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      Is Trump the Democrats’ Secret Weapon?

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I was moved by Ketanji Brown Jackson’s remarks last week after her Senate confirmation: “In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court.” What a ringing affirmation of what’s possible in the United States. And how depressing that only three Republican senators could bring themselves to vote for her, if only on the principle that every president deserves to get qualified nominees confirmed. Whatever happened to acknowledging the possibility that we can respect and admire people with whom we also disagree?Gail Collins: Bret, every time we converse, I get to experience that.Bret: Ditto.Gail: But you know what our politics have become. There are a lot of people to blame for the death of bipartisanship in judicial selection, but I’ll never forget Mitch McConnell refusing to bring multiple Barack Obama nominees up for a vote.Bret: I’ll resist the urge to dwell on Harry Reid’s filibustering of George W. Bush’s nominees. The larger question is how we go forward. I don’t think we can endure as a republic if no president of either party can even appoint judges or staff the executive branch unless he has a Senate majority, too. Your thoughts?Gail: I tend to resist the we-can’t-survive-this predictions — we’ve survived a heck of a lot, after all.Bret: Fair point. We defeated Germany twice. What’s one Ted Cruz, more or less?Gail: But this kind of perpetual partisanship certainly isn’t good for the country. I guess the world will be looking toward Alaska to see how the regular public is reacting — of the three Senate Republicans who voted to confirm Judge Jackson, Lisa Murkowski is the only one up for re-election this year.Bret: Murkowski also faces a primary challenge from a Donald Trump-endorsed Republican opponent, meaning that she showed real political courage in voting for Jackson. More than can be said for a bunch of G.O.P. senators who are retiring at the end of the year and could have usefully demonstrated some principle and independence.Gail: Murkowski aside, I suspect the Republican candidates this fall are going to be running on a generally Trumpist line, which will make things worse. Do you disagree?Bret: Not clear yet. Our news-side colleagues Shane Goldmacher and Jonathan Martin reported last month that some of the primary candidates Trump originally preferred — like the Senate candidate Mo Brooks in Alabama and the gubernatorial candidate David Perdue in Georgia — aren’t doing well in the polls. Trump is also getting crosswise with Republican incumbents in the governor’s office like Doug Ducey in Arizona and Pete Ricketts in Nebraska by opposing their favored candidates, or at least favoring ones they don’t like. If anything, Trump may turn out to be the Democrats’ secret weapon this fall by dividing the party or backing candidates who can’t win in the general election. That’s how Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock were able to win their Georgia Senate races the last time around.Gail: I noticed Trump went ahead and withdrew his support for Brooks, claiming he was outraged that Brooks said it was time to stop obsessing about the 2020 election and move on.Bret: Trump is like John Cleese’s Basil Fawlty character from “Fawlty Towers,” except in reverse: You must mention the war. Or at least the “stolen election.”Gail: Still, I bet Trump could have managed to overlook it if Brooks wasn’t also running way behind in the polls.Bret: We’ll see. Right now, the generic polling leans Republican, but it could change if the Supreme Court votes to overturn Roe v. Wade. It could change even further if Ukraine manages to defeat Russia with American help. What else do the Democrats need?Gail: The Democrats need to run on ways to make the country better. One is reducing health care costs, which would include cracking down on waste and government funding for expensive drugs like insulin. Another is reducing the deficit with a tax on the very rich.Bret: The administration seems to be taking your advice on both points, though I’m not sure it will help them all that much by November. I’d like to see them get ahead of a couple of looming surges that will play into G.O.P. hands: the expected migrant surge at the border; the big cost-of-living surge; and the next Covid surge. The last one is actually tied to the first: The administration can help moderate Democrats by extending something called Title 42 to expedite migrant expulsions as a health-emergency measure. As for inflation, how about a sales-tax holiday for necessities and other basic goods for the next 12 months?Gail: Here’s a proposed deal: a sales tax holiday for basics combined with a tax increase for the rich.Bret: I always oppose tax hikes, but that isn’t the worst bargain. How about the immigration issue? The administration doesn’t seem to know its own mind, according to a fascinating piece last weekend in The Times.Gail: Well, another way to think about it is that the administration knows there’s no good answer. Any immigration policy is going to be unpopular with one side or the other — except Biden’s very, very much appreciated halt to building that stupid Trump wall.Bret: A wall I have reluctantly come