Where's BETO?

Everyone agrees-- except those who don't-- that we need to get rid of Trump in 2020, right? But what comes next is just as important. I'd say even more so, but... Trump. I know what we don't need to replace him: an American version of French President Emmanuel Macron. Apropos of nothing, yesterday I put up a little twitter poll. Harsh:

I guess being known as the American Macron is better than being known as a flash in the pan. But that will be for history to determine. Writing yesterday for The Independent, Elle Griffiths got right the heart of the matter: "The left would presumably want to enact change, not just gain power for the sake of it, and O’Rourke has shown that for all his gloss and engaging rhetoric he simply doesn’t seem to stand for much." She a keener observer of our politics than many (many, many) U.S. writers. She's in Nottingham. But, like all of us, she really wanted to see Cruz lose last month. "And," she wrote, "for a short period of time, all the sectarianism of the Democrats and the American left seemed to evaporate as Clintonites, Bernie bros and centrists united and watched with bated breath as relative unknown Beto O’Rourke had the Republican incumbent running scared of losing his Senate seat. It wasn’t to be, but the fact that the photogenic and social media savvy congressman came so close to doing so in Texas, a notoriously red state that hasn’t seen such a good showing for a Democrat in 20 years, understandably set his star skyrocketing." So now he has to run for president? Jesus!

There were the crowded rallies, the big money raised from small donors, the celebrity endorsements and the electrifying speeches. It all felt very… familiar.

  The comparisons to Obama are obvious and inevitable and at a time when nostalgia for the former president seems to be reaching fever pitch, this has only added to O’Rourke’s appeal. Indeed, a new poll this week confirmed his popularity, showing him to be the top choice among Democrats for presidential candidate in 2020. But this would be a mistake.

The fact that establishment Democrats can take a look at the current political landscape and decide what Americans are crying out for is “Obama, the sequel” makes me worry they haven’t learned a single lesson since 2016.



...The Trump presidency is not a political experiment, it’s a very real nightmare that is destroying people’s lives and the Democrats cannot afford to mess 2020 up. Picking the “right” candidate is paramount.

  But what does that actually mean? Is the right candidate simply someone who can beat Donald Trump by virtue of not being him? Genuine progressives would presumably want to gain power to enact change, not just gain power for the sake of it.

And in this regard, O’Rourke comes up short. For all his gloss and engaging rhetoric he simply doesn’t seem to stand for much. While the democratic base is talking with increasing confidence and urgency about single payer healthcare and free college education, when it came down to it O’Rourke didn’t back either bill. He seems positively Clintonite when it comes to Wall Street regulation and has voted consistently pro-police to the point of supporting making police officers a protected class.

Furthermore, a U-turn on Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza (as a rookie O’Rourke was one of just a handful of Democrats to vote against funding the “iron dome missile defence system” in 2014) suggests that when he does take a stand on something he lacks the stomach to fight for his convictions.

Such criticism may sound like pedantic purism and I empathise with and understand the urge to get swept up in Beto-mania. By very nature of American politics, the protracted search for a presidential candidate leaves a frustrating power vacuum when the opposition needs leadership to get on the offensive.

Never has that felt truer as we watch Donald Trump stagger from one controversy to another, bashing out typo-laden tantrums on Twitter. It is tempting to throw your eggs in the first basket that seems like a viable candidate.

But Democrats should hold their nerve. The ascendance of true progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shows both that these candidates exist and, crucially, that there is a huge appetite for them among Americans.

Beto O’Rouke is progressive for Texas, but he’s not what the party should be projecting for 2020.

Even if he did manage to beat Donald Trump, which is indeed feasible, an O’Rourke presidency isn’t going to magically reset everything back to the Obama years as if the Trump interim was just a bad dream. Nothing can.

The Democrats need to take off the rose tinted glasses, stop clinging to the centre and look forward like true progressives.  Aesthetically pleasing moderates aren’t the antidote to right wing or left wing populism. Just ask France. This time, let’s say: "Yes we can... do better."

Where's Beto today? Not here:

France's Yellow Vests-- Left? Right? Both? Neither?

Russian cyber-saboteurs are certainly pouring gasoline on France's Yellow-Vest protests, but could there be more to it than just social media shenanigans? Macron's government is taking the possibility seriously. Yesterday, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told radio station RTL that according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy, about 600 Twitter accounts known to promote Kremlin views have begun focusing on France, boosting their use of the hashtag #giletsjaunes, the French name for the Yellow Vest movement. "An investigation," "is now underway."

[An] assertion of police dissatisfaction-- which doesn’t appear to be supported by facts-- resembles other Kremlin-backed disinformation campaigns that have tried to engender mistrust in Western governments and show that liberal democracies are in decline, Schafer says.

Much of the tweeted material comes from Russian state media outlets including the Sputnik news website, the RT television network, and Ruptly, a German-based video news agency that belongs to RT. These outlets are covering the French crisis closely; RT has said that 12 of its journalists have been injured in the protests, far more than any other news organization.

Sputnik and RT have reported in recent days that most French police no longer support Macron and are siding with the protesters. Their sources: representatives of two small police unions that together won less than 4 percent of votes in nationwide union elections this month. Sputnik and RT also have shown a video– widely shared on French social media-- of police in the southwestern town of Pau removing their helmets in what was described as a sign of solidarity with protesters. Local police and journalists on the scene said the description was untrue. They said some officers had briefly removed their helmets to talk with protesters before putting them back on.

In response to questions from Bloomberg News, Sputnik later corrected its article about police in Pau showing solidarity with protesters, to say the report "hasn’t been backed by evidence so far." RT said its article about police siding with protesters, based on comments by the head of a minor police union, was justified because he had been quoted by other news outlets.

Macron complained repeatedly during his 2017 campaign that Kremlin-controlled media outlets were spreading fake news about him, because he took a tougher stance on Russia than his chief rivals, Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front and François Fillon of the conservative Republicans. But negative stories, such as a Sputnik report claiming Macron lived a “double life” and was backed by a “wealthy gay lobby,” never gained traction.

In one instance, a bogus website resembling the site of a Belgian newspaper reported that Macron’s campaign was being bankrolled by Saudi Arabia. The source of the hoax was never determined, but the European Union’s East Stratcom Task Force, which tracks Russian disinformation efforts, said it bore striking similarities to an earlier incident traced to a Russian “troll factory.”

eparately, the Macron campaign was hit with repeated email phishing attacks resembling those used by Russia against Democratic Party organizations in the U.S. The Kremlin said it had no involvement in any fake news or cyberattacks on Macron, describing such accusations as “slander.”

