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President Biden was billed as Americas savior from four years of political strife under former President Trump and the turmoil from the coronavirus pandemic, but the honeymoon period has quickly soured following his disastrous military withdrawal from Afghanistan, record inflation and gas prices and a COVID-19 death count that has surpassed his predecessors.

During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden promised to "shut down" the pandemic, fight for the working class and regain the worlds respect following four years of the Trump administration. While the media fawned over Biden during his campaign and the early stages of his presidency, that all began to change following a series of blunders in August during his hasty military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

2021: THE YEAR BIDEN'S APPROVAL RATINGS SANK SLOWLY UNDERWATER

Americans left behind in Afghanistan

Biden faced widespread global backlash after Taliban insurgents retook Afghanistan in a matter of 11 days, winning the war 20 years after their ouster by U.S.-led forces on Aug. 15. On Aug. 26, during the U.S. military's mass evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, suicide bombers killed at least 183 people, including 13 U.S. service members. The U.S. retaliated by launching two drone strikes against suspected ISIS-K terrorists, one of which ended up killing 10 Afghan civilians, including seven children.

The U.S. military evacuation, which required significant cooperation from the Taliban to complete, ended a day ahead of deadline on Aug. 30, leaving behind hundreds of U.S. citizens and tens of thousands of Afghan allies, despite Bidens promise days earlier to "get them all out." The State Department said nearly 500 U.S. citizens have been evacuated in the months following the withdrawal and that a handful still remain today.

President Biden delivers remarks about COVID at the White House.

Failure to shut down COVID-19

Bidens handling of Afghanistan was devastating to his approval ratings, which hovered in the low to mid 50s during his first six months in the White House and started a slow bleed thereafter. The drop was also fueled by a surge in COVID-19 cases and the unfortunate headlines that the number of deaths under his watch had surpassed those under Trump, despite the new prevalence of vaccinations.

Biden, who promised to "shut down" the virus on the campaign trail, took a dramatically different tone on Monday when he informed Americans that "there is no federal solution" to the pandemic and that it was up to governors a sentiment that was much maligned by Democrats under the Trump administration.

Until recently, the White House had no plans to provide free tests for individuals and only revealed that a plan was in the works this month after White House press secretary Jen Psaki previously dismissed the idea when it was suggested by NPR reporter Mara Liasson.

The White House has since agreed to deliver free tests to Americans but has yet to publicly disclose when and how the tests will be delivered. Biden conceded Monday that the steps he took earlier this year to ramp up testing capacity were "clearly not enough."

The New York Times recently wrotethat the new omicron variant sweeping the country "caught the White House off guard" and that "cases have far outstripped the governments ability to make tests available."

Meanwhile, Biden is facing mounting backlash over his vaccine mandates for the military, federal contractors and large private employers. The president admitted in a speech last week that his vaccine mandates are "unpopular" but that theyre for everyones own good.

RON KLAIN, BIDEN'S CHIEF OF STAFF, RETWEETS COLUMN CALLING 2021 NOT 'ALL BAD'

Border crisis

During the 2020 presidential election, Biden described "horrifying scenes" at the U.S.-Mexico border of "kids being kept in cages" and federal agents "ripping children from their mothers' arms" under the Trump administration.

But the "cages," or chain-link indoor enclosures to hold migrants at the border facilities, were built by the Obama administration, under which Biden served as vice president and they are still being used today by the current president. In fact, the Biden administration reopened several facilities that were closed under Trump to deal with the surge of illegal immigration since he took office.

And yet Democrats have remained noticeably silent. Vice President Kamala Harris, who was appointed border czar in March, was criticized for not taking a trip to the border fornearly 100 daysafter her appointment after she repeatedly laughed off questions about traveling there.

Meanwhile, U.S. authorities arrested 1.7 million migrants at the southern border this fiscal year, the most ever recorded, and only a small fraction have been vaccinated, while Biden imposes vaccine mandates for U.S. citizens who work in the federal government, including Border Patrol agents.

President Biden points to the Oval Office of the White House as he arrives on Marine One on the South Lawn in Washington, Sunday, Nov. 21, 2021, as he returns from Wilmington, Delaware. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Record inflation

Two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Bidens handling of skyrocketing inflation, according to an ABC/Ipsos poll released this month.

The White House has started recognizing inflation as a problem after downplaying it as "transitory" for months. The consumer price index rose6.8% in November from a year ago, according to a new Labor Department report released Friday, marking the highest increase since June 1982, when inflation hit 7.1%.

