Vive la France!

[Bereta_Eder]

I missed that alternative reality (I hope it doesn't do irreversible damage to the brain)

[BeBMan]

I get the feeling that pretty much all enthusiasm for this man is driven by the sentiment, "Oh God please not that woman."

That is certainly *one* key factor explaining his win - that ppl did want to prevent LePen.

He appears to want nothing other than the status quo with slight modifications, and nobody especially wants that per se but they're scared that Le Pen would sic stormtroopers on them. Is this accurate?

I wouldn't say that. Even with the point above in mind creating a centrist grass-roots movement that is actually successful in its first election run in a country with classically a more strict left - right divide seems to be something, esp. in times when the extremes are on the rise. He does not seem to care about rather pointless labels a la "left/right", but actually tries to find solutions for the most pressing problems. That could earn him a lot of resistance from both left and right though, so it kinda depends how much ppl are fed up with political deadlock due to the usual partisan games...

"Status quo with slight modifications" - that's how he certainly could end up when he fails though. Mainly if he fails to improve the economy/unemplyoment in France then what Dinner wrote - LePen in 5 - is certainly a possibility.

[Bereta_Eder]

Oh bebro. you're nothing but an eastern european.
very limited perception

[BlackCat]

yes

although macron would propably deny it and say he will bring "real reform"

Pure BS/wet dreams. He was elected on balancing state budget, reducing bureaucracy with 150.000 and get rid of the hopeless rules wrt. hiring/firing workers. He sure has a socialist past, but quit his job as minister since it didn't made sense.

Now if only Greece had a Macron that had the balls to do the same, maybe it could be a prosperous country.

[Bereta_Eder]

It IS a prosperous country.

I enjoyed a graph proteus showed where greece, even in the middle of the crisis, has a health care system that is 20 places upwards than the american one (ok, not a real accomplishment) but still 14th in the world.

[Kidlicious]

Did Macron say that the French deserve terrorism?

[pchang]

Shush - adults are posting.

[Kidlicious]

I suppose there is no reason to say anything about him dating his teacher who was 24 years older since it's France.

[Kidlicious]

Shush - adults are posting.

Yes, only children believe that the Left thinks we deserve to be terrorised.

[Dry]

basically the feeling in france is (I think) **** we have to chose between the bankster oedipus complex wimp and the nazi moron with an IQ of 20. it's the first

I'm not sure about that. I didn't follow closely enough the whole campaign, but it seemed to me that the bankster label some tried to stick on him wasn't very convincing. Only Mélanchon's supporters swalowed it.
By electing Macron, France made the reasonable choice. They managed to avoid both the french Chavez or Tsipras (Mélanchon) and the french Farage or Geert Wilder (Lepen).

Macron might be a vanila, odorless, tasteless, choice, but at least France dodged the communist and the fascist bullets.
I do not expect much of his presidency, except a little bit of common sense. That is if the traditional parties let him do and do not sabotage his decisions. He will have to chose his prime minister with much care.

[BeBMan]

Next month (IIRC) are parliamentary elections in France, this will provide further clue how much backing he has when it goes beyond a mere Big Mac vs Le Pen match.

/2 cents

[Dinner]

of course it depends.


france was never as stupid as the UK or the USA so they made the "right" choice.

this doesn't fix the underlining problems, just gives more time to correct them

macron's only choice is to go back hard to his socialist roots and do a flip flop faster than you can say paine de provence


also with macron merkel's run out of support. now it's only finland and holland and they ain't support. they're peanuts without whiskey

Actually, I saw a report that the outcome mostly came down to the rules behind French elections. If France had electoral rules like the US then Le Pen very well might have won. Rules are really important.

[rah]

Which rules are you referring to specifically? Maybe a link to the report.

[Dinner]

The basic argument had to do with the electoral college, how the US has it but France doesn't, and thus candidates fairly regularly lose the popular vote yet win the election due to the E.C..

Macron won big in cities but not in the countryside. Just Trump and Bush in 2000 lost cities but won in the countryside so they won due to the US system. If the US had a French style system Hillary would now be President and we would have had Gore in 2000.

[rah]

While that sounds good, you never really know. If the rules were different, strategies might have been different. Money spent in different places. There would be lots of differences. So unless those were the rules used, you really can't say for sure how it would have gone. But in this case, I also lean towards thinking Hillary would have won under different rules.