Trump isn't the center of the universe. We can like Macron razzing Trump and still recognize he and Trump have more in common than not

And Putin's government isn't the only authoritarian, anti-democracy government interfering in French domestic politics. So is Trump's-- and Le Drian told Trump to stop meddling in France's internal affairs. Bloomberg reported that "In the past few months, Trump has published a series of tweets criticizing Macron's climate and defence policies, as well as Macron's low approval rating."

Last week Trump claimed, falsely, that French protesters were chanting "We want Trump." The video Trumpism stooges are sharing with each other is actually film from a pro-Trump neo-Nazi counter-demonstration when he was visiting London. Trumpanzee also tweeted: "Very sad day & night in Paris. Maybe it's time to end the ridiculous and extremely expensive Paris Agreement and return money back to the people in the form of lower taxes? The US was way ahead of the curve on that and the only major country where emissions went down last year!"

On French TV Le Drian pointed out that "most Americans disagreed with Trump over his decision to walk away from the 2015 Paris climate agreement."

Over the weekend right-wing Yellow Vest protests spread to Belgium and Holland. The Associated Press reported that "Belgian police fired tear gas and water cannons at yellow-vested protesters calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Charles Michel after they tried to breach a riot barricade, as the movement that started in France made its mark Saturday in Belgium and the Netherlands. Protesters in Brussels threw paving stones, road signs, fireworks, flares and other objects at police blocking their entry to an area where Michel’s offices, other government buildings and the parliament are located... The reasons for the protests are not entirely clear. Neither Belgium nor the Netherlands has proposed a hike in fuel tax-- the catalyst for the massive and destructive demonstrations in France in recent weeks. Instead, protesters appeared to hail at least in part from a populist movement that is angry at government policy in general and what it sees as the widening gulf between mainstream politicians and the voters who put them in power. Some in Belgium appeared intent only on confronting police."

So what's causing this? Russia? A right-wing conspiracy? Hooliganism? Legitimate economic anxiety born out of systemic inequality? Jacobin has an important essay by novelist Édouard Louis, a critic of Macron whose work "emphasizes the daily humiliations and petty brutality of life in small-town France." Louis has been a vocal supporter of the gilets jaunes (“yellow vests”) protests. "In particular, the writer has combatted media attempts to smear the participants as 'country bumpkins' or stupid opponents of progress. In this text, originally published on Les Inrockuptibles, Louis proclaims that 'those who insult the gilets jaunes are insulting people like my father.'" He is horrified by "the extreme violence and class contempt that is battering down on this movement," a movement he says that is made up of "suffering bodies ravaged by work, by fatigue, by hunger, by the permanent humiliation of the dominated by the dominant, by social and geographical exclusion. I saw tired bodies and tired hands, broken backs and exhausted faces... people whose health is devastated by poverty and misery."

Right from the start of this movement we have seen “experts” and “politicians” in the media belittling, condemning, and mocking the gilets jaunes and the revolt that they embody. I saw the words “barbarians,” “idiots,” “yokels,” “irresponsible” spread across social networks. The media spoke of the gilets jaunes’ “grunting”: for them, the popular classes do not revolt, but instead grunt like farm animals. I heard of the “violence of this movement” when a car was torched or a window was smashed or a statue was tarnished.

A common example, this, of the differential perception of violence: a large part of the media-political world wanted us to believe that violence is not the thousands of lives destroyed and reduced to misery by politics, but a few burnt-out cars. You must really never have experienced poverty, if you think that graffiti on a historic monument is worse than the impossibility of being able to take care of yourself, of living, of feeding yourself or your family.

The gilets jaunes speak of hunger, of precarity, of life and death. The “politicians” and part of the journalists reply: “the symbols of our Republic have been tarnished.” But what are these people talking about? How dare they? What planet are they from? The media also talk about racism and homophobia among the gilets jaunes. Who are they kidding? I do not want to talk about my books, here. But it is interesting to note that whenever I have published a novel I have been accused of stigmatizing poor and rural France precisely because I mentioned the homophobia and racism that existed in the village where I lived as a child. Journalists who had never done anything for the popular classes were enraged, and suddenly set themselves up to play the defenders of these same classes.

For the dominant, the popular classes are the perfect representation of what Pierre Bourdieu calls a class-object; an object that can be manipulated by discourse, one day represented as the salt of the earth-- the authentic poor-- and the next day as racists and homophobes. In both cases, the underlying intention is the same: to prevent the popular classes’ speech, about themselves, from ever coming to the surface. Too bad if you have to contradict yourself from one day to the next, so long as they keep quiet... When the ruling classes and certain media talk about homophobia and racism in the gilets jaunes movement, they are not really talking about homophobia and racism. They are saying “Poor people, shut up!” In any case, the gilets jaunes movement is still a work in progress, and its language is not yet fixed in place: if there does exist homophobia or racism among the gilets jaunes, our responsibility is to transform this language.

There are different ways of saying “I am suffering.” And a social movement is precisely the moment where the possibility opens up that the suffering will no longer say “I am suffering because of immigration and my neighbor who’s on benefits,” but will instead say “I am suffering because of those who rule. I am suffering because of the class system, because of Emmanuel Macron and [prime minister] Édouard Philippe.” The social movement is a moment in which language is subverted, a moment in which the old languages can be destabilized. That is what is happening today. Indeed, over recent days we have seen a reformulation of the gilets jaunes’ vocabulary. At the outset, we only heard talk of petrol and sometimes unpleasant references to “benefits recipients.” Now we hear words like inequality, wage rises, injustice.

This movement must continue, for it embodies something right, urgent, and profoundly radical, because faces and voices that are usually reduced to invisibility are finally visible and audible. The fight will not be easy: as we can see, the gilets jaunes represent a sort of Rorschach test for a large part of the bourgeoisie. The gilets jaunes force them to express their class contempt and the violence that they usually only express in an indirect way. That is, the same contempt that has destroyed so many lives around me, and which continues do so, and ever more so; this contempt that reduces me to silence and paralyzes me, even to the point that I can’t write the text I wanted, to express what I wanted to express.

But we must win. For there are many of us now telling ourselves that we can’t tolerate another defeat for the Left, which is thus also a defeat for those who suffer.