around to concluding should be built, even as we do more to increase legal immigration.Gail: Oh wow, Bret, you’ve gone over to the wall! Better than going over the wall, I guess, but still …Bret: Bet some of our readers are thinking, “Both things are possible.”A wall won’t stop people from coming here legally and then overstaying their visas. But it will save some of the most vulnerable migrants from taking terrible risks to cross the border while denying right-wing nativists one of their most potent political issues.Gail: And serve as a great symbol to the rest of the world that the days we celebrated our country as a nation of immigrants are long gone. Sigh.Bret: We are and should remain a nation of immigrants. Just lawfully arrived.Gail: It’s certainly important not to encourage illegal immigration. But it’s equally important — actually more important — to raise the number of immigrants we’re bringing into the country. Given the very low birthrate in America, we’ve got to attract all the willing workers we can.Bret: Totally agree on this. Countries that stagnate demographically will eventually stagnate economically. Our Hispanic population is incredibly talented, energetic and diverse, we’ve got plenty of room to grow, and we’re blessed to have Mexico — the country where I grew up — as a neighbor. Anyone who doubts me on this score should consider what it’s like for Ukraine to have Russia as a neighbor.The case I’d make to the administration is to set out three principles for immigration: that it should be lawful, that it should be safe and that it should be compassionate. They need to take care of the first point to guarantee the other two.Gail: No problem there, but there’s a long leap from a commitment to lawful, compassionate immigration and — oh, Lord, that wall. Sorry, still flummoxed. Let’s move on.Bret: The other big domestic story last week was the failure of the Justice Department to win its case against four men accused of conspiring to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. What do you make of it?Gail: Basically you’ve got a bunch of dopey right-wing guys venting about Governor Whitmer’s Covid restrictions and talking about kidnapping her. And some genuine question as to whether they’d have done anything more than posture over lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings if an F.B.I. informant hadn’t become one of their leaders.Bret: It’s a thin line between, um, entrapment and hate, to adapt an old lyric.Gail: This kind of case always poses the question of how far our investigators can go in exposing anti-government nut jobs. Imagine what it’s like to spend months — sometimes years! — pretending to be best pals with paranoid idiots.Bret: My wife and kids know the feeling.Gail: Sooner or later you may be tempted to push things along — and then maybe create a crime that would never have happened otherwise.I’m not an expert in this case, but I do appreciate how very careful the country needs to be in overseeing law enforcement.Any final thoughts on your end?Bret: Given how high-profile this case was, it’s a real black eye for the government and particularly the F.B.I. Bamboozling foolish people into potentially criminal behavior and then prosecuting them for it in a highly politicized way is the sort of thing that fuels precisely the kind of conspiracy thinking that these people were prey to in the first place.Gail: Meanwhile, I’ve been sort of obsessing about what would happen if Russian psycho-hackers managed to figure out a way to take our power grid offline. Imagining what that’d be like gives me the kind of chills I got as a kid in Catholic school when the nuns would spend hours warning us that the end of the world could arrive any day. Then we were supposed to go home and practice hiding in the basement with our parents.Bret: The good news is the Russians haven’t even been able to manage taking out the power grid in Ukraine, so they might have a harder time against us. Perhaps the end of the world isn’t nigh, after all?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Macron to Face Le Pen for President as French Gravitate Toward Extremes

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      President Emmanuel Macron and the hard-right leader Marine Le Pen will compete for a second time in a runoff on April 24.PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron will face Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, in the runoff of France’s presidential elections.With 92 percent of the ballots cast on Sunday counted, Mr. Macron, a centrist, was leading with about 27.4 percent of the vote to Ms. Le Pen’s 24.3 percent. Ms. Le Pen benefited from a late surge that reflected widespread disaffection over rising prices, security and immigration.With war raging in Ukraine and Western unity likely to be tested as the fighting continues, Ms. Le Pen’s strong performance demonstrated the enduring appeal of nationalist and xenophobic currents in Europe. Extreme parties of the right and left took some 51 percent of the vote, a clear sign of the extent of French anger and frustration.An anti-NATO and more pro-Russia France in the event of an ultimate Le Pen victory would cause deep concern in allied capitals, and could fracture the united trans-Atlantic response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.But Mr. Macron, after a lackluster campaign, will go into the second round as the slight favorite, having fared a little better than the latest opinion polls suggested. Some had shown him leading Ms. Le Pen by just two points.Marine Le Pen speaking after the first-round results were announced on Sunday.