UPDATE: What is happening in France today?
Left candidates who came in 3rd are dropping out of the runoffs to block the far-right.
*Many* Macronists, including incumbents, are doing the same when they came in third. But... many said they won't. (I'd say about half/half right now? Deadline tmrw.)
THE sentence of the day: A Macronist incumbent in the Marseille region came in 3rd in her seat. She just dropped out to support the left. She said, about why she's maneuvering to block the far-right:
"Defeats happen, but you can never recover from dishonor."
This is a great example of how the left loses to the right by splitting ourselves along degrees of policy instead focusing of defeating those who absolutely destroy any progressive change. Good on the left candidates for narrowing that field and I hope they are actively campaigning as well
In US politics, we see a lot of instances where the center of the party DNC actively works to stamp out candidates they feel are too far out of line from the most conservative tenets of the party and supporting an aging cadre of politicians to the detriment of their own success
centrists _are_ conservatives, proven literally everywhere, especially in the past 2 decades; all Western "democracies" are fucked as a result (UK, Canada, Australia, etc)
they’ve always done that. and we, leftists, have always voted for political opponents when needing to save the country. they don’t offer us the same grace (we have to fight and nag and they don’t all do it in the end).
All my adult life I’ve had to vote for the right.
Yeah - there are times I really like the parliamentary system and wished we had something that provided greater opportunities for multiple parties/spectrum of ideologies but it seems the same challenges remain. Bonne chance!