ROAD MOVIE FROM MOROCCO ABOUT A BAD-ASS JAILBIRD MOTHER AND HER PRE-TEEN DAUGHTER WITH ATTITUDE: Queens (ملكات)
BEST MERELY OKAY MOVIE FROM MOROCCO ABOUT A VILLAGE GIRL WITH ATTITUDE WHO DREAMS OF BEING A CHAABI MUSIC DIVA IN THE BIG CITY: Everybody Loves Touda (الجميع يحب تودة)
BEST MOVIE FROM SAUDI ARABIA ABOUT A HEADSTRONG TEENAGED VILLAGE GIRL IN THE AL-ULA REGION WHO YEARNS TO BE FREE: Norah (نورا)
MOST GRATIFYING IRANIAN AND ISRAELI CO-DIRECTED MOVIE ABOUT A HEADSTRONG IRANIAN FEMALE JUDOKA STAR WHO TELLS THE AYATOLLAHS AND MULLAHS TO F*CK OFF: Tatami (تاتامی)
BEST MOVIE FROM TURKEY: Yurt
BEST MOVIE FROM GEORGIA THAT IS MAINLY SET IN TURKEY: Crossing (გადასვლა)
BEST NOT BAD MOVIE FROM ISRAEL ABOUT AN IDF SOLDIER WHO DESERTS HIS UNIT IN GAZA BECAUSE HE’S HAD ENOUGH AND JUST WANTS TO BE WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND BUT WHO EVERYONE IN ISRAEL THINKS IS BEING HELD HOSTAGE IN GAZA: The Vanishing Soldier (החייל הנעלם)
BEST NOT BAD AGITPROP DOCUMENTARY ABOUT LIFE IN GAZA FIVE YEARS PRIOR TO GAZA’S POST-OCTOBER 7TH DESCENT INTO HELL: Journey Into Gaza (Voyage à Gaza)
BEST MOST POWERFUL DOCUMENTARY THAT LAYS BARE THE INIQUITOUS BEHAVIOR OF ISRAELI SETTLERS AND SOLDIERS IN THE SOUTH HEBRON HILLS: No Other Land
BEST DOCUMENTARY BY THE DAUGHTER OF THE GREATEST-EVER PALESTINIAN ACTRESS TELLING THE STORY OF HOW HER MOTHER’S FAMILY EXPERIENCED THE 1948 NAKBA: Bye Bye Tiberias (Bye bye Tibériade)
BEST NOT BAD FRANCO-BELGIAN-GERMAN PRODUCED MOVIE SHOT IN JORDAN ABOUT YOUNG EUROPEAN WOMEN WHO FLOCKED TO ISIS-CONTROLLED SYRIA TO BE SEX SLAVES OF JIHADIST FIGHTERS: Rabia
BEST UPPER CLASS COMING-OF-AGE MOVIE FROM INDIA: Girls Will Be Girls
BEST MOVIE FROM MONGOLIA: If Only I Could Hibernate (Баавгай болохсон)
BEST MOVIE FROM TIBET: The Snow Leopard (雪豹)
BEST MOVIE FROM BHUTAN: The Monk and the Gun
BEST NOT BAD LIGHT COMEDY FROM JAPAN POKING FUN AT JAPANESE WORKPLACE MORES: Mondays: See You ‘This’ Week! (このタイムループ、上司に気づかせないと終わらない)
BEST COMING-OF-AGE MOVIE FROM MEXICO ABOUT THE ORPHANED SON OF A CARTEL HITMAN AND WHAT HAPPENS WITH HIM AS HE COMES OF AGE: Sujo (Hijo de sicario)
BEST ALBEIT WAY-TOO-LONG MOVIE FROM ARGENTINA THAT IS NOT THE CHEF D’ŒUVRE IT’S CRACKED UP TO BE: Los Delincuentes
BEST BORDERLINE ETHNOGRAPHIC MOVIE FROM FRANCE ON CONFLICT AND SOLIDARITY IN THE ALGERIAN COMMUNITY IN PARIS’ 18TH ARRONDISSEMENT: Barbès, Little Algérie
BEST BORDERLINE ETHNOGRAPHIC MOVIE FROM FRANCE ON CONFLICT AND SOLIDARITY AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE IN RURAL FRANCHE-COMTÉ: Holy Cow (Vingt Dieux)
BEST FRENCH MOVIE ABOUT A NICE GUY IN THE HAUT-JURA WHO IS REALLY TOO NICE WITH AN IMPECCABLY CAST KARIM LEKLOU IN THE LEAD ROLE: Jim’s Story (Le Roman de Jim)
MOST UNDERSTATED AND ULTIMATELY SAD FRENCH COMEDY-DRAMA ON THE INCREASINGLY HOSTILE CLIMATE FOR JEWS IN THE IMMIGRANT-POPULATED PUBLIC HOUSING PROJECTS IN FRENCH CITIES WITH AGNÈS JAOUI AND MICHAEL ZINDEL IN THE LEAD ROLES: A Good Jewish Boy (Le Dernier des Juifs)
MOST INOFFENSIVE CROWD-PLEASING FRENCH MOVIE ABOUT HOW MUSIC CAN BREAK DOWN SOCIAL CLASS BARRIERS AND RECONCILE LONG-LOST BLOOD BROTHERS WITH BENJAMIN LAVERNHE AND PIERRE LOTTIN IN THE LEAD ROLES: The Marching Band (En fanfare)
MOST RIDICULOUS FRENCH MOVIE ABOUT A HAPPILY MARRIED MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN WHO IS NONETHELESS NOT GETTING IT ENOUGH WITH HER CEREBRAL HUSBAND SO GOES ADVENTURE-SEEKING ON TINDER WITH LAURE CALAMY IN THE LEAD ROLE: It’s Raining Men (Iris et les Hommes)
BEST MOST UNDERRATED BIOPIC BY SAM TAYLOR-JOHNSON OF A GREAT BRITISH CHANTEUSE-SONGWRITER WHO DIED BEFORE HER TIME WITH MARISA ABELA IN THE LEAD ROLE: Back to Black
BEST NOT BAD BIOPIC BY SOFIA COPPOLA OF THE VERY YOUNG SPOUSE THEN YOUNG WIDOW OF A GREAT AMERICAN ROCK ‘N’ ROLLER WHO DIED BEFORE HIS TIME WITH CAILEE SPAENY IN THE LEAD ROLE: Priscilla
BEST OKAY BIOPIC BY MEHDI IDIR & GRAND CORPS MALADE OF FRANCE’S GREATEST CHANTEUR-SONGWRITER WHO LIVED A LONG LIFE SINGING TO THE DAY HE DIED WITH TAHAR RAHIM IN THE LEAD ROLE: Monsieur Aznavour
BEST MOST ENTERTAINING AND SOMETIMES HUMOROUS THRILLER ABOUT POLITICAL INTRIGUE BACK-STABBING SCHEMING SHAMELESS LYING AND YOU NAME IT IN THE VATICAN’S COLLEGE OF CARDINALS WITH RALPH FIENNES IN THE LEAD ROLE: Conclave
BEST TRUE STORY MOVIE ABOUT A MARRIED COUPLE WHOSE MARRIAGE IS QUITE STRANGE WITH JULIANNE MOORE AND NATALIE PORTMAN IN THE LEAD ROLES: May December
BEST OKAY TRUE STORY MOVIE THAT’S GOOD FOR WATCHING ON AN AIRPLANE ABOUT A STRANGE TRAGEDY-AFFLICTED FAMILY FROM TEXAS AND THEIR STRANGE PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY WITH AN ENSEMBLE CAST ONE HAS PROBABLY NEVER HEARD OF SHARING THE LEAD ROLES: Iron Claw
BEST TRUE STORY MOVIE ABOUT THE TRAGIC LIFE OF AN ARYAN-PASSING JEWISH WOMAN IN WARTIME BERLIN WITH PAULA BEER IN THE LEAD ROLE: Stella: A Life (Stella: Ein Leben)
BEST TRUE STORY MOVIE ABOUT A RIGHTEOUS GENTILE IN GERMAN-OCCUPIED CZECHOSLOVAKIA WITH ANTHONY HOPKINS IN THE LEAD ROLE: One Life
BEST TRUE STORY MOVIE ABOUT THE BANALITY OF EVIL IN GERMAN-OCCUPIED POLAND WITH CHRISTIAN FRIEDEL AND SANDRA HÜLLER IN THE LEAD ROLES: The Zone of Interest
BEST PARTLY TRUE STORY MOVIE BY RITHY PANH ABOUT THREE INTREPID FRENCH JOURNALISTS WHO TRAVELLED TO LATE-1970s CAMBODIA TO INTERVIEW THE STRONGMAN LEADER OF THAT BENIGHTED COUNTRY’S UBUESQUE AUTO-GENOCIDAL TOTALITARIAN DICTATORSHIP AND WHAT A SCARY EXPERIENCE IT WAS: Meeting With Pol Pot (Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot)
BEST FRANCO-BELGIAN TRUE STORY MOVIE ABOUT A FRENCH LEFTIST ACTIVIST TURNED MEMBER OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT WHO BECOMES AN EFFECTIVE LEGISLATOR AND SLAYS A REDOUTABLE LOBBY WHILE HE’S AT IT WITH BOULI LANNERS IN THE LEAD ROLE: Smoke Signals (Une affaire de principe)
MOST UNDERRATED MOVIE BY ABDERRAHMANE SISSAKO THAT IS WITHOUT DOUBT THE FIRST-EVER MOVIE TO BE SET IN CHINA THE IVORY COAST AND CAPE VERDE: Black Tea
BEST COURTROOM DRAMA BY CLINT EASTWOOD THAT MAKES PLAIN SOME OF THE SERIOUS FLAWS IN THE AMERICAN JUDICIAL SYSTEM: Juror #2
BEST ALBEIT NOT ENTIRELY CONVINCING COMEDY-DRAMA BY FRANÇOIS OZON WITH HÉLÈNE VINCENT AND JOSIANE BALASKO IN THE LEAD ROLES: When Fall Is Coming (Quand vient l’automne)
BEST NOT BAD BUT NOT ALWAYS CONVINCING DRAMA BY PATRICIA MAZUY WITH HAFSIA HERZI AND ISABELLE HUPPERT IN THE LEAD ROLES: Visiting Hours (La Prisonnière de Bordeaux)
BEST OKAY BUT RATHER UNCONVINCING DRAMA BY ANDRÉ TÉCHINÉ WITH HAFSIA HERZI AND ISABELLE HUPPERT IN THE LEAD ROLES: My New Friends (Les Gens d’à côté)
MOST OVERRATED COMING-OF-AGE MOVIE BY LUDOVIC AND ZORAN BOUKHERMA BASED ON THE EPONYMOUS GONCOURT PRIZE-WINNING NOVEL THAT IS NO DOUBT BETTER THAN THE MOVIE: And Their Children After Them (Leurs enfants après eux)
MOST ABSURDLY OVERRATED GIMME-A-BREAK MOVIE BY GILLES LELLOUCHE ABOUT AN UNLIKELY TEENAGE ROMANCE THAT PROVES TO BE ETERNAL LOVE BUT THAT WOULD IN REALITY NEVER SURVIVE THE PASSAGE TO ADULTHOOD OR STAND THE TEST OF TIME AND IN WHICH AS A MOVIE MAJOR CASTING ERRORS WERE COMMITTED TO BOOT: Beating Hearts (L’Amour ouf)
MOST ORIGINAL WILD-AND-CRAZY OSCAR-BAIT MOVIE BY JACQUES AUDIARD BUT THAT IS BY NO MEANS HIS BEST MOVIE: Emilia Perez
BEST MESSAGE MOVIE BY JULIE DELPY ABOUT A SMALL TOWN IN BRITTANY THAT IS PREPARING TO WELCOME A UKRAINIAN REFUGEE FAMILY WITH OPEN ARMS BUT WITH THE FAMILY TURNING OUT TO BE SYRIAN INSTEAD AND HOW THE TOWNSPEOPLE REACT TO THAT: Meet the Barbarians (Les Barbares)
MOST INSUFFERABLE SCIENCE FANTASY MOVIE BY YORGOS LANTHIMOS THAT CAN ONLY BE APPRECIATED BY PEOPLE WHO DO NOT MIND SCIENCE FANTASY MOVIES: Poor Things
MOST INTERMINABLE SOPORIFIC WESTERN FROM ANOTHER ERA BY KEVIN COSTNER THAT ONE MAY TAKE A LONG NAP IN WITHOUT REALLY MISSING ANYTHING: Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1
WORST MOVIE ABOUT A BLOODY CIVIL WAR IN TODAY’S AMERICA THAT IS PARTLY REDEEMED BY ONE POWERFUL AND CHILLING SCENE: Civil War
MOST UNDESERVING CANNES FILM FESTIVAL PALME D’OR WINNER IN AT LEAST THREE YEARS: Anora
I am way overdue in writing on a whole range of subjects I’m following and have intended to weigh in on: the aftermath of the US election and countdown to the dreaded Trump 2.0 regime, the slow motion crack-up of the French Fifth Republic, the breathtaking coup de théâtre in Syria, the eternal Israel-Palestine conflict, among others. There will be AWAV posts on all in due course but to close out this annus horribilis, I offer here two texts—an essay and a commentary, to be precise—that I came across this weekend, which I consider sufficiently significant so as to merit posting in AWAV in their entirety.
The first is an essay by Mikhail Zygar, posted on his Substack site, The Last Pioneer, and titled “Putin and Defeated Liberalism: Russian President Announces the New World Order.” Zygar, previously unknown to me—h/t to Claire Berlinski for cross-posting the piece on The Cosmopolitan Globalist—identifies himself as a “Journalist and writer from Russia, now arrested by Putin’s court (in absentia); author of ‘All the Kremlin’s Men’ and ‘War and Punishment’; columnist for Der Spiegel and The New York Times; visiting Professor in Princeton.” Zygar’s essay, dated 3 December, is an analysis of Putin’s keynote speech (four hours, including Q&A) at a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi, on 7 November 2024—some 24 hours after Donald Trump was proclaimed the victor in the US presidential election, which was received with joy in the Kremlin. For those who adhere to liberal values and are attached to liberal democracy (which includes myself, obviously), it goes without saying that Vladimir Putin is the most dangerous leader in the world today (though I may have to revise this if Trump makes good on his sabre-rattling toward Mexico, Panama, Greenland and Denmark, and who knows where else). Putin’s Russia is the enemy. To have a clear idea of Putin’s geopolitical world-view, read Mikhail Zygar’s essay.
A few weeks ago, Vladimir Putin delivered a speech—an epoch-making address that laid out his new political doctrine, though it went largely unnoticed by many. This speech occurred the day after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election. The tone of a victor was unmistakable: Putin was celebrating a triumph. From his words, it was clear that he considers himself the winner of the war in Ukraine, the leader of the Global South, and the one offering terms to the West on behalf of all authoritarian leaders.
New World Order Is Emerging
Several years ago, when I stepped down as editor-in-chief of Russia’s only independent news television channel, I swore to myself that I would never again listen to Putin’s speeches.
But after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I’ve been forced to break that vow. The fact is, Putin’s speeches are sometimes significant. He has been in power for so long that his addresses have taken on a confessional tone. This was true of his infamous 2007 Munich speech, when he first openly challenged the West, and again in 2014, when he announced the annexation of Crimea in a Kremlin ceremony. Now, Putin’s recent speech in Sochi appears to mark another turning point. He seems to believe that he has won the war. His address carries the implication that, with the Democrats’ loss in the U.S. elections, the Western world he has fought against is defeated—and Putin is delivering his verdict.
Putin begins with a statement of fact: “Before our very eyes, an entirely new world order is emerging, unlike anything we’ve seen before—neither the Westphalian system nor the Yalta system.” This theme has been a refrain in many of his past speeches: he has long called for the creation of a new world order, insisting that the Yalta system is obsolete. Now, he speaks of this as an accomplished fact. Whether the West wanted it or not, the old order is destroyed, and “a fierce, uncompromising struggle is underway to shape the new one.”
As You Sow, So Shall You Reap
Then he turns to that struggle. To be precise, he threatens the West with nuclear war and annihilation, but in a philosophical tone he hasn’t used before: “Can human society remain a society with its ethical and humanistic foundations intact? Can humanity remain human? It might seem that there is no alternative. At first glance. But, unfortunately, there is.”
The world has likely never heard a more elegant justification for nuclear war. “In the policies of the United States and their allies in recent years, the principle of ‘if we can’t have it, no one can’ has become increasingly evident,” Putin stated. “This formula is very dangerous. After all, as the saying goes, ‘as you sow, so shall you reap.’” With this, Putin continues to threaten humanity with destruction, all while feigning that he is being forced into such a position.
He then articulates his ideology, one for which he is prepared to fight. It is strikingly straightforward: the rejection of any ideology, any principles or values that might be considered universal. Putin’s main adversary is Western liberalism:
“The threat lies in the imposition and normalization of ideologies that are totalitarian in essence, as we see in today’s Western liberalism, which, I believe, has degenerated into extreme intolerance and aggression toward any alternative, toward any sovereign and independent thought.”
Global Cynicism
How should this paradoxical statement be deciphered? Simply put, Putin insists that every dictator deserves tolerance. Every regime has the right to carry out its own repressions. Kim Jong Un is entitled to kill as many people as he deems necessary; the Taliban are free to impose any laws they wish on women; the Venezuelan authorities can rig their elections however they like. Each country has its own values, and no one should be taught how to live differently.
The fact that the West regards human rights as a universal value is, in Putin’s view, a “claim to exceptionalism, to liberal-globalist messianism.” He labels this as nothing more than a remnant of colonialism and advises the West to stop preaching democracy to the world. Primarily, he argues, because it’s ineffective: the effort to propagate Western values globally will only drain the resources of Western countries.
US As New USSR
“I am confident that sooner or later the West will understand this,” Putin claims. “After all, its past great achievements were always based on a pragmatic, sober approach, grounded in a rather harsh, sometimes cynical, but rational assessment of events and its own capabilities.” Here, he essentially tips his hat to Donald Trump, implying that Trump already understands this lesson. In Putin’s view, a cynical approach to politics is far preferable to clinging to outdated principles.