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesThe principled French rejection of Ms. Le Pen’s brand of anti-immigrant nationalism has frayed as illiberal politics have spread in both Europe and the United States. She has successfully softened her packaging, if not her fierce conviction that French people must be privileged over foreigners and that the curtain must be drawn on France as a “land of immigration.”Ms. Le Pen’s ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia are close, although she has scrambled in recent weeks to play them down. This month, she was quick to congratulate Viktor Orban, Hungary’s nationalist and anti-immigrant leader, on his fourth consecutive victory in parliamentary elections.“I will restore France to order in five years,” Ms. Le Pen declared to cheering supporters, appealing to all French people to join her in what she called “a choice of civilization” in which the “legitimate preponderance of French language and culture” would be guaranteed and full “sovereignty reestablished in all domains.”The choice confronting French people on April 24 was between “division, injustice and disorder” on the one hand, and the “rallying of French people around social justice and protection,” she said.Mr. Macron told flag-waving supporters: “I want a France in a strong Europe that maintains its alliances with the big democracies in order to defend itself, not a France that, outside Europe, would have as its only allies the populist and xenophobic International. That is not us.”He added: “Don’t deceive ourselves, nothing is decided, and the debate we will have in the next 15 days is decisive for our country and for Europe.”A polling station in Pontoise on Sunday.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesLast week, in an interview in the daily Le Parisien newspaper, Mr. Macron called Ms. Le Pen “a racist” of “great brutality.” Ms. Le Pen hit back, saying that the president’s remarks were “outrageous and aggressive.” She called favoring French people over foreigners “the only moral, legal and admissible policy.”The gloves will be off as they confront each other over the future of France, at a time when Britain’s exit from the European Union and the end of Angela Merkel’s long chancellorship in Germany have placed a particular onus on French leadership.Mr. Macron wants to transform Europe into a credible military power with “strategic autonomy.” Ms. Le Pen, whose party has received funding from a Russian and, more recently, a Hungarian bank, has other priorities.The runoff, on April 24, will be a repeat of the last election, in 2017, when Mr. Macron, then a relative newcomer to politics intent on shattering old divisions between left and right, trounced Ms. Le Pen with 66.9 percent of the vote to her 33.1 percent.The final result this time will almost certainly be much closer than five years ago. Polls taken before Sunday’s vote indicated Mr. Macron winning by just 52 percent to 48 percent against Ms. Le Pen in the second round. That could shift in the coming two weeks, when the candidates will debate for the first time in the campaign.Reflecting France’s drift to the right in recent years, no left-of-center candidate qualified for the runoff. The Socialist Party, long a pillar of postwar French politics, collapsed, leaving Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left anti-NATO candidate with his France Unbowed movement, to take third place with about 21 percent.Supporters of Mr. Macron in Paris on Sunday.James Hill for The New York TimesMs. Le Pen, who leads the National Rally, formerly the National Front, was helped by the candidacy of Éric Zemmour, a fiercely xenophobic TV pundit turned politician, who became the go-to politician for anti-immigrant provocation, which made her look more mainstream and innocuous. In the end, Mr. Zemmour’s campaign faded, and he took about 7 percent of the vote.Mr. Zemmour immediately called on his supporters to back Ms. Le Pen in the second round. “Opposing Ms. Le Pen there is a man who allowed 2 million immigrants to enter France,” Mr. Zemmour declared.The threatening scenario for Mr. Macron is that Mr. Zemmour’s vote will go to Ms. Le Pen, and that she will be further bolstered by the wide section of the left that feels betrayed or just viscerally hostile toward the president, as well as by some center-right voters for whom immigration is the core issue.More than half of French people — supporters of Ms. Le Pen, Mr. Zemmour and Mr. Mélenchon — now appear to favor parties that are broadly anti-NATO, anti-American and hostile to the European Union. By contrast, the broad center — Mr. Macron’s La République en Marche party, the Socialist Party, the center right Republicans and the Green Party — took a combined total of about 40 percent.These were numbers that revealed the extent of anxiety in France, and perhaps also the extent of distrust of its democracy. They will be more comforting to Ms. Le Pen than to Mr. Macron, even if Mr. Mélenchon said his supporters should not give “a single vote” to Ms. Le Pen.He declined, however, to endorse Mr. Macron.At Ms. Le Pen’s headquarters, Frederic Sarmiento, an activist, said, “She will benefit from a big transfer of votes,” pointing to supporters of Mr. Zemmour, but also some on the left who, according to polls, will support Ms. Le Pen in the second round.Immigrant families awaiting emergency accommodation outside the Paris city hall last April.Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times“I am very worried, it will be a very close runoff,” said Nicolas Tenzer, an author who teaches political science at Sciences Po university. “Many on the left will abstain rather than vote Macron.”Mr. Macron gained the immediate support for the second round of the defeated Socialist, Communist, Green and center-right candidates, but between them they amounted to no more than 15 percent of the first-round vote. He may also benefit from a late surge in support of the Republic in a country with bitter wartime experience of extreme-right rule.In the end, the election on Sunday came down to Mr. Macron against the extreme right and left of the political spectrum, a sign of his effective dismantlement of the old political order. Now built essentially around a personality — the restless president — French democracy does not appear to have arrived at any sustainable alternative structure.If the two runoff qualifiers are the same as in 2017, they have been changed by circumstances. Where Mr. Macron represented reformist hope in 2017, he is now widely seen as a leader who drifted to the right and a top-down, highly personalized style of government. The sheen is off him.On the place of Islam in France, on immigration controls and on police powers, Mr. Macron has taken a hard line, judging that the election would be won or lost to his right.Addressing his supporters after the vote Sunday, he said he wants a France that “fights resolutely against Islamist separatism” — a term he uses to describe conservative or radical Muslims who reject French values like gender equality — but also a France that allows all believers to practice their faiths.A polling place at the Versailles town hall.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesHis rightward shift had a cost. The center-left, once the core of his support, felt betrayed. To what extent the left will vote for him in the second round will be a main source of concern, as already reflected in Mr. Macron’s abrupt recent catch-up paeans to “fraternity,” “solidarity” and equality of opportunity.Throughout the campaign, Mr. Macron appeared disengaged, taken up with countless telephone calls to Mr. Putin that proved ineffectual.A comfortable lead in polls disappeared in recent weeks as resentment grew over the president’s detachment. He had struggled during the five years of his presidency to overcome an image of aloofness, learning to reach out to more people, only to suffer an apparent relapse in the past several weeks.Still, Mr. Macron steered the country through the long coronavirus crisis, brought unemployment to its lowest level in a decade and lifted economic growth. Doing so, he has convinced many French people that he has what it takes to lead and to represent France with dignity on the world stage.Ms. Le Pen, who would be France’s first woman president, is also seen differently. Now in her third attempt to become president — Jacques Chirac won in 1995 after twice failing — she bowed to reason (and popular opinion) on two significant fronts: dropping her prior vows to take France out of the European Union and the eurozone. Still, many of her proposals — like barring E.U. citizens from some of the same social benefits as French citizens — would infringe fundamental European treaties.The leader of the National Rally, formerly the National Front, toned down her language to look more “presidential.” She smiled a lot, opening up about her personal struggles, and she gave the impression of being closer to the day-to-day concerns of French people, especially with regard to sharply rising gas prices and inflation.But many things did not change. Her program includes a plan to hold a referendum that would lead to a change in the Constitution that would ban any policies that lead to “the installation on national territory of a number of foreigners so large that it would change the composition and identity of the French people.”She also wants to bar Muslim women from wearing head scarves and fine them if they do.Polling booths in Trappes on Sunday. The first round of voting saw the highest abstention rate in decades.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesThe abstention rate Sunday, at between about 26 and 28 percent, was several points above the last election. Not since 2002 has it been so high.This appeared to reflect disillusionment with politics as a change agent, the ripple effect of the war in Ukraine and lost faith in democracy. It was part of the same anger that pushed so many French people toward political extremes.Aurelien Breeden More

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      Emmanuel Macron Is Playing a Dangerous Game

