The French “Political Class” Gets Crushed – on the Surface, by Wolf Richter

Good article that lays out the basics of yesterday’s French election and French politics. From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:

It designed the rules to protect itself against an election like this.

According to preliminary results of the presidential election in France, the two candidates that came out on top during today’s first round and therefore made it into the second round, to be contested on May 7, are Marine Le Pen, leader of the right-wing anti-euro and anti-EU Front National, and Emmanuel Macron, leader of the centrist, pro-EU movement En Marche, which he founded just last year.

So congratulations to today’s winners.

This is the first time since the beginning of the Fifth Republic in 1958 that no candidate from the major establishment parties made it to the second round, and that neither of the two winning candidates are backed by parties that have ever held the presidency.

This is also the first time in the Fifth Republic that the winner’s party will have zero or practically zero power in Parliament.

According to preliminary results, Macron got 23.7% of the vote, Le Pen 21.9%, conservative François Fillon 19.9%, and far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon 19.2%.

As expected, the biggest loser was the political establishment and the entire “political class,” as it’s called in France. At least on the surface.

After François Hollande’s dismal performance as President over the past five years, his Socialists practically disappeared during the campaign and in the election got only 6.3% of the vote. This left as sole representative of the “political class” the conservative and scandal-plagued former Prime Minister Fillon, who now lost too.

Just how frustrated is the public with the political class? Le Pen at the far right and Mélenchon at the far left obtained together 41% of the vote. That’s huge. They campaigned on leaving the Eurozone (the monetary union of 19 member states) and the European Union (28 member states).

To continue reading: The French “Political Class” Gets Crushed – on the Surface