France's snap legislative election on Sunday, July 7, 2024 has resulted in a hung parliament with no majority and instead will be shaped by three main political blocs.
With 180 seats, the left-wing New Popular Front coalition unexpectedly became the leading political force in the National Assembly, overtaking the presidential party (Ensemble), which won just 163 seats, 82 fewer than the 245 it won two years ago.
In third place, the National Rally, formerly the National Front, and its LR allies won only 143 seats, according to the final results released by the Ministry of the Interior. However, with more than 30 percent of the votes cast in both the first and second rounds, the far-right party continued to gain ground, winning 54 seats compared with the 89 it won in 2022.
With a turnout of 66.7 percent of registered voters heading to the polls in the first round and 66.6 percent in the second (compared with 47.5 percent and 46.2 percent respectively in 2022), the turnout was the highest for a legislative election since 1997.
You will find more infographics at Statista
I am noticing some patterns. Labour won out in the UK election. The right leaning party is still in charge in Italy, but they have lost ground. The Le Pin-identified party in France didn't win, though they gained ground. A more left leaning party had unexpected gains. Modi's party in India experienced a loss in ground, though he is still in charge.
ReplyDeleteRightist, authoriarian leaning parties have not managed to steamroller a new world order.
Another thing I have noticed. When an election is held to force the issue and prove a point (as Macron did) it often backfires.
Yes, I think you're exactly right. If Democrats manage to pull this election out of the fire, possibly Repubs will wise up to the fact that they can't keep running extremist candidates (or candidates associated with extremists, i.e., Trump). They figured it out with Goldwater in '64. But politics has a short memory.
DeleteGaah! Goldwater vs Johnson memories. I was a middle school kid. My folks were Goldwater supporters. I never did quite figure out why, except it was the R brand. My paternal grandma was an FDR Democrat. She and my mom had some "interesting" discussions. Dad stayed out of it. Smart move, because neither of them was going to convince the other. Dad did have sort of a cute bumper sticker on his pickup, "AuH2O".
DeletePrior to the last election one of my brothers asked, " Do you think Nana would still be a Democrat nowadays?' I said she absolutely would be, she would only have had one problem with Biden. That would have been his support for abortion. And I think my folks and my other grandma would be so turned off by Trump that they would leave the ballot blank or write in someone.
I remember those AuH2O stickers. "In your heart, you know he's right."
DeleteMy Gramma said she voted Republican, but that was to keep my Grampa quiet. Not sure what problem Grampa had with Democrats. He was a lifelong postal employee with a cushy job and great pension, whose umpteen younger brothers and nephews in utter poverty benefited from CCC camp employment.
My other grandparents voted for Wallace. Their resort town had a sign that read "Welcome to Houghton Lake, a white gentile community." Gramma flirted with liberalism in her youth, but after Dad's father ran away, she got churchy and conservative. She believed that this would protect her from bad things. Loved her to pieces, but you had to take her with her weird ideas. Trauma is a great evangelizer for some people. Her second husband, my Grampa, was just a sweetheart, best guy ever. But he was afraid of her and did what she said.
I might quibble with the word "unexpected". Macron's right-centrist party and Melenchon's Leftist party coordinated closely to ensure Le Pen's party didn't secure an outright majority. The centrists and leftists actually had their respective candidates drop out of selected races for the 2nd round to ensure they didn't split the anti-Le Pen vote. I'm not immediately thinking of a US comparison for that sort of cross-party collaboration.
ReplyDeleteThis is from Reuters, a week or so before the election:
"Opponents of France's National Rally (RN) stepped up their bid to block the far-right party from power on Tuesday as more candidates agreed to pull out of this weekend's run-off election to avoid splitting the anti-RN vote.
"More than 200 candidates have confirmed they will not stand in Sunday's second-round for France's 577-seat national parliament, according to local media estimates...
"Pollsters calculated the first round put the RN on track for anything between 250-300 seats. But that was before the tactical withdrawals and cross-party calls for voters to back whichever candidate was best placed to defeat the local RN rival...
"...Macron on Monday [July 1] told a closed-door meeting of ministers at the Elysee Palace that the top priority was blocking the RN from power and that LFI candidates could be endorsed if necessary.