To bolster his argument, Putin turns to history. He points out that the Soviet Union also sought to spread its own ideology and even achieved some success, contributing positively along the way—such as helping African nations break free from colonial dependence. But, he argues, the USSR’s global ambitions and the economic burden of maintaining its international influence ultimately undermined its economy.
Intriguingly, in this speech, Putin rehabilitates Mikhail Gorbachev. Previously, Gorbachev had been vilified by Putin’s ideologues as a traitor to national interests. Now, he is reimagined as a well-meaning but naïve dreamer—someone who had good intentions but ultimately failed.
Putin goes on to assert that the United States exploited the situation, wielding liberal ideology as a weapon. He paints a vivid picture of the virtues of global opportunism:
“Unlike our opponents, Russia does not view Western civilization as an enemy. We do not frame the question as ‘it’s either us or them.’ Once again, I’ll emphasize: ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’—we never say that. We don’t want to teach anyone how to live or impose our worldview on anyone.”
Savage Face of Capitalism
Putin is not exaggerating. A clear example of his approach can be seen in Russia’s longstanding activities in Africa. For years, Russia has operated effectively on the continent by offering no ideological agenda—neither socialist nor liberal—simply supporting dictators willing to pay. It’s a purely capitalist approach, one that Putin now proposes as the global standard.
Finally, the most important theme for Putin is the lifting of sanctions. This is the core of his message: convincing the West that sanctions should be abolished.
“Today, the same forces and individuals are trying to use restrictions as a tool to pressure dissenters. This will not work for the same reason—because the vast majority of the world stands for openness without politicization,” Putin asserts. This is perhaps the most telling passage of his new doctrine. By “politicization,” he means any attention to internal issues such as human rights violations, corruption, or criminality. His principle is simple: don’t interfere in internal affairs, conduct business pragmatically. In other words, this is capitalism stripped of any idealistic veneer—the raw form of capitalism that Soviet propagandists once derided as the “savage face of capitalism.”
In Putin’s view, every country is akin to a corporation with its own internal management rules, norms, and traditions. Some corporations are owned by their workers; others have a sole proprietor. Some allow casual dress; others require uniforms. Some respect LGBTQ rights; others are run by homophobic owners—and there’s nothing to be done about it.
Brand New Feudal World
Essentially, Putin advocates a return to a feudal world, albeit one that retains the benefits of a modern open economy. “The modern world tolerates neither arrogance nor deafness to the characteristics and identity of others,” he declares. For Putin, this means systemic corruption, hatred of minorities, police violence, or habitual election rigging in many countries should be respected as local customs, traditional values deserving of deference.
“To build normal relations, you must first listen to your interlocutor, understand their logic, their cultural foundation, rather than impose your own assumptions about them. Otherwise, communication turns into an exchange of clichés and labels, and politics becomes a dialogue of the deaf.”
Of course, not everyone in Putin’s envisioned world order will have a voice. For example, he dismisses Ukraine’s aspirations to join Europe as the “appropriation of our historical territories.” Moreover, he appears ready to justify other nations’ desires to wage war on their neighbors: “We were forced into retaliatory actions; in this sense, they achieved what they wanted. The same is happening in Asia, on the Korean Peninsula.” Here, he seems to be recounting a recent conversation with Kim Jong Un.
Putin does not hide the fact that his new world order will resemble something out of the Middle Ages: wars will be frequent, and that, in his view, is perfectly normal. “Throughout centuries of history, humanity has grown accustomed to resolving disputes by force. Yes, that happens too. Might makes right, and this principle also works. Nations have to defend their interests militarily, asserting them by any means necessary,” he declares.
Don’t Swim Against A Current
Finally, Putin insists that these views are not his alone. Referring to the recent BRICS summit, he claims to speak on behalf of all its participants: “We are fighting not only for our own freedom, rights, and sovereignty but also defending the universal rights and freedoms, the opportunities for existence and development of the absolute majority of states.”
Putin is convinced that the countries of the Global South desire this new world order and that resistance to it is futile: “Even the most skilled swimmer, no matter what tricks or even doping he uses, cannot swim against a powerful current. And the current of global politics, the mainstream, is flowing in a direction opposite to the aspirations of the West.”
The overriding impression from Putin’s speech is that his intended audience is not the people who listened to him in Sochi, nor the readers of this text. He has only one true addressee: Donald Trump. Putin’s words are aimed at explaining his vision directly to Trump: “When, say, Washington and other Western capitals comprehend and acknowledge this undeniable, immutable fact, the process of constructing a global system aligned with the challenges of the future will finally enter a phase of true creation. God willing, this happens as soon as possible. It is in the common interest, especially that of the West itself.”
The second piece is not a text but rather a TV commentary (with transcript), by the journalist-author-political commentator-TV talk show host Fareed Zakaria, who is well-known in the US—where he is a member in good standing of the foreign policy establishment and legacy media punditocracy—but not in France or elsewhere. He’s politically centrist/ever so slightly center-left and operates within the boundaries of mainstream elite discourse on geopolitics and other big issues of the day, which is okay by me. I rarely disagree with his commentaries and takes, expressed on his weekly CNN show, the Global Public Square, which I usually watch when at home on Sunday afternoon (4 PM/16:00 CET).
As Zakaria looked to be on vacation yesterday, CNN substituted GPS with a rerun of a one-hour report on the America First movement—and more generally, of the history of isolationist sentiment in the Republican Party to the present day—that aired in October—two weeks before election day—and was produced and narrated by Zakaria. At the end of the report, Zakaria concluded with some closing thoughts on America First, offering a robust defense of the post-1945 liberal international order led by the United States. Though he does not quote her, he clearly agrees with (fellow immigrant and naturalized American) Madeleine Albright’s calling the United States the “indispensable nation.” Zakaria does not mention the name of the soon-to-be-elected 47th POTUS but makes clear the deleterious consequences, to the United States and the world, should liberal internationalism give way to America First isolationism and nationalism. He posted the video of his 6-minutes of closing thoughts on Facebook, which may be watched here. Otherwise, here’s the transcript:
1945 is a bright line in world history. The century before it was grim. World War II, World War I, the Boer War, the Balkan Wars, the Russo-Japanese War, the Sino-Russian War, the Spanish-American War, the Franco-Prussian War, and those are just the major conflicts.
Since 1945, there have been wars. Korea, Vietnam, the Soviets and Americans in Afghanistan, but the number of them and the number of deaths in them have plummeted by more than 95 percent by Steven Pinker’s 2011 estimates. Pinker also notes that successful territorial conquest declined to zero by the late 20th century, despite being the primary feature of war before 1945.
This is why the Russian aggression against Ukraine is such a dangerous aberration. There have been many civil wars of course, but Pinker showed that these have been less bloody than the major wars of the past.
The reduction of conflict is just one measure of the changes in the international system since 1945.
Countries before 1945 were autarchic with largely closed economies, high tariffs, and for the great powers, captive colonial markets. Things worsened in the early 20th century as countries became more mercantilist and nationalist. That began to change after 1945 as the world economy became more open and interdependent, which led to huge rises in the average incomes and quality of life of people across the world.
Average tariffs declined from around 20 percent in the 1940s to under 5 percent on most trade in 2016. Trade increased from $63 billion in 1950 to almost $25 trillion in 2022. And these numbers don’t capture the massive increase in global supply chains, cross-border investment and collaboration around the world. The result has been an almost five-fold increase in average income worldwide since 1950, adjusting for inflation.
This did not all happen by accident. It happened because the world’s leading nation, the United States, organized the world around a series of ideas that produced a very different international system than before. Creating a watershed in international history. It chose to ask for no spoils for its victory. Instead, it financed the rebuilding of the defeated powers, Germany, Italy, and Japan.
It poured money into poor countries, helping them to eradicate many severe problems of health and nutrition. Through the Bretton Woods Institutions, it created a structure of international trade and collaboration that birthed the open world economy. And with its efforts to force Europe’s colonial powers to end their imperial roles, it allowed for a new world of independent nations.
I’m not being naive. America was often selective, hypocritical, and wrong in doing these things. It still is. It often made tragic errors in using force to punish what it regarded as bad regimes. From Vietnam to Iraq. But compared to past great powers, the United States’ behavior and the world that it made stand in bright, shining light.
This world would not have come into being had Germany won World War II. It would not have expanded massively after 1989 had the Soviet Union won the Cold War.
It was not all an act of altruism. America genuinely believed that a world of openness, order, and liberty would be a more prosperous and secure world for all, especially the richest country of them all, itself.
The evidence bears this out. The United States has stayed the world’s leading economic power since 1945. Average income in the United States in 1945 was about $16,000. Today, it is about $58,000. Both numbers adjusted for inflation.
Indeed today, American dominates the world of technology and economics on a scale that is unprecedented. In 2008 the Eurozone economy and the American economy were about the same size. Today America is almost twice the size of the Eurozone.
And yet many Americans want to turn inward. It’s understandable. We take the world that we built and in which we have thrived for granted. We’ve tired of the burdens of leadership. We listened to those who say that foreigners are ripping us off, that we could squeeze them and get a better deal, and that we should walk away and let them sort out their own mess. We are seduced once again by the siren call of America First.
But once we walk away, the world we built will crumble. It is not naturally occurring and will not survive an American abandonment. No other power can fill our role. It is the labor of many generations that have built up these institutions and order. It would be the work of a few years to let it all erode and collapse. And yet that is what some are proposing in this election.
While the issues being discussed domestically are of great consequence, abortion, immigration, they pale into insignificance when you consider what is at stake in terms of the international system itself. Depending on how America acts over the next few years, we might be entering a new world. Actually, one that is old and familiar. One marked by narrow nationalism, protectionism, insecurity and constant mass scale violence and war.
Zakaria’s thoughts are neither original nor earthshaking; his view has been the US foreign policy establishment’s party line for the past eight decades, not to mention that of the Democratic Party and, until recently, the Republicans. But which does not invalidate it—and particularly when juxtaposed with the text on Vladimir Putin’s Weltanschauung. I won’t say that there’s a binary choice between Putin’s vision and Fareed Zakaria’s, except that there is in fact one. The historian Niall Ferguson—who, politically speaking, is not one of my references—had an article in Foreign Policy in 2004, “A world without power,” which I assigned, over several years, in a Master’s level class, to mainly French students. The article’s lede:
Critics of U.S. dominance should pause and consider the alternative. If the United States retreats from its hegemonic role, who would supplant it? Not Europe, not China, not the Muslim world—and certainly not the United Nations. Unfortunately, the alternative to a single superpower is not a multilateral utopia, but the anarchic nightmare of a new Dark Age.
And the conclusion:
[T]he prospect of an apolar world should frighten us today a great deal more than it frightened the heirs of Charlemagne. If the United States retreats from global hegemony— its fragile self-image dented by minor setbacks on the imperial frontier—its critics at home and abroad must not pretend that they are ushering in a new era of multipolar harmony, or even a return to the good old balance of power.
Be careful what you wish for. The alternative to unipolarity would not be multipolarity at all. It would be apolarity—a global vacuum of power. And far more dangerous forces than rival great powers would benefit from such a not-so-new world disorder.
Now that America First has triumphed, we’re going to find out what the international order looks like without the United States playing the hegemon. I don’t look forward to it.
Three weeks have passed since the election that I, along with countless other Democratic Party voters, awaited with dread—an election that I asserted to all and sundry was the most important of our lifetimes, if not the history of the world. No less. Pour moi, it was Kamala Harris or the Berezina (see previous post). But the majority of swing voters in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and the other battleground states clearly did not share my POV. Friends of AWAV have asked when I’m going to deliver my post-mortem on November 5th, so after three weeks of doomscrolling and procrastinating, here goes. But first, some observations on Trump’s cabinet and other highlevel picks, which have been coming down with warp speed and give an idea of what may be in store come January 20th.
Among the early Trump picks is the rogues gallery above. Three beautiful souls, who will be in charge of crafting and executing the incoming regime’s immigration policy, which promises to be the most draconian since Operation Wetback seventy years ago. They certainly have the temperament: e.g. Stephen Miller, who will be the most powerful official in the White House after Trump himself, relishes the idea of firing Predator drone missiles at migrant-transporting ships headed toward American shores; DHS Secretary-to-be Kristi Noem, who shoots puppies and farm animals point blank without batting an eyelash, will certainly not object to the poor huddled masses going down with the sinking ships hit by Miller’s missiles; and definitely not Tom Homan, who seems to delight in forcibly separating crying children from their asylum-seeking parents, with whom they may never be reunited. Cruelty is not a by-product with these top officials-in-waiting in the Trump 2.0 regime; it is, as Adam Serwer put it, the point.
Then there are these, nominated or appointed to head, in order, CMS, DOD, DNI, HHS, DOJ.
Kooks, crackpots, and grifters, most of them Trump lickspittles and all utterly unqualified for the posts to which they have been nominated. Moreover, an unprecedented number are under investigation for sexual assault.
All this would be farcical if it weren’t so pernicious. And quite simply insane. If there is one of the above who rises above the others in sheer awfulness, whose confirmation by the Senate would be an act of folly, it is Pete Hegseth (the second one in the lineup), a weekend Fox News talking host who I will wager no one reading this had heard of—I certainly hadn’t—before his November 12th nomination to the DOD. Hegseth, we learned off the bat, believes that the US military has gone “woke” and once he is ensconced in the Pentagon, will carry out a purge of the upper ranks—akin to Stalin’s of the Red Army in 1938 (hopefully without the firing squads)—but it goes further than that. On this, Jonathan Chait has an absolute must-read piece in The Atlantic, “Donald Trump’s Most Dangerous Cabinet Pick: Pete Hegseth considers himself to be at war with basically everybody to Trump’s left, and it is by no means clear that he means war metaphorically.” Chait writes that
Hegseth has written five books. (…) The [last] three, all published in the past four years—American Crusade (2020), Battle for the American Mind (2022), and The War on Warriors (2024)—lay out his worldview in florid, explicit, and often terrifying detail.
The worldview as presented by Chait is terrifying indeed. Hegseth is a horror show. If he is confirmed, Vladimir Putin will exult.
The Russian dictator will likewise exult, and then some, if useful idiot Tulsi Gabbard is confirmed as DNI. Gabbard’s useful idiocy may be seen in her tweet parroting Russian talking points on Ukraine, on the day the barbarian hordes, a.k.a. the Russian Armed Forces, entered Bucha, where they proceeded to rape, loot, pillage, and massacre.
Dear Presidents Putin, Zelensky, and Biden. It’s time to put geopolitics aside and embrace the spirit of aloha, respect and love, for the Ukrainian people by coming to an agreement that Ukraine will be a neutral country—i.e. no military alliance with NATO or Russia—thus… pic.twitter.com/Xh2RvMNWVk
Jonathan V. Last, writing in The Bulwark, delves into Gabbard’s relationship with Russia. His essay concludes:
Having Gabbard serve as DNI would probably set back America’s intelligence services by a generation.
First, asset recruitment would become impossible. Any potential recruit in the field would be a fool to cooperate with U.S. intelligence knowing that the American DNI was at least functionally on Putin’s side.
Second, no secrets would be safe. There is no way Gabbard could pass a security clearance check in 2024. The only way for her to gain access to this level of information is to be appointed to the top of the organization. She could never be considered for a job inside, say, the CIA. [Footnote: And not that it matters, but: She has no relevant experience. Literally none.]
Third, she’s not even on America’s side. Just objectively speaking Gabbard views the American government as a problem to be resolved and the interests of the Russian government as valid and worth accommodating.
Making Gabbard director of national intelligence simply makes no sense. It’s the equivalent of the American government gouging its own eyes out and purposefully making itself blind to the covert actions of its adversaries.
Or rather, it makes no sense for America.
For Russia, DNI Gabbard makes all the sense in the world.
On Gabbard’s qualifications and temperament, or the lack thereof, Adam Kinzinger writes in The Bulwark, “I Served With Tulsi Gabbard and Yikes: She’s no good.” And then there’s Gabbard’s indulgence of Bashar al-Assad, detailed by Michael Isikoff in a must-read piece in the Substack site Spy Talk, “Tulsi Gabbard, Bashar Al-Assad and Me: Trump’s DNI pick and I were both in Damascus in the winter of 2017 to meet with the dictator of Syria. We came away with very different takes.”
One would think it inconceivable that the Senate, even with the Republican majority, would confirm Gabbard as DNI. As for why Trump, who may or may not be a Russian asset himself, nominated her: Well, she’s good-looking and good on TV, which, for Trump, are primordial qualities in women. Trump was certainly impressed by the way Gabbard went after Kamala Harris in the 2019 Democratic Party primary debates. Gabbard and RFK Jr., both ex-Democrats, also happened to be the most popular Trump surrogates by far at campaign rallies, as one learns in a piece by The Bulwark’s Marc Caputo. These two ex-Democrat cranks are adored by the MAGA base.
RFK Jr.: It’s one thing to have a Secretary of Health and Human Services who opposes all vaccines, including childhood ones (MMR, polio, etc), but is a one-time heroin addict to boot. Call me naïve but I have a hard time imagining 50 Republican senators voting to confirm him.
And then there’s this nominee. While watching the video, keep in mind that this is the soon-to-be Secretary of Education.
🇺🇸
Voici Linda McMahon que Trump choisit pour diriger le Département de l’Éducation.
Elle était en charge des PME pendant son premier mandat.
Elle a dirigé avec son mari WWE qui produit des spectacles de catch. Ils sont devenus milliardaires
And now we learn that ‘whackadoo’Sebastian Gorka will be back in the White House, as counterterrorism adviser to the President. As one anonymous person-in-the-know told The Washington Post, “Almost universally, the entire [national security transition] team considers Gorka a clown. […] They are dreading working with him.”
