11 ms·

The top line, "Not Left. Not Right. Forward." kind of reminds me of Macron's "En Marche" ("Let's Go") that took over France in a storm, taking over the presiden

• disneygibson 5y ago
  And like Macron, Yang seems to have the support of globalist technocratic elites. Very similar situation indeed.
  • southerntofu 5y ago
    Yes, that's just more of the same "managerial feudalism" David Graeber talks about.
• pjc50 5y ago
  It reminded me of "twirling towards freedom": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:The_Simpsons/Character_quote/48 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:The_Simpsons/Character_... I hadn't realised just how much Macron's party materialized from nowhere. Must have been huge pent-up demand for an alternative. However I suspect that only works in systems that aren't FPTP in the first place, and I suspect Macron is going to the same nowhere that all American third-party candidates go. Especially if he starts by aiming for the top. What might work is a third party taking a city and then a state. This is how third parties practically operate in the UK, they're all local - SNP, Plaid, the various Northern Ireland factions.
  • kryptiskt 5y ago
    France has FPTP elections, but in two rounds, so there is room for tactics.
  • Karto 5y ago
    This wasn't exactly a FPTP situation. First, the presidential election spans over two rounds. Second, about a month later, the legislative elections (two rounds also) were won too with a proper tsunami (350 out of 577 seats, providing a governing majority). When he won the presidential election, everybody thought it was no big deal, as he hadn't shown a single viable candidate to staff any of the 577 seats in the parliament, without which he couldn't wield any real structural power. But he used that weakness as a strength. He hired inexperienced people from all regular ways of life, young and shiny. To the voting public, the message was "you wanted neither left nor right ? Here you go, vote for the almost normal people I'm offering you." This turned into a huge strength, as once in office these inexperienced MP simply followed the group leader, who, you guessed it, was a seasoned politician from olden, and made the parliament a transparent corridor for the presidential power for quite some time. The public pitch was along the "climb over the left/right stalemate and go forward". But the mechanics, besides good ties with the corporate world, were a masterpiece of perfect timing for every action along the campaign, and then for the legislative elections. In those days I was admiring Macron like you would admire a talented enemy general.
    • pjc50 5y ago
      Argh, I meant "Yang will go nowhere" when I wrote the second "Macron", and now it's too late to edit :(
  • hef19898 5y ago
    Not sure if he will go nowhere, he is still having the same 4% lead (24% vs 20%) over Le Pen for the 2022 election (I just checked). Macron basically replaced the French Conservatives (they basically died after Sarkozy) while the Socialists (not in the sense most in the US understand that, they are the French left) killed themselves with Hollande after Sarkozy. So there was a huge opportunity for someone like Macron, it seems Le Pen isn't really able to get a true majority. These numbers are despite things like: Yellow Vest demonstrations against Macron, his hugely unpopular reforms around retirement (especially railways among other things), Covid lockdowns and so on.
  • dlivingston 5y ago
    I have nothing substantive to add, but: here’s the clip of the quote referenced [0] and a larger clip containing most of that Treehouse of Horror skit [1]. Classic Simpsons is the “soul food” of American TV IMHO. [0]: https://youtu.be/HqjhHVUzl8o https://youtu.be/HqjhHVUzl8o [1]: https://youtu.be/sGvTzIOSFyc https://youtu.be/sGvTzIOSFyc
• chalst 5y ago
  <strikeout> En Marche benefitted from the peculiarity of France's electoral system, which combines proportional representation in a 1st round with a "sudden death" 2nd round for the powerful presidency with only the two best-polling parties taking part. When it became clear that the far-right would be the largest single party, people ditched traditional party allegiances to back a candidate they found tolerable. </strikeout> (Apologies for posting my half-mangled recollections without checking and thanks to the commenters who fixed my incorrect claims). France's electoral system is not well-suited to its current political landscape.