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      In 2017, Emmanuel Macron was “a meteor born under a lucky star.” A former banker without experience in elective office, he benefited during his first presidential campaign from President François Hollande choosing not to seek re-election, while the conservative candidate and front-runner, François Fillon, faced an embezzlement charge.In 2022, the planets appeared to align once more, this time on account of international circumstances rather than national dynamics. As president of the European Union since January, Mr. Macron has enhanced his status as a legitimate interlocutor with Vladimir Putin, even if his attempts to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine have been unsuccessful. All opinion polls have shown Mr. Macron leading in Sunday’s first round of the presidential election, but his lead has been swiftly declining.In his first campaign, Mr. Macron claimed to be “neither left nor right,” a slogan that had seduced many who are weary of the old political divisions. Once elected, however, he quickly revealed what that meant in practice. Cutting taxes for the wealthy, shrinking the welfare state and hollowing out democracy, Mr. Macron drifted rightward, to the point of shocking some members of La République En Marche!, his party.Far from changing course, Mr. Macron appears to be doubling down. In recent months, his appeal to the right-wing electorate has become ever more explicit, orienting his platform around two of the right’s traditional themes — control of immigration and stiffening of secularism. It may deliver him another victory. But Mr. Macron is playing a dangerous game. By absorbing his opponents’ views into his own platform, he risks bringing about a political landscape hazardously skewed to the right.Among Mr. Macron’s first decisions in office was the abolition of the wealth tax and a flat tax on capital income, which benefited the rich. At the same time he pursued a reduction in the housing allowance for the poor and a reduction inpensions for retirees. Halfway through his first year in power, he had become the “president of the rich.” The image stuck, burnished by his reform of labor law, which limited workers’ rights and weakened representative organizations, curtailment of unemployment benefits and diminution of employers’ social security contributions.During the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr. Macron did show a different face. Having ordered a lockdown of the population, he decided that the state would generously bail out companies, which salvaged many of them and avoided massive layoffs of workers. The act, though broadly in line with governments across Europe, was undoubtedly helpful. All the same, Mr. Macron’s first term tended unmistakably to widen inequalities, as shown in surveys.In parallel, there has been a disquieting democratic decline. During 46 of the past 78 months, France has been under a state of emergency, a record in Europe. It was declared by Mr. Hollande after the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, then under Mr. Macron at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Confronted with similar challenges, Germany never used such extreme measures. Moreover, two days before the end of the first state of emergency, at Mr. Macron’s initiative, various emergency statutes were integrated into the common law by his party-dominated Parliament. Since then, six laws restricting the rights of asylum seekers, protesters, prisoners, labor unions and nongovernmental organizations have been enacted.The prerogatives of the police have also significantly been expanded at the expense of the judiciary, notably for search warrants and stop-and-search. The permission to use guns by the police has increased. During the Yellow Vest movement, 2495 protesters were wounded, 30 lost one eye, five had their hand blown off. Asked about the damage caused by so-called sublethal weapons prohibited in most European countries, the president declared that speaking of repression or police violence was unacceptable under the rule of law.Mr. Macron’s combination of neoliberalism and authoritarianism has deepened inequality, diminished the welfare state, weakened democracy and aggravated the mistrust of politics, resulting in unprecedented abstention rates in regional elections, especially among the youth. Under the Fifth Republic, in place since 1958, it is a unique record.There is one domain in which Mr. Macron had raised more optimistic expectations: climate change. In 2018, Minister of Environment Nicolas Hulot detailed an ambitious plan to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 in accordance with the 2015 Paris Agreement. A year later, as it became clear that the administration was not complying with its objectives, the popular Mr. Hulot resigned in protest. A year later, Mr. Macron convened The Citizens’ Convention for the Climate to provide proposals to mitigate global warming, which he promised to follow. But his government abandoned some of the most significant ones and watered down others.Yet the most revealing sign of Mr. Macron’s political drift to the right has been his placing the control of immigration, implicitly from the South, and the regulation of religion, tacitly Islam, at the center of his politics.On immigration, Mr. Macron has become ever more hard-line. In the past five