Some 6½ years ago, during 45’s first term, I had a post on the Trump kakistocracy, a kakistocracy being ”government by the worst and most unscrupulous people among us.” Now this is not to say that every last Trump nominee or appointee is a lowlife degenerate. E.g., Trump’s pick for Secretary of Labor, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, is not only acceptable but may even be not bad at all, to the point that her nomination is causing congressional Republicans to “freak out.” [UPDATE: The Trump-friendly Wall Street Journal editorial page—which is, needless to say, not friendly toward labor unions—has expressed consternation over Trump’s nominee for Labor Secretary, committing two editorials to the subject in the space of five days: “Trump’s Labor Choice: Unions Over Workers: He nominates Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a teachers union favorite, to be his Labor Secretary” (Nov. 23) & “Trump Betrays the Truckers With Chavez-DeRemer: His Labor nominee’s views on gig workers could cost thousands of jobs” (Nov. 27)]
And then there’s the peculiar case of Matt Gaetz, who withdrew from consideration for Attorney-General. Gaetz, a sleazeball hors pair, was clearly unqualified to be A-G, so much so that the initial announcement of his nomination was received with incredulity and disbelief, as a laughable joke. That said, there is no reason to believe that the new A-G nominee, Pam Bondi, will be any less zealous in executing Trump’s desiderata. For the record, one also learns that Gaetz has supported progressive legislation in the House, even to the left of establishment Democrats. He has, moreover, struck up a friendship with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (watch here), and at a time when AOC and “the Squad” were being demonized nightly on Fox News. I had no idea.
My post-mortem on November 5th: I had intended to do it here but will now do so in a follow-up post, hopefully this weekend. In the meantime, here’s a must-listen podcast discussion hosted by my dear friend Adam Shatz.
And here are three articles, among the dozens I’ve read of late:
“How Trump Won,” by Nina L. Khrushcheva (Professor of International Affairs at The New School), in Project Syndicate (Nov. 6).
“Is This What Democracy Looks Like?,” by Michael Podhorzer (former political director of the AFL-CIO and smart electoral analyst) on his Substack site (Nov. 11).
“Why American democracy will survive: Students panicked after Trump’s win, but our research on autocracy points to democracy’s resilience,” by Eva Bellin (Myra and Robert Kraft Professor of Arab Politics at Brandeis University, and good friend) and Kurt Weyland (Mike Hogg Professor in Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin), in The Washington Post (Nov. 26).
Berezina: a river in Belarus and site of a murderous battle in November 1812 between the Imperial Russian Army and retreating Grande Armée of Napoleon Bonaparte, with the latter suffering catastrophic losses of men and materiel. “Berezina” has thus entered the French language as a metaphor for ‘disaster’ or ‘catastrophe’.
Berezina aptly describes the outcome of yesterday’s election, which I followed on The Bulwark’s YouTube livestream to the wee hours of the morning. The tone was sober early on, as it became clear from the early returns in Georgia that there was not going to be a Harris blow-out, which some had dared to dream of following the bombshell Selzer poll in Iowa (which has to be one of the biggest misfires in polling history), and became increasingly grim as the numbers from more states rolled in. And then there was the cursed New York Times needle (above), which slowly but inexorably inched in Trump’s direction as the Rust Belt states (can’t call it the Blue Wall anymore) started to report. I felt dismay as it became clear who was going to win but was less stressed out than in 2016, or even 2000 or 2004.
I am not going to offer an instant analysis of the stunning outcome—not only Trump’s victory but also of the Republican Party more generally—which lots of people are doing today; I’ll do so in due course, after I’ve thought about it some. In the meantime, here are three sharp analyses by three smart analysts from the vieux continent, published in the days before the election and that I was going to include in yesterday’s post.
The first is an interview in Le Nouvel Obs (Oct. 30) with Paris-based social scientist and historian Patrick Weil, who has an appointment at Yale University and whose latest book, The Madman in the White House: Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt, and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson, was published in 2023 in English translation by Harvard University Press.
“The Trumpist project is the revenge of the American South projected on a planetary scale”
According to the historian Patrick Weil, the Republican candidate for the White House represents an America that still hasn’t come to terms with the North’s victory in the American Civil War. With billionaire Elon Musk at his side, he intends to project this vision of white, Christian males across the globe.
Pascal Riché: The presidential campaign, with its many twists and turns (Joe Biden’s withdrawal after a disastrous debate ; the assassination attempts against Donald Trump ; the candidacy of a black woman, Kamala Harris ; the emergence of Elon Musk…), is out of the ordinary. What do you make of it, a few days before the election ?
Patrick Weil: What’s at stake in this campaign is the return to power of a new Donald Trump, who now dreams of conquering the whole world. This campaign is nothing like the one he ran in 2016. Remember : at the outset, his candidacy was almost a joke. And when he was elected, he was flabbergasted, almost stunned, hardly believing it. Now, the pattern is very different. He is campaigning to regain power, and to exercise it fully. And he intends to free himself from the shackles of the Constitution. It’s a sort of revenge of the South on the North. Let’s not forget that the Constitution, which was that of a federation of states before the Civil War, became that of a nation with the addition of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. They abolished slavery and protected the rights of emancipated former slaves, making them irretrievably citizens. Later, they permit to impose many federal law on the states.
The movement carrying Trump is that of white, Christian males who have never accepted the South’s defeat. And their opponent is a woman, and a black woman. The risk of Kamala Harris leading the United States has radicalized their support for the billionaire Trump. In his rallies, he is deified, the new Christ… But there is also a new and very interesting element in this campaign : the presence of Elon Musk.
Pascal Riché: What do you think billionaire Elon Musk, boss of Tesla, SpaceX and social network X (ex-Twitter), represents ? The economic elite ?
Patrick Weil: He represents technology and globalization. And his presence – instead of Steve Bannon’s one – changes the dimension of the Trumpist project. It’s as if the Southern revenge embodied by Trump were destined this time to extend beyond American territory to a planetary scale. Musk dreams of conquering the planet. But he can’t accomplish this by entering the White House, because, as a native of South Africa, he is not a natural-born American citizen – a prerequisite for running for president.
He therefore joined forces with Trump. This alliance is reminiscent of another, which I know well, having studied it for my latest book « A Madman in the White House » : the one that united, at the time of the negotiation of the Treaty of Versailles, President [Woodrow] Wilson and Jan Smuts, also a South African, member of the British delegation. Wilson, a Southern president, had practically fallen in love with this Boer general. This led him to write the statutes of the League of Nations with him, to cede most of the former German colonies to the British Empire, and also, at Smuts request, to impose heavy reparations payments on Germany.
When the U.S. Senate simply wanted to reiterate that, even within the framework of the League of Nations, the President of the United States had to respect the U.S. Constitution, Wilson asked his supporters in the Senate to vote against ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, creating the chaos that led to the Second World War. Like Trump today, Wilson had ambitions to rule the world, with Smuts at his side. He saw himself as the new Christ, and no longer wished to be bound by the shackles of the American Constitution, which had become that of the hated, anti-slavery North.
Pascal Riché: A Franco-British journalist, whose parents are South African, Simon Kuper, noted in the « Financial Times » that the three big Silicon Valley bosses who support Trump lived in apartheid South Africa : Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and venture capitalist David Sacks….
Patrick Weil: He’s right to point out that this is no coincidence. Nostalgia for America’s southern past and for apartheid South Africa can go hand in hand. But neither are they very different from nostalgia for « eternal » Christian Russia. If Trump wins, he’ll rule with his loyal Musk by his side, but also Vladimir Putin.
Pascal Riché: There’s a big debate in the US about whether Donald Trump is a fascist. What’s your take on it ?
Patrick Weil: Trump’s conquest of power doesn’t involve a mass party and armed militias. History never repeats itself. But there are certain elements common to fascism in Trumpism, such as the atmosphere of certain rallies or the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The second is Thomas Legrand’s Nov. 4 column in Libération. Legrand, a longtime political editoralist for France Inter before moving to Libé, is my favorite political commentator in France. (ICYDK, the very rightwing media magnate Vincent Bolloré, referred to in the column, strives to be France’s Rupert Murdoch). (N.B. I fed the text through the DeepL online translator).
Trumpism: today in the United States, tomorrow here in France
French public debate is not yet at the extreme point of degradation it has reached across the Atlantic. But we can already detect the first symptoms.
We’re worried, we’re panicking, we don’t want to believe it… The Americans can’t do this to us. This great democracy can’t elect Donald Trump, this fascist clown, this vulgar, crude, immature billionaire, this convict who has exploded all forms of political decorum, sent all the codes of public life into a tailspin. The Trumpian way of doing things, the reaction – or rather the lack of reaction – of the Republican electorate to the repeated provocations of the orange candidate, all seem very strange to us.
And yet, if we observe our own political debate, we’ll find real pieces of Trumpism, the emergence of that drift that political science doesn’t yet know how to describe, between new fascism, populism and the general breakdown of all collective rationality. We’re far from having reached the American level of the breakdown of public discourse and polarization, but Trumpism is making worrying headway in Europe and France.
How do we recognize elements of Trumpism here at home, beyond the simple score of our extreme right-wingers? It’s mainly a defiant relationship with factual truth. The most striking sign of this is the dominance of the Bollorized media sphere, which has succeeded in imposing its themes of identity and security, describing France as a dislocated society prey to the ravages of “uncontrolled immigration”, and reading economic and social news only through the prism of “grand replacement”. This Bollorian mechanism pushes a section of the media, well beyond the organs owned by the Breton billionaire, to prefer commenting on unverified “news” (which often turns out to be false) rather than putting their energy into doing their job: establishing the truth of the facts.
A recent example is a chemically pure case of the Trumpian method exported to France and set in motion by the Bolloré sphere. The case of the “forbidden publicity” of Jordan Bardella’s future book on the walls of SNCF stations. Fayard, publisher of the biography of the young RN boss, commissioned Publicis, the advertising agency that manages space for the SNCF, to run a poster campaign in France’s railway stations. Publicis refused, in accordance with its contract with the SNCF, which explicitly stipulates that there can be no political posters in stations, including those promoting a book written by an active politician.
Fayard, owned by Vincent Bolloré, could not have been unaware that its request would be refused. Perhaps that’s even why Bardella’s publishing house had formulated it: to provoke victimization on the basis of a lie. The refusal was therefore presented as censorship. The exchange on Tuesday October 29 between Eric Ciotti and the hosts of France 5′sC à vous about this crude manipulation was a moment of pure Trumpism, with the journalists recalling the facts and the deputy from Nice, now an ally of the RN, replying in substance: “It’s your truth, not mine”.
This aplomb in lying, which places journalism as the enemy, the producer of a relative truth, is only possible because it is supported, encouraged and financed by captains of industry like Vincent Bolloré. Several right-wing and far-right leaders, encouraged by those who may be their rich patrons for future elections, feel entitled to say anything, without feeling the need to base themselves on any factual reality. According to the Bolloro-Trumpian agents, this factual reality, in the case of global warming or proven immigration figures, would only be established to keep the people at a distance.
It is through the disintegration of the status of truth and of scientifically or journalistically established fact that Trumpism unfolds. France, without its tabloid press, had long been spared this scourge, but today, under the yoke of social networks, the algorithmic politics of their owners and their French industrial and media relays, Trumpism, this skewed relationship to facts, is spreading in our national debate and deeply damaging our social relationships.
The third piece is by Stathis N. Kalyvas, Gladstone Professor of Government and fellow of All Souls College at Oxford University. Stathis, who is a personal friend and one of the most brilliant political scientists one will meet, is also a public intellectual in Greece, where he writes a weekly column for the Athens daily Kathimerini, which he posts on Facebook, with the text showing up on my FB news feed in English thanks to Google Translate. The latest (Nov. 3) I fed through DeepL, which I find superior to Google (though passages may be awkwardly translated).
Bored voters
I recently heard, in an interesting discussion about the post-war period, something I didn’t know, namely that the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, which marked the collapse of the communist regimes and the end of the Cold War, went almost unnoticed in Greece, in the middle pages of newspapers that were almost exclusively concerned with the outcome of the upcoming elections. Something similar happened with the great financial crisis of 2008: for many it was news that mainly concerned America. But what events of the last fifty years have had a greater impact on Greece? I wonder if the upcoming elections in the United States will prove to be an event on the same scale as the previous two.
I note first of all that, on the basis of the available polling data, it is not possible to make any safe prediction about the outcome of the US election. The combination of the electoral system that makes these elections indirect, [the Electoral College], and the majoritarian electoral system (where a single vote difference can decide the allocation of all the electors in each state) makes the outcome highly uncertain. As in 2016, it is very likely that the outcome will be decided in a few states and by a few thousand voters.
How exactly? I note three scenarios. The first: that Donald Trump wins the election. Otherwise, political developments will probably be incomparably smoother. The probability of him being elected is currently hovering just above 50%. The second scenario is that Trump is surrounded by advisers who will push him to make radical choices in the field of foreign policy. This presupposes that Trump’s entourage will be purged of the technocrats who prevented such developments in the 2016-2020 four-year period and will be dominated by ideologues, before whom those who led the country into the adventure of invading Iraq look like innocent disciples. I can think of at least two such options: a US cut-off from NATO that would whet the appetite of all sorts of adventurers (say Putin or Erdogan) and push Europe towards an unprecedented crisis, especially if the cut-off of US aid to Ukraine is ended. The second is for a trade war to break out between the US and China that will have incalculable economic consequences and possibly contribute to some kind of military crisis in Taiwan. I would put the likelihood of such radical foreign policy choices in the event of a Trump victory at 60%. The third and final scenario is the inability of Europe to act in a way that limits the negative consequences of these choices. I am extremely pessimistic about Europe’s ability to function in this way, I would give a 20% chance of such a scenario.
If the above is the case, it means that a few thousand bored American voters will decide our lives. This is because, as polarization has anchored the majority of voters to one party or the other, the outcome is likely to be determined by whether or not next Tuesday a few thousand bored and relatively uninterested Americans get up off their couches to go vote. So let us hope, if we first consider the irony of the situation and if we also happen not to have any ability to personally persuade some of them, that the majority of those who decide to go and vote will be those who choose Kamala Harris and the majority of those who stay at home would have voted for Donald Trump.
The majority alas got off the couch to vote for Trump.
I had intended to do this post yesterday—the eve of the most important election in the history of the world—before catching my flight from RDU to CDG, but didn’t have time. Now it’s election day and I’m back in Paris, where I will start watching the returns in some six hours. It will be an all-nighter, at the end of which I will either be ecstatic or the opposite (something I do not wish to contemplate). Several friends have asked for my final prediction. I hesitate to make one this year, as I simply do not know, though in my post three days ago, I suggested a scenario that had Trump winning the Sunbelt states and Kamala Harris the Blue Wall, which, with NE 2nd CD, which would put her over the top with 270 EVs. Today I will roll the dice and predict a narrow win for Kamala in NV—following Jon Ralston, who knows that state’s politics better than anyone—and NC—because my vibes—thereby upping her to 292 EVs. As for the PV: KDH 50.5%, DJT 47%. A crap shoot.
Pollsters and pundits have been saying for two months that the race is tied, that it’s a coin toss as to who will win. The coin toss metaphor reminds one of the gas station scene in the Coen brothers’ film “No country for old men” and the encounter between the Javier Bardem character, Anton Chigurh—the most terrifying psychopathic killer ever depicted on the big screen—and the gas station proprietor.
The worried proprietor doesn’t know what will happen if he gets the coin toss wrong. But we do.
Donald Trump: so is he the Anton Chigurh of American politics or what America will get if the coin falls the wrong way?
I was going to post the texts of a few good analyses but will save them for next time, if they’re still pertinent.
I started this post at five days to go. Now it’s three. Three excruciating days to go, the sense of dread inexorably increasing as we approach le jour fatidique. I look forward to next Tuesday night, as the polls close and the first projections come rolling in, with a foreboding akin to that of parents awaiting the doctor’s verdict as to whether or not their child has terminal cancer. The specter of Donald Trump and the MAGA Republican Party coming to power—with no checks or balances and for a minimum of four interminable years to come—fills me with terror such that I have not felt in my adult life, if ever. I cannot wrap my head around the prospect—very real—of Trump winning the election. I cannot accept this. But, as they say, here we are.
My sentiment is, of course, shared by tens of millions of fellow Americans, not to mention tens of millions of Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Moldovans, and others who will risk being eaten for lunch by Vladimir Putin—a huge victor if disaster strikes on November 5th—or who do not wish to live in a new, Moscow-led European order (if you think that Berlin or Paris will be a rampart against this new order, dream on). I am not going to speculate here on the apocalyptic consequences of a Trump 2.0 regime, except to say that it will indeed be apocalyptic. We know this. Democratic Party voters—which includes all of my friends and most relatives—are properly anxious, worried, wringing their hands, or downright flipping-out, suffering near heart failure with the latest poll showing Trump gaining a point in Wisconsin or Nevada. The collective panic among Dems was captured well in a report by Molly Ball in The Wall Street Journal the other day. I happen to be in the US right now, in swing state North Carolina—I’ll be back in Paris on election day (FYI, I voted early last week, in person; see pics on Facebook)—which affords no greater insight into US politics than I can get in Paris, except for MSNBC, FWIW, which is on 24/7 at my mother’s house, and phone calls with friends around the country (which I can do in Paris, though complicated by the time difference). And touching base with friends reveal all to be pretty much on the same page: positive feelings about Kamala Harris but not optimistic that she can defeat Trump—which is to say, terrified that that despicable, unspeakable, reptile of a human being will win next Tuesday.
I can’t say I don’t feel the same way. Like everyone, I was ecstatic when Biden threw in the towel on July 21st, seamlessly passed the torch to Kamala, and with the entire D party rallying to her candidacy. The Chicago DNC four weeks later was a sans faute, without doubt the most impeccably executed DNC ever. Kamala caught up with Trump in the polls, the money rolled in, and everyone was feeling good about her chances. The Dems had the vibe.
And then there was a vibe shift. Polling-wise, nothing has fundamentally changed since September: Kamala has had a small lead in the national polls, of two to three points, and with the seven swing states essentially tied. That the race is tied and the closest in history is repeated daily by campaign operatives and pundits. It also appears that the Republicans’ structural advantage in the electoral college is diminishing: to wit, in 2020 Trump would have won the electoral college with a shift of 42K votes in three states (AZ-GA-WI), despite Biden winning the national popular vote with a spread of 4.4% and 7M votes; whereas today, the tight numbers in the national PV are due to Trump increasing his score in blue states, e.g. CA and NY, but that he still has no chance of winning, whereas the swing states remain toss-ups. So Kamala (or a future D candidate) could well win the EC with a mere 1 or 2% lead in the PV. Which is nice.