Also, the highest average price of all grades of gasoline combined was $3.49 per gallon for the month of November, the highest average for the entire year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). That number has since dropped only slightly to $3.35 a gallon.

Supply chain issues have also hit the U.S. economy, with massive port backlogs leading to empty store shelves during the crucial holiday shopping season.

Nearly three-quarters of those questioned in a Fox News national poll conducted last month said higher prices at the grocery store and the gas pumps are causing financial hardship.

The economy ranked as the top issue in the survey, and less than a quarter rated the economy positively, down 10 points from the beginning of Biden's presidency. The poll also indicated that inflation was the most pressing economic issue among Americans.

Crime wave

New data released last week by the Census Bureau revealed that residents of blue states have been fleeing to red states in droves in the past year. Some commentators have pointed to a nationwide crime surge in Democrat-led major cities, as well as strict COVID-19 restrictions in those same areas, as the reasoning behind the exodus.

Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., told Fox News last week that she believes the crime surge is a result of Biden and the Democratic Party trying to "vilify the very heroes that are putting their lives on the line" and a "lack of resources" and support for law enforcement from the federal government.

Only recently did the White House attempt to separate itself from progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who have downplayed the crime wave. White House press secretary Jen Psaki this month said the increase in smash-and-grab robberies in retailers in major cities was a "serious concern" and that federal law enforcement was being provided to assist.

About 36% of Americans support Bidens handling of crimes, according the ABC/Ipsos poll released Dec. 12. The percentage is down from an October ABC/Ipsos poll, which found 43% of people approved of Bidens handling of crime.

President Joe Biden, with Vice President Kamala Harris, arrives to speak before signing the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill into law during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

BIDEN'S MOST MEMORABLE CLASHES WITH REPORTERS IN 2021

BBB failure

Biden has also faced trouble in his own party after his landmark multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better Act failed to gather enough votes after months of party infighting. After Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., announced that he could not reach an agreement with Biden on the package, the White House launched an attack essentially characterizing him as a traitor to the party. The response irked fellow moderates and sowed further discord in the party as it tries to advance the presidents agenda with only razor-thin majorities in the House and Senate and the looming 2022 midterm elections.

Progressives have since called on Biden to bypass Congress and impose components of the BBB Act.

The failure to pass the bill came on the heels of the Democratic Partys devastating loss in Virginia, where Republican Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin eked out a win against former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe after trailing behind him in the polls for months.

All this while Biden faces mounting criticism in the mainstream media over his lack of press accessibility and unhappy staff who are reportedly eyeing the exits.

According to UC Santa Barbara's The American Presidency Project, Biden has done fewer than half of the 21 press conferences Trump did in his first year in office. Biden also set a presidential record by not holding a single news conference until 64 days into his term.

"Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd recently criticized Bidens White House as looking "like a White House from the '80s or '90s" that doesnt understand "how to work the 21st Century media environment."

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and President Biden sit in Marine One prior to lifting off on the South Lawn of the White House Dec. 17, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Staffers at the White House are also reportedly so unhappy that they anonymously leaked to Politico in the hopes that senior staffers would be alerted to the lack of comradery in the workplace.

"A lot of the natural coordination that happens in a typically functioning White House has been lost, and there has been no proactive effort to make up for it through intentional team building," one White House official said.

This comes as Harris faces her own staff departures amid allegations shes a "bully" and fostering a toxic work environment. Her approval ratings are even worse than Bidens at 28%, according to polling last month.

Despite the troubles facing Biden heading into the new year, White House chief of staff Ron Klain drew mockery on social media late Sunday night after he retweeted a post calling 2021 not "all bad."

"A look back at 2021!" Klain wrote enthusiastically.

While Bidens approval rating dipped below 40% in mid-November, he has seen a slight increase since, with a national poll from Monmouth University saying earlier this month that he stands at 40% approval and a 50% disapproval.

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Biden quipped to "Tonight Show" host Jimmy Fallon earlier this month that he kept an eye on his approval ratings earlier in his presidency, "but now that theyre in the 40s, I don't pay attention."

The 79-year-old president has said he plans to run for reelection if his health allows it.

Fox News Brandon Gillespie, Paul Steinhauser, Emma Colton and Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.

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Joe Biden was the most powerful man in the world as it fell apart around him in 2021 - Fox News

The Democrats passed their Build Back Better reconciliation bill in the House without a single Republican vote, and they arent likely to get any Republican votes in the Senate either. Thus, whether it passes in the Senate depends on whether all 50 Senate Democrats vote for it.