But not all the voices on the left are singing from the same hymnal that Édouard Louis is. The World Socialist Web Site of the 4th International ran an essay by Peter Schwarz denouncing the reaction by Germany's Left Party which has condemned the Yellow Vest movement. "Abhorrence of any revolt from below," he wrote, "is written into the DNA of the Left Party, which emerged from a fusion of the Stalinist state party of former East Germany with a group of Social Democrats and trade union bureaucrats from the West. To paraphrase Friedrich Engels, it is 'more frightened of the least popular movement than of all the reactionary plots of all the Governments put together.' The Left Party instinctively regards any social movement that is not controlled and held in check by the trade unions as a right-wing conspiracy.

Left Party chair Bernd Riexinger has denounced the Yellow Vests.: "The potential of ultra-rightists in the ranks of the movement is worrying... such fraternization of left and right-wing sentiments is unthinkable."

French trade union leaders are also opposed to the Yellow Vest movement. Michel Poittevin, an official of the Solidaires-SUD union, said he "refuses to take part because the Yellow Vests are strongly supported from the right." Schwarz writes that "Above all, Poittevin is outraged that the unions, which have a long record of isolating, breaking, and selling out every social movement, have no influence over the Yellow Vests. It was 'a movement that we as left trade unionists cannot fathom. People have organized themselves, who are not or only tangentially in a union, or who even do not want to join one,' he laments."

Poittevin compares the protests against Macron with the Italian Five-Star Movement and the French Poujadists, a far-right party that achieved temporary electoral successes in the 1950s and in which the National Front’s founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was active.

This is nothing less than a vicious slander. The Yellow Vests movement is directed against the decades-long redistribution of income and wealth from the poor to the rich, which has made life impossible for many working-class families. It is part of an international working-class offensive that manifests itself in a growing number of strikes and protests. The increase in the gasoline tax by the former investment banker Macron, who had previously lowered taxes for the rich, was simply the last straw.

Even many bourgeois media outlets opposed to the movement must admit to this fact. The December 4 editorial in the daily Le Monde states that the inability of successive governments to respond to the global financial crisis of 2008 has "fuelled anger on the most powerful of breeding grounds, the sense of inequality."

The striving for social equality has revolutionary implications. It can only be realised through the overthrow of capitalism and requires an international, socialist movement of the working class. This is diametrically opposed to the goals of the extreme right, which fuel nationalism, divide the working class, and are preparing to defend capitalism with brutal force.

If extreme right-wingers seek to influence the movement and are partly able to do so, then it is only because they can exploit the anger and frustration of broad layers with those alleged “leftists” who have been and remain at the forefront of the attacks on the working class. This applies not only to the French Socialists and the German SPD, but also to the Left Party, which is pressing ahead with austerity policies in Berlin and other federal states where the party is part of or heads the administration.

Riexinger’s denunciation of the Yellow Vests plays into the hands of the extreme right. What worries him is not "the potential of ultra-rightists in the ranks of the movement," but rather its revolutionary potential and the fact that it is developing outside of the straitjacket of the unions and established parties. Before taking up the leadership of the Left Party, Riexinger was a full-time Verdi (public service union) secretary in Stuttgart and is familiar with these issues.

The Left Party can accommodate and even ally itself with the far-right-- as its idol Alexis Tsipras did in Greece, where he implemented a reckless austerity program in a coalition with the far-right Independent Greeks. But the Left Party cannot accommodate and ally itself with a movement that threatens the capitalist order.

In contrast to Riexinger, the head of the Left Party faction in the Bundestag, Sahra Wagenknecht, expressed support for the Yellow Vests. "I think it's right for people to defend themselves and protest when politics makes their lives worse," she said. She hoped for "stronger protests in Germany against a government that cares more about the interests of business lobbyists than the interests of ordinary people."

Is Whitaker A Distraction? Or Just Another Catastrophic Trump Regime Screw Up?

Trump and his advisors are desperate for Republican voters to not look too closely at the GOP’s exploding deficit— only a self-obsessed idiot pretending to have been educated at Wharton would not understand the toxicity of tax cuts for the rich and cascading and pointless spending hikes that invest nothing in the American people. So the 300-ring circus intensifies. The Washington Post reported that “During his 43-hour stay in Paris, Trump brooded over the Florida recounts and sulked over key races being called for Democrats in the midterm elections that he had claimed as a ‘big victory.’ He erupted at his staff over media coverage of his decision to skip a ceremony honoring the military sacrifice of World War I.” The fuming asshole was angry and resentful over Macron’s public rebuke of rising nationalism, which Trump (rightly) “considered a personal attack. And that was after his difficult meeting with Macron, where officials said little progress was made as Trump again brought up his frustrations over trade and Iran… All the while plotting a shake-up in his failed regime.

He’s back and what does he find? On-again-off-again ally and tukas-licker Lindsey Graham has announced he supports a bill to protect Mueller from Trump and his allies. Graham is demanding a vote, exactly what McConnell and Trump advisors do not want. In the background, more Trump rubber-stamps— like Jeff Denham and Mimi Walters in California and Karen Handel in Georgia— are losing their seats as votes continue to be counted. And then there’s the growing Matt Whitaker disaster.

Tuesday evening, Eliana Johnson and Darren Samuelsohn covered the bipartisan outrage against Trump’s naked power play and how it’s already backfiring. Obviously unvetted, as well as utterly unqualified to head the Justice Department, even temporarily, Whitaker’s appointment has not exactly been warmly received… anywhere. Trump wants Whitaker to protect his family from impending corruption charges but Maryland’s Attorney General just filed the first legal challenge seeking to overturn his dubious appointment, “while on Capitol Hill newly empowered House Democrats are already making plans to have the acting attorney general appear as one of their first witnesses when the next Congress launches in January. The uproar over the appointment, which effectively removes Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as Mueller’s primary supervisor, has put Whitaker in a difficult spot, trapped between setting off a political firestorm by clipping Mueller’s wings and angering a president intent on having him do just that. Even Trump’s Justice Department is wavering about whether Whitaker will do the deed the president wanted him for." Whitaker is being pressured to recuse himself and Trump is running around the White House with smoke coming out of his ears.

Lanny Davis, the former Bill Clinton White House crisis manager, said that if Whitaker were to follow the president’s wishes and meddle with the Mueller probe, he would be susceptible both to legal fallout and long-term reputational problems.

“This guy is vulnerable criminally. He’s vulnerable morally. He’s just plain out vulnerable,” said Davis, who is now representing Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen in his criminal proceedings.

There is also the fact that Mueller’s investigation may be too far along to merely smother it. A Washington-based defense lawyer representing a senior Trump official in the Russia investigation said Whitaker couldn’t make decisions “based on his seat-of-the-pants preferences.”