But still. It is disconcerting, to put it mildly, to see Trump polling at 47%, even 48, of the national PV, with everything we know about him and that he has said and done over the past nine years, the enumeration of which is hardly necessary at this point—and as he now slides into dementia while going the full Fascist. A lot of people, myself included, thought one month ago that Kamala would start pulling away in the home stretch, breaking 50% and establishing a lead in the blue wall states, but which has not happened. She’s plateaued at 48-49%, despite having raised a colossal amount of money—upwards of $1.5 billion, to which may be added a comparable amount raised by Democratic Party super PACs—dominated Trump in the September 10th debate, put together the broadest possible coalition—spanning progressive Democrats to anti-Trump Republicans—run a good campaign, and with a GOTV ground game, especially in the blue wall states, that the Republicans cannot hold a candle to. There have inevitably been a few errors, e.g. flubbing a couple of questions in media interviews, as if that doesn’t happen to every candidate—or if Kamala’s missteps can in any way compare to the bullshit Trump spews every time he opens his mouth.
What Kamala Harris has done in a mere one hundred days is pretty impressive, making it all the more appalling, not to mention alarming, that she has been underperforming in key Democratic Party constituencies—Afro-American men, Hispanics/Latinos, union members, Gen-Z men—which have witnessed defections to Trump, but with the orange-haired idiot having not only done nothing to merit their support but having doubled down on his MAGA base-only strategy, descending ever further into demagoguery, racism, and outright fascism. Culture wars and ressentiment have become driving forces in American politics—spearheaded by a closed conservative media ecosystem, i.e. the right-wing disinformation juggernaut (Fox et al)—and with the Democrats othered as the party of wokeist urban cultural elites and third-wave feminism (which is partly what the Democrats are). It’s not clear what Kamala Harris or the Democratic Party can do to stem the hemorrhage of MAGA-curious non-college educated men or entice them back to voting for the Dems.
Looking at the electoral college and the swing states, it is easier to envision a scenario that has Trump sweeping all seven than Kamala performing the same feat. With three days to the dreaded November 5th, voilà a brief run-down, beginning with the Sunbelt:
Arizona: This has been the weakest state of the seven for Kamala, with Trump up a mean of 2% in the polls. The border is the main issue. Socially conservative Latino voters, who also don’t like the Central Americans and others trying to crash the border, have been moving away from the Dems. Perhaps a strong score by Ruben Gallego over MAGA crackpot Kari Lake in the Senate race will pull Kamala over the top. Perhaps.
Nevada: Polls have shown an essentially tied race but the early voting has not been good for the Ds. Las Vegas, the fount of Dem votes, was hard hit by the pandemic, housing is a critical issue, the vaunted Harry Reid (d. 2021) turnout machine is not what it was, many new voters of uncertain partisan ID have moved into the state. In short, I won’t be surprised if NV’s 6 EVs go to Trump.
Georgia: If Black turnout is robust, as in 2020, then Kamala may win it. But given the Dems’ problems with younger Black men, I’m not too optimistic.
North Carolina: I like to think that Kamala will win NC, as this is where I vote and am writing these lines, though it is the only one of the seven states that Biden did not win in 2020 and has only voted D once in this century (Obama in 2008, which was utterly unexpected). Black voters are fewer in NC than GA but educated D voters are moving into the state in large numbers. But then, so are R voting retirees. So I probably shouldn’t get my hopes up for the Tar Heel state.
Now to the Blue Wall.
Wisconsin: The ultimate swing state, which has been on the razor’s edge for the past several cycles. It’s D-voting Milwaukee and Dane counties (+ a few patches of blue) vs. the rest of the state, which is solidly R and red. Noteworthy fact: some 60% of the state’s population lives in towns of <15K inhabitants. Dane Co. has witnessed an influx of advanced diploma holders, so I am reliably informed, that is transforming Madison into an Austin Texas. This is good for the Dems, who presently have a strong ground game in the state. If the decline in Black turnout in Milwaukee can be reversed, Kamala will win WI.
Michigan: The bluest of the swing states, which Biden won by 150K votes in 2020 and where the Ds cleaned up in the 2022 midterms. The Harris-Walz campaign, along with the UAW, has been pulling out the stops to keep Trump-curious union members in the fold. Likewise with Black voters in Detroit. A big problem—and danger for the D ticket—is Arab/Muslim voters in and around Detroit, notably in Dearborn and Hamtramck, who have been defecting en masse from the Democrats over Gaza. This has been the subject of several in-depth journalistic reports over the past several months, e.g. in Slate, Mediapart, NY Times, The New Yorker, and Puck, which have all detailed the collective anger of Arab/Muslim-Americans—the Palestinians and now Lebanese among them who have had family members killed by the IDF—over the Biden administration’s uncritical support, politically and materially, of Israel’s murderous campaign in Gaza—with a clear majority of Arab/Muslim voters saying they will abstain or vote for Jill Stein, or even Trump, but absolutely not for Kamala Harris. Sinking the Harris-Walz ticket in Michigan—a state they absolutely have to win—and facilitating a Trump victory would, objectively speaking, not be in the interest of Arab/Muslim-Americans, in view of Trump’s own record on Israel, not to mention his Muslim bans, which are sure to be even more draconian if he returns to power. But the collective, rage-fueled desire to punish Kamala and the Democrats, to send them a big Fuck You! by enabling a Trump triumph, is overwhelming dispassionate strategic calculus—and causing people to risk cutting off their noses to spite their faces. As for Kamala and the establishment Democrats, Israel-Palestine is an impossible issue. And particularly Gaza. The Democrats are fucked no matter what they say; e.g. if, say, Kamala, to mollify the voters of Dearborn, had disassociated herself from the policy of the Biden administration—an administration in which she happens to be vice-president—or merely criticized it, the ensuing shitstorm—indeed crise de régime—would have dwarfed whatever problems she is having in southeastern Michigan. And on the strictly electoral level, denouncing Israel would have created big problems in turn with normally Democratic-voting Zionist Jews in southeastern Pennsylvania, whose votes are of equal importance (if not more) to the ticket’s chances. Mixing metaphors, the Democrats’ trying to triangulate between pro-Israel and pro-Palestine constituencies, and as the worst war in the history of that conflict is underway, is a circle that cannot be squared. Thus Kamala’s paralysis on the issue. I have more to say on all this, and will perhaps come back to it if the occasion warrants. In the meantime, the Dems are hoping that they can withstand the defection of Arab/Muslim voters—who constitute <1% of the statewide electorate—and still win MI. Or that large numbers will have watched Bernie Sanders’ YouTube appeal (below) or read Hussein Ibish’s article in The Atlantic, put aside their anger, and—holding their noses if they must—vote for the candidate who will be far better for their own interests as well as those of Palestine.
Pennsylvania: Every minimally informed person knows that PA is the must-win state for both candidates, that it’s on a razor’s edge, and where the Trump-friendly white working class is a significant portion of the electorate (Eyal Press’ deep-dive report in The New Yorker makes for sobering reading). But if defections of non-college educated men are a grave problem for the Democrats, there are also women—of all races and age cohorts, suburban, more than a few moderate Republicans—who have been voting early in larger numbers than men, which has apparently alarmed the Trump campaign. The gender chasm looks to be working in Kamala’s favor. Fun fact: since 1940, PA and MI have voted the same way in every presidential election except 1976 (when Michigander Gerald Ford was the R candidate).
So if Trump wins the Sunbelt states and Kamala Harris sweeps the Blue Wall, that gets her to 269 EVs. Add the single EV from the Nebraska 2nd CD, which she is certain to win, and she’s at 270 EVs. Barring a faithless elector, this would be the narrowest victory in a presidential election in US history. As to how Trump and his MAGA cult following would react if this scenario comes to pass, I don’t wish to find out. But find out we will. And it won’t be nice
I’ll try to get up another post before flying back to Paris on Monday.
The above image was on day 381, of what should more accurately be called the Israel-Palestine-Lebanon war—as the great majority of Palestinians and Lebanese killed, maimed, or who have had their lives shattered by IDF bombs have nothing to do with Hamas or Hizbullah—or maybe just the new Hundred Years’ War, as it will surely still be going long after those reading this, and certainly myself, will be gone from this earth. My last post on the war dates from day 205; much has happened over the subsequent six months, and with much to write about, but I am simply going to link here to three excellent, must-listen podcast discussions hosted by my good friend Adam Shatz—who requires no introduction for AWAV readers—and posted in the past week on the LRB website (as well as Spotify and other platforms).
In the first of three episodes on the crisis in the Middle East, Adam Shatz is joined by Mairav Zonszein—a journalist and Senior Israel Analyst with the International Crisis Group—and Amjad Iraqi—a senior editor at +972 Magazine and an associate fellow with Chatham House’s MENA program—to discuss the experiences of Israeli Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel. While the Netanyahu government is opposed by many Israeli Jews, and increasing numbers have left the country, support for Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon remains high because few can imagine an alternative. For Palestinian citizens of Israel, who have long suffered restrictions on their democratic rights, the escalating crisis has intensified that discrimination, while stirring a deep sense of fear regarding their future. Mairav and Amjad talk to Adam about the tensions in Israeli society, not least between the government and military, and why Netanyahu has shown so little interest in the lives of the hostages still held by Hamas.
In the second of three conversations about the crisis in the Middle East, recorded shortly before the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was reported, Yezid Sayigh—a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut—talks to Adam Shatz about why he sees Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October as an inflection point both for the Palestinian movement and global history. Sayigh believes that the attacks reflected an erosion of Palestinian leadership, as well as a moral and strategic crisis. Only a new vision of Palestinian liberation, rooted in progressive ideals rather than in the ethno-religious project of Hamas, he argues, can lead to genuine Palestinian freedom and sovereignty.
N.B. Yezid Sayigh’s magnum opus, Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), which clocks in at 990 pp., is the best book one will read on its subject (out-of-print alas).
In his third conversation looking at the crisis in the Middle East, Adam talks to Mohamad Bazzi—director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and a professor of journalism at New York University—about Israel’s expansion of its war into Lebanon and the recent assassinations of Yahya Sinwar and Hassan Nasrallah. They discuss the factors behind Israel’s unprecedented aggression and why, as in Gaza, it’s able to operate without restraint, not least from the Biden administration.
Israel’s Lebanon offensive and killing of Hassan Nasrallah prompted Adam to fire off a 5,800 word essay—first-rate, as usual—on “Israel’s forever war,” for the 24 October issue of the LRB. The lede: “Israel’s leaders claim this war is existential, a matter of Jewish survival, and there is a grain of truth in this claim, because the state is incapable of imagining Israeli Jewish existence except on the basis of domination over another people. Escalation, therefore, may be precisely what Israel seeks, or is prepared to risk, since it views war as its duty and destiny.”
Voilà an overdue shout-out to my good friend Ricky Goldstein’s Substack blog, RikTok, which he launched last spring upon retiring from Human Rights Watch/Middle East-North Africa, of which he was the longtime deputy-director. Smart posts on a range of subjects, including Israel-Palestine—e.g., “How Israeli Prisons Became ‘Torture Camps'” and “Of ‘Ordinary Men’ and Israel’s War in Gaza”—and anti-Semitism. Check it out.
Don’t miss Gideon Rachman’s latest FT podcast (October 24), with Sigrid Kaag, the UN’s Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza: “The trauma of life and death in Gaza: ‘I sometimes feel almost ashamed at what we are allowing to happen’.”
N.B. My next post will be on the US presidential campaign, in the next couple of days inshallah.
Fifty-six days, actually. Eight excruciating weeks to the most important election in the history of the world, during which the level of anxiety and stress will inexorably—if not exponentially—increase. Labor Day has now passed and without a bounce in the polls for Kamala Harris, and despite the exhilarating DNC in Chicago, which was without doubt the most impeccably organized and brilliantly executed political convention/spectacle of its kind and scale we have ever seen in America, and maybe in any democracy. Among observers and pundits whose views are worth listening to, the consensus is unanimous that the Democrats in Chicago pulled off a sans-faute. They did what they had to do to appeal to undecided voters in the states that matter.
A case in point in this consensus is the reaction of veteran British politicos Alastair Campbell (Labour) and Rory Stewart (Tory), hosts of the top podcast on UK politics, The Rest Is Politics, who crossed the pond to attend the Chicago DNC. It has long gone without saying that the level of oratory in Britain is far superior to that in America (cf. debates in the House of Commons and the US House of Representatives). Not that Campbell and Stewart said any such thing themselves but both marveled at how they were able to sit through successive four-and-a-half hour evenings at the DNC riveted to the proceedings whereas they could never do likewise at a Labour or Conservative conference. And this from Stewart:
The quality of the speaking is unbelievable. What the Democratic party revealed in the last four days is they are able to mobilize some of the most astonishing public speakers that you’ve ever seen (…) If you were doing a class for students on public oratory and communication you could take probably 12 of those speeches and play them to [the students] and every one of them has a different style… Sadly, and I don’t want to be rude to Britain, but I do not think we could produce half a dozen speakers of that quality…
Campbell’s response: “I agree.” Their discussion, though two-and-a-half weeks old—thus ancient history—is worth the listen.
We’ve known all along that the election is going to be razor-edge close, that it will play out in the six or seven usual suspect swing states, and that one should ignore the horse race polls, as, barring a game-changing event—like tonight’s debate—or October surprise, that this will be the state of the race to November 5th.
But still… The latest NYT/Siena poll is, if not quite panic-inducing, just so depressing. Okay, it’s just one poll, with the usual margin of error, and which doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know, which is that the race is essentially tied. For those who want to delve into the weeks, Michael Podhorzer, counseling calm—and to steel our nerves—explains here how to interpret that and other polls. For now.
One can offer cold analyses as to why the race is a dead heat—and I am perfectly capable of explaining the dynamics of the election from a political science-y perspective—but still… I, along with so many, am having difficulty comprehending how upwards of half the American electorate could possibly vote to send Donald Trump back to the White House, after everything we know about him, that he has said and done over the past nine years. And despite the legions of Republicans and others who staffed his administration—beginning with his own vice-president—who have denounced him as a danger to democracy and the constitution, as one who must not be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office.
And then there’s Trump’s favorability rating, which, at 43%, is higher than it ever was when he occupied that Oval Office. More than depressing, this is downright alarming, as Trump is now, objectively speaking, completely out of his mind. The man is, objectively speaking, insane. From a psychiatric standpoint. Not only is he a raving lunatic and clearly into dementia, his rhetoric is more violent than ever. To call it fascistic hardly suffices. It’s worse than that. Seriously, when someone like Dick Cheney—Dick Fucking Cheney!—lets it be known that he’ll be voting for Kamala Harris, you know that America is in a truly dangerous place.
In lieu of blathering on about all this, I recommend to all and sundry a couple of podcasts I’ve listened to over the past couple of days, which are well worth 45 minutes of one’s time as we await the debate. First, this discussion with Greg Sargent of The New Republic and the excellent Bulwark columnist A.B. Stoddard, on Trump’s angry new threats of bloodshed and revenge:
Here is Aaron Rupar’s X/Twitter thread on Trump’s Wisconsin rally cited by Sargent (also here). It’s a doozy.
Trump's bulletproof enclosure is visible in front of him as he speaks today in Mosinee, Wisconsin pic.twitter.com/LeYYaWARRk
And this by Ben Meiselas of the Meidas Touch Network, on Trump’s speech in Charlotte last week.
Kamala, please save us.
There’s so much more—with the orange-haired madman, it’s endless—but that’s enough for today. Crossing fingers for this evening.
UPDATE: It’s Wednesday, the day after. I watched the debate on YouTube this morning, my reaction being identical to that of the totality of pundits and other commentators (minus MAGA trolls) who show up on my X/Twitter feed, which is that Kamala Harris crushed it. And Trump was a disaster. Such was obvious even to Trumpy right-wingers.
Trump lost the debate and whining about the moderators doesn’t change it. He didn’t lose because of their behavior. He lost because of his own performance while his lips were moving, not theirs.
If scholars of the presidency of Michael Beschloss’ calibre say it, it is surely the case.
From start to end, Kamala Harris has just delivered what is easily one of the most successful Presidential debate performances in all of American history.
Kamala’s response to the opening question was tentative but she took off after that, and was excellent to the very end. She was well prepared and in command throughout. She didn’t miss a beat. Trump, for his part, was okay (for Trump) for maybe the first twenty minutes but then went off the rails, ranting, shouting, and spewing bullshit, inanities, and lies. Trump could not help himself, as Kamala had his number, pushing buttons that caused him to react like an unhinged lunatic—which is what he is. CNN’s Van Jones said it well: She baited him, then she spanked him.
This title of this post is somewhat misleading, as it’s mainly about the Democrats still in Chicago, with highlights of Days 3 and 4 of the Democratic National Convention. If you haven’t seen my previous post, on Days 1 and 2 of the DNC, go here.
Beginning with the pièce de résistance—Kamala Harris’s acceptance of the nomination—all I can say is: What a terrific speech! She nailed it. Absolutely. If one did not see the Thursday night speech (Friday 4:35 AM CEST) of the next president of the United States إن شاء الله or wishes to rewatch it, voilà:
It was an excellent speech on both form and substance. On form, the delivery was impeccable. Kamala Harris is a forceful speaker—which, as a courtroom prosecutor, is to be expected—and with expressive body language: her infectious smile, which is the most radiant of any politico who comes to mind, and accompanied by her trademark laugh. Kamala exudes exuberance and joy—and there’s nothing contrived or false about it; it’s the way she is—but she can then pivot on a dime to a posture of steely seriousness, of an alpha female exuding authority. There is no mistaking that she is a femme de pouvoir.
On substance, she succeeded in doing the three things she needed to do, and packing it all in to a concise 35-minute address in which there was hardly a wasted sentence. First, she told her personal story. As polls revealed that a third of the electorate said that they didn’t know much about her, it was important that she do this. Second, she pummeled Trump, and did so effectively. Two lines in particular stood out, and with her delivery pitch perfect:
In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences — but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious. (…) And get this. Get this. He plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator, and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions. Simply put, they are out of their minds.