At least one Democratic Senator has serious reservations about it, and I dont think he is the only one.

Sen. Joe ManchinJoe ManchinOn The Money Powell, Yellen face pressure on inflation Overnight Energy & Environment Presented by ExxonMobil Dems seek to preserve climate provisions Democrats wrangle to keep climate priorities in spending bill MORE (D-W.Va.) is concerned about a number of things in the bill, but I am going to discuss only his concern about the bills immigration parole provision, which would provide temporary lawful status and work authorization to more than 7 million undocumented aliens who have been living here continuously for more than ten years.

Manchin is not opposed to a legalization program; in fact, he has said that he is totally committed to trying to help immigrants but he does not think we should be establishing a legalization program while we are in the midst of a border crisis.

To be talking about a legalization program without border security is ludicrous. The average person turns on the TV and sees what's going on at the border, and it scares the bejesus out of him. If migrants think they can make an illegal entry and then get all the benefits that American citizens are entitled to, they're going to continue to come.

Manchin says previous immigration and amnesty proposals have included significant border security provisions to gain support from moderate Democrats and some Republicans. He would be open to that kind of deal.

That was the approach used to get bi-partisan support for the last big legalization program, which was established by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA).

Manchin also has said that he is not going to vote to overrule the Senate parliamentarian if she recommends removing the parole provision from the bill because it doesnt come within the rules for reconciliation.

The reconciliation process was established by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, to permit expedited consideration of certain tax, spending, and debt limit legislation.

Support from his constituents

Manchin is a West Virginia senator, and according to a Rasmussen poll released on Nov. 22, West Virginia voters overwhelmingly oppose the legalization provision in the reconciliation bill.

Survey findings

West Virginia voters arent the only ones who oppose the reconciliation bill for various reasons. A Rasmussen poll issued on Nov. 29 found that 51 percent of likely U.S. voters oppose the bill. Only 42 percent support it.

Other reasons for rejecting the legalization program

The Democrats are basing their legalization program on the parole provision in Section1182(d)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which provides the DHS Secretary with broad, discretionary authority to allow aliens who may not otherwise be admissible to the country under our immigration laws to enter and remain in the United States temporarily.

As I have noted before, the parole program in the reconciliation bill would violate restrictions in the law. The Democrats could have included an amendment to make their program permissible under the authority granted by the statutory parole provision, but they didnt.

Whats more, the federal immigration system cant handle the applications it already has. As of June 30, the backlog for employment authorization was 1.36 million applications. The Democrats should provide the resources to handle that caseload before adding 7 million more.

Finally, there would be no numerical limits on how many undocumented immigrants would be able to obtain temporary lawful status and work authorization. This could become the largest legalization program America has ever had, and Democrats are trying to pass it without bipartisan support by using a reconciliation process enacted to expedite the passage of budgetary measures.

I will be very surprised if Manchin is the only Democratic Senator who votes against the reconciliation bill if the legalization program is not taken out of it.

Nolan Rappaportwas detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an executive branch immigration law expert for three years. He subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years. Followhis blogathttps://nolanrappaport.blogspot.com.

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Manchin knows the legalization program must be removed from the reconciliation bill | TheHill - The Hill

The New York City Councils recent decision to give some 800,000 noncitizens the right to vote might, on the surface, seem just and appropriate. After all, those legal city residents can be said to endure (high) taxation without representation. But this stark departure from historical precedent has a number of serious flaws for those who truly believe in e pluribus unum a nation whose voters share essential civic ideals.

As a practical matter, the council action allows these new voters, such as illegal immigrants, to jump the line of those who have waited for years to prepare to become citizens. Thats a process that takes up to three years for those who have already qualified for the green card held by legal immigrants. Becoming a citizen requires one to pay a $725 fee and pass a 100-question citizenship test a process designed to make sure new voters are exposed to basic American history and principles.

The test that the council is allowing new voters to skip is not some formality. It tests knowledge with which any American voter should be familiar. First, its offered only in English which any immigrant with hopes of achieving economic success will need to master and which binds the nation together culturally. Just as important, however, is the content of the test. The council apparently feels its not important for voters to know about the Bill of Rights; that the U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land; to be able to define freedom of religion; to know what the branches of government are; or the name of their state capital.

