Supporters of Hollande fill the Place de la Bastille celebrating victory
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
Socialist Francois Hollande swept to victory in France’s presidential election on Sunday in a swing to the left at the heart of Europe that could start a pushback against German-led austerity…
The president conceded defeat within 20 minutes of the last polls closing at 1800 GMT, telling supporters he had telephoned Hollande to wish him good luck…“I bear the full responsibility for this defeat,” he said.
Sarkozy, punished for his failure to rein in record 10 percent unemployment and for his brash personal style, is the 11th successive leader in the euro zone to be swept from power since the currency bloc’s debt crisis began in 2009…
Hollande’s clear win should give the self-styled “Mr Normal” the authority to press German Chancellor Angela Merkel to accept a policy shift towards fostering growth in Europe to balance the austerity that has fueled anger across southern Europe…
Hollande, a mild-mannered career politician, had held a steady lead for weeks after outlining a comprehensive program in January based on raising taxes, especially on high earners, to finance spending and keep the public deficit capped…
Sarkozy launched his campaign late and swerved hard to the right as he tried to win back low-income voters that polls show have ditched him for either the radical left or extreme right.
His aggressive rallies and promises to rein in immigrant numbers, crack down on tax exiles and make the unemployed retrain as a condition of getting benefits did not reduce Hollande’s lead…
Sound familiar?
Private enterprise, particularly the multinational entities, have got to stop biting the hands that have been feeding them. That’s what I read with this election result. Let’s hope Mr. Normal knows how to make this work.
If he does he’s going to be the first man in history who did.
This is EXACTLY the sentiment here.
For the Teapublican Party to win my consideration, their current sucking up to the Christian Taliban and the 1% needs to change. …they better wise up fast. The writing is on the wall.
Dallas, I agree with your “Christian Taliban” comment.
I do laugh a little that as much as the Tea Party tried to reject Romney by every means necessary — even backing that idiot Santorum — they have a Mormon moderate nominee.
One thing I liked about Obama is that he mellowed out the Democratic party. Obama rejected the James Carville/Clintonesque politics of “demonizing opponents.”
Likewise, I cannot stand right-wing “religious litmus test” type of Tea Party nuts. Which is essentially hate-mongering and anti-intellectual drivel which I find offensive.
Romney is quite the opposite of that. I’ve always thought Blue State Republicans and Red State Democrats are among the best behaving politicians.
We agree. The Teapublican strategy is outdated and is a legacy of the Karl Rove method of divide and conquer.
In the age of social networks, it’s going to be tough for Teapublicans to go after the mainstream, working class, compassionate American – the swing voter.
Santorum was the best thing to happen to the Dems. He took the campaign fight to the lunatic fringe and the rest followed.
Romney will have to date a hot guy and perform an abortion himself to dig himself out of that hole he dug. His alternative is to attack Obama (which he is doing) on who loves women best, who will do more for the poor – losing campaign.
The GOP needs to look deep inside and find their original core principles of fairness together with fiscal discipline.
It’s not really the Germans everyone objects to.
The conservative thieves come from every developed country in the world. Your ones in the USA seem to have a particular sense of entitlement but they are no different from other sociopaths anywhere else.
We had some local elections in the UK on Thursday. The Conservatives lost the most. The Liberals lost some and the gains went to the left. When can we get rid of our conservatives nationally?
This will be a question being asked across Europe and the whole world.
It gives us hope for the future.
My solution would work for the british as well without threatening the monarchy in the least.
The Independence Party is doing very well in England too.
So basically everyone wants to dump the EU.
The palace will never be the same without Carla.
A national treasure.
I’m taking bets on the Bruni/Sarkosi divorce pool.
How many week until she decides that he’s just another short-dicked man?
I think this was no surprise to anyone paying attention to the election. I did for the most part because I have relatives residing there. With all the news happening regarding the economic crisis to immigrant issues he was surely ousted if not sooner. As someone had said already here, I hope the new president knows what he’s doing to help the country recover.
The vote was 51.9 percent to 48.1.
Yes, all clear thinking honest people saw this election a kilometer away.
“Swept Into Office.”
Politics is just as over hyped and BS driven with a croissant as with a burger.
France is about to begin one of the biggest economic slides downward yet to be seen in the Euro-zone.
Part of Hollande’s platform includes initiatives that sound like they were scripted as porn for die-hard Keynesians, including what sounds like a Buffett Rule on steroids:
Hollande has promised more government spending and higher taxes — including a 75-percent income tax on the rich — and wants to re-negotiate a European treaty on trimming budgets to avoid more debt crises of the kind facing Greece. That would complicate relations with Germany’s Angela Merkel, who championed the treaty alongside Sarkozy.