Touché!
In keeping the projector focused on Trump and MAGA, the Harris campaign and the Dems are following the counsel of Michael Podhorzer—former political director of the AFL-CIO and one of the smartest data-driven political and electoral analysts in progressive world—who, in a July 22 post, “Election 2024: the path forward,” in his Substack site, thus submitted:
While the person at the top of the Democratic ticket will matter, it is secondary to the factor that will most determine whether or not Trump wins in November: what voters think this election is “about” in October.
There are two basic possibilities for what the election will be “about.” We could have what I call a “MAGA Election,” where the election is “about” what Trump will do if he is returned to the White House, and how his MAGA allies on the Supreme Court and Project 2025 will help him do it. Or we could have what I call the “Normal Election,” where the election is “about” anything else – Democrats’ governing record, crime rates, “the economy,” you name it.
If it’s a MAGA Election, Trump will almost certainly lose. If it’s a Normal Election, Democrats will almost certainly lose.
The third substantive thing Kamala did was to talk policy, in broad strokes, to give the voters an idea of where a Harris administration would stand on the major issues. No laundry lists or wonk talk. The policy details will come later. I liked how she dispensed with the immigration issue in three short sentences. And there was one moment in the speech when I whooped and cheered:
Trump, on the other hand, threatened to abandon NATO. He encouraged Putin to invade our allies. Said Russia could “do whatever the hell they want.”
Five days before Russia attacked Ukraine, I met with President Zelensky to warn him about Russia’s plan to invade. I helped mobilize a global response — over 50 countries — to defend against Putin’s aggression. And as president, I will stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies.
YESSSS!! Vladimir Putin will not get the better of Kamala Harris. She is, as the governor of Michigan characterized her a half hour earlier, “tough, tested, and a total badass” I like the image—not totally fantastical—of Kamala as an Iron Lady à la Margaret Thatcher staring down General Galtieri or Arthur Scargill. Leftists surely winced—as I would have in decades past—when Kamala said that, “As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” Today—and so long as MAGA is kept at bay—I’m fine with that.
Then there was Gaza and Israel, the most toxic issue out there—and a thankless, indeed impossible one for the Democrats, as its leadership is going to get bashed and sullied by one sector or another of the party’s electorate whatever position or policy the leadership adopts toward Israel; and not to mention the Republicans waiting to pounce on them. The question regarding Kamala’s speech was if she threaded the needle on Gaza, and I think she did. Her concluding line on the issue was noteworthy:
President Biden and I are working to end this war, such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.
I applauded at this one. As for the 20,000 attendees at the United Center, the applause was thunderous. There is more to say about the Israel-Palestine conundrum at the DNC—and the purported refusal of the DNC to allow a Palestinian-American to address the arena on Gaza. I’ll come back to this subject in the coming days, in an update or separate post.
Tim Walz: His V-P acceptance speech on Wednesday looks to have convinced remaining doubters that Kamala made the right choice in putting him on the ticket. Along with most everyone else, I hadn’t heard of him until a month ago, when his name was tossed into the mix of possible V-P picks. He seemed fine, and with progressive friends in the Midwest praising him to the high heavens, but I was hoping that Kamala would go with Pete Buttigieg, who is so well-spoken. There’s no better surrogate than Mayor Pete. As for the LGBTQ thing, I argued that it wouldn’t matter—though more than one political friend differed on this; and with one submitting that the mere presence of a BIPOC woman and LGBTQ man on the same ticket would suck up media coverage and be a distraction from the issues at hand, notably Trump—and supply the fodder for Republican culture war ads ridiculing the Democrats for being the party of “wokism.” Valid point.
If the V-P pick had been up to the anti-MAGA pundit class, Josh Shapiro would have won hands down. If there is one thing everyone agrees on—and I mean everyone who at all follows US politics—it’s that the election will come down to Pennsylvania. Whoever wins PA wins the Electoral College. Period. I , proclaimed this to be the case in 2016 and it also was in 2020. As it so happens, the Democrats are nervous about PA this year—and the Republicans, it is being said by those in the know, are bullish on PA. The old joke about Pennsylvania being “Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Alabama in between” is as spot-on a description of the state as ever, and local Republican elected officials in the “Alabama” part have been laying the legal groundwork to challenge the integrity of the vote in November. Putting Governor Shapiro—who has a 60% approval rating among PA voters—on the ticket, conventional wisdom had it, would put the state in the bag for the Dems.
Perhaps. The last time a running mate was selected to win his state for the ticket, and succeeded in doing so, was Lyndon Johnson in 1960. Michael Dukakis picked Lloyd Bentsen for the same reason (and same state) but it didn’t work for him (Walter Mondale arguably won Minnesota for Jimmy Carter but that’s not why Carter put him on the ticket). Otherwise, presidential candidates have historically not opted for swing-state V-Ps. In the case of Shapiro, there was the animosity toward him on the D party’s left flank , because Gaza, which, however unfair, would have been a problem and distraction for the campaign,. It’s just not a good idea to piss off part of your base in the final stretch of a close general election campaign, and particularly for uncertain returns. Somehow I don’t know if Shapiro would have worn well had Kamala picked him. In my subjective view, he’s a little too slick; seeing him speak, he reminded me of Gavin Newsom the first time I saw him, in the debate with Ron DeSantis on Fox News in Nov. ’22: smooth and slick, a little too much maybe. A Hollywood caricature of a politician. Shapiro on the stump also sounds way too much like Barack Obama; it’s flagrant, and which everyone notices. It’s distracting IMHO. Watch his speech on Day 4 and decide for yourself.
Tim Walz was thus the right pick. In an analysis posted on The Center for Politics website, Joel K. Goldstein, the nº 1 academic specialist of the vice-presidency, wrote that Kamala Harris looked to have conducted a careful and thoughtful process that produced a good choice. Personal chemistry was no doubt decisive but the Walz pick also suggested that Kamala was seeking a running mate who had both waged campaigns and governed in purple or red states, signifying in turn that she would seek to expand the Democratic Party’s electorate into Republican-voting exurbia and rural America. In view of the structural Republican advantage in the Electoral College and the Senate, the Dems have little choice but to at least give it a shot. Walz is not only from the boondocks but, as we learn from the Goldstein essay, has had extensive experience (17.5 years) in elective office, more than anyone on the V-P short list..
Walz’s governing experience and progressive political stances aside, one is struck by the man himself, his background and personal history. We know that he hails from a village of 400 inhabitants in northern Nebraska. La fin fond de l’Amérique profonde. What is noteworthy is his educational parcours: B.A. from Chadron State College, an establishment of higher education that surely no one outside the state of Nebraska has heard of. It’s also really isolated, tucked away in the northwestern corner of that big but sparsely-populated state (Chadron is some 800 km from Omaha, the state’s largest city; Alexander Payne’s excellent 2013 film, Nebraska, was shot out that way). Walz’s M.A. was obtained at Minnesota State University, Mankato, in the southern part of the state. Again, not a school that is well-known outside its state (and Minnesota, given its geographical location, being a state that relatively few Americans have been to).
What this all signifies is that Tim Walz attended the least elitist establishments of higher education of anyone on a presidential ticket in a long time. At a time when the American political class is increasingly dominated by graduates from the Ivies and a handful of other elite schools, to have a vice-president with Walz’s educational profile is downright refreshing: the proof in the pudding of the non-elite life he has led. Tim Walz is the real deal. A fun fact about him (and which did not make this list): he owns no stocks. This would be normal for a politico in France but is most unusual for one in the U.S. of A.
Walz is not, however, a hick from the sticks, witness the year he lived and taught English in China in the late 1980s, of which, not surprisingly, mention was not made during his acceptance speech on Day 3. The speech, also billed a pep talk, lasted all of 16 minutes, which was as it needed to be to attain its objective: to introduce the heretofore little-known Walz to the American public. And in this, it succeeded royally. What a good man he is, Tim Walz. A fine human being, who has manifestly touched the lives of so many who have known him. There were more football metaphors in the speech than references to policy, which was just right, as important points can be made via sports metaphors. Before watching the speech, see this this four-minute introduction by Walz’s former student Benjamin Ingman.
The Gus Walz moment was moving. As for where the race is right now in football terms. I think we scored a field goal to tie it up…
There was a succession of Democratic Party warhorses on Day 3, e.g. Chuck Schumer, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi et al. Here’s Hakeem Jeffries, who will be the next Speaker of the House إن شاء الله .
One revelation for me was Gretchen Whitmer, who spoke on Thursday. Earlier in this election cycle, when it was not certain that Biden would run for reelection, and with D party pols readying themselves to jump in the race, I announced, to no one in particular, that Gov. Whitmer was my candidate for the Dem nomination (I thought a Whitmer-Cory Booker ticket would be cool; ça aurait de la gueule), as I had read about her and was impressed. She sounded like she had the chops to be POTUS, what with her solid record as governor of a big Midwestern state. But I had never actually seen her. I had no idea what she looked like or how she was as an orator (I suppose I could have checked her out with two clicks of the mouse but I didn’t). What to say, she’s great! very impressive. I had one further observation on her that was echoed by a stateside friend who called over the weekend, and echoed in turn by the well-known political scientist-blogger Daniel W. Drezner, who weighed in on the DNC on the ’90 Days with Ana Marie Cox’ podcast (go to 22:00).
Oprah Winfrey made a surprise appearance on Day 3.
It is quite simply unbelievable that Trump has not been tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison for January 6.
Another Trump outrage.
Five Republicans who spoke out against Trump and endorsed Kamala Harris at the DNC. These are worth watching: Former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham; Mesa AZ mayor John Giles; former Mike Pence adviser Olivia Troye; former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan; and former IL Rep. Adam Kinzinger.
Chicago: one of my two hometowns and a city I love. I wish I were there this week, to attend the Democratic National Convention—reporting for AWAV—and feel the good vibes. As for my other hometown, Milwaukee, 150 km straight north and a city to which I have an emotional attachment, I would absolutely not have wanted to be there last month for the dystopian MAGA RNC. Quelle horreur! Such a disappointment that Milwaukee’s DNC in 2020 was upended by Covid-19, as I had intended to be there. Alas.
It’s nice that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz were holding a rally in Milwaukee—filling to capacity the same arena where Trump’s RNC happened four weeks ago—during Tuesday night’s roll-call in Chicago, and that the two events linked at the moment the California delegation symbolically put the Harris-Walz ticket over the top.
Today is Day 4 of the convention. I’ve watched much of days 1, 2, and 3 on CNN, staying up past 3 AM CEST, catching other speeches on YouTube. It’s literally been decades since I’ve been so caught up in a DNC plus felt so optimistic for the Democrats’ prospects—a sentiment I expressed in my previous AWAV post. In 2020, the pandemic got in the way; 2016: there was bad feeling between the Hillary and Bernie camps; 2012: meh, no drama; 2008: I was in Brazzaville during the DNC, and though I didn’t see much of it I nonetheless spoke at three events a day on the US presidential election (and at the moment Obama was giving his acceptance speech in Mile High Stadium, I was in a US embassy speedboat crossing the Congo River to Kinshasa, where, upon arrival at the embassy, I caught the tail end of the Denver coronation before speaking about it to a group of Congolese journalists). Prior to that one, I have to go back to the 1980s for DNCs I watched on all four nights. July 1988: Michael Dukakis, who gave an okay acceptance speech, surged to a 17-point lead over Bush in one post-convention poll and I other progressive friends were confident he would win in November; well, we know how that one turned out. At the 1984 DNC—”the San Francisco Democrats” dixit Jeane Kirkpatrick—Jesse Jackson gave a stemwinder of a speech, as did Mario Cuomo, Gary Hart made a rock star entrance, and Walter Mondale—a good, decent man—informed the American public in his acceptance speech that he would raise their taxes if he defeated President Reagan in November. Needless to say, he did not defeat President Reagan.
This DNC is being called “historic” by the media, which it objectively is in view of the circumstances. Earlier this year I made but one prediction for the 2024 election, which is that there would be a black swan event involving Joe Biden or Trump; that something unprecedented would suddenly happen that would dramatically upend the campaign and alter its trajectory. That event did indeed come to pass on July 21st, with President Biden’s renunciation and handoff to Kamala Harris, who hit the ground running and has not made a single misstep in the intervening month. Ms. Harris may not have run in a single primary or participated in a single debate, but three-and-a-half years as Vice-President has fully prepared her to occupy the Oval Office and hold the reins of power. That the entire D party rallied behind her from the get go, and has remained united through the convention, attests to, entre autres, the seriousness and sophistication of the top tier of the national Democratic Party, in Congress and at the state level—and in stark contrast to the Trump cultists in the MAGA party, with its crackpots, whack jobs, and IQ-challenged halfwits—and amoral opportunists, grifters, and rank neofascists. When it comes to the quality of its elected officials and representatives, the D party has an exceptionally deep bench (American sports metaphor), and which has been showcased at the DNC. Here are some of the speeches I found noteworthy.
But first, an invocation, this one from day 2.
Prayer leaders from almost all the major religions present in the US officiated over the invocation (that opened the evening session, at 5:30 PM) or closing benediction on one of the four days: Catholicism, Protestants (mainline, Black, Pentecostal), Eastern Orthodox, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism). An aside: the presence of religion at such an event—however brief and symbolic—is utterly inconceivable in France. The French, particularly on the left, find totally bizarre the ubiquity of religion in American society and of references to God. A significant cultural difference between my two countries, that I am frequently reminded of.
Back to noteworthy interventions, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke on Monday (Day 1) and was, as usual, very good. Or, I should specify, almost as usual, as AOC, along with Bernie Sanders and other Congressional progressives, strongly supported Biden in his stubborn refusal to renounce his candidacy in the wake of his June 27th debate debacle, insisting that Biden remained the D party’s standard-bearer and its best shot to win in November. AOC went so far as to spend a full hour on Instagram, warning Democrats of deleterious consequences if Biden were replaced at the top of the ticket. I think the world of AOC but she majorly irritated me with this one, as she was not only not making sense but was wasting my time taking an hour to say what she could have in ten minutes. But… a part of me appreciated her support of Biden, however wrong I felt she was in wanting him to maintain his candidacy, as it spoke to a political maturity and seriousness on her part, of entering into the good graces of the D party establishment, to be a player, all while maintaining her progressive credentials and policy objectives (that she lost the endorsement of DSA says more about DSA than it does about her). She’s “The new AOC,” as The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg titled a piece written after her 7-minute speech (below), and summed up by the lede: “The progressive congresswoman is no longer speaking solely to the left wing, but to the party as a whole.”
AOC is the logical, natural successor to Bernie Sanders as the chef de file of the American left—the part of the left that works within the system—once he passes the torch.
As for Bernie’s speech the next day, it was standard-issue Bernie Sanders; if one wants to watch it, go here.
The address by UAW president Shawn Fain was certainly the most leftwing in tone at a DNC in my lifetime, if ever. He was, moreover, given a ten-minute slot in early primetime, as much as the six other union heads who addressed the convention, who were grouped together a little later in a single slot. Fain’s full-throttled support of the Harris-Walz ticket will help win Michigan (and Sherrod Brown in Ohio). How very nice to see labor unions make their return to—or at least increase their profile at—the quadrennial DNC. The decline of the US labor movement over the past four decades has been such that US media websites, so I have noticed at least, have had to define ‘scab’ for American readers (traduction de ‘scab’ en français : briseur de grève, un jaune).
Hillary Clinton on Monday was excellent, possibly the best I’ve ever seen her, a reaction echoed by commentators and pundits, one of whom submitted that when HRC goes against form, throws caution to the wind, and lets it all hang out, she can give one helluva speech..
I discovered Jasmine Crockett, Congresswoman from Dallas, earlier this year, after her verbal altercation with Marjorie Taylor Greene, and proclaimed “A star is born!”
I didn’t stay up for Biden’s speech and only watched the highlights the next day. I also read this Tuesday morning post by Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark, “The Old Man Who Saved American Democracy. Twice.” It begins:
I hope you drank it in last night. It was one of the most human moments I’ve ever seen in politics, from the second the president stepped on stage and embraced his daughter.
But it was more than that. It was America saying goodbye to this ordinary man who has become an extraordinary president. A president who saved our democracy.
This is one of those cases where the transcript doesn’t give you enough context. You need the video. You need to see Biden’s face and feel the vibrations from the crowd. And you absolutely need to watch his final section, when he transitions from a campaign speech to a valediction.
This is the story of a nation grateful to a president not just for his accomplishments, but for his sacrifice. For his ability to understand that he was dispensable.
It was this extraordinary willingness, when American democracy was threatened from within, that made Joe Biden the indispensable man.
I know I’ve said this before but I want to say it again: Biden is our greatest living president. (…)
That Biden is greater than TFG and Bush 43 goes without saying, and it’s doubtful too many would extol Jimmy Carter’s record in the White House (as opposed to his post-White House one) over his Democratic Party successors. But greater than Obama and Clinton? One thing the three have in common is that each enjoyed only two years of Democratic control of both houses of Congress, after which they were hamstrung in implementing their policy agendas. A cursory evaluation of the domestic policy accomplishments of the three during their first two years in office would confirm JVL’s assertion hands down.
Tuesday (Day 2). Angela Alsobrooks is the Democratic Party’s Senatorial candidate in Maryland, who will face off against the “normie” Republican and former governor Larry Hogan—and surely win. First time I’ve seen her. She’s impressive.
Future First Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s stories of meeting and marrying Kamala, and of their “blended family,” are charming, heartwarming, and funny. Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark made the observation that Doug’s ex-wife seems to like Kamala more than Donald Trump’s current wife likes him, and that Kamala’s step-children manifestly have warm feelings toward her; and that this speaks well of Kamala as a person, given how fraught these relationships can often be.
Michelle Obama: Wow, what a speech! She’s incredible. Her husband Barack’s speech that followed was perfectly fine—he’s Barack Obama after all—but Michelle killed it!