Theres a lot more than what is listed above. Try taking the test yourself or checking to see if your high school-age child can pass. The point is this: The citizenship test is not voter suppression. Its crucial basic preparation for one to become an informed voter.

It also includes what is still called an oath of allegiance. The language is powerful and includes a pledge not unlike that which a new president swears that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic (and) that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. In moving naturalization ceremonies held regularly across the country, new citizens raise their hands to take an oath, having studied and saved for the chance to do so. The New York City Council is telling them it wasnt necessary, devaluing their achievement.

The right course of action for local government and civil society community groups, as well is to encourage legal immigrants to become citizens. Thats what New Yorks famed settlement houses did during our last great wave of immigration at the turn of the 20th century. Those local leaders understood that shared political principles as distinct from political views on any given issue are essential for a functioning American democracy. One practical step is to lower the cost of the citizenship test. Asking a married couple to pay almost $1,500 to become American citizens is a lot to ask of those making e-bike deliveries or flipping burgers.

Whats more, citizenship will allow for something the city council cannot: the right to vote in federal elections. As matters stand, congressional districts are drawn based on the number of residents, not the number of legal votes. That means that districts such as that of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-CortezAlexandria Ocasio-CortezNoncitizen voting doesn't pass this test McCarthy pleads with Republicans to stop infighting: 'Congress is not junior high' Ocasio-Cortez slams McCarthy's 'Ku Klux Klan caucus' after Omar death threat MORE (D-N.Y.) have far fewer voters and she receives far fewer votes than typical Republican districts with fewer immigrants. This truly is taxation without representation. These new immigrants can vote only if theyre citizens.

Lets hope the New York City Council action faces legal challenge and does not become law. Its bad for those it pretends to help and it sets a dangerous precedent for America.

Howard Husock is a senior fellow in domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on municipal government, urban housing policy, civil society, and philanthropy. He served on the Brookings Duke immigration Policy Roundtable in 2008-09.

Originally posted here:
Noncitizen voting doesn't pass this test | TheHill - The Hill

With the drowning deaths of 27 migrants crossing the Channel from France to England, illegal migration from the Third World is front and center anew in European politics.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has proposed that France take back to its shores all migrants who cross the Channel illegally and come ashore in Britain.

In the run-up to French elections this April, a startling development suggests that resistance to illegal migration is spreading and the idea of dealing with it resolutely and unapologetically is taking root.

Marine Le Pen, president of the rightist National Rally, formerly the National Front, who is expected to reach the finals for president of France against Emmanuel Macron, is suddenly being challenged.

The rising star on the right is Eric Zemmour, who, writes The New York Times, "became one of France's best-selling authors in the past decade by writing books on the nation's decline fueled, he said, by the loss of traditional French and Christian values, the immigration of Muslim Africans bent on a reverse colonization of France, the rise of feminism and the loss of virility, and a 'great replacement' of white people."

Zemmour is being called "the Donald Trump of France." And he and Le Pen are now running third and second behind Macron in the polling to become the next president of France, which suggests the power of the issue on which they agree: uninvited and unwelcome Third-World migration.

"You feel like a foreigner in your own country," said Zemmour in his announcement speech Tuesday, declaiming, "We will not be replaced."

Neighboring Spain is gripped by the same concern. Refugees and migrants from the global south use Morocco as a base from which to breach the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the African coast.

Spain has taken to pushing the intruders back into Morocco.

Madrid has accused Rabat of using the migrants as a diplomatic weapon to extort changes in Spanish policy.

Italy, whose native-born ethnic population has been in a steady decline, patrols the Mediterranean Sea to prevent migrants from Libya from reaching its shores. Drowning deaths are not uncommon. The Channel and the Mediterranean Sea are more formidable and unforgiving waters to cross than the Rio Grande.

Greece is attempting to keep Turkey from moving refugees and migrants from Middle East wars onto the Greek islands off Turkey's coast.

Half a decade ago, Turkey was bought off with billions of euros to prevent the millions of Arab and Muslim refugees within its borders from crossing over into the EU.

In the recent clash between Poland and Belarus, the weapon of choice for Alexander Lukashenko was migrants.

Brought into Belarus from the Mideast, they were moved to the Polish border, forcing Warsaw to deploy troops to keep thousands out of Poland. Lukashenko was exploiting the migrants to punish Poland and the EU for supporting sanctions on his regime.

After Europe united against him, Lukashenko moved the migrants away from the border and sent many back to Syria and countries whence they came.

