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Le Pen and Macron clash in crucial French election debate
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Le Pen and Macron clash in crucial French election debatePosted:

ProfessorNobody
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The two contenders for the French presidency have traded insults in a head to head TV debate in a key moment of a long and bitter campaign.

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Centrist Emmanuel Macron said his far-right rival Marine Le Pen's strategy is to lie", while she called him a shameless "darling of the system".
Mr Macron is well ahead in the polls, although his lead has narrowed.
The aim of both candidates is to win over the estimated 18% of undecided voters.
For the first time, neither candidate is from a mainstream French party.

They clashed early, as the debate began with questions about their views on the economy and France's 10% unemployment rate.
Mr Macron said France had failed to tackle unemployment for 30 years, and said his solution would be to give small- and medium-sized companies the opportunities to create more jobs and be more flexible.
Ms Le Pen made it personal, accusing him of failing to turn things around when he had the chance while economy minister under President Hollande.
They sparred over their rival visits to a factory in Amiens, in which Ms Le Pen made an unannounced visit while Mr Macron was there.
The En Marche leader accused the National Front (FN) leader of staying for a "15 minute" photo opportunity while he spent "hours" talking with workers worried about their futures.

There have been TV debates ahead of the first round but this is the first time the two main candidates have sparred face to face.
And this 160-minute debate is being billed as the moment of truth, on the two biggest TV channels in front of some 20 million French viewers.
All the big campaign themes are being tackled, including security, health policy and the European Union.
For Marine Le Pen it is her big chance to land some blows and make up ground by exposing her 39-year-old rival's relative inexperience.
Emmanuel Macron, as favourite, arguably has most to lose.


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I think that, despite the current polls, Le Pen will win this election and it really comes down to only two issues which, in France, are inextricably linked. Immigration and terrorism.
Macron has called terrorist attacks an "Imponderable threat which will be facts of daily life in the coming years."
Imagine if Donald Trump had said that the Pulse night club massacre and terror attacks like it were just going to be a fact of daily life and that it was 'imponderable' or unsolvable.
His campaign would have been dead in the water and it should be no different here for Macron.

I also don't think it's fair to call Le Pen 'far right' if anything she seems more centrist than Macron, if a little to the right while Macron seems center left.
But of course the source is the BBC so the window for what is considered far left or far right is... wrong.

As someone who has also come to support Brexit since the referendum [I was originally strongly against it] I think it is only fair that France gets their chance to vote on their membership too.
She isn't perfect, but I sincerely think the world needs more pragmatic leaders right now and they mostly appear to be right wing candidates.

The following 1 user thanked ProfessorNobody for this useful post:

pleb (05-03-2017)
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pleb
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Thanks for the share. I now know who is running against who in the French election and what their views are.
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Le Pen for France!
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TaigaAisaka
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Well Macron won the election. I'll be honest, I was thinking it would be another scenario with how it worked for Trump. Yes France's polling is different but it was the same scenario about mentioning your vote for Trump, if you were to say you were going to vote for Trump, you are labeled a racist, Islamophobic Xenophobic, ect; I was thinking it would be the same scenario with Le Pen where people wouldn't want to admit they were voting for her, but that's because they didn't want to get a label over their head.

All I'm going to say at this point, is I hope the French people can "adapt" to the terrorist attacks when/if they happen in France since Macron doesn't really see the importance of them and I question if he really gives a shit seeing how he said they're a fact of daily life. France is now going to easily become a migrant hotspot once again as from what I recall Macron can easily be labeled an EU crony and will easily take in more migrants than his country can handle just to please the EU states. I've even seen some people talking about how France should just get used to being a new Islamic country and I would agree under Macron. France now isn't the same, especially Paris; Paris literally looks like some ghetto trace piece you would see in Compton LA. I used to go to France rather frequently 4, 3 years back, I went once in 2016 and the Paris streets were cluttered with trash, tents and what looked like more migrants than actual French people around; so I can only expect more at this point and more ghettos appearing in France where not even police or medical aid can go in without being assaulted.