This is the third post I’ve started over the past three weeks, the previous two either trashed or filed away in the draft folder. There’s too much happening these days: I’ll be focused on one thing, e.g. the French election, and then there will be a sudden development somewhere else, e.g. the American presidential campaign, which will distract my attention and entirely consume my time. It’s too hard to keep up, though I’m hardly the only one. À propos, AWAV friend Michel P. forwarded this lead story from The Onion. dated last Monday, “News happening faster than man can generate uninformed opinions,” which, mutatis mutandis, could be about AWAV himself:
NEW YORK VAL-DE-MARNE – Calling out the unsustainable pace at which historic events seemed to be occurring, local man Brad Gifford told reporters Monday [Arun sighed] that important news stories were now happening faster than he could generate uninformed opinions about them. “Look, I’m trying my hardest to scrape together confused [halfway intelligent] takes about everything that’s going on in our country [America, France, Israel-Palestine, etcetera, not to mention movies, concerts, and you name it], but it’s getting harder and harder to come up with enough incoherent perspectives to meet the moment,” said Gifford [Arun], who emphasized that he had already felt stretched thin [trying to come up with an analysis of the 2nd round of the French legislative election that would not drone on for five thousand words, then] devising a superficial and deluded reaction to the Trump assassination attempt before Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 campaign sent shock waves through the race. “Frankly, I’m exhausted here. Just as I’m putting the finishing touches on a worldview about a topic that [I like to think I know well but sometimes fear that] I don’t have even the faintest inkling about, it’s like three more news stories pop up out of nowhere in an arena where I genuinely have no idea what the fuck I’m talking about [to say that is in any way interesting or original]. And again, [while I do know a lot about some things] I really don’t know jackshit about anything at all [many more things], so how am I supposed to keep up?” At press time, Gifford [Arun] added that the only thing helping him keep his head above water was that he did not have to research or think about his opinions at all before putting them out into the world.
One major world event presently underway is the Olympics, which are happening less than an hour from where I sit. If one didn’t see it, the opening ceremony last Friday was quite impressive, with one of the high points the spectacular performance by Aya Nakamura:
What a brilliant concept! France’s answer to Beyoncé, Nakamura—a native of Bamako and Aulnay-sous-Bois—marching out from the Uber-elitist Institut de France—the guardian of the temple of the French language and culture—singing a cover by Charles Aznavour and two of her planetary hits (which have been streamed over one billion times on Spotify alone), that many in France would need subtitles to follow—and being joined on the other side by the Garde Républicaine. A terrific spectacle—and celebration of the diversity of French society: a happy reconciliation of “wokeism” and French “universalism,” dixitThomas Legrand, and that no doubt provoked collective apoplexy, if not cardiac arrest, chez Eric Zemmour, Philippe de Villiers, Pascal Praud and the regulars sur le plateau at CNews, and everyone else on that end of the French political spectrum. They’ll just have to get over it.
It’s a festive time in Paris right now, with the Olympics and all, but three-and-a-half long weeks ago, France was teetering at the abyss. Perched on the political precipice. But to the surprise and relief of all—i.e. of all those not way out on the right—France stepped back. In thwarting the inexorable progression of the extreme right, voters insured that France would not fall into the abyss. For now. My post-mortem on France’s unexpected legislative election and the aftermath will come in due course—if I am able to tune out the US presidential campaign for a couple of days, as I managed to do over the four weeks that followed the June 9th European election and Emmanuel Macron’s capricious decision to wreak some havoc in the French political system, during which time I declined to read or listen to anything about US politics, including Joe Biden’s debate debacle and the SCOTUS immunity ruling. Headlines and a few tweets were all I needed. Contemplating an imminent victory of the Rassemblement National in France followed by a Trump/MAGA triumph outre-Atlantique was more than I could process.
After the pleasant surprise of July 7th and collective ouf de soulagement, I could no longer tune out the looming apocalypse in my native land: the disastrous polls, Biden’s stubborn refusal to face reality, the Trump shooting, Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling, etcetera. And then there was the MAGA RNC in Milwaukee and coronation of the Orange God-King, which I could not bring myself to watch—or catch up en différé—except for the interventions of Hulk Hogan—an epitome of the MAGA Zeitgeist—and Usha Vance, to check her out and marvel at how a schlemiel like J.D. landed himself a beautiful, intelligent, professionally accomplished Indian wife, but also the incongruity of it, in view of his ideological parti pris on immigration and gender-related issues.
I’m not going to say anything about J.D. Vance—I have an archive on him from 2016—until it is clear that he will remain Trump’s running mate, as I do not put it past the orange-haired idiot to try to dump him from the ticket at this late date. Black Swan event #2. However much of a dud JDV’s speech at the RNC may have been, not to mention that of the top of the ticket himself, the sentiment one had was expressed in the title of a long, must-read article in The Atlantic by staff writer Tim Alberta—one of the best political journalists in the business—”Trump is planning for a landslide win,” whose principal sources were Trump campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, two of the most redoubtable Republican operatives on the market. Complementing Alberta’s piece in The Atlantic is a one-hour podcast interview with Ezra Klein, dated July 18, “The Trump Campaign’s Theory of Victory: Tim Alberta discusses why Trump’s campaign managers are increasingly confident they’re going to win by a landslide this November.” Alberta, who is extremely well-spoken, offers the most informed account and analysis of the MAGA Republican Party—of how the Republican Party has been so fundamentally transformed by Trump—that one will find anywhere.
To contemplate that Trump and MAGA could be headed toward not only an electoral college landslide but an outright victory in the national popular vote—and with control over both houses of Congress and carte blanche to further stack the federal judiciary—I could not wrap my head around that. The dread was palpable among every last American with whom I discuss politics—and to whom I may add the Never Trumpers in the Bulwark podcasts I listen to, who spoke with a tone of desperation at the death march to November the Democrats were embarked on, with Biden stubbornly refusing to do what he had to do. So some twelve days ago, while doom scrolling after midnight, my good friend Don in Wisconsin—who’s as trustworthy a fount of analysis on US politics as I’ve ever had—called and, beating me to it, said “We’re fucked…”
America was truly teetering at the abyss. And then suddenly, on Sunday the 21st, it pulled back. So when I called Don last week, his first words were: “It’s morning in America.”
N.B. the lede of Tim Alberta’s aforementioned Atlantic article: “And [Trump’s] campaign is all but praying Joe Biden doesn’t drop out.”
What a month this week has been! I don’t think I have ever lived through a period in American politics that felt like as much changed as fast. On Sunday, we got the news that Joe Biden was dropping out. I was on a plane that night. I feverishly wrote the audio essay that I then recorded Monday that came out Tuesday. And by Tuesday, I felt like we were in a fully different world than when I was writing.
Over the last year that I’ve been working on some of these issues, the most common and dominant worry that Democrats had if something happened to Joe Biden or if Joe Biden decided or was convinced to step aside is that they had so little confidence in Kamala Harris. Sunday, I was still hearing from Democrats worried about Harris. There was reporting of Nancy Pelosi wanting an open primary or an open convention.
And now, watching the party not just converge around her, but feel a real thrill around her, really, really become passionate Harris stans — watching the whole party fall out of the coconut tree and live unburdened by what has been and only in the imagining of what could be, it’s fun to watch Democrats have fun. They have not had fun in a long time. And it’s also a good reminder that people don’t know how something is going to feel until it actually happens.
Absolutely and totally. I haven’t felt this good about US politics in a long while. And as it’s too late to have an open convention in Chicago, it’s only logical that the Democratic Party coalesce around Kamala Harris. If Biden had announced before the primary season that he would not be running for reelection, I’m not sure that she would have been my nº 1 choice, but I’ve had a positive image of her since she emerged on the national scene, was happy that Biden put her on the ticket in 2020, and thought she was getting a bum rap for her performance as V-P. Here’s what I wrote about her in a post dated July 4, 2019, after the Democratic Party’s first debate:
There is a near-total consensus that [Kamala Harris] was the breakout star of the debate, via her now-famous exchange with Joe Biden but also supremely self-confident, in-charge demeanor. She showed herself to be the prosecutor that she once was. In a debate with Trump, she’ll cut him into little pieces. Some think that her attack on Biden was too calculated—as if politicians on the campaign trail don’t calculate—or overly aggressive (a charge that would likely not be leveled if she were male). But not only was it inevitable that Biden would be taken to task for his gratuitous public declarations on busing and the segregationist senators, Harris also needed a hook to peel off older black voters who have been reflexively supporting Biden’s presidential bid. And it manifestly worked, witness her surge in the post-debate polls—and entry into the top-tier of the field—and Biden’s consequent drop, much of which looks to be due to black voters switching. As for her positioning within the D party, she’s somewhere between the progressive and establishment/centrist wings. She’s waffled on issues or quickly adapted her position (e.g. on health care). The left is wary of her on account of her record as San Francisco DA and California Attorney General, with a NYT op-ed from January by law professor Lara Bazelon slamming that record—as not progressive—being widely circulated by lefties on social media (also here and here). Harris will need to respond to the critiques. I assume, or at least hope, that she acquits herself well and quells the left. It will not be good if her candidacy hits a wall, because if Warren doesn’t make it, we must have Harris. [UPDATE: After posting the above, I came across a couple of pieces that further increased my esteem for Harris, one by Jocelyn Sears on her personal history, “13 trailblazing facts about Kamala Harris,” the other by Courtney Swanson defending her record as prosecutor, “‘The research on her record: Why Kamala’s time as a prosecutor and Attorney General are a damn good thing’.” There was also the enquête by Ben Terris, “Who is Kamala Harris, really? Ask her sister Maya.”]
What many forget about Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign was that, for the most part, she was a happy warrior. Sure, her slash-and-burn attack on Joe Biden over busing in their first debate last June has become seared in our brains through constant repetition on cable TV.
But that was the exception.
What I remember is a different and more upbeat candidate on the campaign trail, a senator who gleefully laughed at her own jokes. In a speech to a largely Black audience in Florence, South Carolina, in early July of last year, Harris talked about how everyone was “going through individual and group therapy,” trying to grasp what Donald Trump was doing to America.
Instead of rage, Harris offered her own version of hope: “We’re going to be fine.” She harked back to the Founding Fathers and their concept of checks and balances as she stressed, “This is a nation that was founded anticipating a moment just like this.” And her dramatic example was the late John McCain casting a crucial Senate vote to break with Trump and Republican orthodoxy to save the Affordable Care Act.
This is a view of politics that Biden shares. They believe that not all Republicans are beyond salvation—and that our democracy and our values can be saved through individual acts of courage like McCain’s.
Many volumes will be written about why Biden chose Harris. But the truest bond between them may be the simplest: They are both politicians in the best sense of the word. They understand elections, Capitol Hill, and how to be tough without losing your sense of humor.
Could one possibly say such a thing about any Republican today?
What to say, Kamala has been a terrific candidate these past ten days. If she keeps this up over the next three months, she’ll win.
N.B. Kamala is speaking before a packed arena of 10,000 fired-up supporters. The Democrats haven’t seen this in a general election candidate since Obama in 2008.
As for her V-P pick, I’m hoping it’s Pete Buttigieg, who will defend the ticket’s policy proposals better than anyone, and demolish JD Vance while he’s at it. As for him being gay, it won’t hurt the ticket, not in 2024 (for those who say it will, I will need to see ironclad polling data on this). He and Kamala also get along well, so it is reported. Tim Walz, whom I hadn’t heard of until last week, looks good, but it likely won’t be him. If Josh Shapiro on the ticket guarantees Pennsylvania, that pretty much settles the matter. I was initially concerned about Shapiro’s rhetoric on Gaza, that this could create problems on university campuses—the ticket will need massive turnout in Ann Arbor and Madison—but Yair Rosenberg’s piece in The Atlantic today addressed my qualms. Andy Beshear looks to be a contender according to certain pundits (and Don in Wisconsin likes him), I’m not sure what he would do for the ticket. Mark Kelly: we need him in the Senate, so scratch him.
A couple of days ago a friend sent me, for no particular reason, a YouTube of ten of Jacques Chirac’s most memorable petites phrases, or off-the-cuff remarks, which was kind of a coincidence, as I’d been thinking of one Chirac maxim (not in the YouTube) over the previous couple of days, that aptly conveyed my feeling about the apocalypse underway in my two patries, France and the United States; in France, with the sudden snap election called by Emmanuel Macron and the very real prospect of a victory of the extreme right-wing Rassemblement National tomorrow; in the US, with Joe Biden’s debate debacle followed by the SCOTUS ruling on immunity for the Orange Man psycho: for America’s Saddam Hussein wannabe, who, despite being the most wretched, despicable specimen of a human being in American public life, is widening his lead in the presidential polls. Thus Chirac’s maxim: “Les emmerdes, ça vole toujours en escadrille.” As the phrase does not translate precisely into English (necessitating explanation), this is how I render its meaning: “If shitstorms were hurricanes, the one barreling toward us would be a category 5″…
When the 1st round returns came in last Sunday night, it looked like that mega-shitstorm heading toward the Hexagon was indeed a category 5, with the RN’s score—33%, up from 18% in the 2022 legislatives—translating into as many as 300 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, i.e. an absolute majority, and ergo, a government of the extreme right. The consequences of this unthinkable prospect for France would be dramatic and felt almost immediately, and far more so than Trump 1.0 was in the US in 2017 (a 2.0 Trump regime would be another story). That the party founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen and still known to all as the Front National—the FN and Le Pen names conjuring up all the sulfurous associations with the extreme right (racism, anti-Semitism, ethno-nationalism, xenophobia, neo-fascism, caesarism, and you name it)—could win an election and come to power all on its own, with no significant political allies, is breathtaking—and a mere seven years after Emmanuel Macron laid waste to Marine Le Pen in the presidential 2nd round. I wrote more than once in the early Macron years that Marine Le Pen and her party would never come to power, that they had hit a glass ceiling—and with my confident assertions on this buttressed by the RN’s counter-performance in the 2020 municipal and 2021 regional and departmental elections, in which the party revealed its ongoing inability to attract quality militants and cadres, or build a party infrastructure at the local level.
But there was a dramatic change in 2022, when Marine Le Pen broke 40% in the 2nd round against Macron and with the RN then, in an enormous surprise, electing 89 deputies to the National Assembly (MLP reportedly expected around 15 max). A parliamentary delegation of this size suddenly yielded the heavily indebted RN an annual €10.3 million in public financing—the jackpot—and spawned a crop of new faces: of media-savvy politicians who could go on television and competently argue the RN party line, giving the impression that the ranks of the RN were now made up of political professionals, not the motley collection of neo-Nazis, nutcases, and dunderheads the party coughed up in the past. And while bigots and IQ-challenged kooks do, objectively speaking, remain a greater presence in the RN than in other parties, the RN braintrust has succeeded in deflecting attention away from the sketchy pasts—and presents—of some of its cadres.
A case in point is Marine Le Pen’s masterstroke in propelling her protégé, Jordan Bardella, to the forefront, as the RN’s nº1 (his formal title: President) and who, in the hideous event the RN wins 289+ seats tomorrow, will celebrate his 29th birthday this September in the Hôtel de Matignon. Bardella is Marine’s man to head the French government—which is a really hard and demanding job—while she waits for Macron to throw in the towel and resign (which he has made clear he won’t do), triggering an early presidential election. Bardella’s age and experience—or lack of; he’s never had a real job in his few years in the vie active—are clearly not an issue for RN sympathizers, as his poll numbers have consistently been among the highest over the past two years—behind Edouard Philippe but ahead of MLP—and includes pollster questions about him eventually succeeding Macron. And while Bardella is not a dummy—receiving a mentiontrès bien on the bac, and from an exclusive Catholic lycée—he has no higher degree, having dropped out of the Sorbonne after a year of coursework. He did, however, undergo four years of “media training,” the effects of which have indisputably contributed to his côte de popularité. But what has been less understood about Bardella is his militancy, from his mid-teens on, in the ultra-right nebula of neo-Nazis, fascists, and old-school Jew-haters: groupuscules and goons that have always been in the FN/RN orbit but that the FN, even in the days of Le Pen père, tried to keep out of sight at events where outside journalists were present. There’s more to say about Bardella’s parcours but suffice to underscore that nasty groups like the GUD—which interior minister Gérard Darmanin opportunistically dissolved last month—are where Jordan Bardella, the man who will be France’s next prime minister if the sky falls in tomorrow, received his political and ideological education.
But so long as Bardella’s carefully constructed public image remains that of the gendre idéal for the Français moyen, and not that of a bomber jacket-wearing facho who came of age in a gang of street-brawlers banned by the state, he will be seen as having contributed to Marine Le Pen’s strategy of “de-demonization,” which was also greatly advanced by the candidacy of Eric Zemmour, who dominated political coverage in late 2021, making her look moderate by comparison. Add to this the radicalization of the mainstream right electorate—of Les Républicains, the heirs of neo-Gaullism (an extinct species, like moderate Republicans in the US)—who were orphaned after the fiasco of François Fillon’s candidacy in 2017—and with Valérie Pécresse’s even greater fiasco in 2022 signifying that a sizable portion of the LR base was defecting to Marine LP and the RN. Further add the fallout from the 2018-19 Gilets Jaunes—close to half of whom voted for MLP in 2017—and the cold fury against Emmanuel Macron, and you have a third of the French electorate.
Last Sunday’s 1st round logically confirmed the new sociology of the RN’s electorate as revealed in the European elections: that the RN is now present in all demographic and occupational categories, and in all parts of France, with the notable exception of the large cities (Nice and Marseille excepted) and heavily immigrant-populated banlieues. And the erstwhile gender gap has been wiped out. Repeating what I wrote in my June 27th post, the RN electorate bears a striking resemblance to the MAGA base in the US: rural/small town/exurban and less educated. The demographic and political dikes that heretofore restrained the growth of the FN/RN are giving way. The big political one that remains is a large, mainstream conservative party deciding to ally with the extreme right—which has historically been a precondition for the extreme right to come to power. Though there was some porousness in the mid and late 1980s between the droite libérale and FN in the PACA region, the cordon sanitaire of the RPR-UMP-LR around the FN never gave signs of ceding, and despite the rightward lurch of much of the parliamentary right on immigration and insécurité. A crack in the dike opened last month, however, with the unilateral decision of LR president Eric Ciotti to ally with the RN. It’s hardly surprising that Ciotti, who hardly differs with Marine Le Pen on any issue of significance, would make the leap—and all the more so as he’s from Nice, a very right-wing city—but not only was he not accompanied by other LR tenors but was vehemently denounced for his action. So the LR cordon sanitaire still mostly holds. For now.