In the hierarchy of European fears, the perceived threat to national identities that comes with mass migrations from the failed and failing states of the Third World appears to rank as a greater concern than the prospect of a Russian army driving toward the Rhine.

Most European nations have a birth rate below what is needed to replace their native-born ethnic populations. And as the founding peoples of these nations pass on, they are being replaced by peoples from what were once colonies that the old European empires controlled.

Most of these European nations have not had the experience with mass immigration the Americans have from the Irish migration of 1845-1849 to the millions from Central and Eastern Europe between 1890 and 1924.

Yet even the Americans had never known a migration of the magnitude of the one that began in 1965 and continues today, legal and illegal, a migration that has altered irreversibly the ethnic composition of the country of Ike and JFK.

In President Joe Biden's first year, over a million illegals breached the U.S. southern border along with hundreds of thousands of "got-aways" who made it into our country without any contact with border authority.

The rising resistance to illegal immigration in Europe is being denounced by Euro-elites as xenophobia and racism, and the proscribed term used to define it is the one the Times associates with Zemmour.

What is "The Great Replacement"? A hostile critic defines it thus:

"The Great Replacement Theory is an ethno-nationalist theory warning that an indigenous European e.g., white population is being replaced by non-European immigrants.

"The Great Replacement concept was popularized by French writer Renaud Camus in his 2012 book, 'Le Grand Remplacement' ('The Great Replacement')."

The English translation of Camus' book is entitled, "You Will Not Replace Us!" Growing numbers of Western peoples appear to fear exactly what it is that Zemmour and Camus say they fear.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at http://www.creators.com.

Photo credit: PublicDomainPictures at Pixabay

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The West's Fear That Dare Not Speak Its Name, by Patrick Buchanan - Creators Syndicate

Writing for Libration this September 17, Jean-Luc Mlenchon warned against obsessing with speculation about far-right pundit ric Zemmour running for the presidency. For the France Insoumise (LFI) leader, it would be a mistake to get bogged down in putrid debates with Zemmour and co. Six days later, Mlenchon debated this same polemicist on CNEWS, a TV channel widely compared to Fox. As agreed, the first half of the evening dealt with Zemmours preferred themes (immigration, immigration, and immigration) while at the LFI leaders request, the second half focused on social and ecological issues.

Ahead of Zemmours announcement this Tuesday that he will indeed run, some doubted whether Mlenchon hadnt just played into his hands. Is it even possible, they asked, to have a debate a rational exchange of arguments with an individual who breathes lies, and who has made misogynistic and racist provocations his whole calling in life? And why agree to go on a channel that has so actively contributed to the right-wing turn in French public debate?

We might doubt the sincerity of such questions when theyre being raised by supporters of Emmanuel Macron. They had no objections when the president called Zemmour on his personal phone to comfort him after an attack, or indeed when Macron praised the great soldier MarshalPtain, leader of the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime. We might question the consistency of those on the center-left who criticized Mlenchon for debating Zemmour but themselves joined this Mays protests called by far-right police unions.

But behind this polemic with all its share of hypocrisy and petty rivalries is the thorny question of what strategy can contain the fascist threat. Unless one claims to have found the definitive answer already (an unlikely conclusion, considering that the French far right has been making ideological and electoral headway for four decades), then such controversy ought to be welcome; and Mlenchons own choices are, certainly, worth debating. But how has he tried to fight the far right and is it working?

Mlenchons approach is especially a response to the rise of the National Front (FN), and its mounting strength in blue-collar France. During the 1990s, founder Jean-Marie Le Pen dropped his fascination with Thatcher/Reagan-style economic liberalism, and since then the National Front has succeeded in broadening its electorate to embrace much of the working classes. This social turn combined with its detoxification strategy was completed with his daughters enthronement as party leader in 2011.

This has paid off electorally: in the 2017 presidential run-off, Le Pens party scored over 10 million votes for the first time. Marine Le Pen almost doubled the score her father achieved against Jacques Chirac in 2002, and already in the first round captured 39 percent of the working-class vote. While the party (rebadged Rassemblement National in 2018) has fared poorly in first-past-the-post races like parliamentary elections, it can now proudly write on its posters that it is the first workers party in France.

This is itself an alarming development added to the problem that the popular vote for this party is less subject to periodic fluctuations than the radical lefts own. The far rights gradual penetration among the working classes has been concomitant with the erosion of the Communist (and Socialist) vote among these same classes. That said, only a small proportion of ex-left-wing voters have switched directly to Le Pen. Rather, they have mostly taken refuge in abstention, while already right-wing workers have radicalized to the extreme right.

