Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: La France a voté contre Poutine

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Chris O’Brien/Twitter:

The @nytimes has a dangerous obsession with Le Pen. A quick review of headlines from the past month:
Marine Le Pen Is as Dangerous as Ever 

Macron May Keep the Presidency, but Le Pen Has Already Won

Le Pen Closer Than Ever to the French Presidency (and to Putin)

A Reinvented Marine Le Pen Threatens to Upend French Elections

Macron to Face Le Pen for President as French Gravitate Toward Extremes

French Election Opens Up as Marine Le Pen Surges

In Le Pen Territory, as France Votes, Anger at a Distant President

A Problem for Macron in France’s Election: ‘The Hatred He Arouses’

Even if the tone toward her is negative, she has absolutely dominated the way the Times covers and thinks about this election. In much the same way Trump used to drive media narratives. Lessons not learned, I guess.

This was a solid win for Macron, a bit larger than expected. And nothing beats losing like winning does. So, expect all the coverage to be about the loser.

Stanley Pignal/Twitter:

France votes today.
A lot of the focus has been on Le Pen. We’ve had weeks of “What if she wins?” or “Even if she loses, she’s changing France!”
But the candidate who matters is the one who wins.
That’s going to be Macron. And his re-election matters more than his 2017 win.

…

So everyone can find something they dislike about Macron (I have a pretty long list, who doesn’t?).
But the most usual feeling among the most voters is that he’s done a good job. Yes, some strongly disagree. Someone always does. But look at who’s going to win. 

The key point is that Macron is the candidate who matters, not Le Pen. Elections matter because they tell us who voters think ought to run the country. Not who protests loudest, not who nearly won, not who you think ought to have won. 

Shades of U.S. political coverage.

Michael Kofman/Twitter:

I’ve been traveling and not writing much these past two weeks. Some brief thoughts about the second phase of the war, Russia’s offensive to retake the Donbas, and implications. Thread. (map from Nathan below)…

Russian forces have taken heavy losses in manpower and equipment, with far fewer combat effective formations available. Not clear what we are calling ‘BTGs’ at this point and their level of manning. Russian reinforcements are far from sufficient to replace earlier losses…

I think it is fair to say that the decisive period of the war was the first three weeks (maybe even first 4 days). Whatever happens in this next phase, the Russian military is likely to exhaust its offensive potential in the near term. 

Does this presage a stalemate? Not necessarily. UKR has its own offensive options. Russia may next try to consolidate control over territory held and pressure UKR via blockade. Its too early to predict what the next phase might look like & it depends on what UKR chooses to do.

Kamil Galeev/Twitter with a Mariupol history lesson:

Mariupol was founded by the Crimean Christians deported by Russia in 1770s. Deportation of Christians from Crimea received surprisingly little international coverage. So let’s discuss it. Until XVIII century Muslim Tatar Crimean Khanate was a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire…

Being so archaic, Crimean Khanate was very diverse. Ruling class was Tatar (=Kipchak Turkic). But there also lived Greeks, Armenians, Jews, etc. According to Jacob Ziegler, it was the last place where the Gothic language, dead elsewhere, was still spoken in the late Middle Ages.

Brett Kelman/Twitter:

Tennesseans who won’t get the COVID-19 vaccine describe “no one” as more trusted source of info than their own doctors, hospitals, pharmacists, public health experts and politicians of either party, per a new vaccine hesitancy survey the state didn’t publicize. A quick thread. 

The Tennessee Department of Health published a vaccine hesitancy survey last April and announced a second round would follow. The second round was done just before the Omicron wave but the state decided not to push it out like the first. They gave me the results when I asked. 

The findings are bad. High levels of misinformed and politicized hesitancy were expected, but vaccine resistance appears more entrenched than I feared. Of those responders who are currently unwilling to be vaccinated, 64% said they “will NOT” reconsider. 

We already knew unwillingness is most common among rural, conservative whites, which makes up the bulk of Tennessee and the survey group. Of those rural, conservative whites in the survey, less than 1% were vaxxed & boosted. In a smaller quantitative study, none were vaxxed. Zero

Charlie Sykes/Bulwark:

The Humiliation of Kevin McCarthy

Lordy, there were tapes

So what happens now? Politico’s Playbook is asking: “Is Kevin McCarthy toast?”

For years now, through controversy after controversy, House Minority Leader KEVIN MCCARTHY has bent over backward to stay in former President DONALD TRUMP’s good graces, all to serve one major purpose: He wants to be speaker someday.

That hope may have just blown up on the launchpad.

But, if he is toast, it’s not because he has just been caught in a lie, because that’s not really a disqualification in today’s GOP. If his dreams of becoming speaker have been torched, it’s only because he’s seen as disloyal by Trump. And because he’s a cynical moron.

Roger Sollenberger/Daily Beast:

Trump’s Most Loyal Lawmakers Are Actually Losing Money

The members of Congress trying to mirror Donald Trump’s politics the most are spending an awful lot.

Last year, it was a fundraising feast for the MAGA Goon Squad. But in 2022, without the donor stimulus of an attempted insurrection, things are going in the wrong direction.

The first three months of the year took more than $275,000 combined out of the pockets of Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), and Matt Gaetz (R-FL)—the foursome of America First, Donald Trump-loving, exhibitionist election objectors. All told, it was their worst showing to date.

It wasn’t always like this.

James McAuley/New Yorker:

The French Far Right Comes on Little Cat Feet

After years of seeing Marine Le Pen as a dangerous extreme, many voters now see her as a politician like any other.

On my trip to Saint-Cloud, I wanted to understand where she came from. In 2015, in an attempt to distance herself from her father’s Holocaust denial after he repeated his remark, yet again, that the Nazi gas chambers had been a mere “detail in the history of World War Two,” she announced that she was banishing him from the Front National—now renamed the Rassemblement National, or National Rally. For years, their relationship was one of performative estrangement, although an organization that Jean-Marie controlled loaned his daughter’s 2017 campaign six million euros. This year, she has given up the performance. If elected, she told France’s BFM TV, her father would be at her side when she entered the Élysée Palace. “I am my father’s daughter,” she said. “I think that yes, he would want to be there, clearly.”