Hollande also pledged to lower the retirement age from 62 to 60 (which Sarkozy had raised from 60 to 62) and to add 60,000 employees to France’s public education system. And yet the budget, according to another of Hollande’s campaign promises, will be balanced by 2017.
The social cradle to grave programs that Sarkozy cut back were breaking Franes budget. An ever growing cancer of expenses that fewer rich and middle class workers were available to pay.
75% tax on the wealthy will drive investment money off-shore and encouarage those with money simply not to spend.
At least Paul Krugman will be happy.
Hey David–that does not sound “good” for France.
Going from 62 to 60, or in USA from 65 up to whatever: interesting questions of “values.”
Can it even be done? If it can be done, what tradeoffs have to be made?
Weighing and balancing. Something that brainless zealots aren’t much good at.
Yup, brainless zealots on the left think the money will keep flowing forever, they can just raise taxes on the rich and the money will come. My guess is lots of money in France is going to stay on the sidelines if this 75% tax happens.
75% tax on the wealthy will drive investment money off-shore and encourage those with money simply not to spend.
Where is it guaranteed that those with money are going to invest?
Nah, they’re French, its not transportable.
They’re cultured, and would just end up sending the money back home whenever they wanted champagne or wine and they’d miss the food terribly.
They’re rich in France, its not transportable.
If you own one of the innumerable chateaux in Deauville or in Nante et alia, or along the Loire or a hundred other valleys running from the Alps to the coast of Bretagne its not suddenly going to pick itself up and move.
The French are French après tout.
Some voters have declared a war on math.
With this election, I’m sure Julia is happy.
France grows ever more irrelevant.
>Keynes was Right.
Funny, this same Keynesian analysis led the Obama Admin to promise lower unemployment with the stimulus passage, instead we ended up with higher unemployment. Not just higher, but higher than the no-stimulus number they predicted based on their Keynesian analysis.
In response, Keynesians like Paul Krugman state that the stimulus should have been bigger, which gives him an unprovable assertion to hang his hat on.
The biggest problem is all these pundits who bloviate before all the chips have fallen.
The problem with economics is that you can’t prove anything, one way or the other. It is simply all theory with nothing but correlation analysis.
How do you KNOW the stimulus package, weakened and minimal as it was due to Puke opposition, didn’t save millions of jobs regardless of what the promise supposedly was?
Same as it always is.
The promise was not the statements of a politician, but rather based on Keynesian analysis. Perhaps it saved millions of jobs, which I doubt, but that doesn’t take away the flaws in the analysis, which basically amounts to money spent=jobs produced.
Good jobs are not bought. Good jobs are created by demand.
And the Keynesian model is that the money spent will produce demand will produce jobs. Indeed, this is how they can even get the jobs created or saved logic to work. They spent money, therefore they created jobs.
“How do you KNOW the stimulus package … didn’t save millions of jobs regardless of what the promise supposedly was?”
Maybe it did save millions of jobs.
But Obama doesn’t put forth any ideas or plans of action to fix things. What he does do is golf more than Tiger Woods and go on vacation a hell of a lot.
Obama never puts anything on the line.
He doesn’t do anything to improve gas mileage, he hasn’t done anything of substance with green energy, healthcare reform wasn’t a reform — it was “you must buy health insurance”, didn’t normalize relations with Cuba, he didn’t do anything to ensure that countries trade fair with us, he hasn’t made efforts to keep jobs in America.
My problem with Obama isn’t any of the ideas, but he won’t put the hard work into any of ideas to draft up and then implement a hard-won plan.
He’s lazy and he doesn’t care, plus he’ll sweet talk in a speech and then not act so he thinks you are stupid with a short attention span too.
Actually, I’m so disappointed in Obama, if you’d back off a notch on the dogma and talking points that don’t withstand simple definitions, I could give that an Amen.
…..and yet, even if we took your position at face value, Obama is still, and will be, head and shoulders above Romney AND all other Pukes that might run for the office, now, and in 2016.
Really sucks to be so incompetent, a flip flopping liar pandering to every group you are in front of. Romney is doing that affirmatively, Obama by failing to speak.
Ironically–two sides of the same political coin.
Since WW2 Europe has stood for nothing except its four month vacations , invented little and stood for little.
Nothing is for nothing
This is one just one more example
Europe is a monument to the past.
Government program to give subjects bike sharing. 30 minutes free, $100 for a four hour ride. That’s after paying a $100 annual fee, or $10 for a day.
http://nypost.com/p/news/local/braking_the_bank_hhigRna6fEMdC4adPdkm9M?utm_source=SFnewyorkpost&utm_medium=SFnewyorkpost
Completely privately sponsored, BTW.
Still, whoever says “We can’t keep borrowing and spending” is dead meat at the poles. I guess the French people don’t want to hear that either.
Actually I belive their approach is going to be “tax and spend”. Not as popular but I believe it will work.