In the late 2000s, the social-democratic think tank Terra Nova concluded that the working class was no longer the electoral heart of the Left and no longer in tune with its values. It thus advised the Parti Socialiste to drop any focus on the working class and instead address various other categories supposedly defined by their liberal values young, female, non-white, middle-class, urban, etc. voters.

Yet Mlenchon, who quit the Socialists in 2008, has never resigned himself to this. In the 2012 parliamentary elections he directly challenged Marine Le Pen in Hnin-Beaumont, an old Socialist fiefdom already turning toward the far right. He insisted on the need to mobilize the working-class vote:

Victories for the extreme right have always depended on the tactical and strategic mistakes of the left. [] The disconnection is not only emotional this left is today unable to prove to the people that its interests are on the left. There is a disconnect between its program and the working classes. We are taking over the reins.

Yet, even with 21 percent support Mlenchon was eliminated in the first round reduced to the optimistic insistence that, I proved able to wrest an important clutch of feathers from Le Pen, to take votes from her.

Mlenchons aim, in Hnin-Beaumont as elsewhere, was to win back those he calls fchs pas fachos fed up, not fascist. This means rivaling the far right for the support of the losers of globalization, whose anger, Mlenchon insists, is misdirected toward the foreigner rather than the financier. Through [fighting] Ms. Le Pen, Mlenchon asserted in 2012, I confront the FNs ideas. [] Will the way out of the crisis be social, or ethnic?

The beginning of the gilets jaunes movement in fall 2018 provided a fresh terrain for this battle posing the question of who would draw the electoral benefit in May 2019s European elections. Mlenchon reiterated his earlier analysis, telling RTL: The job of people like me is to talk to all the people, but perhaps mainly to the fchs pas fachos by telling them dont get the wrong anger.

Over the last decade, Mlenchon has made the half-crazy National Front leader his main enemy. This is, firstly, a matter of principle: the most urgent task is to oppose the racist and anti-social content of the National Fronts program, which threatens the cohesion of France as well as workers interests. But its also a tactical consideration. Mlenchon is convinced that power is out of reach, so long as the social-liberals and their Macronist offspring can use the far-right bogeyman to rally a pragmatic vote in their own favor. As he argued in a 2019 blogpost:

Today, a vote for Le Pen is a vote for the system and the system has understood this perfectly. The fchs pas fachos have no reason to turn to this option, which is more than ever the systems life insurance policy. All those who think that France and Europes problems come more from the banker and the billionaire than from the immigrant must be called on to join forces with France Insoumise. This objective remains central for us. This is key to advancing our cause: the mobilization of the popular mass which has today fallen into the Rassemblement Nationals trap.

Theorized by Mlenchon, the reconquest of the fchs pas fachos has become a key ideological marker of LFI. Adrien Quatennens, head of LFIs organization since 2019, recognizes this unambiguously. He wrote in Libration on May 22, 2019 that the Rassemblement National and Mlenchons movement are each in a race against time with victory sure to go to whichever manages to attract the fchs pas fachos into its own fold.

Telling in this regard is the stance of Franois Ruffin, a reporter and filmmaker who is also an LFI MP. Following his victorious run for parliament in 2017, he credited his success to his forgiving attitude toward former Le Pen voters:

Ms. Le Pen took 41 percent of the vote in the Somme in the first round of the regional elections, and 45 percent in the working-class municipality of Flixecourt. I think we have to start from there. [] The unemployment rate among the unskilled, five times higher than that among managers, does not incline them to expect a happy globalization, or even happy alter-globalization. Now, added to their economic and social downfall is a political and moral condemnation. Let them vote FN, let them identify with an ostracized party, and their exclusion will thus be legitimized, [in a] double punishment. [] Macron is basically the only one I have taken as an opponent. I did not attack Le Pen very much. How can people who are doing badly, socially and economically, believe that Ms. Le Pen or her father, who have never governed the country, are responsible for their misfortunes? We should fight the FN by giving another opening to anger, to hope. By offering another conflict than the one between French and immigrants.

So, to win at the polls, it is necessary to spare Le Pens electorate from criticism or even Le Pen herself. But isnt sparing the Le Pens from criticism in order to win over their voters exactly what the mainstream right has been doing for thirty years with the result that the National Front has become ever-stronger? And if, as Ruffin aptly comments, the Le Pens have never governed France, havent their ideas ended up governing anyway, precisely because of the complacency toward them?