The special counsel’s work is now into its 18th month and includes guilty pleas involving former senior Trump aides and indictments against more than two dozen Russian officials accused of sabotaging the 2016 presidential election.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) told Politico on Tuesday: “To try to stop it when it’s nearly concluded would be a mistake.”

The new constraints on Whitaker represent a harsh reality check for a White House that helped kick-start his promotion back in August 2017. That’s when the White House counsel at the time, Don McGahn, pressured Sessions into hiring the little-known attorney as his new chief of staff, replacing Jody Hunt, who had just left to run the Justice Department’s civil division.

Sessions, stung just weeks before by a series of humiliating Trump tweets, came away from his interactions with McGahn with an impression that he had little choice but to accede to the White House’s demands, according to two sources familiar with Sessions’ thinking.

Whitaker had others pushing for his hiring, too.

The Federalist Society’s executive director, Leonard Leo, whose stock has been high in the Trump White House for his behind-the-scenes vetting of potential Supreme Court picks, recommended Whitaker to McGahn.

Trump also liked Whitaker’s cable television appearances and his attack-dog style challenging Mueller’s investigation. While working for Sessions, Whitaker used his post to engender the president’s belief that Trump had a friend in him. The two men also bonded over football— Whitaker was a tight end on the University of Iowa team that went to the 1991 Rose Bowl.

Whitaker’s promotion has been anything but smooth. Trump last Friday told reporters outside the White House that he didn’t even know the new acting attorney general, though in an Oct. 11 interview on Fox & Friends the president called him a “great guy,” adding, “I mean, I know Matt Whitaker.”

Some of the president’s own aides, including members of his legal team, expressed frustration on Monday that neither the White House nor the Justice Department had made any attempt to put an end to the controversy generated by Whitaker’s appointment by issuing a statement about Whitaker’s views on the Mueller probe or his role overseeing it— making clear he had no intention of curtailing it or providing some window into his thinking.

Others said that although they believed it was unlikely Whitaker would take aim at Mueller, issuing a public statement saying as much would infuriate the president, who would view it as a betrayal akin to Sessions’ initial recusal from the investigation in early 2017.

But Whitaker’s appointment has created anything but certainty for Trump and the Russia investigation.

The Maryland motion on Tuesday asking a federal judge to name Rosenstein the acting attorney general argues that Whitaker’s promotion violates a constitutional provision requiring Senate confirmation for top positions like attorney general.

Senate Democrats have said they’re considering their own lawsuit, and the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), has already promised to make Whitaker the first witness when the new Congress convenes in January.

“He’s totally unqualified,” Nadler told CNN on Sunday. “And his only qualification seems to be that he wants to be— that the president wants him to be the hatchet man to destroy the Mueller investigation.”

The shakeup at Justice is also creating internal demands on its own lawyers.

The department on Tuesday was reportedly expected to finalize a legal opinion backing Whitaker’s appointment.

Mueller’s office faces its own deadline next Monday to tell a federal appellate court panel what the changes atop the department mean for a lawsuit that seeks to knock the special counsel out of his job on constitutional grounds.

Nadler on Tuesday also sent a letter to Whitaker and FBI Director Christopher Wray seeking responses to more than 100 information requests from Democratic lawmakers that have gone unanswered while the party has been in the House minority, including details about “improper communications” between the White House and Justice Department.

And Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the minority leader, made clear on Tuesday the position of Senate Democrats: There are “serious questions,” he said, about whether Whitaker’s appointment— rather than that of the special counsel— is constitutional.

CNN reported today that this is all having a bad impact of Trump’s health. Already morbidly obese, he’s been binge eating and putting on the pounds and could die, answering the prayers of most Americans. The mood in the White House is darker than usual, as he storms around angry and petulant. As we’ll probably be reporting later this afternoon-- waiting for a second confirmation now--, he’s too strung out on Adderall to carry out his basic duties as president, finally seeming to understandi that the major congressional losses were a rejection of him by the vast majority of Americans, including in areas that had voted for him in 2016.

Trump Puts America Last, As Always When He's Palling Around With Putin

When Herr Asshole got back from his disastrous trip to Paris, he couldn’t think of anything better to do than insult Emmanuel Macron, the French president on twitter... in a way he would never have been man enough to do to his face. Trump is certainly the most disgusting excuse for a national leader anywhere in the world— and a stain on our nation, just like his dwindlng base of supporters are. I once pissed on Nixon’s grave. I look forward to defecating on Trump’s. Imagine what Jamie McCourt must have thought when someone in the Embassy rang her up and said, "Madame Ambassador, I think you had better take a look at la page twitter du grand crétin." Although... she did give him $400,000 for the job so she’s probably as cretinous as he is. (Besides, she used to be married to Frank McCourt and didn’t even have the class to change her name back.)

Aside from everyone in the world laughing at him for his general petulance and for being afraid to get his “hair” wet, Trump is also pissed off about Paris because Macron released an international agreement on cybersecurity principles Monday as part of the Paris Peace Forum, which was the backdrop for Trump’s latest international buffoonery. More than 50 nations were among the initial signatories, but not authoritarian states like Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran… and Trumpistan.

As Axios explained yesterday, "The Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace is another step in the disjointed effort to create international norms and laws for cybersecurity and warfare. In most international matters of regulating the internet, there tends to be a wide split between the liberal Western order and authoritarian nations like Russia and China. The agreement does not command any specific legislation." Asshole just wanted to show he stands with Russia and China against democracies and especially against Macron.

The principles include agreements to promote human rights on the internet, thwart election hacking, cease the theft of intellectual property via hacking and stop "malicious cyber activities in peacetime, notably the ones threatening or resulting in significant, indiscriminate or systemic harm to individuals." China, Russia and North Korea have each been accused of violating some or all of these in the past.

And Trump probably hopes to. Caroline Orr, reporting for ShareBlue, wrote that no one is positive why Asshole refused to be part of the new framework agreement.

The need for the international pact couldn’t be clearer. Current international law protecting civilians is founded on notions of state sovereignty and traditional methods of warfare, but the digital environment doesn’t respect or abide by international borders, and the information battlespace does not separate state actors and combatants from civilians.

Without rules and norms to define these matters in the digital environment, civilians can all too easily get caught in the crossfire of state-sponsored hacking, misinformation campaigns, and cyberattacks on critical infrastructure.

Just as the Geneva Convention specified rules of combat to protect civilian populations during wartime, the cybersecurity pact is meant to define what is unacceptable, and to provide a legal basis for punishing those who breach international rules and norms in the digital world.

