Ruffin Diverges, Tondelier Emerges – Tocqueville21

This electoral sequence certainly has not provided the “clarification” President Macron hoped for when he dissolved the National Assembly, but it has cleared up a few things on the left. Mélenchon’s purge of Corbière, Garrido, et al. set his authoritarian proclivities in relief as never before. And now François Ruffin has quit LFI. Make no mistake: he obviously had one and a half feet out the door before this month. He is in a close race to hold on to his seat, which he will probably lose, and Mélenchon makes a convenient scapegoat. I hold no brief for Ruffin, whose brand of agitprop leftism is not to my taste. But he deserves credit for exposing Mélenchon’s tactics.

The other revelation of the campaign is Marine Tondelier, the leader of the Greens, who has emerged as an effective spokesperson for the non-LFI left. After attracting attention for her deft destruction of Macroniste Aurore Bergé on the evening of the first round, she then suspended the Green boycott of Bolloré-owned CNews to sit for an interview with Laurence Ferrari. Refusing to be distracted by Ferrari’s ham-handed attempts to channel the discussion, she made her case against the RN with the aplomb of a veteran prosecutor well-equipped with a detailed bill of particulars. She will also appear this evening in a debate (of sorts: the candidates will speak serially) on France2. If the result of the second round is a coalition government including elements of the left and center, Tondelier will have earned consideration as a prospective ministrable.