Poland is also going to be royally screwed with sanctions now. While Poland is probably one of my least favourite Slavic countries and while a lot of Polish don't like Russians and vice versa; still, I'm going to have to stay with my Slavic brothers and sisters with this. Poland has refused to take migrants that Germany is demanding they take. Hollande has been pretty timid with the matter but also saying they should, Le Pen would have literally said they don't have to do it, but Macron is easily going to try and please Germany and would throw the sanction vote in for any meetings with regards to migrant distribution. Where now Poland is going to either have to get forced into taking migrants when they weren't even the cause of the migrant issue (2000 soldiers in the 2003 invasion of Iraq really shouldn't count as part of the war that caused the migrant issue when you have greater numbers from America, France, Canada, UK, Germany, ect.) or they get hit with sanctions in an already fluctuating economy.

Le Pen was a long shot, I won't argue that but giving how things have been in 2016 and 2017, I didn't completely toss out the idea of Le Pen winning. I mean, Trump had what, 20, 13 and even some places giving him a 1% chance of winning?
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ProfessorNobody
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TaigaAisaka wrote Well Macron won the election. I'll be honest, I was thinking it would be another scenario with how it worked for Trump. Yes France's polling is different but it was the same scenario about mentioning your vote for Trump, if you were to say you were going to vote for Trump, you are labeled a racist, Islamophobic Xenophobic, ect; I was thinking it would be the same scenario with Le Pen where people wouldn't want to admit they were voting for her, but that's because they didn't want to get a label over their head.

All I'm going to say at this point, is I hope the French people can "adapt" to the terrorist attacks when/if they happen in France since Macron doesn't really see the importance of them and I question if he really gives a shit seeing how he said they're a fact of daily life. France is now going to easily become a migrant hotspot once again as from what I recall Macron can easily be labeled an EU crony and will easily take in more migrants than his country can handle just to please the EU states. I've even seen some people talking about how France should just get used to being a new Islamic country and I would agree under Macron. France now isn't the same, especially Paris; Paris literally looks like some ghetto trace piece you would see in Compton LA. I used to go to France rather frequently 4, 3 years back, I went once in 2016 and the Paris streets were cluttered with trash, tents and what looked like more migrants than actual French people around; so I can only expect more at this point and more ghettos appearing in France where not even police or medical aid can go in without being assaulted.

Poland is also going to be royally screwed with sanctions now. While Poland is probably one of my least favourite Slavic countries and while a lot of Polish don't like Russians and vice versa; still, I'm going to have to stay with my Slavic brothers and sisters with this. Poland has refused to take migrants that Germany is demanding they take. Hollande has been pretty timid with the matter but also saying they should, Le Pen would have literally said they don't have to do it, but Macron is easily going to try and please Germany and would throw the sanction vote in for any meetings with regards to migrant distribution. Where now Poland is going to either have to get forced into taking migrants when they weren't even the cause of the migrant issue (2000 soldiers in the 2003 invasion of Iraq really shouldn't count as part of the war that caused the migrant issue when you have greater numbers from America, France, Canada, UK, Germany, ect.) or they get hit with sanctions in an already fluctuating economy.

Le Pen was a long shot, I won't argue that but giving how things have been in 2016 and 2017, I didn't completely toss out the idea of Le Pen winning. I mean, Trump had what, 20, 13 and even some places giving him a 1% chance of winning?


A lot of news agencies have been saying that this final debate was the nail in Le Pen's coffin because of how aggressive she was, which I guess doesn't surprise me because let's face it, Europe is different to the US so that doesn't really work here.
Even the insults were nicer than the ones we saw in the US election, Macron called Le Pen a "Grand priestess of fear" at one point. Sounds pretty awesome to me.

Macron might be centrist on economic and social issues, but there is nothing more left wing than his stance on immigration and I completely agree with your predictions about the future of France and Paris with respect to that.

I'm just looking forward to the increased pressure which is going to be put on the UK to take more migrants now, and the clashes between right wing groups and Antifa which will happen more often.

I made a prediction a while back that if Trump won the election then Europe would swing to the right in terms of elected leaders. I'm not sure if I'm happy that I might have been proven wrong by this election or if i'm even more worried that this is just one extra track piece to the top of the rollercoaster before it eventually falls off the other side.
If Macron's presidency goes badly then the swing to the right afterwards might be even more severe.
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