It’s not clear why the United States chose to join some of the world’s most repressive regimes in refusing to sign the agreement, but it’s far from the first time America has split from its allies under the leadership of the Trump administration— and just like the previous times, Russia stands to benefit substantially from America’s retreat from the global stage.

The Kremlin regularly uses its cyber capabilities as tools of war, sometimes turning them against the Russian population, and at other times aiming at countries like Ukraine, Estonia, and, most recently, the United States. And in many instances, Russia has gotten away with these acts of aggression and human rights violations, in part because there is not even widespread agreement on the definition of cyberwarfare or the rules of engagement.

A new agreement like the one unveiled Monday would put the United States and its allies in a stronger position to mount a defense and hold Russia accountable for such acts. But, as the RAND Corporation warned in a 2017 report, “Without clear consensus on what constitutes a cyber violation, Russia will likely continue to maneuver unfettered in the vast gray area of international law.”

With the Trump administration continuing to make inexplicable decisions that benefit Russia with no apparent gains for the U.S., it’s not hard to see why so many people believe that Putin has a hold on Trump.

Unfortunately for the American people, that also means Putin has a hold on Trump’s decision-making— and despite what Trump may claim, there’s nothing “America First” about America retreating.

Would Hegel Really Think That Trump Is Like Napoleon?

In a Financial Times OpEd this morning-- Donald Trump embodies the spirit of our age-- Gideon Rachman wrote that "Historic figures do not have to be good people, or even particularly intelligent. Mr Trump is a habitual liar, whose administration has set up detention camps for children. Rex Tillerson, his former secretary of state, is reputed to have called the president a 'moron.' But none of that need stop Mr Trump from being what the philosopher Georg Hegel called a 'world-historical figure'." Like Napoleon. "Hegel," explained Emmanuel Macron, "viewed 'great men' as instruments of something far greater... He believed that an individual can indeed embody the zeitgeist (world spirit) for a moment, but also that the individual isn't always clear they are doing so." Trump, proposes Rachman "may be the kind of instinctive statesman that Hegel described-- a figure who has harnessed and embodied forces that he himself only half-understands."

If future historians do indeed decide that Mr Trump was a historic figure, what might they say?

First, that he broke decisively with the elite consensus about how the US should handle its relationship with the rest of the world. Previous presidents had either denied the erosion in American power, or sought quietly to manage it. By contrast, Mr Trump acknowledged American decline-- and sought to reverse it. His method was to use US power more overtly and brutally, in an effort to rewrite the rules of the global order to America's advantage, before it was too late.

In particular, Mr Trump decided that globalisation, embraced by all his predecessors, was actually a terrible idea that was weakening America's relative power and eroding the living standards of its people. After more than 30 years of stagnant or declining real wages, the American people were receptive to that message. Unconstrained by the politeness of his predecessors, Mr Trump bullied friends as well as enemies.

With his instinctively zero-sum approach to the world, Mr Trump also decided that a richer and more powerful China was obviously bad news for America-- and became the first president to try to block China's rise. Whether or not this is a good idea, it is undoubtedly a historic development, reversing more than 40 years of American foreign policy, which has sought to integrate China into a US-led global order.

On the domestic front, future historians might note that Mr Trump was the first president to notice the huge gap that had opened up between elite American opinion and that of the wider public-- on a range of issues from immigration, to trade, to identity politics. As a candidate and then as president, he ruthlessly and effectively exploited these divisions. Mr Trump said and did things that conventional analysts regarded as political suicide. But his instincts proved better than those of the pundits. Despite his age, Mr Trump also "got" new media-- and exploited it far more adeptly than other politicians.

But will all this radicalism be crowned with success? As Hegel pointed out, "the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at dusk," which is a fancy way of saying it is too soon to tell.

However, from a Trumpian perspective, the early signs are promising. The US economy is booming, while China's economy is sputtering. The US Supreme Court has been reshaped. Under crushing American pressure, Canada and Mexico have agreed to rewrite their trade deal with America-- and other US allies are showing signs of falling into line. Whatever the results of the midterm elections next month, Mr Trump stands a good chance of re-election in 2020.

Of course, it could all still go wrong. And, as an establishment kind of guy, I'm inclined to think it will. The Trump trade wars could backfire. The US economy could overheat and the stock market could tank.

In the event of another global financial crisis, a Trump-led US will struggle to lead a co-ordinated global response. If the Trump administration continues to undermine America's alliance system, US power could erode even faster than before. In the worst case, Mr Trump's instinctive risk-taking style could lead to a major miscalculation-- and a war with China or Russia or on the Korean peninsula.

But even ultimate failure and disaster would not invalidate Mr Trump's claim to be a truly historic president. The president may think that greatness is all about "winning." But Hegel suggested that things usually end badly for world historical figures: "They die early like Alexander, they are murdered like Caesar; or transported to St Helena like Napoleon." A cheering thought for Mr Trump's many foes.

Do Trump's worst qualities disqualify him from "greatness" in any way, shape, or form? Absolutely. He is a morally squalid, penny-ante crook, eager to stuff his pockets and really nothing more. He's a manipulative asshole with nothing but contempt and disdain for his own moron base of supporters. He's more a PT Barnum than a Napoleon. Just yesterday as Rachman's piece was being published, so Trump was asserting on Twitter that the refugee "caravan" from Honduras at the Mexican border with Guatemala is filled with "criminals" and "Middle Easterners." As last week's extensive ProPublica exposé on the Trump family's dishonesty showed, everywhere in this man's life what you see is not greatness but patterns of deceptive practices. "Since Donald Trump's fortunes came surging back with the success of The Apprentice 14 years ago, his deals have often been scrutinized for the large number of his partners who have ventured to the very edges of the law, and sometimes beyond. Those associates have included accused money launderers, alleged funders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and a felon who slashed someone in the face with a broken margarita glass. Trump and his company have typically countered by saying they were merely licensing his name on these real estate projects in exchange for a fee. They weren’t the developers or in any way responsible. But an eight-month investigation by ProPublica and WNYC reveals that the post-millennium Trump business model is different from what has been previously reported. The Trumps were typically way more than mere licensors or bystanders in their often-troubled deals. They were deeply involved in these projects. They helped mislead investors and buyers-- and they profited handsomely from it." Rachman is dead wrong if he thinks that kind of behavior-- the only kind of behavior Trump knows or has ever known-- "embodies the spirit of our age," his mind is too twisted and misshapen to be taken all that seriously.

