I DON'T GET IT
All week long, I've been seeing headlines about how the foxy Socialist was going to win the French presidency. It seemed a fait accompli until the votes were actually counted in favor of the pro-American guy. So what gives? Does the French press utilize the same wishful thinking tactics as us or was our press only printing the poll results that it hoped was true? Or was this simply a Dewey Defeats Truman moment of the outcome falling at the far edge of the polling margin of error? I'm truly miffed - someone please elucidate.
2 comments:
I did not follow this election and I know hardly anything about the two candidates, but the coverage I heard did seem to indicate that the tide was behind the socialist if only because the other guy was pro-America, and of course no pro-America platform could possibly have broad support in this day and age. So I was surprised to hear ABC Satellite News reporting this morning that "the money was on Sarkozy all along." I don't know if that means, in our vernacular, that the "smart money" was on Sarkozy to win, or if Sarkozy had a campaign finance advantage, or if the language was deliberately loose as cya.
His opponent suggested that Sarkozy would "cause violence" because he took a tough position during the Muslim riots a couple years ago. I guess his own position, then, was "make nice" and "cave to the bullies."
The key issue in a number of countries, including this one, is what to do in the face of Muslim bullies who want to come into your country and have things their way, and I think (or maybe hope) that people intuitively know how to deal with bullies, and that's to punch them in the face, but it has become impolite or impolitic to say so. Likewise here, all you get is a steady diet of anti-Bush, but when you take an anonymous poll on tough Giuliani or tough McCain vs. Hillary or Obama, the tough guy wins. Sarkozy didn't squeak by - he won with a decisive 53 percent of the popular vote. I hope the French election augurs well for our own.
This was certainly a blow to the American press. Sarkozy's pro-growth platform had a big deal to do with it.
She had a clear path last November when she won her party's nomination, but slumped in the polls when the electorate got to know her. I don't think she led any polls in the last 2 months, but the American media was quiet about that too. Finally, she did poorly in the debate against Sarkozy and that was that.
I saw a couple of good analysis articles that I'll post later in the day.
Let's have some Bordeaux to celebrate.
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