A few comments on the left and the New Popular Front (NFP), whose candidates won a total of 28% of the vote. As the turnout rate was 66.7%—a 19 point increase over 2022 and the highest for a legislative election since 1997—this was not a great score for the left, the masses of new voters showing up at the polls more to vote for Ensemble and even the RN than for the NFP. In comparing the NFP’s score to the sum total for the NFP’s constituent parties in the June 9th European elections, where—as it was a proportional representation election—each party ran on its own, we see that there was a near 4 point drop on June 30th for the NFP.
The reason is simple: a not insignificant number of centrist or center-left voters, who are more than willing to vote for a Socialist or Ecologist candidate, will not consider voting for La France Insoumise. As I argued last time, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and LFI are a boulet, or millstone, for the reformist left, causing voters to flee. The personality and politics of Jean-Luc Mélenchon have been discussed in detail on AWAV, so they need not be recapped here, except to reiterate that JLM seems to almost delight in throwing rhetorical bombs at his putative political allies—the Socialists, his party until 2008 and that he loathes—and to remind them who’s boss, or who he thinks is boss, of their electoral cartel. And so on election night, while the pundits and politicos were analyzing and debating the projected results, JLM—who was not a candidate—addressed the TV cameras, flanked on one side by his lieutenant and deputy from Marseille, Manuel Bompard, and on the other by Rima Hassan, wearing a keffiyeh, but not being a candidate, had no reason to be there. It was a pure provocation by Mélenchon.
Last Monday my friend Claire Berlinski invited me to discuss the French election on The Elephant Cage podcast, which she co-hosts. The discussion was a mere twenty minutes, which was a little short, as Claire asked me a question that I would have liked more time to answer, which was why did the reformist left parties of the NFP—PS, Ecolos—not dump LFI and Mélenchon, and seek an electoral alliance with the centrists instead? This is a good question to ask, which I will answer next time and in detail, but briefly: an electoral pact of the PS and the parties that call themselves “centrist” is, given the institutional logic and political culture of the Fifth Republic, not in cards. As a possible option, it’s not on the table. À suivre.
Mélenchon is a problem for the non-LFI left—and for some in LFI as well—that has to be managed. The problem is being made more difficult, though, by the toxic issue of anti-Semitism and the Israel-Hamas war, which I delved into last time but, again, said I would come back to. But no sooner had I posted the AWAV than Claire, who writes ten times faster than I can read, took me to task on her Substack site, The Cosmopolitan Globalist, raking me over the coals for my contention that JLM, who is hardly my cup of tea, is nonetheless not an anti-Semite. I will stand my ground on this and, once again, get back next time.
Two things. First, the anti-Semitism issue is not only toxic, as people are now just screaming at one another and hurling insults, but it has become insidious as well; to wit, the demonization of LFI, which is equated with the RN, or deemed even worse. This is outrageous. Today, as I write, there is one danger here in France and one only, which is the Rassemblement National coming to power. Doing everything possible to prevent this catastrophe from coming to pass is all that matters. Today, at this moment. To denounce LFI over the RN, to refuse to choose between the two, or to implicitly prefer the RN over LFI—as did that despicable, mendacious tribune in Le Figaro yesterday [text in the comments thread below]—is worse than reprehensible. If the RN comes to power, those who refused to choose between LFI and the RN when faced with that choice, may they burn in Hell.
Second thing, and related. To those who despise JLM and LFI, and who sincerely believe them to be Jew-hating scum, a reminder: the RN not only has its share of Jew-hating scum, it has more than LFI. Another reminder: the RN is at the gates of power. They could possibly win a majority of seats in the National Assembly in less than 24 hours from when these words are being written. LFI has zero chance of coming to power, tomorrow or ever. Likewise for JLM. But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the NFP won a majority in the NA and with LFI the dominant force. And with JLM as PM. What do you think they would do to the Jews of France? Reenact the 1940 Statut des Juifs? Break relations with Israel and ally with Hamas and Hizbullah? Seriously? Come on.
And here’s the YouTube of a campaign rally yesterday near where I live, which I attended. I’ll speak more about it in due course. In the meantime, if you want to get a good idea of what Jean-Luc Mélenchon is about—his discourse and style—watch his speech here (at 27:00, he spoke for 45 minutes).
The frontmen: Gabriel Attal – Manuel Bompard – Jordan Bardella
Tomorrow is the 1st round of the French legislative elections—elections that are beyond doubt the most important of any kind held in this country in our lifetimes. Perhaps ever. These are, moreover, elections that, three weeks ago, not a single person—a half dozen in the Élysée palace excepted—had any idea were going to happen. The French people have been blindsided by Emmanuel Macron’s incomprehensible decision, announced one hour after the polls closed in the June 9th European elections, to invoke Article 12 of the constitution, dissolve the National Assembly, and schedule the snap legislative election, and in three weeks, i.e. in the minimum time frame specified in the said Article 12. For members and voters of the extreme right-wing Rassemblement National—the ex-Front National, founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen—the snap election is a divine surprise—the expression naturally comes to mind—as the RN, which, at 31.5%, finished far ahead in first place on June 9th, is certain to emerge as the largest single party in the 577-seat National Assembly. With the addition of voters of Eric Zemmour’s even more far right-wing party, called Reconquête (5% on June 9th), plus a sizable portion of those from the establishment—but rightward lurching—conservative party, Les Républicains (7% on June 9th), the RN will head into the July 7th 2nd round with at least 40% of the voters in its corner, and thereby a good chance of winning an absolute majority of seats in the 2nd round.
If the RN’s voters are thrilled and tasting victory, voters on the left are—like their post-debate Democratic Party counterparts outre-Atlantique—in a state of panic, indeed downright terror (and this includes myself). The specter of the RN coming to power for the first time since the Vichy regime of le Maréchal Pétain—a ressentiment-fueled extreme right with a tenacious hatred of the left and that will not hesitate to settle scores the moment it is able—is the worst nightmare of the left, not to mention the millions of French dual nationals and others who have non-French roots. The latest polls have the New Popular Front in the high 20s, signifying that moderate left voters in the European elections are shifting to Ensemble pour la République, Emmanuel Macron’s bloc central, but which has disowned him since he threw all of his allies, acolytes, and henchmen under a bus in invoking Article 12, and then ran over them a few times. Ensemble, liberated from Macron, will thereby improve on its 14.5% June 9th score, but still finish a distant third.
Seat projections before the 1st round are somewhat of a crap shoot given the way the electoral system works in legislative elections, where any candidate who receives 12.5% or more of registered voters in the circonscription, or constituency, can move on to the second round; so if the participation rate is sufficiently high, any candidate in the high teens or more percentage-wise can qualify, setting up the prospect of three-way races, or triangulaires, in which the 2nd round candidate who finishes first, though with a mere plurality, wins the seat. Since the 1960s, the Socialist and Communist parties practiced discipline républicaine, whereby the candidate who finished third, but still qualified for the 2nd round, would withdraw, so his voters could vote for the single left candidate, enabling the left to maximize its number of seats in the NA. But the same kind of “discipline” was never the case between the parliamentary right and the extreme-right FN, with triangulaires thus a big problem for the former as the latter gained strength in the 1990s. So in the 1997 legislatives, there were 79 triangulaires on the right, which enabled the Gauche plurielle to win many of those seats with pluralities, and thereby a majority in the NA.
The turnout rate has been steadily declining over the past three decades, however, from 69% in the 1993 legislatives to 47.5% in 2022, with a consequential drop in the number of triangulaires into the single digits. But projections for tomorrow’s 1st round have turnout skyrocketing to 65%, if not more, which, given the electoral weight of the three blocs, means that there could be as many as 250 triangulaires, if not more. If this comes to pass—and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t—the NFP and Ensemble will be faced with a stark, brutal fact, which is if they don’t conclude some kind of agreement—and by Tuesday 6 PM—for a front républicain of 2nd round duels with the RN—that if, unable or unwilling to make a deal to temporarily put their differences aside to block the RN, 2nd round voters in 250+ circos will be faced with triangulaires—the RN will win a huge victory on July 7th. And so goes France. It’s as simple as that.
At this point I want to pick up from where I left off in my previous post, in the discussion on the left and the NFP, in general, and La France Insoumise and its caudillo, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in particular. LFI, which has asserted itself as the nº 1 party on the left and over the Parti Socialiste, what with JLM’s 19.6% and 22% 1st round scores in the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, respectively (cf. the PS candidate’s 6.3% and 1.7%), and domination of the NUPES in 2022 (and this despite the PS’s dense network of elected officials and reps at the local level, where LFI is all but absent). As I discussed in the last post, LFI is both the driving force on the left and, because of its radicality, the left’s weak link, insofar as it causes potential moderate voters to flee (to Ensemble). Over the past seven years, and particularly the last two, LFI and JLM have become a punching ball for the Macronists and others in the extreme center (there is indeed such a thing), and whose attacks have become increasingly virulent and below the belt, to which may be added the feuding within the left since the collapse of the NUPES last year.
LFI is hardly innocent in all this, it should be said, as JLM, a trash-talking bully hors pair, has long been one of the most polarizing personalities in French politics. And some of his acolytes take after him in this regard, e.g. Mathilde Panot and Manuel Bompard, his top lieutenants in the NA, who have done little, au contraire, to improve the public image of LFI’s parliamentary group of loudmouths, who come to the Palais Bourbon wearing jeans, tee shirts, and sneakers (cf. the RN’s parliamentary group, which adheres to a strict dress code imposed by Marine Le Pen—jackets and ties—and are usually on their best behavior; le Français moyen in the Loir-et-Cher or Lot-et-Garonne watching the TV news will note the contrast). But while LFI does not always project a positive image, the incessant equating of it with the RN, as the two extremes on the political spectrum, is unacceptable and simply wrong. In point of fact, LFI is not a party of the extreme left, as the Macronists and the right have labeled it. Extremist parties in France are thusly labeled because the policies they advocate—which are at the core of their world-view and political agenda, to be implemented when they come to power—are incompatible with the French republican model as it is commonly understood, and are manifestly unconstitutional. This is clearly the case with the RN (to be discussed in due course), which is why it is a party of the extreme right. As for the extreme left, this has, since the 1960s, mainly referred to Trotskyist parties and groupuscules that advocate an overthrow of the capitalist system and the state apparatus that underpins it. While these parties (if one wants to call them that) sometimes run candidates in elections—mainly for the free media time—they are not interested in working within the system to realize their utopian goals. This is, needless to say, not the case with LFI, which is a party of the radical, not extreme, left. Despite some half-baked ideas about a “Sixth Republic,” which seem to have vanished from its rhetoric, LFI exists firmly within the confines of French republicanism.
The big accusation leveled against JLM and LFI, and particularly since last October 7th—which has provoked countless heated arguments and led people to recount all sorts of nonsense—is of anti-Semitism. Of course. Before putting forth my take on the subject, I need to specify, for those who don’t know AWAV well, that I strongly dislike Jean-Luc Mélenchon. I cannot stand the man. I spelled out my dim views on him in a 4000-word broadside—which some would call a screed or diatribe—in AWAV, on the eve of the 1st round of the 2012 presidential election, and which holds up well twelve years later IMHO; it may be read here. Other posts I’ve consecrated to JLM include this and this. Now that I’ve established my bona fides—that, personally speaking, I have no dog in the fight to defend JLM’s good name—I will submit that while he has made utterances on Jewish-related matters that were borderline or just plain stupid, and that anti-Semitic invective has been heard from LFI corteges at demos over Gaza, JLM is not an anti-Semite. JLM is not an anti-Semite because if he were, we’d have had plenty of evidence of it in the course of his decades-long political career, particularly as he has a penchant for shooting off his mouth and saying what’s on his mind. But the fact is, all of the accusations against JLM on the matter date from the past five or six years, when he manifestly decided that he was going to be the champion of France’s Muslims, over four-fifths with roots in the three countries of the Maghreb; JLM having lived himself in Morocco to age 10. And of no minor significance, his S.O., the Franco-Algerian Sophia Chikirou, is also, so it is said, his top political adviser. He has determined that there is a “Muslim vote” in France and that he was going to take up its big causes, particularly Palestine and combating Islamophobia.
N.B. Jean-Luc Mélenchon is no Jeremy Corbyn, who has long supported Hamas and Hizbullah, laid wreaths at the graves of Palestinian terrorists, used “Zionist” as a code word, and made rank anti-Semitic statements. While Corbyn was praising Hamas, we were hearing a different tune from JLM (watch here).
Mélenchon may participate in marches against Islamophobia—such as the one in November 2019 (I don’t like the term “Islamophobia” but went to the march anyway)—but several years earlier he was speaking about the actual discomfort he felt at the sight of women wearing the hijab (see my 2012 post linked to above). Until he found religion, as it is were, Mélenchon was a laïcard: a militant French-style atheist hostile to public expressions of religiosity, regardless of the religion. This current of thought has long been epitomized by Charlie Hebdo—which Muslim fanatics targeted for massacre on January 7, 2015. At the funeral of the cartoonist Charb, JLM delivered the eulogy:
Then there was the Silent March for Mireille Knoll, the elderly Jewish woman who was murdered in 2018 in a horrific anti-Semitic crime. JLM sought to attend and with an LFI delegation, but were insolently told by the CRIF not to come, that they would not be welcome. When they did anyway, they were met with abuse and invective by LDJ/JDL toughs, and had to be exfiltrated. An outrageous incident, which I wrote about here.
The point of all this about Mélenchon is that he and LFI may not be one’s cup of tea but we will need to put differences aside and unite to prevent the RN from winning a majority in the 2nd round. JLM has said stupid or borderline things and made mistakes, e.g. not attending the march against anti-Semitism last November 12th, but he is not an anti-Semite, and LFI is not a party of the extreme left. To equate it with the RN is unacceptable.
As for the candidate I’ll be voting for tomorrow:
🟣 @LyesLouffok, militant de la défense des droits de l'enfant et essayiste, est le candidat du #NouveauFrontPopulaire dans la 1ère circonscription du Val-de-Marne !
✅ Les 30 juin et 7 juillet, mobilisation générale ! Nous pouvons changer la vie et écrire l'histoire ! pic.twitter.com/91SVfqCP95
— La France insoumise (@FranceInsoumise) June 14, 2024
On the brink of a political earthquake the magnitude of which this country—ma deuxième patrie—has not seen in the adult lifetime of anyone reading this. In a mere two-and-a-half weeks—by the July 14th fête nationale, a.k.a. Bastille Day—France may well have its first government of the extreme right in eighty years—and the first one ensuing from an election since the 1815 Bourbon Restoration. And the earthquake will be felt across Europe—particularly in Brussels and Kyiv—and further afield. This post is going to be short and to the point but before delving in, a word on AWAV’s silence over the past two months [If one is not interested in reading about personal matters not germane to the topic at hand, please skip to the next paragraph], which several friends and readers have asked me about—particularly as AWAV was AWOL during the European election campaign, which I had several posts on in 2014 and 2019, but with this one seen by all to be the most important since the advent, in 1979, of the direct election of deputies of the European Parliament by citizens of EC/EU member states. Making excuses for myself, I had, for almost a month, continual houseguests from the US, notably three friends from my childhood years in Milwaukee, and with the four of us sexa- and septuagenarian men taking off on a road trip down south, with the high point a week in Marseille (where, entre autres, we spent a lively evening with AWAV’s most prolific commenter over the thirteen years of AWAV’s existence). As I was entirely caught up with my visiting stateside friends during this time, AWAV sort of fell by the wayside. C’est dommage mais ça arrive.
I did make it back to Paris in time to vote on June 9th—for the Parti Socialiste-Place Publique list, or slate, headed by Raphaël Glucksmann, a no-brainer of a choice—and then man a polling station for several hours as an assesseur (a volunteer civic duty I have performed in all but a few election rounds since becoming a citizen in 2005). There was no big surprise in the election result—projected at 8 PM, as always—or collective polling misfire: To recap, the extreme right-wing Rassemblement National finished way ahead in first place and, for the first time in its 52-year history, broke 30% in a national election—pour mémoire, the RN was founded in 1972 as the Front National, changing its name (but little else) in 2018—and with the highest voter turnout (51.5%) in a European election since 1994; the Macronist centrist/center-right bloc, headed by the non-descript Valérie Hayer—entirely unknown to even politically informed persons before Emmanuel Macron hand-picked her three months before the vote— bit the dust, finishing below 15% (cf. 22% in 2019) and barely ahead of Glucksmann’s moderate left, PS-dominated slate, which, in a solid third place and four points ahead of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise—the LFI slate, led by Manon Aubry, overperformed the polls in finishing just shy of 10%—has rectified the imbalance on the left of the past seven years, which saw the radical left LFI, thanks to JLM’s strong showing in the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections—and the corresponding collapse of the PS in those contests—establish itself as the dominant force on the French left. This imbalance in favor of LFI (of which more on below) looks to be behind us, which is a good thing, for both the left and for France.
There was much to analyze in the election results and conclusions to be drawn, but with hardly any time to do so on election night, as Macron, one hour after the polls closed, threw a grenade (his own word, uttered privately) into the collective political class, in announcing to the nation that, in view of the election outcome, he was dissolving the National Assembly and with legislative elections to be held inthree weeks. To say that his decision took everyone by surprise is putting it mildly. Over the subsequent days, two words were heard repeatedly from seasoned politicos and veteran political analysts and pundits, who’ve been around for a long time, seen it all, and know everyone who counts in the Paris political world: “sidération” (stunning, astonishing) and “inédit” (unprecedented). Stunning because absolutely no one—three or four of Macron’s advisers in the Élysée, plus Brigitte, excepted—saw it coming or had any idea that Macron, despite his unpredictability, was at all contemplating such a drastic move and at this particular moment. As for it being unprecedented, while the President of the Republic has the constitutional authority to dissolve the National Assembly—once in a one-year period and subsequent to “consultations” with the presidents of the Assembly and Senate—and with early legislative elections to be held within 40 days, never has a president of the Fifth Republic done such a thing under such circumstances—and with elections to the lower house of parliament to be held, with no forewarning, in three weeks: 577 deputies to be elected in single-member constituencies in two rounds, which absolutely no one was ready for. What Macron has done is not only stunning and unprecedented: it is insane. Madness. And with potentially grave consequences: for France, Europe, Ukraine, and you name it.
