Sacre Bleu

No sooner than I had written about the right-wing gains in the first round in elections in France than the second round on Sunday (elections on the Sabbath Day? Those frogs have no morals!) blew the far right out of the water, giving leftist and centrist parties a solid win and making it less likely that Marine Le Pen's party will have a loud voice in any coalition government formed by this fall.

The French results in the second round proved that the polls in France were wrong, just as the British elections proved wrong the polls predicting that the Labour victory would be much smaller than the Labour victory actually was.  President Biden sees this as anecdotal proof that the polls in the United States showing him losing to Trump in November are also likely wrong.  Excuse me for saying that I disagree.  I'm not saying that Biden should withdraw from the 2024 presidential campaign, and I'll address that in a future post.  I'm saying that, unlike Britain and France, which are imbued with the wisdom of antiquity, medieval feudalism, and the Renaissance - and unlike Canada and Australia, whose associations with the Crown gives them a link to that storied histories - America lacks the wisdom and maturity to be counted on to make the right decision at critical moments.   Or as H.L. Mencken defined American democracy a hundred years ago, it is "that system of government under which the people having 35,717,342 native-born adult white males to chose from, including thousands who are handsome and many who are wise, pick out a Calvin Coolidge to be head of the state. It is as if a hungry man set before a banquet prepared by master cooks and covering a table and acre in area should turn his back upon the feast and stay his stomach by catching and eating flies."

Add to the number of said native-born adult white males, add an even greater number of females and Americans of non-European stock (as this is 2024, not 1924), and substitute Donald Trump for Calvin Coolidge, and you instantly get that the basic ethos of the American grain hasn't changed.  At this point, Kamala Harris may not be able to beat Trump.  Even Social Security Administration Commissioner Martin O'Malley - wink, wink - may not be able to beat Trump.

Oh yeah, there's one other wrinkle - in Britain and France, the incumbents lost.  Guess who's the incumbent in our elections this year.