The phrase fchs pas fachos denotes a strategic gamble: for the left-populists, electoral salvation comes from poaching voters from the Rassemblement National. But there are two ways to take back part of Le Pens working-class electorate: convince it or seduce it. Between his 2012 and 2017 presidential runs, Melenchon considerably altered his discourse in this regard. While during his first campaign Mlenchon sought to convince the fchs pas fachos by celebrating diverse society and otherness, in 2017 he tried to seduce them by toning down his previous pro-immigration line.

Thus, in his 2017 campaign, Mlenchon insisted that, while France had a duty of humanity toward refugees, the priority was to reduce migration flows, through diplomatic and trade agreements with departure countries. In 2017, LFI leaders no longer just attacked Le Pen for her fantastical specter of migrant invasion. Rather, they simultaneously denounced another fantasy no border ideology and the abolition of borders, as conveyed by the far left and sought to position themselves as a middle course between these two extremes, implicitly put on the same level.

Talking to the fchs pas fachos also means intervening in their preferred media. Mlenchon has for years rejected requests for interviews from centrist daily Le Monde and left-wing site Mediapart, but regularly takes to the columns of the right-wing Le Figaro and goes on the far-right CNEWS.

In January 2019, prominent cadre Alexis Corbire and political scientist Thomas Gunol (who quit LFI soon thereafter) even granted an interview to far-right weekly Valeurs actuelles, in 2015 convicted for incitement to racial hatred following a dossier entitled the Roma overdose. In the four-page interview, LFI MP Corbire insisted France is a country of immigration and that it is absurd to talk about zero immigration. But he also distanced himself from the no border left. Asked about the FN slogan on est chez nous (this is our home), heard at some gilets jaunes protests, Corbire said: I can see the xenophobic potential of the slogan, but it can also mean a desire to regain sovereignty.

Mlenchon narrowly missed out on the second round in 2017 and seems to think the fchs pas fachos could have pushed him over the line. No doubt he has in mind the 36 percent of Rassemblement National sympathizers who expressed a positive opinion of him just months later (Odoxa survey for Le Figaro, September 21, 2017), or the 26 percent of Le Pen voters who said that Mlenchon was their second choice (Ipsos poll for Le Monde, April 14, 2017).

Was there a reservoir of potential support, here? Some LFI cadres consider that this was where the six hundred thousand missing votes in 2017 were to be found, among the petits blancs modestly off-whites living in peripheral and deindustrialized France. When, interviewing them for my book on LFI, I sought evidence for these claims, these cadres cited geographer Christophe Guilluy, demographer Emmanuel Todd, and philosopher Jean-Claude Micha. But other insoumis challenge this analysis instead locating the missing votes among another segment of the working classes, i.e. the multicultural suburbs of the major cities.

So, have the appeals to the fchs pas fachos borne fruit? The answer is no. When left-wing populists move onto the terrain of right-wing populists, the vote transfers are at best zero-sum, and at worst actually benefit the Rassemblement National.

In the 2017 first round, 4 percent of Le Pens 2012 voters voted for Mlenchon, and 4 percent of Mlenchons 2012 voters voted for Le Pen. A draw, then. In the 2019 European elections, pollsters estimate that the proportion of 2017 Le Pen voters who backed the LFI list was close to 0 percent. Conversely, 7 percent of 2017 Mlenchon voters who voted at all in 2019 backed the Rassemblement National list led by the young Jordan Bardella. To this we can add the 2 percent who voted for Nicolas Dupont-Aignans Debout la France (IFOP data for Paris Match, May 27, 2019). So, about three hundred thousand people who voted Mlenchon in 2017 migrated to the far right in the 2019 European elections, while less than ten thousand people made the reverse journey.

The quest for the fchs pas fachos is based on the idea that part of Rassemblement Nationals base is motivated by social difficulties, so we need to listen to their suffering. There is some basis to this analysis. When voters are asked to explain their motives, many say they are voting because of concerns over precarity (55 percent of Le Pen voters in the 2017 first round said that this was decisive to their choice), unemployment (69 percent), or public services (45 percent) yet this is far less than the numbers claiming to be motivated by illegal immigration (92 percent), crime (85 percent), or terrorism (93 percent).