Macron Says There Is No Planet B-- But I Think Republicans Should Launch Themselves Into Space And Look For It

I lived in Europe for over 6 years, mostly in Amsterdam. But I had already spent a lot of time driving all around France and then settling down in Aix-en-Provence. My best friend was half French and half Dutch and I was the only one in our circle with a car... so we visited her mother, a renowned and brilliant painter, frequently. I grew to love Paris over the years and later was thrilled when I became the president of a big international company with a very active regional headquarters in France I was expected to visit. I took every opportunity. So maybe that's why I thought all the TV commentators who covered the Macron- Trump meetings were out of their minds when they talked about the bromance between the two.

Take my word for it, there was no bromance. Marcon obviously thinks Trump is barely tolerable garbage beneath his feet. Perhaps a TV commentator who had never been out of New York or DC thought when Macron was smiling thought it was a smile of friendship instead of a French smile of loathing. Macron is diplomatic but he can't stand Trump-- not any more than any foreign leader-- perhaps not counting fellow fascists like Putin, Netanyahu, Orbán, al-Sisi, Andrzej Duda, Erdoğan and Mohammad Bin Salman-- can.

John Harwood wrote that "There's no election for leadership of the 'liberal world order'-- the U.S.-constructed system of laws and values underpinning American prosperity since World War II.n But French President Emmanuel Macron has seized it with words just the same. He underscored that with his speech to a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday, which got a warm bipartisan reception even as it challenged the American host he calls 'dear Donald' Trump."

"We can choose isolationism, withdrawal and nationalism," Macron said in the well of the House of Representatives. "It can be tempting to us as a temporary remedy to our fears.

"But closing the door to the world will not stop the evolution of the world," he added. "I'm convinced that if we decide to open our eyes wider we will be stronger, we will overcome the dangers, we will not let the rampaging work of extreme nationalism shake a world full of hopes for greater prosperity."

Macron's call to "re-invent" cooperative approaches to international problems offered a point-by-point rebuttal to President Donald Trump's "America First" insularity. Instead of wiping away national identities, Macron argued, "strong multilateralism will allow our cultures and identities to be respected."

The French president warned that trade wars, rather than trade deals, "destroy jobs" and raise prices for the middle class. He appealed to the U.S. to rejoin the Paris climate accord and create a "low-carbon economy" because "there is no Planet B." He said remaining with America's allies in the Iran nuclear deal, at least until some replacement is negotiated, is the best path for fighting terrorism, preserving peace and avoiding nuclear proliferation.

Reaction from lawmakers was far more positive than anyone could have predicted during the Bush-era estrangement of France and the U.S. over the Iraq War. It packed all the more punch following his public displays of warmth and friendship with Trump during the first state visit of the new American presidency.

"A strong speech," said conservative Alabama Rep. Bradley Byrne, although like other Republicans he disagrees with Macron on the climate accord and Iran deal.

In its uplifting tone and invocation of shared values, the speech evoked the 2004 convention address that helped turn then little-known Barack Obama into the leader of the Democratic Party. Macron did not call out Trump by name, just as Obama then did not call out Republican President George W. Bush. Both punctuated their speeches with an "I believe" peroration appealing to hope over fear.

"Against cynicism, trust and good faith," Macron said. He cast "intelligently regulated market economies" as the path for preserving globalization's benefits while reducing the destabilizing inequality it has caused at the same time.

There's reason to doubt that Macron's combination of flattering personal diplomacy and idealistic rhetoric can nudge the Trump administration in his direction. His top near-term goal is persuading the White House not to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal next month. Last year, he failed on a similar mission to convince Trump to remain in the Paris climate deal.

Yet Macron offered momentary comfort to foreign policy veterans of past administrations-- the "establishment" Trump has disdained-- who fear for the future of institutions such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization.

Richard Haass, a former aide to both presidents Bush who now runs the Council on Foreign Relations, recently wrote an essay declaring "Liberal World Order, R.I.P." due to Trumpism and other threats.

With Britain's Theresa May enmeshed in Brexit and Germany's Angela Merkel hobbled politically, Haass welcomed Macron's spirited defense.

"It was refreshing to hear that from a French leader, and disappointing that we don't hear it from an American leader," he said. "The President of France is the de facto leader of the West."

American Elites Need To Feel The Fear The British Elites Feel Today

It’s nice-- very nice-- that Macron pulverized Le Pen and her fascist party. In Sunday’s parliamentary elections, Macron’s party won 350 seats, an absolute-- and unassailable-- majority in the 577 member National Assembly. Le Pen’s fascists won just 8 seats. That, though, is different from having reason to celebrate a great progressive victory. Ultimately, the fact that Macron detests and reviles Señor Trumpanzee is just funny and admirable, not governance. Neither Macron, a centrist former banker, nor his prime minister, conservative Édouard Philippe, is remotely progressive. They literally define conservatism: preservation of the status quo. The turnout, its worth noting, was the lowest in living memory. I was in France for the election. People seemed motivated primarily to stamp out fascism, not to embrace Macron and Philippe. As the French used to say-- or at least the French Jews-- “feh!”

Now across the Channel, on the other had, there really is a reason for progressives to celebrate. Though Jeremy Corbyn isn’t Prime Minister yet, he smashed the Conservatives and sent waves of fear through the British elites. Last week, The Nation carried an interview with veteran British journalist Paul Mason, which you can listen to here:



The point that Mason wanted to get across though, is that Corbyn’s moral victory was something of beauty and something that shouldn’t be underestimated-- and something that can be imported into America. “What happened,” he explained, “has no parallel in modern British politics since 1945. Labour didn’t win a majority, but they won a moral victory because the government had called the election to get a bigger majority of its own. It was predicted on the night before that it would get a majority of 100 seats. In the end it got no majority. There is now what we call in Britain a hung Parliament, which would be as if Congress was controlled by nobody. Theresa May, the Conservative prime minister, is clinging on, but what happened was that really massive numbers of young people voted for Labour-- not just under-24-year-olds, but under-35-year-olds. Something like half of all under-35-year-olds voted for a party that was vilified by the media as a kind of terrorist-supporting threat to national security… [Corbyn] started out far behind, polling 25 percent. The first thing he did was claw back to about 35 percent by publishing the most left-wing manifesto of any Social Democratic Party in the world. It called for renationalization of the railroads, the postal service, and some energy firms. It called for what we call ‘Robin Hood taxes,’ taxing not just the incomes of companies and rich people, but also taxing the wealth of rich people. Taxing the unearned wealth, the property speculation, the stock-market speculation. This would bring in billions, which he said we would spend on free college education for everybody who wants it. That is revolutionary-- and it’s not surprising so many students came out to campaign for the Labour Party in the last few nights of the election. On some urban streets, people were opening their windows and saying, What’s going on? Is there some kind of disturbance? Why are 100 young people coming down my street and knocking on my door? It felt like a sort of velvet revolution in parts of Britain.”