  • hef19898 5y ago
    That's not entirely correct. Macron got 24.01% in the first round, 66.1% in the second. Le Pen, the far right candidate, got 21.3% in the first and 33.9% in the second. The runner-up in the first round was Fillon, a coservative, with 20.01% in round one. There was the fear Le Pen would win the second round, sure. One thing about the French system is, that usually the second round is not won by a radical candidate as those usually fail to get enough votes from the other parties and candidates not qualifying for round 2. We'll see how that plays out next year so. Not sure how the French system wouldn't fit the current political landscape.
  • cabalamat 5y ago
    > which combines proportional representation in a 1st round No it doesn't. The french parliament is elected in 577 single member constituencies by a 2 round system: in the 1st round, voters vote for any candidate. If no candidate wins >50% of all the votes in that constituency, a 2nd round is held, where candidates that came 1st or 2nd or got >12.5% of the vote, in the 1st round, can run. Thus the French 2 round system is similar to Instant Runoff Voting, except that it isn't instant. As an example of how the French system isn't proportional, En Marche got 32% of 1st-round votes but 61% of seats. > for the powerful presidency Presidential elections, like any other election that elects 1 candidate cannot in principle be proportional, because each party must either win 100% or 0% of the candidates elected. > When it became clear that the far-right would be the largest single party No, the National Front only got 13.2% of 1st round votes (and only ended up winning 8 seats, 1.4% of the total). They were nowhere near being the biggest party.
• vadfa 5y ago
  "forward" means "progress" which means "left". I don't really see the point there :P I've seen many parties claim "we are not left-wing or right-wing" but they evidently have to be either.
  • chmod600 5y ago
    If what you say is true, there must be some underlying outlook or philosophy that leads to one or the other. What I suspect is that's true for some kinds of issues, but other issues are more of a mixed bag that just happened to end up polarized. Maybe those other issues are important enough to make a third party worthwhile.
  • Juliate 5y ago
    That's so binary.
  • arnoooooo 5y ago
    In the case of "Macron", forward was clearly "right", as it was mostly about getting rid or reducing social schemes. In France, "neither right nor left" generally means "right".
    • vadfa 5y ago
      That's economically right, but socially left. I haven't really seen anything conservative coming from Macron. I don't see how he's from the right.
  • spyckie2 5y ago
    forward in Yang's case means "anti incumbency". Not sure if that's leftist or not because incumbency is basically a mainstay of the current political system of both parties.
• qsort 5y ago
  I suspect a huge part of Macron's success was his opponent. France elections have a top-2 runoff, and I wouldn't be surprised if many electors were like "I don't like Macron but I really don't want Le Pen to win". The whole "socially progressive, economically middle of the road" political coalition that would win every election on HN is extremely unpopular in the real world.
  • pjc50 5y ago
    > "socially progressive, economically middle of the road" political coalition that would win every election on HN is extremely unpopular in the real world. ... except Germany? I think it's more popular on the ground than you'd think, but it's very unpopular in the media who like their politics to be professional wrestling.
    • Loughla 5y ago
      No, it is very unpopular in the US in those who regularly vote in primaries. The primary decides the race, for many, many elections. The presidential race is not exempt from this, either. To draw enough primary voters to make the ballot in one of the two major parties, candidates are, increasingly, needing to take extreme stances on most social and economic issues. (for example, look at how many people came out for Trump in the 2016 primary. In my parents' county in their Midwest state, the polling place literally ran out of republican ballots) Pandering to the extremes, and the movement of many politicians toward extreme views is a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself.
      • ordinaryradical 5y ago
        Yang explains this exact issue so well here: https://youtu.be/-2O3JYaELW0?t=1038 https://youtu.be/-2O3JYaELW0?t=1038 This is part of the reason he and others will be pushing for structural changes, including open primaries, as central to the platform. Changing the mechanics of the elections is the only way to enable a return to centrism in the US.
        • deleted 5y ago
• whakim 5y ago
  While Macron did indeed win the second round of voting in a landslide, I think that had more to do with an overwhelming rejection of the social-nativism of the National Front. In the first round of voting, it was striking how evenly split four of the candidates were. This is particularly interesting because (as a general political rule) as the margins between candidates decrease, tactical voting tends to correspondingly increase. This is why you very rarely see four-way (or more) splits in voting, and means voters must have been especially divided along multiple axes (i.e. not just "left" and "right"!). Macron was really the candidate of the "internationalist right" - a supporter of global institutions who opposed redistribution (see his abolition of the ISF - the wealth tax).