"The "republican front" has worked before, such as in 2002 when voters of all stripes rallied behind Jacques Chirac to defeat Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie, in a presidential contest."
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/french-candidates-bow-out-concerted-bid-block-far-right-2024-07-02/
That's a clear and interesting analysis. Multiparty parliamentary systems can be kind of byzantine. To Americans who tend to think in political binaries.
DeleteAt The Free Press, Peter Savodnik reports that many French Jews were going to vote for Le Pen's party(!) because they perceive that she and her party have moved away from her father's notoriously fascist views - and more to the point, the French Left has embraced the French Islamists who reportedly perpetrate contemporary antisemitic attacks in France.
ReplyDeleteFrom the article:
"To stave off what Macron has portrayed as the dire threat—he’s warned of “civil war”—posed by the National Rally, the president allied with the New Popular Front, the coalition of far-left parties that includes La France Insoumise (LFI), or France Unbowed. LFI is led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who in 2017 called Jews “an arrogant minority that lectures to the rest” and has openly embraced vitriolic antisemitism over the past several months.
"The LFI has found fertile soil—and not primarily because of the far right.
"The demography of France has transformed over the past two decades.
"Nearly eight percent of the French population—some five million people—now identify as Muslim, making Islam the second most popular religion in the country, behind the 25 percent who identify as Catholic. (In 1960, there were about 400,000 Muslims in France.) By 2050, Muslims are expected to comprise 17 percent of the country’s population...
"...antisemitism is exploding here. A recent study showed that more than half of French Muslims “hate” Jews or have a “bad” or “very bad” opinion of them. In 2023, antisemitic incidents in France quadrupled. In the first three months of 2024, there were more than 360 antisemitic incidents. That number does not include the recent gang rape, allegedly motivated by antisemitism, of a 12-year-old Jewish girl by three boys, aged 12 to 13, in a Paris suburb. Jewish boys know not to wear their kippot in public. People admit to taking mezuzot off their doorposts...
"“I never imagined voting for the National Rally to curb antisemitism,” Alain Finkielkraut, a French philosopher, told Le Point. Compared to the LFI, he said, it was the lesser of two evils.
"More stunning was the announcement by Serge Klarsfeld, a prominent Nazi hunter and Holocaust historian, who said he would vote for the National Rally. “Now I’m faced with a far left that’s in the grip of LFI, which reeks of antisemitism and violent anti-Zionism, or the National Rally, which has evolved.”
https://www.thefp.com/p/why-french-jews-believed-le-pen-could-save-them
Religion sure does cause a lot of trouble - throughout history up to the present day - violence and wars are very often rooted in religion, including the Christian religions. Ireland, the orthodox, Catholics and Muslims after Yugoslavia broke up, and, of course, the Mideast never ending hatred between Muslims and Jews. Religions role in inciting violence is one of the reasons two of our sons have rejected organized religion, along with heartily disliking conservative Christianity trying to impose its beliefs on all Americans.
ReplyDeleteI think if it wasn't religion, there would be something else for people to fight about. Tribalism is at the root of most of it, "us" vs "them". Homo sapiens is a pretty dysfunctional species.
DeleteKatherine, I agree - and I also agree with Anne insofar as religious differences are part of the tribalism picture. Or maybe religion is a symptom as much as a cause: maybe people who are attracted to particular "tribes" also are attracted to a particular religion or denomination.
DeleteIn our own country, MAGA is pretty closely linked with the Evangelical Right. There are Catholics and others in Trump's base, but Trump's version of the culture wars seems to appeal most to certain Evangelicals. Or so it seems to me.
But I think hatred of Jews may be sui generis. It doesn't seem to matter whether or not they are religiously observant, or in what way they observe their Judaism; it's that they identify as Jewish that seems to make them targets.
Jim, I find it very sad that well more than 50% of WHITE Catholics support trump. I also think that much of the “ leadership” of the Catholic Church in America is often as guilty as the evangelicals are in promoting the culture wars, and MAGA, from parish priests to bishops to EWTN.