Key figures on the right of British politics are now saying that, to stop Jeremy Corbyn, they have to be prepared to ditch everything. They have to be prepared to ditch what is called “hard Brexit,” which is walking away from Europe without a deal. They have to be prepared to ditch austerity. We’ve had seven years of spending cuts and attacks on the welfare state, and they’ve got to be prepared to ditch that. They’re in full panic mode. As a reporter on British politics and economics, I haven’t seen the ruling class of England in a panic like this for a long time. They realize that their defense lines are falling away. The normal defense lines for British capitalism run not just through the Conservative Party, but also through the Labour Party. But once Corbyn took control of Labour and decisively moved its political programs to the left, the only thing standing between the working class and young people on one side, and the minority and the elite on the other, is the Conservative government. And that just effectively fell apart. It’s a minority government, with no power to legislate.

…[I]t’s not enough to have the combination of a strong leader and a well-worked-out program. The left also needs a ground game. We have this movement called Momentum, a movement to get support within the party. That movement was able to have a million conversations with voters in the space of six weeks, talking to people on their doorsteps, just the way the Sanders people did. Then Jeremy Corbyn in the last days of the election campaign stepped out of the role of party leader and started to speak on behalf of the nation. He’d absorbed so much pressure, so much vitriol, and so many attacks—he assured people that it was possible to go beyond the pain barrier. I think the Sanders movement, or whatever comes after it, has to do popular politics. It’s not the same as populism. It’s like gaming. You go into the dungeon and you kill the boss. You need someone who can do that. And Corbyn proved he could do it.

Help Randy Bryce battle the elites of both wretchedly corrupt DC parties and get down into that basement and end the political career of Paul Ryan next year. No DCCC handler is going to talk Randy into "going centrist," the way they did with Ossoff in the final stages of the GA-06 campaign. Randy stands for deeply held values and beliefs, rooted in his life's experiences. After he wins in 2018, by campaigning on those beliefs-- not on a DCCC-dictated GOP-lite platform-- we’ll see if progressives have the strength to smash the conservative Dems and their donors and beat Trump with a Corbyn, not with a Macron.

Anyone Thinking About Moving To France 'Til Trump Is Impeached?

One of my friends drives for Uber and because he drives his mom's Beamer, he's an Uber-Premium driver. He says he gets a lot of nice and interesting customers. He mentioned a couple he picked up a few days ago who were celebrating because they had just been approved for Japanese citizenship. They had to invest $5,000,000 in Japan to get the citizenship and they'll have to give up their U.S. citizenship. They mentioned they mostly just wanted to get their money out of the U.S. because they fear Trump. I would have liked to have talked to them to find out more.

After Trump announced he was pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord, French President Emmanuel Macron invited American scientists to come work in Paris. Canada has also been very encouraging to skilled workers. France has since put up an official Make Our Planet Great Again website which encourages American teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs, etc to relocate to France. I started filling out their form and got this page:

Your new homeland.

With a number of Nobel Prizes and Fields medals, leading research universities, top ranked research bodies (CNRS #1 Nature Index worldwide, CEA #2 Thomson Reuters Innovation, etc.), top-level research infrastructure and laboratories as well as an effervescent startup ecosystem, France is a home for excellence in science and innovation.

France is a driving force of science and technology in Europe, with a strong involvement in the H2020 program.

France‘s laboratories are particularly active and among the world leaders in the previously mentioned scientific domains: non-exhaustive examples include a leading position in climate modeling intercomparison exercises, earth observation as part of the ESA, or in advanced solar photovoltaics and breakthrough energy storage solutions.

France is at the forefront of future innovation and industry, notably green tech and green finance that will keep driving growth and meet the targets of the Paris Agreement.

More than ever, France enjoys unique structural strengths that make it one of the most competitive countries in Europe for science and innovation: 2nd European economy, most dynamic European country in terms of demography, a productive, well-educated and well-trained workforce, most attractive R&D intensity level in Europe, unique central position, high levels of infrastructure, solid financial environment, favorable lifestyle environment, etc.

On top of these structural advantages, researchers and university professors will find a welcoming environment to help them fulfill their goals and reach great scientific achievements.

International researchers and university professors, France is here for you!

And then this page about eligibility and how to apply and get a research grant. Stuff like this: "Senior researcher: Up to 1.5M€ for 4 years grant (salary + 2 working staff + 2 students + working expenses) allowing to develop projects within and benefiting from the hosting laboratory environment."

Yes you can apply for a 4 year all expenses grant that includes a work visa and residency permit. And there's this: "You will be able to stay in France at least for the duration of the grant, and longer if you are granted a permanent position. There is no restriction on your husband / wife working in France. If you have children, note that French public schools are free, and the tuition fees of universities and grandes écoles are very low compared to the American system."

Sunday, Macron's party won an immense first round victory in the French parliamentary elections. The run-off will be next Sunday, June 18. In all 577 members are being chosen. Macron's party En Marche! wound up with 6,390,871 votes (32.32%), followed by the center right Republicans with 3,573,398 (15.77%), the fascist National Front with 2,990,613 (13.20%), Jean-Luc Mélenchon's left-wing La France Insoumise with 2,497,663 (11.02%) and the center left Socialist Party with 1,685,808 votes (7.44%). No other parties broken a million. It looks like Macron's party is on track to win between 415 and 455 seats of the 577-- which would be the biggest parliamentary majority for a single party since World War II.

France Defeated The Fascist/Elected The Centrist

A significant plurality of French voters (43%) who cast their ballots for Emmanuel Macron Sunday told pollsters that had done so primarily to stop Le Pen-- more of the ole "lesser of two evils" vision of politics, generally espoused by the Democratic Party to such ill-effect. Everyone I know-- in Europe and here at home-- was rooting for Le Pen to lose (except for Monsieur Trumpanzèè, Bannon, and neo-fascist Congressmen Steve King and Dana Rohrabacher). But no one-- no one I know-- was rooting for centrist former banker Macron to win. He was just the way to stop Le Pen. (He's already talking about naming right-wing Bordeaux mayor Alain Juppé as prime minister.)