Dissolving the National Assembly and bringing about early legislative elections is one of the most consequential acts a President of the Republic can take, and while the constitution’s Article 12 does not oblige the president to provide a reason for such a decision, some reasons are, politically speaking, considered valid—prompting the electorate to give the president a majority in the Assembly—and other reasons are seen as not valid, causing voters to inflict a defeat on the president’s camp in the snap election. Macron’s action on the evening of June 9th marks the sixth time a President of the Republic has made use of article 12. As for the previous five, a historical detour:
October 1962: Charles de Gaulle, elected President of the Republic in 1958 by—as stipulated in the new constitution—an electoral college of 81,764 mostly local elected representatives, enjoyed a majority in the National Assembly, with his Gaullist movement (UNR) governing in a coalition with other conservative parties. De Gaulle wished to replace the electoral college with direct election of the President of the Republic by universal suffrage, but which was certain to be rejected by the (indirectly elected) Senate, whose assent was/is necessary to amend the constitution. De Gaulle thus took the decision —itself of dubious, if not doubtful, constitutionality—to invoke Article 11 of the constitution to organize a national referendum on the question. The parties of the left, center, and non-Gaullist right vehemently opposed De Gaulle’s move, a censure motion was filed in the NA, and which passed, triggering the resignation of the government of De Gaulle’s newly-designated prime minister, Georges Pompidou. De Gaulle thus invoked Article 12, dissolved the NA, and scheduled legislative elections. De Gaulle’s action was overwhelmingly viewed as valid—a legitimate use of Article 12—and which the French people confirmed later that month, giving him a landslide victory in the referendum and consecrating the UNR as the dominant party in the NA in the early legislative elections held in November.
May 1968: After one month of student demonstrations and union-led strikes that paralyzed the entire country, and with an accord negotiated by PM Pompidou and the unions rejected by the masses of striking workers, France appeared to be on the verge of insurrection, and with the 78-year-old President de Gaulle looking clueless and unable to exercise authority. Revolution was in the air. But on May 30th he went on the radio and, specifically addressing the masses of conservative Frenchmen and women alarmed by the chaos, announced that he was dissolving the NA—which had been elected the previous year and with a narrow right-wing majority—and with new elections to be held in 25 days, as the way out of the crisis. De Gaulle’s wager paid off, as the demos wound down and strikers drifted back to work; with order restored, attention thus shifted to election campaign. When the dust settled, the Gaullist party—martially renamed Union pour la Défense de la République for the occasion—had won a landslide victory of historic proportions, achieving a majority of seats in the NA on its own (for the first and last time).
May 1981: François Mitterrand defeated Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in the 2nd round of the presidential election—May 10, 1981: an iconic date on the French left—signaling a return to power of the Socialist party for the first time since the waning days of the Fourth Republic. Mitterrand’s first act as President of the Republic was to dissolve the NA—elected in 1978 with a majority of the right—and schedule legislative elections two years early, on June 14 & 21, with the hope and expectation that the voters would validate their choice of May 10th and deliver a majority of the left. And this they did, the PS and allies winning a historic 37.5% of the vote (up from 25% in 1978)—a feat the PS would never again achieve—and an outright majority of seats on its own, with no dependence on the Communists. That a newly-elected President in the Fifth Republic should hold early legislative elections to achieve a governing majority, so as to realize his agenda and make good on campaign promises, is considered by all and sundry as entirely legitimate.
May 1988: President Mitterrand, easily reelected for a second (then) seven-year term, logically dissolved the NA that had been elected two years earlier and with a right-wing majority (a consequence of which was the Fifth Republic’s first cohabitation). The broad left won a narrow majority in the June legislative elections but the Socialists were some 15 deputies short, leaving them dependent on the whims of the Communist party—with whom its relationship was difficult—to ward off censure motions and expedite legislation.
April 1997: Jacques Chirac, elected President of the Republic two years earlier, enjoyed a huge majority in the NA—of neo-Gaullists and a myriad of conservative and center-right formations—that had been elected in a landslide in the 1993 legislative elections. Looking ahead to 1998, when the NA would be up for reelection, Chirac’s chief-of-staff in the Élysée, Dominique de Villepin, advised him to dissolve the NA a year early, as France, despite being in a near recession and with 12% unemployment, would nonetheless have to implement austerity measures later in the year, to meet the European Union’s convergence criteria to qualify for the single currency—the euro—by the 1999 deadline for Economic and Monetary Union. This would most certainly provoke a popular backlash, however, and cause the right to lose the 1998 elections. So better to hold the elections a year early, win with a smaller majority—the left was not viewed as a threat—and then turn the austerity screws without having to worry about facing the voters for five years. So Chirac solemnly announced to the nation that he was dissolving the NA and with elections to be held in five weeks. But his reasons for doing so were not entirely coherent (watch his ten minutes of word salad and charabia here and try to make sense of it). It was clear to the informed public that Chirac’s action was driven by political calculation, that he had no good reason to call the electorate back to the polls. The consequence: the left, which had looked to be out of the picture, used the three week window before the deadline for submitting candidacies to forge an unexpected five-party electoral bloc—la Gauche plurielle—led by a resurgent Socialist party and its uncontested leader, Lionel Jospin, who had unexpectedly emerged as the PS’s presidential candidate in1995, losing to Chirac in the 2nd round with a respectable 47.5%. The Gauche plurielle, with a plethora of strong personalities—a political A-list—and minimal infighting—took Chirac and the right by surprise, scoring a brilliant victory in the May 25-June 1 elections. Chirac’s politically-motivated invoking of Article 12 blew up in his face, consigning him to a five-year, mostly powerless cohabitation with Prime Minister Jospin.
The moral of the story: if you’re President of the French Republic, don’t dissolve the National Assembly unless you have a reason that is considered valid by both the public and your political allies—and particularly the incumbent deputies of your party or coalition, who will suddenly need to defend their seats in a reelection campaign. If there were a compelling reason for Macron to decree a snap legislative election on the evening of one for the European Parliament—regardless of the result—it did not occur to anyone outside his tiny circle of advisers. Macron, in his 9 PM address to the nation—which lasted not even five minutes (watch here), a record in brevity for France’s gasbag-in-chief (Macron normally drones on interminably)—observed that the result was “not good” for defenders of the European project, among them his “presidential majority,” and deplored the 40% of the vote that went to the parties of the extreme-right, but also the “fever” and “disorder” that had gripped France; so in view of the many “challenges” facing France and that necessitated “clairity” in the public debate, he was thus invoking Article 12, and with elections to be held in the minimum time period stipulated in the said article. (My loud reaction to his announcement was this).
A few points on Macron’s move. First, he has naturally been frustrated since the 2022 legislative elections, which unexpectedly failed to deliver a majority to his centrist/center-right electoral alliance, called Ensemble pour la République, spawning what was in effect a hung parliament. Macron’s prime minister, the haute fonctionnaire, non-politician Elisabeth Borne—appointed in May 2022, after his reelection—was thus obliged to negotiate legislation with the fractious opposition, left and right, or invoke Article 49-3 and then ward off censure motions. Borne competently executed Macron’s desiderata, demonstrating that he could in fact advance his agenda, albeit with a few compromises, in governing with a mere plurality in the National Assembly— though which did not stop him from unceremoniously, humiliatingly replacing her in Jan. ’24, and for no apparent reason, with the cherubic, germanopratin Gabriel Attal. In point of fact, the hung parliament of the past two years transformed the NA from the President of the Republic’s rubber stamp into a real parliamentary body—at least the way these work in most democracies. If Macron wanted an “indispensable clarification” from the electorate as to where it stands, he could have, at any point in his seven years in office, made good on his pledge to introduce a dose of proportional representation in the electoral system—or, better yet, entirely replace the single-member constituency two-round system with PR—which would axiomatically institutionalize multiparty coalition governments but dramatically increase the probability that Macron’s bloc central would be an indispensable player regardless of the outcome of a given legislative election. But as Macron, in asking the voters to deliver a “clear majority”—presumably for Ensemble—manifestly prefers to have a rubber stamp, he could have at least waited for the debate over the budget in September or October, which, given the state of France’s public finances, promises (or promised) to be the Mother of all budgetary battles, the government inevitably invoking 49-3, followed by a censure motion submitted from the benches of the opposition, but which this time would pass, thereby causing the fall of Attal’s government. Macron, adopting the posture of Charles de Gaulle in 1962, could then legitimately dissolve the NA and allow five weeks for new elections. It might not have given him an absolute majority but would have at least (somewhat) saved his legacy.
A second point, on Macron’s holding the snap election three weeks after Ensemble’s counter-performance—and the extreme right-wing RN’s brilliant one—but calling for a “clear majority;” again, presumably for the same Ensemble: one is struck not only by the cynicism of Macron’s move, of its narcissistic, indeed solipsistic calculation, but also how dangerous it is. And totally crazy. Macron’s gambit brings to mind that crackpot 2015 referendum in Greece, organized by Alexis Tsipras à la va vite. In decreeing on June 9th a snap election for the 30th, this meant that all candidacies would have to be filed with the prefectures by June 16th. So all the parties, caught utterly unawares, would have exactly six days to come up with candidates and programs, print flyers and other media, raise money, mobilize activists, etcetera etcetera. And not to mention the organization of such an important election, of the tens of thousands of municipal employees who would suddenly have to be mobilized; and then all the voters leaving for vacation or planning to be absent, who would suddenly have to undertake the procedure for the vote par procuration, or vote by proxy (over 2 million so far).
Then there’s the question as to what kind of political debate could possibly happen in such a time frame—and given the stakes and configuration of forces, in what is being called the most important French legislative election since at least the Second World War. Macron’s action is not only so disruptive and dangerous—as it threatens to bring the extreme right to power—but is also an assault on democracy itself. And to what end? One can only speculate but it seems clear that Macron’s calculation centered on the left, whose historic cleavage between la gauche reformiste (PS) and la gauche radicale (nowadays incarnated by LFI, with the PCF and ecologists straddling the two) has widened to a chasm since the collapse last fall of the NUPES—the shotgun electoral wedding of the left-wing parties—primarily, though not exclusively, over Israel-Gaza. The NUPES, initiated by Jean-Luc Mélenchon—from a position of strength vis-à-vis the rest of the left, in view of their respective performances in the April ’22 presidential 1st round (here)—enabled the left to send 151 deputies to the NA (half from LFI); without the NUPES, the number of left-wing deputies would have been divided by at least two-thirds (and with the PS all but wiped out).
Macron most certainly assumed that there was no way the left—where there’s a lot of bad blood among all sorts of people, and particularly around the polarizing figure of Mélenchon— would be able to come together in a NUPES-like alliance in less than a week, throw together some kind of electoral program, and, above all, decide which party gets what circonscription, or constituency, of which there are 577. So with several left candidacies in each circo, signifying that few would make the run-off, the stage would thus be set for a 2nd round of duels between Ensemble and the RN, with left voters yet again, one more time, voting for Macron (this time the macroniste) to block the extreme-right, and with some who voted RN in the low-stakes European election—always a vehicle for a protest vote or to send a message—maybe having second thoughts.
Macron, who thinks he’s brilliant, surely thought this strategy was equally so. Except that it wasn’t, as the PS, LFI, écolos, and PCF rose to the occasion and formed an electoral bloc—the New Popular Front (NFP)—that looks even more robust than the NUPES, and despite the continued internal quarreling and backstabbing. The reason is so simple: unlike 2022, or at any point in the past, the Front National—which is how the left still refers to that party—is on the threshold of power. A party whose nº 1 is named Le Pen could be in charge of the key ministries of government in less than one month. A 28-year-old named Jordan Bardella, who travelled in neo-fascist circles in his politically formative years—and who may be labelled, until proof to the contrary, a closet neo-fascist himself—may well be prime minister of the French Republic come Bastille Day. And while the FN/RN is not a fascist party, it is, from the standpoint of French republican principles, beyond the pale. The dread, indeed terror, this sudden new reality arouses on the left—which, like everyone else, was blindsided by Macron’s move and what has ensued—is akin to that felt by US Democrats and anti-MAGA ex-Republicans at the specter of a Trump victory in November, and with the MAGA Republican Party controlling both houses of Congress.
A few comments on the left. First, on the reaction to the NFP, the birth of which was quite remarkable in view of, as mentioned above, the open warfare that has broken out between the PS, PCF, and just about everyone else, on one side, and LFI on the other, and with several leading figures in LFI having themselves entered into dissidence against Mélenchon and his autocratic leadership. When the NUPES was born in May ’22, a not-insignificant number of Socialists refused to sign on to it, notably social-liberals ( = establishment Democrats in the US) close to François Hollande and Manuel Valls (who led the right flank of the PS before quitting the party and becoming a rightist tout court). The objections included the dominance of LFI (which was inevitable given the rapport de forces at that moment), LFI’s radical positions on issues across the board, its Euroscepticism, and the personality of JLM. But the NUPES detractors are now on the NPF bandwagon, among them former president Hollande (who is running for deputy) and Carole Delga, the leading PS personality in the southwest. When I heard that these two were on board with the NFP—plus Raphaël Glucksmann, a target of LFI insults and invective during the European campaign—I knew the left would wage this campaign as united as it could possibly be.
That said, and this is a second comment, the NFP has in no way resolved a big problem on the left, which is the outsized weight, relatively speaking, of LFI and, in particular, the even more outsized personality of Jean-Luc Mélenchon—and with LFI-JLM aggravating the big problem on the left, which is its electoral weakness. From the 1970s through the 2012 election, the national electoral strength of the left, as measured by the first-round vote totals of left presidential candidates, was in the 40-49% range, with 43-44% the threshold for winning a presidential election. In 2017 a sizable portion of moderate PS voters defected to Emmanuel Macron when the leftist Benoît Hamon won the PS presidential primary, and stayed with him in 2022, causing a steep drop in the total stock of left votes to a mere third of the electorate. And that is where the left vote has stubbornly remained. At a maximum one-third of the electorate, the left—already fragmented and bitterly divided over identity-related issues that do not lend themselves to compromise—has no hope of returning to power. Moreover, polls over the past two years have consistently shown that when the parties of the left are polled separately, their total reaches 30-34% of voters. But when they’re polled as the NUPES or NFP, i.e. a single electoral bloc, the number drops three or four points, into the mid to high 20s.
The reason for the fall-off is not hard to divine: LFI and, above all, JLM are a repoussoir—are repellent—to a sizable number of moderate left voters, who are more than willing to vote for the PS or ecologists but not the radical LFI (a US comparison would be Hillary Clinton voters who could possibly go along with Bernie Sanders but not with the leftist Bernie Bros, and who hated her in turn). The reformist left thus finds itself in the Catch-22 situation of not being able to win, or even credibly contest, a national election under the prevailing electoral system without an alliance with the radical leftist LFI, but with that very alliance causing voters to turn away. Over the past two weeks I have listened to two LFI-haters—one a friend, the other an Ensemble activist encountered on the street—harshly criticize the PS for making a pact with the LFI devil rather than seek an alliance with the centrists, specifically Macron’s party (or “party”), now called Renaissance (ex-République en Marche), and François Bayrou’s MoDem. My response: (a) The idea of a center-left/centrist alliance is a nice one but could only be considered after a change in the mode de scrutin to proportional representation and away from the binary two-round system; (b) Renaissance is an empty shell; it is not a veritable party; without Macron it does not exist; so to negotiate an alliance with Renaissance is to do so with Macron, which is quite simply out of the question; (c) How on earth could such an alliance be negotiated and concluded in a week?; (d) LFI is not only JLM and his inner circle of acolytes and other grandes gueules on its margins, but also François Ruffin, Clementine Autain, and other worthy personalities with whom the reformist left can work; (e) Get rid of Macron first and then we’ll see.
So for better or worse, and given that the hour is grave, all those who are terrified by the specter of the RN in power—even if one doesn’t care about France but does about Ukraine—there is no choice but to support the NPF candidate, LFI or not, who is best placed to defeat the RN.
Macron, the grenade he tossed having blown him up as well, has responded to the disaster he created by doubling down on his increasingly desperate attacks on the NFP and LFI, labeled “extreme left” and equated with the extreme right RN. And then there are the accusations of anti-Semitism—by Macron and all those in his camp, across the right, and into the left—against LFI in general and JLM in particular, and which has hystericized the public debate—if people screaming at one another and engaging in ad hominem attacks can be called a “debate”—since last October 7th. This issue, which is as toxic in France as in the US, is an important one and on which I have some things to say. As it merits a separate post, I’ll come back to it in the next two days.
One of the consequences of Macron’s action is to have, in effect, killed off his own political camp. Every last one of Macron’s allies, beginning with the members of his government and deputies of his “presidential majority,” feels betrayed by what he has done. They are all, to a man and woman, outraged, as, entre autres, most of them will find their political careers over by the evening of July 7th. Emmanuel Macron has no political allies left. Not one. His face or name figures on not a single campaign flyer or poster of his “presidential majority.” Macron, the Gasbag-in-Chief, has been blathering daily but no one is listening, and with his erstwhile allies—macronistes, whose political careers he launched—just wish he would STFU. What this will mean for the future of his presidency—if he lasts to 2027—and France’s international position, we’ll soon have an idea.
And then there’s the Rassemblement National, on which I will say more next time (and times after that). Just one observation for now: not only did the RN cross the 30% threshold but finished in first place in every part of the country (apart from Paris and most of the larger cities), and with support in almost all demographic and occupational categories. Sociologically speaking, the RN electorate bears a strong resemblance to that of Trump in the US (rural and exurban, less educated), though is now more representative of the French population than is any other party. The transformation of the RN’s fortunes, compared to seven years ago, when Macron entered office, is quite stunning. The dikes are ceding. RN voters no longer do so to send a message or cast a throwaway protest vote; a vote for the RN is now a vote of affirmation, an openly assumed expression of support by those who want the RN to come to power. And there is every reason to think—and fear—that it will.
Arun with a View 