DeleteJonathan Haidt ‘s “Moral Foundations” theory says that self- identified conservatives have “loyalty to tribe” as one of their five ( amended later to six) ruling moral foundations. Self- described liberals do not, nor do they consider “ purity” or obedience to authority be key moral foundations for their decision making, as do conservatives. Both groups selected fairness ( justice) and Care ( for others - empathy) as important. Those were the only two selected by liberals as being important moral foundations.
I had many disagreements with his book, his theories, and was especially taken aback by his research methodology. When I first read it I immediately thought that he needed far more nuance, context, definitions, in his book and in the online questionnaire he used to compile his data. I felt that the three that liberals don’t choose but conservatives choose, are very problematic.Tribalism, purity and obedience to authority are occasionally good ( loyalty to friends and family might be a form of tribalism and even that isn’t always a moral choice) but they also describe very well the foundations of evil movements like Nazism. Tribalism is definitely a major cause of wars throughout history, especially religious tribalism. Not coincidentally, the friend who recommended Haidt’s book (The Righteous Mind) to me is a political conservative and religious conservative - pure MAGA evangelical. Anti- vax unfortunately and now his wife is suffering from long Covid.
Every Catholic should read Constantine’s Sword to gain insight into why Jews are so untrusting of others, especially Christians. I remember overhearing a conversation at one of our sons’ soccer games around the time Edith Stein was canonized. The Jewish moms were upset that the Catholic Church was claiming her as a saint. After all, she wasn’t murdered by the Nazis because she had become Catholic- she was murdered because she had been born Jewish.
“ she was taken prisoner with a group of women who were converts from Judaism to Catholicism.”
DeleteThat’s the whole point of the concerns of the Jewish women who were talking about it - Edith Stein and the other women were killed because they were Jewish - not because they were Catholic. They weren’t martyrs for Christianity because they didn’t die because of their Catholicism. They were killed precisely because they were not born Christian - but Jewish. I fully understand the chagrin of the Jews about Edith Stein, maybe because I lived in a predominantly Jewish community for 50 years and learned so much more about their history and educated myself on their persecution for two thousand years by Christians, which was basically the Catholic Church for most of it.
John McCain chose to stay with his fellow prisoners at the POW camp in Hanoi rather than be released ( because of who hus father was) . Would his act of solidarity qualify him for canonization ( if he had been Catholic?). He was a hero, unlike draft dodger trump who so maligned him, but he was not a saint. But there are lots of Catholic saints who don’t deserve the title “ saint”. I’m sure a lot of Jewish folk would agree that John Chrysostom was not a saint either!
Anne, there are people who are called saints, whom I also question whether they deserve the title. But if John McCain had been a Catholic, and had been canonized, they would have no argument from me.
DeleteI think Edith Stein deserves the title of saint because of the holiness of her life. I'm not one to slice and dice how we define martyr. It basically means "witness". She did give witness with her life and death. I don't think we want to say that someone (who was a Catholic) can't be a saint because of their Jewish ethnicity.
Jews see Stein's canonization as a slap in the face: Here's a Jew who saw the light and went to go to heaven for it, the implication being that the rest of the Jews are bound for Hell.
DeleteCatholics see a pious convert who, motivated by her faith, performed a saintly act of mercy. That act might have been informed as much by tikkun olam as anything specifically "Catholic." But that's not something the Church us going to advertise.
It's frustrating to see two groups talking past each other and insisting on taking offense over or credit for what a godly woman did in a time of extreme duress when holiness by the standards of any faith was just about nonexistent.
Edith Stein is surely in Heaven with many other Jews, including Mr Bergstein, our neighborhood pharmacist and the only friend who visited Dad in hospice and never charged my friend Ronnie for the drugs she needed when she was dying.
That's my Unitarian talking, I guess.
Are the only saints Catholic? I don’t think Edith Stein shouldn’t be called a saint because of her conversion to Catholicism, but I agree with the Jewish moms at the soccer match that she wasn’t put to death because she was Catholic, but because she was Jewish.
DeleteJewish people, Hindu people, Buddhist people, even Muslim people can be very holy too. I know agnostics and atheists who live such “ good” lives that model the teachings in the christian gospels that maybe they should also be recognized as “ saints”.