• Vinnl 5y ago
  It's also almost the tagline Rita Verdonk used to use: "Niet links, niet rechts, maar rechtdoorzee" ("not left, not right, but straightforward"). This was when she started her own party after being sidelined by the party of the current prime minister of the Netherlands, after getting more votes than he did. Her party failed miserably, and ten years later he's still prime minister. Which is to say: success doesn't just come from the tagline, I suppose.
  • dagw 5y ago
    Happened in the UK as well. A group of centrist MPs from different parties got together and started a new party called Change UK. They got a lot of good press and good will from people wanting a more 'rational' center option. One catastrophic election later the party collapsed and later dissolved.
    • FridayoLeary 5y ago
      Changing their name every few days did them no favours as did their continuously variable manifesto.
  • rocqua 5y ago
    Note that she was rather right-leaning. And an alternative translation of 'rechtdoorzee' might be "straight-up as in honest and blunt". Her main platform was blocking immigration.
• sbergot 5y ago
  Macron presented itself as the "reasonable" option between classical left & right & the extreme right. He seems in a pretty good position as far as poles go. The left will be divided as usual. The right is struggling to find a candidate, has many court cases to deal with, and has yet to find its position relative to the far right. The far right is torn with crazy extremists such as éric zemmour. While Macron has made many communication mistakes, his success with the vaccine pass and his ability to deliver good speeches at the right time may allow him to win a second mandate. After that his party will probably collapse.
  • hef19898 5y ago
    Whether or not En Marche collapses after the 2022 election largely depends on whether they win or not.. And if they win, how they do until 2027.
• _gohp 5y ago
  The was once the slogan in ex Yugoslavia, death to fascism, freedom to the people. Socialism/communism light followed. Eventually, once that failed, people started saying f##k communism, death to fascism, freedom to the people. Things never meaningfully changed, though.
• ricardobeat 5y ago
  In Brazil a couple parties sprouted up in the past few years: Novo (New) and MBL (Free Brazil Movement). They both position themselves as being "outside" of the left-right spectrum. And of course, it's a marketing trick to capture people who are 'fed up with the system' and don't realize it is an impossible proposition. If you're in government you'll inevitably have to position yourself on all issues, including labour laws, social safety nets, property rights and so on. Invariably these parties sit on the right of the political spectrum. The current government already ran with this idea back then, made of "outsiders" who incidentally have really far-right ideas and associate with the military. But they see themselves as "apolitical", whatever that means...
  • irae 5y ago
    I never seen any of them put themselves "outside" of the left-right spectrum. I probably read what they say in a different way. What I see both movements doing is not align enough to either side to position themselves as such. You said it yourself: they need to position themselves on "all issues". If you align yourself 90% to the left or right, you can align with a traditional party. If you split your positions 40-60% on the issues, you are neither right or left wing. One example for both Novo and MBL: Both movements align in economic ideas closer to right wing parties, but both movements are pro environmental polices. Traditionally you don't see political groups in Brazil that support both ideas.
