Anne Hidalgo presented, Thursday, January 13, the details of her government program. Invited by France Inter to talk about it, it is however, a question of electoral strategy which occupied the heart of the debates: that of the union of the left! The socialist candidate for the presidential election finds herself caught in her own trap.
The union of the left, in addition to being a sea serpent, is becoming the elephant in the room! A third of the questions addressed to the switchboard of France Inter were apparently centered on this subject. For Anne Hidalgo, this is obviously very damaging: while she should defend her proposals, she is still justifying the relevance and legitimacy of her candidacy. And the least we can say is that this defense is laborious. The first argument deployed by the socialist candidate is that she incarnates, basically, an unavoidable force. “The position to gather, it must be central, says Anne Hidalgo. At the end of the day, it is all the same the social democrats who unite because they have this will to govern. The driving force, the one that may have the capacity beyond the gathering of the left, to also bring together French women and men on a project, this is the force that I embody.
“The Driving Force”, the one that brings people together is social democracy, it is the central position, in short, that is what it embodies! There are no arguments! There is certainly a small argument by the golden mean: between two radical proposals, it is the central solution which would be the best. But this is a sophism, a fallacious process: there is no reason why radicalism should never be justified! And apart from that, we are mainly in incantation! Remember that the polls are very pessimistic for Anne Hidalgo, that her campaign is also meeting with very little response, but that is not serious: she continues to assert that it is her position that would be the most likely to collect, in flagrant disregard of all the factual elements!
We remember that last December, Anne Hidalgo had invited her competitors to participate in the popular primary. However, this will take place, without neither Jean-Luc Mélenchon, nor Yannick Jadot, nor herself recognizing the result. Once again difficult for the candidate to justify herself. “There is a citizens’ initiative which is interesting and which is also surely a response to this desire of many citizens to take matters into their own hands directly. Will I submit to it, listen, that will be an indication very interesting about what the citizens want. But my campaign, my candidacy, my proposals are there. I’m rolling them out and I’m going to try to bring them together.”
“The initiative is interesting”, “it is a response to the will of the citizens”, “an indication of what they want”… But her, her campaign, her candidacy, her proposals are there. So, of course, Anne Hidalgo had made it clear that she would only submit to the result of this initiative if her competitors did the same. But the difference is that she has previously recognized its legitimacy: that is what places her now in the face of serious contradictions. To the question of knowing the solution would not ultimately be to withdraw in favor of another candidate, Yannick Jadot for example, whose campaign seems to carry a little more, Anne Hidalgo answers: “I don’t think that’s how you create dynamics. I think that the right dynamic would have been to accept a primary in front of the citizens. I don’t think that hiding behind this or that, we have seen it in regional elections, when it comes to juxtaposing or erasing this or that. It creates absolutely no dynamic.
The important thing here is the verb of the sentences: “I don’t believe; I think”. These are what are called entirely subjectified statements. Anne Hidalgo does not present arguments to us: she merely states opinions. She then adds: “the good dynamic would have been to submit to the primary”. Use of the past subjunctive: that is to say, the time of disappointed hopes. We are again, grammatically, in pure incantation. For the rest, we will see? History can still prove her right if, by chance, she actually manages to establish a dynamic. In the meantime, Anne Hidalgo finds herself caught in her own trap: that of having conferred legitimacy on a primary which was to bring together the left. If no one withdraws, it will, on the contrary, have contributed to fragmenting it.