One of the things I liked about the Episcopalians is that their calendar of saints is much broader than the Catholic’s.They not only honor traditional saints that are in the RC saint calendar, but lots of others who were often very imperfect, not necessarily “Holy “ in the common understanding of that word but who were inspirational examples to the rest of us about how to live our own lives - Martin Luther King, for example. And they don’t require an alleged “miracle’ to be recognized as saints.
After seeing Schindlers List and then doing some research on him I thought that he may be much more of a saint than several of the popes and others who are called saint. :) Oskar Schindler is honored by the Israeli government as being among “ The Righteous of the Nations” and he was buried in a Franciscan cemetery in Jerusalem. He went through all of his money and was supported by Jewish organizations during the many of the years of his life after the end of the war, until his death. He was Catholic so maybe someday he will receive recognition from the Catholic Church and not just from Jews.
Jean, that makes sense to me. I think the two groups do talk past each other.
DeleteAnne, no way I'm going to argue with Jewish Soccer moms, but my understanding is that Stein died trying to offer comfort to others.
DeleteYes, I still refer to the Anglican Kalendar, though all those Anglican priests Bloody Mary executed are on there. No denomination is free of its tribalism.
I had more faith in saints declared before the modern era's obsession with miracles and it's quasi scientific info gathering. People know a saint when they see one, and they don't need the hierarchy to tell them.
"People know a saint when they see one, and they don't need the hierarchy to tell them."
DeleteI emphatically agree. I think it would be salutary if more people looked around and acknowledged and honored the saints in their midst rather than solely relying on the institution to decree who is entitled to the appellation.
Anne, FWIW, I raised that same observation about Edith Stein years ago: it was her Jewish heritage and (ethnic) identity which caused the Nazis to arrest and imprison her. So I guess I'm with the soccer moms (who seem more knowledgeable about this stuff than the soccer moms I knew back in my coaching days). I had made that observation in the wake of JPII declaring her a martyr; as I recall, he dispensed with one of the miracle requirements or put his thumb on the scales in some similar way. I'd have been happy to acknowledge her exemplary life without insisting on her also being a martyr.
I bought the Haidt book a while back but keep forgetting to read it. At present I'm plowing through a biography of US Grant. He was much, much more a champion of Black civil rights than I had known previously. It would be good for the country to know more about this. I took a US history class in high school (all of us did, it was required to graduate), but my recollection is, they sort of glossed over Reconstruction quickly in their haste to get to other stuff.
"I find it very sad that well more than 50% of WHITE Catholics support trump"
DeleteWell, maybe we can take comfort that 50% of white Catholics makes for a considerably smaller fraction of American Catholics as a whole. If our parish is representative, then the white Catholics tend to skew older; the families with young children are a good deal more diverse.
Of course, various surveys indicate Trump also is making inroads with Hispanics and Blacks, especially Hispanic and Black men. I take this as evidence that we're in the midst of some sort of realignment. Democrats are becoming more educated and elite, whereas Republicans are becoming more blue collar. Perhaps realignments are happening in the UK and France, too. FWIW, my view is: conservative parties in the US and elsewhere will lose out in realignment if they fail to stand for anything other than a thirst for power, coupled with resentment and/or hatred of others.
Well, Jean, of course you are smart and know better than to argue with Jewish soccer moms in spite of being as formidable as you are.
DeleteBut I’m a bit surprised that nobody here seems to grasp the soccer moms’ point of view or even to accept the fact that Edith Stein was arrested and died because she was Jewish.
Is giving comfort to others enough to be a saint? Thankfully there are many, many people who give comfort to others - in prisons, POW camps, refugee camps, jails, hospitals and even to their own friends and relatives who aren’t waiting to be killed or starved to death. If giving comfort to others makes someone a candidate for sainthood, then I have been blessed by many saints in my lifetime including four people here in San Jose who have been my lifeline, literally, for months - holding me up, comforting me. Helping me to survive.
Jim, I just saw your comment and I’m glad that at least one person here besides me accepts the reality that Edith Stein died because of hatred of Jews.
DeleteI accept that Edith Stein was murdered because she had been a Jew. I just don't think that means she wasn't a saint. The Church's push to canonize her was precipitous and apparently insulting to Jews. But the Catholic heirarchy has never been particularly knowledgable about or respectful of other people's faith. I've been through RCIA (or whatever they call it now), and I can attest to that.
