The French election proves that it wasn't Russia that elected Trump,it was the Republicans and Comey

[BeyondGeography]

39. Here's to the French system as well

Last edited Sun May 7, 2017, 04:53 PM - Edit history (1)

In France, you can create a party on the fly and win the presidency. Absent a conventional party label, Macron was much better able to define himself and fit his candidacy to the moment; it was Le Pen, the would-be insurgent, who looked stale and flat-footed. With our entrenched two-party system (not to mention the institutional stagnation within the parties) it would be much harder if not impossible to pull that off.

Democrats should be able to understand the difference of what happened here vs. what we are seeing in today's French election. In the face of Trump, their leaders cleared the decks for an establishment figure who many Americans were never going to like in what everyone understood to be a change election. In our system, there's no fallback if one party produces a suboptimal candidate to face an extremist. And there's no second round with a straight either/or choice.

When there are more than two relevant parties when it comes to actual power (Socialist/Communist/Republican/FN...and now, En Marche!), you need two rounds so the President ends up with something of a mandate rather than 30% of the vote. One result is people are able to vote with their hearts and their heads in the respective rounds, making it a little more difficult for extremists to rise to the top.