I asked this question in other forums.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

It looks like Macron will win the run off in France. France has a lot more problems than we do. Their unemployment rate has hovered around ten percent for almost a decade. They suffer much more at the hands of terrorists than we do and our immigration problem pales in significance to theirs.

Yet it looks like they will go to the polls on Sunday and hand their Déplorables a resounding defeat.


Why are the Deplorables ascendant here and floundering there?

[jberryhill]

1. Looked that way here too

[DemocratSinceBirth]

3. Trump was never twenty points behind with four days to go

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_French_presidential_election,_2017

[grantcart]

2. What is the question?

[SHRED]

4. Aren't France's social safety nets way better than ours?

Do they really have it worse off than us here in the USA?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

6. Their immigration problem is much worse.

We do a much better job of absorbing immigrants.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. Perhaps it's because they're less deporable than ours. Or better educated.

[gratuitous]

7. France also had the object lesson of Trump's selection in the U.S.

People in other countries are also far more aware of things going on in other parts of the world because they don't all think that the planet begins and ends at their street corner.

[Vinca]

8. I would guess education.

A good chunk of our population couldn't name the Vice President for a million dollar prize.

[smirkymonkey]

17. Winner!

[Wounded Bear]

9. France doesn't have an electoral college...

that's it in a nutshell.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

10. If the election plays out as expected even an Electoral College wouldn't help LePen.

[unblock]

11. roughly 3 decades of hate radio and foxnews have reduces political discourse in this country to

base tribalism. it's nearly impossible to have an actual discussion of the issues, it always degenerates into sound bites and sloganeering and name-calling and ultimately whose side are you on.

french culture is very different on this point.

[okieinpain]

12. your counting your chickens before they hatch. i believe the russians

have something people think is not possible.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

13. Like what?

She is losing in the polls by twenty points with four days to go and she lost the debate that was her last chance:

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[okieinpain]

25. i pretty sure people were saying the same thing about election 2016

i pray you're correct and that everything goes right, but i will not be surprised if it goes totally wrong.

[octoberlib]

14. France doesn't have an electoral college. Deplorables wouldn't have won if we just relied on the

popular vote , like France.

[genxlib]

15. 9/11

My first thought was FOX and others of their ilk. They have effectively fertilized the minds of the right wing with such bullshit that they are ripe for the cultivation of some horrible things.

But my real answer...9/11.

I think we have massively underestimated the damage in the national psyche caused by that trauma.

We were already on a rightward tilt when that happened but I believe things got much worse; authoritarianism, xenophobia, Muslim bashing, wars of aggression, defense spending, hyper-nationalism, us-v-them mentality. I think it all draws a line back to 9/11.

One of the nauseating things about terrorism is that it works. Nineteen people changed us in ways that no army ever could.

[ProudLib72]

16. Maybe the French

Saw Brexit and our election as a wake up call.

[OnDoutside]

20. No, the French Fascists have been advancing in numbers, thankfully not enough to win on this

occasion. The mainstream parties in France have mirrored the inertia of the US parties, none of them have the cojones to take the tough decisions on the economy. One of my best friends owns a business there and the stories he has been telling me are shocking. He has been the victim of employee theft on a number of occasions, and on two of those occasions he has had to pay the thief to leave his employ ! The last one was a massive theft and if they push it through the police, they stand to lose serious value to their business, so they've had to sell personal possessions to pay for the hole in their finances. Once an employee gets over the 2 years as an employee, it's virtually impossible to fire them. The balance in employee rights has gone too far the other way. He would still like to employ more people but it's more trouble than it's worth.

[Get Off Of My Cloud]

18. Maybe the French are misogynistic and loath to vote for the woman

[ecstatic]

19. A well-informed electorate is essential to democracy

We don't have that. Our cable TV news organizations are a joke, for the most part. Our democracy can and will fall apart if half the population continues to be completely uninformed.

I assume France has a more educated populace, although they could be headed down the same road as us as more people are exposed to "fake news."

[madinmaryland]

21. Huh? Do they suffer from the gun violence that we do here?????

So I would have to disagree with you, especially with the definition of terroriist. Robert Zimmerman (and the NRA) IS a terrorist, but the M$M won't report that.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

22. I don't think Bob Dylan is a terrorist.

So I would have to disagree with you, especially with the definition of terroriist. Robert Zimmerman (and the NRA) IS a terrorist, but the M$M won't report that.

I don't think Bob Dylan is a terrorist:

Robert Zimmerman or Zimmermann may refer to: Robert Allen Zimmerman, birth name of Bob Dylan (born 1941)

Do you?

[madinmaryland]

23. "George Zimmerman". Sorry for the confusion...

Bob Dylan is no gun nutter or nra member.

[GulfCoast66]

24. Perhaps they have a little more understanding of extreme politics?

Like watching the church and monarchy loot the country, then lopping off thousands of heads, killing priests and destroying their churches, followed by an incredible gifted despot who happened to capture pretty much all of Europe. And all the shit that happened in the 19th century including the Paris commune and the capturing of Paris by the newly formed German Nation. Fast forward to the 20th century...

They lose over 2 million men fighting Germany and due to the un-fucking-believable sacrifice of their populace manage to win that war. If losing 2 million of the prime of your country can be considered winning. Then just 25 short year later being occupied for 4 years by one of the most evil empires ever an having the humiliation of conspiring with that Empire to send most of your Jews to Germany to be killed.

If LePen comes with in 20, which I think she will there is a huge crisis in France. If Macron wins, and I pray to god he does, he needs to make some changes.

I love France. Will be going there for 3 weeks this fall. But they need to get their shit together. And I have no idea how.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

29. Great points.

For all of its flaws the NATO and then the EU have given us and Europe seventy years of peace.

[True Dough]

26. The rise of the alt-right

in many European countries is still disturbing. Even if Le Pen fails to win the election, the support she has mustered is reflective of a substantial population of highly intolerant people. Thankfully just not enough of them to put her in power.

[UncleTomsEvilBrother]

27. Trump has something that she Doesn't.

Trump and the Republicans were able to use "dog whistle" racism in order to help his cause. He was able to question the validity of Obama's birth, and even the most progressive people on the airwaves would not staunchly refute him.

Republicans could say, "Obamacare is terrible," and though it was hard to articulate, every Black person in America knew that that phrase was more of an attack on him than it was the actual ACA.

Though Trump has golfed more than Obama already, Trump was able to call the President "lazy", a word that has historically been attributed to Black people.

Macron isn't up against any of this right now.

[awesomerwb]

28. We de-stabilized a region

with stupid unnecessary wars. We removed previous "allies" which led to armed conflicts that created millions of refugees and maybe even millions of enemies. Our immigration" problem" is that our immigration system is outdated and we need to legalize all those hard workers who take jobs nobody else wants who have been here 10 or 20 years or more. They're not terrorists. They're family people who just want to work and be left alone.

I also think the French have looked at Farage, and what happened in England and then what happened here with TrumpRussia and have said f*ck NO.

[FSogol]

30. They have better safety net. Better unemployment, healthcare for all, a shorter work week, etc.