Opinion | Democrats should act like France and unify against the far-right

That leaves us, oddly enough, where France was before its recent elections. Like our ally, we face the threat of right-wing government and the decay of functional democracy. And like it was in Britain, functional government is at risk.

Ours is not a parliamentary system like Britain or a multiparty presidential system like France. And, granted, the American political scene is far angrier and more personality driven. Still, the victories for France’s New Popular Front and Britain’s Labour Party are instructive because they were referendums on right-wing ideologies waged by less-than-ideal coalitions of the center-left.

“The anti-far-right bulwark has worked. Not only is the leftist coalition, New Popular Front, the first-place party in the National Assembly, but the Macron-aligned party is the second, and the National Rally is only the third. France has clearly said ‘Non’ to the prospect of a far-right government,” wrote Gérard Araud, former French ambassador to the United States. There was no love lost among parts of the coalition. Indeed, the campaign was almost entirely about the opposition, the fear of a far-right government.

The French political alliance was essentially a gaggle of squabbling parties that could agree on little else but the one fundamental issue. CNN reported:

A month ago, the NFP did not exist. Now, it is the largest bloc in the French parliament and could provide France with its next prime minister. It chose its name in an attempt to resurrect the original Popular Front that blocked the far right from gaining power in 1936. Sunday’s results mean it has done so again. . . .

This many-headed hydra does not speak with a single voice. Each party celebrated the results at their own campaign events, rather than together. Two of its most prominent figures – Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the populist France Unbowed leader, and Raphael Glucksmann, the more moderate leader of Place Publique – are barely on speaking terms.

Running against fascism worked. It frankly did not matter to most French voters which faction would capture the prime ministership; what mattered was defeating a movement antithetical to France’s identity (“Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”).

Meanwhile, the critical issue in Britain’s parliamentary system was 14 years of failed Conservative and Unionist — “Tory” — governance. The election was about, to borrow an American slogan, a return to normalcy. The victorious candidate for prime minister, Keir Starmer, took over the Labour Party only four years ago, replacing Jeremy Corbyn (infamous for antisemitism). Starmer eschewed the extreme leftist agenda, navigating back to the center. He has been criticized as dull — but that may have been a plus. (As Politico put it, “dull ordinariness is arguably his greatest electoral asset.”) When one side in an election is utterly unacceptable, the other need only be acceptable, not extraordinary.

Simply framing the election as the chance to rid Britain of the Tories was sufficient. “After 14 years in power, the Conservatives were punished at the polls for all the tumult that occurred on their watch: Brexit, which most Britons now regret; [Boris] Johnson’s partygate scandal, in which the then-prime minister threw parties while the country was under covid-19 lockdown and then Johnson lied about them; and the disastrous 2022 budget of Johnson’s successor, [Liz] Truss, which sent shockwaves through financial markets,” NPR reported.

It is a misnomer that only a positive vision can unite and stimulate a winning coalition. Sometimes, it is the fear of a concrete, hideous transformation of one’s country or the exhaustion over rank incompetence that wins the day. Fear of chaos, turmoil, incompetence and ideological rigidity can drive voters to an alternative, even a boring one.

Project 2025 — a MAGA guide to autocracy and extremism — and the Supreme Court’s radical rulings (e.g., allowing states to criminalize abortion, preventing experts in government agencies from setting reasonable standards, empowering the president with a get-out-of-jail-free card) are the equivalent of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party. (Indeed, she said quite candidly in 2017: “A new world has emerged in these past years. It’s the world of Vladimir Putin, it’s the world of Donald Trump in the United States, it’s the world of [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi in India.”) They are the building blocks of a reactionary, authoritarian government dedicated to Christian nationalism.

The task for Democrats in November, therefore, will be to make this a referendum on right-wing extremism. The folks at Lincoln Project have done just that:

Biden, for now, is at the top of the Democratic ticket, but it’s democracy that is on the ballot. If Democrats are to be successful, they will need to identify and explain the MAGA threat, which is every bit as radical and scary as France’s far-right and as inimical to competent government as the Tories.

In a sea of hysteria over Biden’s candidacy, a few sage voices in the Democratic Party have offered a reasonable request: Show us.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (N.M.) released a statement calling on Biden “to continue to demonstrate that his debate performance was just a bad night, and that he has a clear path to defeating Donald Trump.” Montana Sen. Jon Tester’s statement similarly implored Biden: “President Biden has got to prove to the American people—including me — that he’s up to the job for another four years.” And Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.) issued the following: “We need to see a much more forceful and energetic candidate on the campaign trail in the very near future in order for him to convince voters he is up to the job.” On Wednesday, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Sens. Tim Kaine (Va.) and Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) all suggested Biden still had to decide but expressed confidence in his judgment.

That is precisely the message Biden needs to hear. Biden has said he is staying in and can show everyone he is up to beating Trump. However, he cannot expect Democrats and others who are anxious about our democracy to take his statement on faith. He has the chance to shed the curated campaign in which his appearances are scant and opportunities to go off script are limited. He can hold town halls with regular voters, sit for interviews with swing state media outlets and take questions for an hour or more at a news conference.

“Less of Biden is more” may have worked to help Biden govern successfully, but in accommodating his limitations and restrictions, his campaign has made him appear feeble and vulnerable. The senators are right: That is not good enough. If he cannot get out to show his vitality and his polls do not rebound, I would expect these senators and other responsible Democrats will publicly and privately confront the president. Too much is at risk.

“American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis” by Adam Hochschild documents a frightful time in America: pervasive violence, rampant racism, metastasizing xenophobia, besieged labor unions, creepy domestic surveillance and withering civil rights. The book is not the present day or a flash back to the Trump administration; neither is it a preview of the next four years. Rather, it is a granular account of the years 1917-1921, when World War I and the Russian Revolution sent America into a tailspin.

From the violent attacks on the Industrial Workers of the World (“Wobblies”) to the mass round up of foreigners to the suppression of any periodical that smacked of socialism to the imprisonment of citizens purely for “unpatriotic” speech, the period that Hochschild describes revealed America at its worst. Limited numbers of people actually participated in lynchings or vigilante work, but millions upon millions shrugged their shoulders as judges and juries punished fellow citizens for exercising First Amendment rights. A few voices of sanity in Congress and in the Wilson administration inveighed against the spasm of authoritarianism, but they were rare exceptions.

In short, the United States is not witnessing dark trends and autocratic impulses for the first time. We have no excuse to be surprised as to what may follow if we discard cardinal principles such as the rule of law, freedom of conscience and limited executive power.

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