Biden hopes French elections will boost his political defense – but it’s complicated

WASHINGTON – As president Joe Biden Faces growing calls to drop out of the presidential race from members of his own party, he has sought to bolster his case for staying in office, pointing across the Atlantic Ocean to another election that defied dismal polls and panic in the center and on the left.

Speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday, a day after the right-wing French National Rally party and its allies finished third in seats gained in France’s early parliamentary elections, Biden compared the French result with his own election this fall. The right lost despite leading in the first round and in public opinion polls.

“France has rejected extremism,” Biden said. “Democrats will reject him here, too.”

Biden reiterated that point in a conference call with some of his biggest donors and campaign supporters that same day, as one person on the call told NBC News. “One of the things that’s happening around the world is the far right, the MAGA extremist conservatives of France, the [Marine] Le Pen’s party and others are being killed, they’re being kicked because people are saying, ‘Wow, we’re not going there,'” Biden said, according to the source. (His comment was first reported by The New York Times.)

But France’s vote was not as simple as the narrative presented by Biden. The elections were a rejection of the far right, but also of the French president Emmanuel Macron and his centrist coalition. It’s the latest in a trend that’s ricocheting around the world — something experts say should make Biden very concerned. Voters, dissatisfied with the post-Covid economy and, in some cases, angered by the influx of immigrants, are dealing with setback after setback at the polls.

And while Biden faces intense political backlash after his dismal debate performance last month, polls show that American voters express similar dissatisfaction with the status quo, which has helped former President Donald Trump build narrow electoral leads nationally and in decisive states.

“It’s a bad time to be a starter,” he said. Ian Bremmer, chairman and founder of Eurasia Group, a geopolitical risk firm, adding that electorates around the world are pushing for change. “No matter what you think of Biden’s record, no matter how much you think he’s accomplished, this is just a tough time for an incumbent to win.”

In France, Macron’s Ensemble alliance won far fewer seats than in 2022, finishing in second place behind the left-wing New Popular Front. The National Rally won the highest total of seats ever, as well as a plurality of votes – a point Trump was quick to highlight on her Truth Social page on Monday. (Still, the National Rally’s vote share only translated into third place in actual parliamentary seats, due to strategic center-left voting.)

Across the English Channel days earlier, UK voters kicked out the Conservative Party from power for the first time in 14 years, with the center-left Labor Party winning a landslide victory. In both cases, deep dissatisfaction with incumbents led to radical changes.

Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, said these disputes and the recent elections in India and South Africa serve as “a warning that Joe Biden is highly vulnerable as an incumbent at a time of great dissatisfaction, something that could lead many to stay home or vote for Donald Trump.”

“The ‘age’ issue only makes the situation worse for Biden,” Haass added.

Biden allies who spoke to NBC News said there were differentiating factors in the U.S. that made them feel more positive.

For one, the US economy is stronger than Western European economies – even as many Americans express similar levels of dissatisfaction. Biden supporters predict that as the economy continues its post-Covid recovery, this sentiment will also recover before November. What’s more, Trump, a former president who inspired deep feelings in the American electorate, is not a blank slate or a relatively lesser-known challenger like other incumbents have faced. Different electoral and governmental systems cannot be ruled out either.

“People have been looking for signals that confirm what they intend to report,” said David McGonigal, associate director at National Security Action, a group that seeks to promote Biden’s foreign policy agenda. “People are very eager to ignore the Democrats in November, to say that overseas elections are bad news for Biden’s chances in November. This is at least proof to the contrary.”

Bremmer said the anti-incumbent energy is strong enough to engulf not just Biden but also a potential replacement if Biden drops out of the race because voters can tie them down. At the same time, he said the US could “easily be an exception” to this trend due to the deep political divisions that exist in the country.

“So few seats and so few votes are actually up for grabs,” Bremmer said. “And because Trump is almost exclusively unpopular as an outsider.”

The international right accumulated new influence amid the wave of anti-incumbent sentiment. Nigel Farage, Trump ally and darling of the right, saw his Reform UK party win around 14% of the vote in the United Kingdom, winning seats in Parliament for the first time. In last month’s European Parliament electionsGermany’s far-right AfD party made huge gains, as did the National Rally, prompting Macron to call early national elections.

Meanwhile, right-wing parties across Europe are looking to form a coalition that could increase its influence in that body if it were formally recognized by the European Parliament.

“The tide is rising,” said Marine Le Pen, longtime leader of the National Rally. said after the French vote Sunday. “This time it hasn’t risen high enough, but it continues to rise. And as a result, our victory is actually only delayed.”

Macron’s decision to call early elections following the National Rally’s surge in European Parliament elections represented a gamble that French voters would not want to hand power to the untested and staunchly anti-immigrant right-wing party, especially with the Olympics coming up. about to start. .

The dynamism of the National Rally was thwarted when left-wing and centrist candidates across the country set aside differences and called for unity against the far right, a long-standing practice in France known as “cordon sanitaire”. Many candidates ended up dropping out of the three-way contests, giving their left-wing or centrist opponent a greater runway to keep the right-wing candidate at bay.

But with Macron’s group losing 76 seats and finishing third in the popular vote, it was clear that the electorate was not very interested in maintaining the status quo, even if elevating the National Rally to power was not at stake either.

“With this vote, whether on the right or on the left, [people] they were strongly anti-establishment,” said Alexandre Pesey, founder and executive director of the Institut de Formation Politique, a conservative training institute in Paris.

Gérard Araud, former French ambassador to the US, said that the political realities in France and the US were “striking” due to their similarities.

“It’s the same rebellion of 35% of our citizens who simply say, ‘We want to throw the table. We no longer have access to the table,'” Araud said. “The problem is that we, the elite, really shouldn’t disapprove of these people. sense, we should really listen to them.”

Even though both Macron and Biden sought changes in immigration policy – although not as substantial as his right-wing critics have argued – his actions have influenced few on this issue. Pointing to other policy initiatives, Araud said Biden and his administration have sought to respond to the concerns of dissatisfied people.

“The problem is that the Biden administration tried to respond to their concerns about reindustrialization, with the Inflation Reduction Act,” Araud said. “Apparently it doesn’t work.”

This article was originally published in NBCNews. with