Congrats to the 47% of the French populace who have proven DeTocque to be mostly wrong... While there were sporadic riots following Nicolas Sarkozy's triumph on Sunday, by-and-large, the masses have just eaten their cake and laid low. Since the election had a huge turnout, was fair, and not contested by Sego, the 47% probably just felt exhausted. Sego is actually lucky that the center-right fielded such a personally unlikeable candidate as Sarko, otherwise you could probably add about 2-3% to his total: far too many Sego voters were in the "anyone but Sarko" camp.
(an unflattering mock-up of Sego)
Where does this leave the French Socialist Party?
Frankly, it's in a tight spot, and has some serious contemplating to do in order to reemerge as a truly viable political force in France. While Segolene certainly had her draw-backs as a candidate, it was the image of France's future that the Socialists have to rework: the world is a global economy, and nothing will change that. Nothing. Multinational corporations will merge and manual labor jobs will be lost as the industrial sector continues to shift towards the developing world. So, instead of grasping to the hope that France fights to relatively low-paying jobs in protected "national champion" industries, the French Socialists simply must go the Clintonian-Blairite "Third Way" and be a modern Socialist party which espouses social justice and embraces globalization. For starters, they should encourage social justice by providing the mechanisms necessary for citizens to advance along with globalization, rather than fight against it.
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