    • ricardobeat 5y ago
      Both parties supported the (terrible) idea of merging the environmental protection and agriculture ministries. The previous Minister of the Environment came from Novo, and in only 2 years his policies had a disastrous effect on the environment, especially deforestation in the Amazon (he was kicked out of the party but the damage is done). If you split your positions 50/50, you're in the center :)
• southerntofu 5y ago
  > "En Marche" ("Let's Go") that took over France in a storm (...) with very few previously known political figures in its ranks "En marche" is not "Let's go" ("allons-y") but "March on", a military reference. They had key figures in the previous government, for example Macron who was ministry of economy and supervised the destruction of working law protections (2016 reforms) for the "socialist" (huge quotation marks) government. His first prime Manuel Valls minister was also part of the previous government, where he supervised the crushing of popular uprising as ministry of interior. They both represent the national-capitalist turn/wing of the "socialist" party that emerged in the 80/90's. They both have countless blood on their hands, and have betrayed all their campaign promises. For example, Macron campaigned against Le Pen's racism, then passed racist laws doubling retention times (90 days) for undocumented people, pressured against rescuing the Aquarius... It's also important to note that if they appear to come out of nowhere, they are not emerging challengers. They have been chosen by the oligarchy (media and land/industry owner establishment) to represent their interests, and have been heavily promoted across private/public media as an "alternative" to the politics we knew. As you could guess, this "alternative" was always more of the same: less public services, more cops/prisons, less taxes for the rich, more corruption in the heart of government. > The whole thing looked like doing management rather than politics That's politics, too. Just very reactionary, anti-humane politics that destroy people's lives and autonomy in the name of micro-managed stats. You may be interested to know that historically, having a strong government managing society without "politics" (huge quotation marks, everything is political) is Mussolini's historic definition of fascism: > "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." PS: "Neither left nor right" is also a popular fascist meme.("third position"). In France, it's still represented by famous holocaust-denier Alain Soral ("working Reft, traditional values Right") or Troisième Voie (the neofascist militias who were dissolved after murdering Clément Méric). Hitler was also famously "neither left nor right", and actively campaigned against existing parties, claiming the plurality was a form of chaos that ruined efficiency. He historically managed to convince some workers that he was going to be their defender against the bosses, while at the same time taking considerable funds/support from the German industry owners who he convinced he would be their defender against "communism".
  • Juliate 5y ago
• yodsanklai 5y ago
  Macron (a banker) was strongly supported by mainstream medias. And when people realized he was a potential winner, many politicians from left and right started to rally him.
• tokai 5y ago
  Sounds like the good old Third Way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way
• ekianjo 5y ago
  Macron hardly won with a huge majority or something. president by default just like Hollande before.
• api 5y ago
  > doing management rather than politics, This. I want someone who will throw the culture war out the window (both the left and right wings of it) and focus 100% on competent problem solving and execution and on real world practical problems facing the country. These are problems like infrastructure, transportation, water security in the West, energy modernization and decarbonization, repatriation of critical manufacturing capabilities (or at least making the country attractive for it), bringing government services into the digital age, and so on. "Competence!" should be the battle cry of this movement. The culture war gets everyone to focus on culture war issues instead of the basic competence of the candidates, leading to the election of the likes of reality show star bullshit artists and people with early stage dementia.
  • slothtrop 5y ago
    Culture wars fall within the purview of media op-eds and social, which tries to rope in policy makers. I don't think Biden for instance has devoted much time addressing identity politics any more than Yang. Does it not then mean he's focused on pragmatic problems? Competency is up for question. I like that Yang narrows the focus of what he purports are policy changes in need. I don't think this has resonated well, but I expect it's because UBI and VAT scares off moderates who want someone to feign upholding something close to the status quo. Also because UBI and VAT don't rank among the more imperative concerns people have, or at least don't obviously address them, e.g. healthcare, cost of living, economy.
  • robertoandred 5y ago
    Sounds like you want someone on the left.
  • tangent128 5y ago
    It's not easy to divorce "culture war" from "problem solving", since the question of whether problems even _exist_ and need to be solved is frequently a culture-war issue. For example, you can't pursue "energy modernization and decarbonization" in the USA without taking a side in the "does anthropogenic climate change exist?" culture war. Any infrastructure plan, whether heavy-infrastructure or social-infrastructure, touches the culture-war questions of "should the government subsidize industry?" and "should the government subsidize the working class?"
• JohnL4 5y ago
  Reminds me of the "No Labels" crew in the US. Sounded good for a while, but....
• datenarsch 5y ago
  Macron's "En Marche" never took over France "in a storm". That is just media spin. Macron is your typical establishment droid and has always been perceived as such by the majority of the French population. The only reason he won the presidency is because of the extreme vilification of Marine Le Pen by mainstream media.