French elections: And Macron becomes a liability | International

Seven years ago, Emmanuel Macron led more than 300 deputies into the French National Assembly with charisma and youthful vigor. His name, boasted on election posters, was enough to elect him. His party changed its name several times, but for voters it remained the same Macron’s Party,

Everything has changed. Its candidates are now avoiding using it on posters for the assembly elections on June 30 and July 7. …

Seven years ago, Emmanuel Macron led more than 300 deputies into the French National Assembly with charisma and youthful vigor. His name, boasted on election posters, was enough to elect him. His party changed its name several times, but for voters it remained the same Macron’s Party,

Everything has changed. Its candidates are now avoiding putting it on posters for the legislative elections scheduled for June 30 and July 7. The Macronist deputies, who are running to re-validate their seats, with the vote against them, are trying to mark their own profile as men and women on the ground. For many, the president has become a liability.

-Macron, let her stay home!

-My name is Patrick Macron or Patrick Vignal?

In Liberation Square in Mauguio, a town of 17,000 inhabitants in the south of France, Macronist deputy Patrick Vignal campaigns. He has recently met Jean-Marie Pla, a retired painter, son of a Spanish fighter exiled after the Civil War and proud to be a communist. Vignal, a former judo teacher and experienced politician from the region, tries to explain to Pla that he is not Macron, even though he is fighting for his party, and that over the past seven years as a deputy in the National Assembly he has fought for the interests of this region, the 9th constituency of the province of Hérault.

There is no way. Pla told Vignal that, if he reaches a second round against a far-right rival, he will not run. And don’t tell him that this gives Marine Le Pen’s National Regroupment (RN) a win. Pla says it is the president, not the left, who, with his policies – and now, it might be added, by bringing a surprise election at the peak of the RN’s rise – has put Le Pen’s people on the doorstep of power.

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“Communist sir, my father was a communist…” Vignal told him. And Pla replied: “I would rather be a communist than be with Macron.”

This is a street-level campaign in the agricultural town of Montpellier, a region where, as across France, the Lepenists won the European elections on June 9. The RN’s victory and the Macronist candidacy’s third position were a humiliation for those loyal to the president. Upon learning of the result, Macron dissolved the assembly and called for new elections.

With this decision, Macron’s representatives have been thrown, against their will, into a campaign in which it does not seem possible to re-validate the majority. And they distance themselves day by day from a president who arouses deep hatred in certain sectors of society. Meanwhile, the rebellion Yellow Vest and the poor middle class, the unpopular pension reform, the arrogance of French monarchical power, and the sanbenito of the “president of the rich”.

Macron is no longer advancing; rather, subtracting.

Gabriel Attal, a 35-year-old precocious politician whom Macron appointed prime minister in January and who could lose the post after the election, was walking this week in Le Perreux-sur-Marne, a municipality near Paris. A citizen looked at him and scolded him:

“I’ll shake your hand because I like you.” But you have to tell the president to shut up.

“Step aside, President.”

This sums up the Macronists’ problem in the campaign, and perhaps even its solution. His people think that the less he says, the better. According to a person familiar with the conversation, after the parliamentary dissolution was announced, Edouard Philippe, one of his former prime ministers and aspiring to be his successor at the Elysée, told him: “Step aside, president.” The president replied: “Yes, yes.” But he immediately contradicted the previous statement, saying: “By the way, I’m going to give a press conference.”

Undeterred, the president has not stopped talking. And making his people uncomfortable, like on Tuesday, when he attacked the “extreme left” for proposing to allow something “worthy of the theater of the absurd”, such as “the procedure to change one’s gender at city hall”. One of his most loyal allies, former minister Clément Beaune, reacted: “For trans people, for LGBT people, for everyone… we must reject all stigma in political discourse and advance rights.”

For many Macronists, the less said, the better. Philippe has declared that “we have to move on to something else.” Attal has distanced himself from his mentor and, like Philippe, also dreams of the Elysée in 2027, the year the president’s term ends. It is as if everyone, starting with the Macronists, wants to turn the page on Macronism.

-I would more likely vote for Mr. Vignal than for Mr. Macron.

The speaker is Xavier Magne, a pharmacist from Mauguio, a town in Hérault’s 9th constituency, where candidate Patrick Vignal risks succumbing to the Lepenist and anti-Macron tide. However, Magne points out that he voted for the president and regrets that he is the target on which the country focuses to express its criticism. Despite everything, there is a Macronist France; a base that probably represents a fifth of the electorate or a little more.

“The president should not be a burden!” says Vincent Malaviel. “Whoever was in charge of the state would be a liability.” Yes, there is a problem, says this retired civil servant in the town café, and that is that in Paris “they are too Suit and tie“. Pointing to Deputy Wignall sitting in front of him, he adds, “His advantage is that he wears a polo shirt.”

“I think the president has been given an unfair process, but that’s politics, that’s what happens,” summarizes Vignal, who was not at all happy with Macron’s decision to dissolve the assembly. Dismantle them Actually for them). “They have faced crises, riots, Covid, the war in Ukraine… Without them, I don’t know who would have been better than them.” Pragmatic, he adds: “Macron wants Vignal to become a deputy, and Vignal wants Macron to become another deputy, so if we have to avoid putting his picture on posters because today it makes people angry…”

Later, on the square, Vignal distributes leaflets without Macron’s face, only of himself and his deputy Patricia Moulin-Traffort, who accompanied him on this day of campaigning. He speaks to far-right voters and the communist PLA, who tell him: “I think you’re dead.” “Shall we bet?” the deputy responds. “I invite you to an aperitif, because we are going to win.”

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