DeleteI accept that Edith Stein was killed out of hatred for Jews. But I also accept that she is a saint.
DeleteIn Europe the extreme right has been defeated for very different reasons.
ReplyDeleteIn Britain they defeated themselves. Look at the low voter turnout. They did not have something to rally about.
That might happen in our elections. Trump will have his deeply loyal third of the country which continues to dominate the Republican party and its choice of candidates. But will the middle of the road Republicans have a reason to turn out in support of Trump or House or Senate candidates? I think the Republicans could lose this time for the same reason that the Tories lost. Lack of any positive interest in the elections.
In France, the right-wing threat mobilized the left and center. Very high voter turnouts. That could happen here. People worried about a Republican sweep: Presidency, House, Senate, Supreme Court. That did motive people to get out to vote in France, nor simply the right but everyone.
I think there is still some ticket splitting in this country, the notion that if one has a president of one party, the House or Senate should be of the opposite party. I think that is why after a presidential election the opposite party often gains seats in Congress in the next non-presidential election.
What I think is common to the US, Britain, and France, is a great deal of dissatisfaction with parties, politics and politicians. Nothing new to rally around. The Far Right was the popular “new” for a while, but that seems to be running its course around the world. The gains of the left seem mostly to be in reaction to the Far Right not because they have something new.
I sure hope that you are right about the far right running out of steam around the world. But I fear that won’t be the case here in November.
DeleteAnne asks: Are the only saints Catholic?
ReplyDeleteI think somewhere in the catechism it says that one does not have to be a Catholic to be a saint, but I could not find it.
Anyway, we know that Jews, specifically OT figures, are venerated as saints.
On the 20th of July, Saint Elias (Elijah) is celebrated by both East and West. The local Orthodox parish is celebrating it this year with Vespers the night before followed by Divine Liturgy in the morning followed by the Blessing of Cars!!!
I guess of all of those who image themselves in their sports cars zooming off into the sunset might want to avail themselves and their cars of this blessing!
Pope John Paul II called the Jews ""... our elder brothers in faith."
DeleteJuly 20 is our 40th wedding anniversary. I will tell Raber we should celebrate by getting the Honda blessed. It's 8 years old, and we'd like to keep it going.
DeleteHappy anniversary! (if I forget to tell you on the day)
DeleteHondas run a long time. My nephew has a Honda Pilot that's lasted nearly 20 years.
I have a Honda 2007 CRV. Got a little scared last year when I received a recall notice for bolts that attach the wheels to the frame. They replaced them free of charge.
DeleteThe important thing was the old bolts had not rusted through and therefore they were easily removed, and the new bolts could be attached to solid frame, etc. So, I guess they are good for another ten years.
I usually have kept my cars for ten years, so I began checking out the new CR-Vs around 2017. Not that much difference. They have made the rear seats a little roomer at the expense of the hatchback area, a disadvantage to me. So, this is probably my last car. I really do not have much mileage on the thing with my restricted travel in the last decade plus the isolation of the pandemic.
Betty's Element has rusted out; she gave it to our neighbor who restores cars with the proviso that if he sells it that he donate half the proceeds to the Christ Child Society. He found that very agreeable, and now has another toy for his collection.
We have an HRV with over 100k, and I am still hanging on to my mom's 2004 Merc Grand Marquis, which only has about 60k miles. Figured it could be an emergency vehicle for us and The Boy. Getting ready to unload it, though couple girlfriends from the old hood urged me to hang onto it until their next visit. They like taking road trips in Mrs Hughes's big car. On a hot day, it still smells vaguely of Mom's AquaNet.
DeleteKathetine, I was not a fan of John Paul II. However he did two things I liked - he advanced ecumenical outreach and he worked towards reconciliation with the Jews. He was the first Pope to visit the Great Synagogue in Rome and the first pope to visit Yad Vashem. Growing up in Poland before Hitler with a Jewish best friend was a source of enlightenment for JPII.
DeleteFather Peter Daly has some interesting commentary about Ukraine at NCR online.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ncronline.org/opinion/guest-voices/understand-ukraine-better-think-about-ireland