Electoral Politics: French And American

Yesterday Alexander Mercouris presented his take on the first round results of the French elections. Of course he’s aware that there will be all sorts of shenanigans going on, horse trading among the parties to prevent a Le Pen majority. He didn’t attempt to handicap all that. In fact, since there’s little holding the non-Le Pen parties together except antipathy toward Le Pen, it seems pointless to go through that sort of exercise. Instead, he looked for some unifying principle in the results, especially given the record turnout—what was driving that?

Here is the list he came up with:

Macron has conclusively lost control of the French parliament.

Two thirds of the prospective MPs--or, at least, two thirds of the votes in the election--have gone to parties that categorically reject Macron's foreign policy. And foreign policy is essentially all Macron cares about, it’s the province of the president in the French system.

The two thirds all reject Project Ukraine and at least say that they're deeply skeptical about further European integration.

In an election with high turnout, French voters have overwhelmingly rejected Macron's foreign policy.

It appears that--at least for voters--Project Ukraine is a "crystalizing" issue.

Scott Ritter this morning voiced the same conclusion:

France has been neutered as regards Project Ukraine. The European Front against Russia is collapsing rapidly. Keep your eye on the UK Independence Day election, and developments in Germany.

Mercouris, currently in Germany, believes that this dynamic is especially a factor among younger voters. This makes sense, as they are the ones whose future prospects are going down the drain.

In the US, exactly what’s going on is obscured still by the fog of war. The forces that want to remove Zhou are rolling out anecdotes of his incapacity. For example:

Biden donors 'freaked out' by his reliance on teleprompters at private fundraisers

'Does it freak donors out that he needs to be on prompter? It freaks them out,' MSNBC's John Heilemann says

The problem, of course, is that Zhou’s incapacity has been on display, in videos, for years. This is obvious gaslighting. These multimillionaire donors want us to believe they never had a clue. They were too busy counting their money to watch the news:

MSNBC political analyst John Heilemann revealed on his "Impolitic" podcast that donors are "freaked out" that Biden can't go off script during their private fundraisers. 

"One of the things, to go back to my various donor friends, something that in, of course, the last six months, has come up a bunch of times with donors who have had Joe Biden at their house, they are all freaked out by one thing that you guys will understand. He shows up- and it's a group of people, the friendliest people you can imagine, they're all writing him big checks. He speaks for about 15 minutes on prompter at every little dinner event," Heilemann said on Friday's podcast. 

"He never ad-libs. He's never just off prompter… I mean, you're sitting with a bunch of, like, 40 multimillionaires who are writing you giant checks. You have 15 minutes of remarks to give over dinner, and you're on prompter. Again, does that make him a bad president? No. Does that make him unfit to be president? No. Does it freak donors out that he needs to be on prompter? It freaks them out," he said.

OK, that doesn’t tell you anything you probably didn’t guess at, as far as Zhou is concerned. But what does it tell you about the people writing the “giant checks”? Short of simply inheriting the money, how do you become a multimillionaire by making judgments like, Oh, yeah, Zhou is fit to be the most powerful man in the world so I’ll write a giant check to him even though he’s incapable of delivering a single unscripted remark? Well, one supposes that these mega donors are reassured by the knowledge that Zhou’s Israel Lobby approved controllers—Ron Klain, Jeff Zients, and the rest of the gang—will keep Zhou “on script”, as it were. That, the mega donors judge, should be good enough for the rest of the country, too. Something like that. But now that the stuff has hit the fan, they’re talking about refunds.

And that’s the nub of it. Getting rid of Zhou is doable, but what comes next? Kama Sutra? Nobody wants her—except maybe Donna Brazile. And yet Kama thinks she deserves a shot at it. And she has an ace in the hole. Politics in modern America is about nothing if not about money, and if you wanna play you gotta have it:

Kamala's Ace In The Hole? $91 Million Biden-Harris Campaign Fund Looms Large

Little attention has been paid to what might be Kamala's greatest asset: her name on the $91.2 million Biden-Harris campaign account. Per federal election rules, in the event Biden drops out, that account can't simply be handed over to whomever the party eventually nominates for president -- unless it's Harris.  

According to NBC News, the question of what would happen to the Biden-Harris war chest surfaced on a tense Sunday conference call hosted by the Biden campaign with an audience that included some 40 top Biden donors. While denying Biden might drop out, campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez's answer was that most of the money would fall into Harris's control.  

Now, nothing is simple, and certainly not in the Byzantine world of federal campaign laws—written by lawyers for lawyers, so you better have a good one to navigate this mess. If Zhou walks away, Kama Sutra controls the money—but only if she heads the ticket. So what happens if she isn’t the nominee? Ah. There are all sorts of alternatives for disposing of the cache of cash, but—according to the article—none of those alternatives includes passing the money on to whomever the Dem nominee is—if it’s not Kama Sutra.

You can bet that even as I keyboard the campaign finance lawyers for the Dem party and various Dem hopefuls are racking up the billable hours. But it all takes time, Doc Jill and Kama Sutra are holding firm, and the convention is fast approaching.

Somewhere Putin is smiling.