The drivers of the far-right vote are multiple, complex, intertwined, and difficult to untangle. They also vary between regions; the far-right vote in deindustrialized northern areas like the Pas-de-Calais and the Somme doesnt correspond to the same history or social situation as wealthy parts of the Cte-dAzur like the Var or the Vaucluse. Thirty-nine percent of Le Pens 2017 voters belong to households with a net monthly income of less than 1,500 a month, and 45 percent consider themselves at the bottom of the social ladder. By cross comparing these data, we can reasonably claim that the votes of about half of Le Pens base are rooted in socioeconomic difficulties.

But we can just as reasonably surmise that 90 percent of this same electorate is driven by hatred or at least fear of foreigners. These lepnistes suffer from a disease that the insoumis sometimes find difficult to name: racism. So, certainly, there have always been and there will always be repentant people. Without doubt, political identities are never fixed. Resentment can turn into revolt, and we must not abandon the workers to the far right. But, according to the most solidly grounded surveys on this subject, Le Pens base expresses massive hostility to the practice of Islam, and an antisemitism unmatched by any other electorate. It is culturally, ideologically, and politically rooted in the far right.

Insoumis leaders seem to underestimate the strength of these roots. In 2018, 85 percent of supporters of the Rassemblement National were avowed racists that is, they claimed this term for themselves. Also, notes historian Hugo Melchior,

when massive vote shifts took place to the detriment of the FN, as in 2007, it was Nicolas Sarkozys free-market right who benefited. Conversely, in 2017, Marine Le Pen managed to attract up to 14 percent of Sarkozys 2012 voters. These two cases, a decade apart, provide evidence of the porosity between right-wing electorates, while LFI, despite its so-called left-populist strategy aimed at addressing the lower classes across partisan divides, has not managed to bring back into its fold even a fraction of this electorate despite a discourse that sought to be more balanced on the migration issue.

Over the last two years, Mlenchons anti-fascist strategy has again evolved. This was evident in his participation, on November 10, 2019, in the March against Islamophobia (a term that the LFI leader now uses, after long rejecting it). So, too, in his praise of cultural creolization, a concept borrowed from the Martinican poet douard Glissant; and his recognition of the fact that universalism can be instrumentalized by the dominant in order to impose their culture and mores on everyone.

We also see this in his changed attitude to the police. Mlenchon today denounces the structural character of police violence (whereas he once saw it as a problem of black sheep), and LFI deputies refused to participate in the police demonstration this May, whereas Socialist, Communist, and Green MPs did take part. Mlenchon has moreover broken off all relations with right-wing personalities and those defending an identitarian version of French secularism (such as Natacha Polony and Henri Pena-Ruiz) while the sovereigntist wing of LFI, as embodied by figures like former defense spokesman Djordje Kuzmanovi, has also been ejected.

These developments seem to suggest that Mlenchon no longer really believes he can win the fchs pas fachos. The secret of his good score in 2017, soaring to 20 percent of the vote, instead lies in his ability to bring the Left together. Indeed, that year, in the first round of the presidential election, the LFI candidate rallied 70 percent of voters who identified as very left-wing, 48 percent of the left-wing and 24 percent of the somewhat left-wing (CEVIPOF data).

Moreover, even the geography of the 2017 Mlenchon vote closely overlaps with territories historically anchored to the Left. Admittedly, many left-wing voters no longer identify with this label, which was undeniably tarnished by Franois Hollandes presidency in 201217. But, if they reject the word Left, they remain attached to the egalitarian content. When Mlenchon debated Zemmour in September, he was not addressing the far-right pundit or his supporters, but left-wing voters.

Looking at how Mlenchon has tried to stem the rise of the fascist danger over the last fifteen years thus provides a series of lessons. Despite its limitations, a left-populist strategy does in certain contexts seem able to allow the Left partly to reduce its distance from the working classes. Yet confronting the far right on its own terrain on its preferred themes (immigration, security, nation, sovereignty) and in its own press organs (Valeurs actuelles, BFMTV, etc.) is a highly risky operation, with little results to show.

But it also needs recognizing that fascism isnt a phenomenon confined to the far right. Rather, it designates, more broadly, a dynamic of fascistization afflicting French society and public debate with the effect that defending the fundamentals of left-wing politics is itself courageous. While the cultural arena is an important terrain of struggle, it simply cannot replace long and hard activist work on the ground as close as possible to the working class from which the Left has gradually been isolating itself for decades.

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The French Left Is Struggling to Win Back Voters Who've Turned to the Far Right - Jacobin magazine