But, there are people-- even if I don't know them-- who are actually excited about Macron right here in America. Early Monday morning a group calling itself the Centrist Project sent out an e-mail celebrating. Do you know who Nick Troiano is? In 2014 he ran as an independent centrist against Pennsylvania Republican Tom Marino and got 13% of the vote. He's now the executive director of the Centrist Project and wrote that "Macron's election to the French presidency as a first-time, independent candidate demonstrates that constructive political disruption can come from the political center. And it can happen here, too. A similar En Marche! movement in France has already begun at the state level, where several centrist independent candidates were elected in 2016. Since the Centrist Project's public launch last month, we have already begun fielding dozens of inquiries from potential independent state and federal candidates for the next election. With a majority of Americans now holding an unfavorable view of both parties, we believe the political moment is ripe to challenge the two-party duopoly in the United States, and win."

Le Pen only one two departments across France-- Pas-de-Calais (52.1%) and Aisne (52.9%) in the northeast. She lost all 8 southern departments where polls had shown her leading before the Kremlin's cyberattack on Friday. Macron beat her 20,753,798 (66.1%) to 10,644,118 (33.9%). Macron picked up the majority of first round supporters of the two left-wing candidates, Jean-Luc Mèlenchon and Benoît Hamon. More surprisingly, Macron won almost half of the votes of those who went with cconservative right-winger François Fillon in round one. According to the Financial Times, the strongest predictor of voter preference was education. Areas with higher numbers of university degrees is where Macron found his biggest support.

This pattern echoes the findings of a Financial Times analysis of the predictors of the Leave vote in 2016 Brexit referendum, US presidential election and recent Dutch election. In each of the plebiscites, education emerged as the strongest predictor of vote for a populist option, where the less educated chose it more often than those with degrees.

First-round voting projections and research reported on by the FT indicated that higher income voters were more likely to vote for Macron. This trend reinforces the narrative of the presidential race as a battle of haves versus have-nots, embodied respectively by Macron and Le Pen... Like education, income was also a factor in the recent Dutch election, in which less affluent areas voted in proportionately higher numbers for the populist Geert Wilders. This was also true in the UK's EU referendum, where analysis suggested lower income voters were more likely to vote Leave.

...Macron did well where life expectancy is higher, in line with the theory that [lack of] health and wellbeing are proxies for pessimism-- a known predictor of support for Le Pen. There is a growing school of thought that health metrics, including life expectancy, can be used as precision proxies for imprecise concepts such as wellbeing and pessimism, allowing researchers to identify social breakdown without resorting to large-scale surveys and self-reported measures.

This allows us to interpret the positive relationship between life expectancy and the Macron vote as additional evidence that general wellbeing and a positive outlook on life lead voters to reject Le Pen's appeals to negative emotions, and vote instead for a candidate with a more positive message.

The NY Times analysis of Macron's win, which "brought joy from Europe’s political establishment," was less in the weeds, claiming that "the French presidential runoff transcended national politics. It was globalization against nationalism. It was the future versus the past. Open versus closed." But Macron's victory has it also be seen in what is unique in French history-- Nazi occupation and collaboration.

For the past year, a pressing political question has been whether widespread public frustration against Western political establishments had morphed into a global populist movement. Britain’s vote to leave the European Union last June, followed by the presidential election of Donald J. Trump in the United States, created the impression of a mounting wave. Ms. Le Pen, stalwart of the European far right, was the next truly big test.

But Ms. Le Pen’s challenge was different because French history is different. She has spent the last six years as president of the National Front single-mindedly focused on one objective: erasing the stain of her party’s association with the ex-collaborationists, right-wing extremists, immigrant-hating racists and anti-Semites who founded it 45 years ago.

She knew-- as her father, the party patriarch Jean-Marie Le Pen, always refused to acknowledge-- that she would always be a minority candidate as long as she reminded the French of perhaps the greatest stain in their history, the four years of far-right rule during World War II. Inside and outside the party this process was called “undemonization”-- a term suggesting the demons still associated with her party. The French do not want them back.

“There was no choice. I couldn’t vote for Le Pen. You’re not going to vote for the extremist,” said Martine Nurit, 52, a small-restaurant owner who had just cast her ballot in Paris’s 20th Arrondissement on Sunday. She had voted for the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round, on April 23, and it was with “not an ounce of joy” that she voted for the “business-oriented” Mr. Macron in the second.

“Mostly, I voted against Le Pen,” she said.

In the end Ms. Le Pen failed to “undemonize,” spectacularly. She failed during the course of the campaign, when her angry rallies drew the Front inexorably back into the swamp from which it had emerged. And then she failed decisively in one of the campaign’s critical moments, last week’s debate with Mr. Macron, when she effectively “redemonized” herself and the party, as many French commentators noted.

It was an hourslong tirade against Mr. Macron, laced with name-calling and epithets, and woefully deficient in substance. She appeared lost on subject after subject, fumbling on one of her signature issues-- withdrawing from the euro-- that is opposed by a majority of French. Something essential about Ms. Le Pen, and the National Front, had been revealed to France.

...Macron’s pro-market views stirred much opposition. Mr. Mélenchon not only refused to endorse him, but also encouraged the idea that Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen were equivalent menaces-- a calculation endorsed by many far-left voters. Nearly half the first-round electorate voted for candidates hostile to the free market and to capitalism. Even if they voted for Mr. Macron on Sunday to save the country from Ms. Le Pen, they did so without enthusiasm.

Some of the antipathy sprang from his hermetic persona, as a caricature of the elite-educated, know-it-all technocrats, perpetually encased in a dark suit, who have guided France for much its postwar history, usually from behind the scenes, and whose record is mixed.

“He’s not someone I feel a lot of conviction for,” said Thomas Goldschmidt, a 26-year-old architectural firm employee in Paris who voted for Mr. Macron after supporting the Socialist Benoît Hamon in the first round. “He’s someone who raises a lot of questions. It’s a vision of society that is too business-friendly,” Mr. Goldschmidt said. “It’s this whole idea of making working life more uncertain. We just can’t bet on it, that everyone out there can be an entrepreneur. Society isn’t built like that.”

Mr. Macron seems aware that his large victory isn’t a large mandate, that the pressure is now on to ensure that France’s reprieve from the National Front is not just a temporary one. “If I fail to solve” France’s problems “or fail to offer a solid start to solving them, in five years it will be even worse,” he told the left-wing news website Mediapart on Friday night. “What nourishes the National Front will be even more virulent,” he added.