on the municipales

Gee - here's a mystery for ya. In the American elections in 2010, Obama made an early turn to the right and kept pressing the issue of cuts and the deficit. And the Dems were wiped out. How strange, eh? Then Hollande, who governs like he leads his love life, fell in love with neo-liberalism and proclaimed it to all the world and the socialists were wiped out yesterday in the municipals. Do I sense a pattern? Is it perhaps not true that people want their leftist parties to govern and talk like they are rightist parties? That is so weird of the people! They need to grow up and realize that what is good for the plutocracy is good for them, in a manner of speaking. Every unemployed person should look on him or herself as a necessary sacrifice, so that France can impress Germany with its willingness to impose austerity! They should be so proud. Hollande is going to speak tonight, and inevitably he will say that the PS has not be rightist enough. Obviously, the people want more austerity and unemployment. And he'll give it to them.
All of which is to say, I thought the socialists richly deserved to be whacked yesterday. For all the brouhaha about the FN, they did not capture a ville the size of Grenoble - which elected a green ticket. But the Parisian press, which is hysterical about the barbarians in the province, will continue to have their moral panic about the FN, rather than about chomage. Now the latter is a reason to have a moral panic, but the families of the editors of le monde and liberation are no doubt doing fine. So they don't care.