The elections in France aren't for another six months, but the show has already started with the Socialist primaries. See, for the first time ever, they're holding primary elections within the party to figure out who they're going to send as their candidate. In the past, if they had several people, they would send them all, with the glorious results we know. So this time, they decided to play it safe and only send one person, even though some have made it known that they don't much favor this kind of "democracy, American style" (you mean the kind that works*?)

So tonight was the first debate between the three candidates. All have been in politics for decades and have never held a private-sector job. Although they couldn't actually speak to one another (too "American"), the show was quite entertaining. Between Segolene Royal, the favorite, droning on and on about some nice fuzzy idea of "participative democracy", and Laurent Fabius (pictured, right), trying with all his might to sound more to the Left than the others, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (pictured, left), the least retarded of them, held on to some ideas of social-democracy before reverting back to a "raise minimum wage!" discourse.

The pearl of wisdom came when Fabius said that France needed to be protected from "a financial ultracapitalism", where "we're all competitors and whoever has the lowest prices wins". That protection would of course be coming from - where else - Europe, at least as long as Europe doesn't become "some sort of free-trade zone" (wasn't that the whole point of Europe?)

At least they're entertaining, I'll give them that.

*: Lest an bunch of people leave indignant comments about Bush, I am referring here to the US Constitution, and I am especially comparing it to France's hugely flawed one, which dates back to 1958.

Labels: france