@snoopydawg

officially the Democratic nominee (after an oh so democratic, small D primary, of course), polls showed him losing the general to every passenger packed into the 2012 Republican Presidential hopeful clown car AND Mr. Generic Republican. But, Axelrod (who would no doubt openly or covertly make himself available to Macron for the right number of francs).

And then, someone supposedly "happened" to get hired as a bartender for a very select Romney fundraiser and, while there, "happened" to leave his phone on to record Romney's referring to military veterans, recipients of OASDI and other citizen recipients of federal money in a (shocker!) very demeaning way. And this bartender "happened to deliver the recording" to s relative of President Carter. Yadda, yadda, voters went for the candidate who knew enough to re-hire Axelrod and finally knew better than to describe "the other side" with anything like "so they cling to their Bibles and their guns."

Obama also happened to have not only the standard-issue incumbent advantage, but also the advantage of an incumbent President--and CIC-- during a war.* And a war for which he (like Nixon) could not even be blamed.

US voters have never voted out a war-time incumbent, even Tricky Dick as WAPO's Watergate reporting was hitting the fan several times a day, from June 18, 1972 to election day and beyond. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/watergate/part1.html

*Perhaps interesting to contemplate: Every day and every evening, Carter was mocked for not waging war over the hostages--who would assuredly have been the very first victims of a US war against Iran. If Carter had done what he was being goaded to do, resulting in many casualties on both sides, might Carter have improved his chances of defeating Reagan, despite the warm fuzzy feelings American had for the affable, All American "aw, shucks-ness" of the film and television hero?

We will never know, dear reader, but one thing is certain: Carter did not lose to Reagan because Carter was a Sixties type liberal, nor did Mondale lose to Reagan for that reason. Among many other things, Carter was, for his day, a relatively conservative Democrat on issues other than civil rights, as was Mondale.

This should have been people's first clue about how he would rule if elected. Looks like France is having the same buyer's remorse that we did.

@The Liberal Moonbat

got it.

What they got long before we did: Politicians who sell out to the richest 10% of Americanx, including, of course, the biggest political donors, get richer faster than politicians who, while in office, attempt to accomplish really good things for the other 90% of us. And it's fine if so doing ends up costing them their political offices: The "sacrifices" of politicians on behalf of the very wealthiest Americans will be rewarded after they leave office.

Look at Clinton and Obama, or Cantor or Dodd or Lieberman, or almost any corporatist, Republican or Democrat. They all did/do quite well after leaving office, in terms of highly-paying, prestigious and power-broking jobs. Think tanks, lobbying firms, other lobbying firms law firms, lobbying heads of industry associations, "contributors" on MSNBC, whatever.

It's that retirement security despite harming and disgusting most constituents that was the final piece needed to ensure that politicians would benefit the wealthiest, no matter how much it might piss off a majority of their respective constituents. It was that final retirement piece that completed their journey to fascism, plutonomy, oligarchy or whatever label du jour one prefers. And of course, that piece is in addition to all the perks they vote themselves, above and beyond the salaries they collect for fundraising most of the time while they are in office. Sadly, most of us had no choice but to accompany them on that fetid journey.

Gone are the days of a politician like Harry Truman, who, in his post-Presidency, had to ask Congress for a pension of $10,000 because his post-Presidenced involved so much correspondence and other work stemming from his Presidency; dand he believed that the Presidency should not be degraded by a former President's charging Americans for something like a speech. No office, no staff, no other retirement bennies, not even a franking privilege. Just, "Please, please Congress,vote me a total of $10,000 a year so I don't need to pimp out my Presidency or to refuse to respond to citizens who write me and those who want me to make a speech because I was President.

Thanking you in advance for your consideration of this plea, Harry."

Or, at least, so this story has come down to us.

They make good promises, then they break them, then they act like they've never heard of how democracy, or even promises, work. This is just...stupid. What are THEY expecting to happen?

@HenryAWallace

Seizing the chance to capitalize on a protest nobody saw coming, both Marine Le Pen on the extreme right and Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the radical left have tried to jump on the bandwagon, but to no avail. The protesters seem wholly uninterested in party politics. Their demands are as varied as they are vague. But they do have something in common with the extreme right and the radical left: a profound dislike of Mr. Macron.

His elitist disdain for anyone of lower social importance (i.e., money) is too obvious. If there were a recall or French equivalent, most of the vote would go far-left (Melenchon) or far-right (LePen). Let's hope the French electorate is not so ignorant of reality as most American voters.

Films of the riot show the wimpy response of Parisian law enforcement (because no big corporate holdings were under attack).

Rothschild controls the money.
CIA controls the muscle.
Vive la France(?)

more powerful than his first election made him?

As for Macron's having been elected in the first instance, we exported Third Way to France and other European nation. We did so in the persons of none other than the first female member of the DLC and the first full-time employee of the DLC. These were, respectively, Hillary Clinton Herself and Al From Himself, both of whom arrived in Europe via Trojan Horse Airways.

in the identical way and more, we also exported to France and other European nations the perennial neoliberal lie that Sixties-type "paleo-liberals" cannot win elections. especially Presidential elections; and, therefore, anyone who does not vote for the neoliberal only helps elect the most evil candidate in the bunch. And, there, just as here, many believed that Big Lie.

Of course, Nixon would have been elected in 1968 and re-elected in 1972, even if Christ Himself had returned for the specific purpose of opposing Nixon. And the Big Lie that neoliberal "leaders" and their bots love to repeat is the reason that US Democrats have been conditioned since the tragic 1968 election to "vote blue, no matter who."

IMO, the Big Lie is also the reason Macron got elected. There, as here, an incumbent in times that are troublesome to voters will very likely be re-elected, much as was Nixon in 1972. Only Macron won't be likely to do France the favor of resigning so that a somewhat sane and less evil President can succeed him, as happened when Ford succeeded Nixon.