years, the unprecedented repression of migrants and refugees at the border with Italy, in informal camps around Paris and above all in the so-called jungles of Calais, from where exiles try to reach Britain, has been denounced by human rights organizations. As incoming president of the European Union, he announced that after the drowning of 27 people in the English Channel in November, border policing by the European agency Frontex should be reinforced, disregarding the higher risk for migrants.Earlier in 2021, Mr. Macron had a bill voted on by his parliamentary majority against the alleged “separatism” of Muslims, who have been deemed a threat to republican values. Criticized by religious groups and advocacy groups as an attack of civil liberties, this law has already allowed the government to dissolve several nongovernmental organizations.The xenophobic and Islamophobic notes in Mr. Macron’s policies may come as a surprise from a candidate whose constituency is mostly composed of middle- and upper-class voters as well as retirees for whom immigration and secularism rank far lower as priorities than purchasing power, the health system and the environment. But with the left candidate of La France Insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, polling third in the first round, Mr. Macron appears to have assumed that he would win the presidential election on his right, against Républicains’ Valérie Pécresse, Reconquête’s Éric Zemmour, and above all, Rassemblement National’s Marine Le Pen, in second place, with a constituency attuned to her nationalist program.It’s been done before. In 2002, Jacques Chirac adopted a similar approach in a runoff against Jean-Marie Le Pen. Ahead of the vote, Le Pen warned that “voters always prefer the original to the copy.” He was wrong, and lost by about 60 percent. In mid-March, when his daughter Marine was polling between 16 and 22 percent behind Mr. Macron in the second round of the election, it seemed like his prediction would continue to fall short. But now, when the difference between the candidates has plummeted to as little as 2 percent, it looks close to coming true.During his 2017 campaign, Mr. Macron presented himself as a renovator of politics and a rampart against the far right. Today, he appears to be something very different: a traditional politician, offering a bridge to the far right. For a president who promised to remake France in his image, it is a worrying legacy.Didier Fassin, an anthropologist and physician, is the James D. Wolfensohn professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. He works on moral and political issues and on crisis in contemporary societies. He is recently the author of “The Will to Punish,” “Life. A Critical User’s Manual,” and “Policing the City. An Ethnographic.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      With Macron and Le Pen Leading Election Field, a Fractured France Decides

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      In Dijon, magnificence and malaise sit side by side, in the image of a country divided before the presidential vote on Sunday.DIJON, France — At Le Carillon, a convivial place for a coq au vin as France prepares to vote in a critical election, the heated political debates that always characterized past campaigns have fallen silent, as if the country were anesthetized.In other election seasons, the restaurant would buzz for months with arguments over candidates and issues. This time, said the owner, Martine Worner-Bablon, “Nobody talks politics. I don’t know, people’s heads are elsewhere. No confidence in politicians. If anything, they talk about the war.”In this strange atmosphere, overshadowed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Emmanuel Macron, a centrist, holds a slight lead over Marine Le Pen, a hard-right nationalist, according to the latest polls. But his comfortable advantage of more than 10 percentage points has evaporated over the past month as his dismissal of debate and failure to engage have irked voters.“What astonishes me is that the president of the French Republic does not think first about the French,” Ms. Le Pen, whose newfound mild manner masks a harsh anti-immigrant program, said last month. It was a remark that hit home as Mr. Macron spent most of his time pondering how to end a European war.President Emmanuel Macron held a campaign rally last week in Nanterre, near Paris.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesWith the vote spread over two rounds starting on Sunday, many people still undecided and an expected abstention rate of up to 30 percent, the election’s outcome is deeply uncertain. During her last campaign, in 2017, Ms. Le Pen chose to appear at the Kremlin with President Vladimir V. Putin, who said with a smirk that he did not wish “to influence events in any way,” as she vowed to lift sanctions against Russia “quite quickly” if elected.The possibility of France lurching toward an anti-NATO, pro-Russia, xenophobic and nationalistic position in the event of a Le Pen victory constitutes a potential shock as great as the 2016 British vote for Brexit or the election the same year of Donald J. Trump in the United States.At what President Biden has repeatedly called an “inflection point” in the global confrontation between autocracy and democracy, a France under Ms. Le Pen would push the needle in the very direction the United States opposes.All seems tranquil in Dijon, for now. Quiet and immaculate, its center a succession of churches and palaces, the capital of the Burgundy region is as good a symbol as any of “la douce France,” the sweet land of gastronomic delights that finds its way into many people’s hearts. But Dijon, a town of 155,000 inhabitants, has its turbulent underside, in the image of a country where beauty and belligerence and magnificence and malaise are often uneasy bedfellows.The city center of Dijon. Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesAmong regulars at Le Carillon, inquiries as to the whereabouts of nuclear bomb shelters are on the rise. Emmanuel Bichot, a center-right city councilor, does not like the country’s mood. “There’s a lot of frustration, of aggression, of tension,” he said. “People get angry very quickly. This has not been an election about programs. I don’t hear anyone debating them.”Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionThe run-up to the first round of the election has been dominated by issues such as security, immigration and national identity.On the Scene: A Times reporter attended a rally held by Marine Le Pen, the far-right French presidential candidate. Here is what he saw.Challenges to Re-election: A troubled factory in President Emmanuel Macron’s hometown shows his struggle in winning the confidence of French workers.A Late Surge: After recently rising in voter surveys, Jean-Luc Mélenchon could become the first left-wing candidate since 2012 to reach the second round of the election.A Political Bellwether: Auxerre has backed the winner in the presidential race for 40 years. This time, many residents see little to vote for.He paused to contemplate this puzzle. “It’s come down to Macron’s Machiavellian manipulations against Le Pen’s resilience.” This is the third time that Ms. Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally, formerly the National Front, has run for president. The two leaders in the first round of voting go through to a runoff on April 24.One fundamental development contributed to the fractured, incoherent nature of the election. Mr. Macron’s agile occupation of the political center, destroying first the center-left Socialist Party and then the center-right Republicans, effectively wiped out two pillars of postwar French democracy.What was left was the president against the extremes, whether to the right in the form of Ms. Le Pen or to the left in the form of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Between them, Ms. Le Pen, the far-right upstart Éric Zemmour and Mr. Mélenchon are set to garner some 50 percent of the vote, the latest poll from the Ifop-Fiducial group showed.“There’s a lot of frustration, of aggression, of tension,” said Emmanuel Bichot, a center-right city councilor in Dijon.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times“This is a country that no longer has the political structures that corresponds to what a democracy is,” François Hollande, Mr. Macron’s Socialist predecessor as president, said in an interview last month in Paris. “And I believe, if you look across Europe, it’s only in France that political parties have collapsed to this point.”Contemplating his own allegiance to the center-left, he said, “The left has completely blown up, divided, and the most responsible part of it disappeared.”At the same time, Mr. Macron’s own party, La République en Marche, has proved a largely empty vessel.In this vacuum, the campaign has often descended into candidates shrieking at each other, while a lofty leader takes the view that his presidential stature should be enough to win the day.That attitude, however, underestimates French restiveness. Not for two decades has a French president won a second term. Regicides are a thing of the past, but political decapitations at five-year intervals are not.Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader, campaigning in Stiring-Wendel last week.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesAt the same time, immigration, security and a sharply rising cost of living have coalesced into an ugly brew. Many French people feel left out from the economic growth Mr. Macron has delivered to the country and anxious about the violence they see in their neighborhoods.Referring to several Islamist terrorist attacks in France, Irène Fornal, a retired state pension fund director ensconced at Dijon’s Café de l’Industrie, said, “After Charlie Hebdo, after Bataclan, after the murder of Samuel Paty, evil was personified by the immigrant stranger, and the country split.”Dijon, like many towns in France, has its projects, underprivileged areas of nondescript high-rises where immigrants, often Muslims from North Africa, and their descendants predominate, and the drug trade brings violence between rival gangs.“Insecurity pollutes the life of people,” said François Rebsamen, the city’s longtime mayor and a lifetime Socialist who has joined the Macron campaign, given his own party’s collapse. “In these areas, tranquillity is elusive.”“Insecurity pollutes the life of people,” said François Rebsamen, Dijon’s longtime mayor.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesTwo years ago, in the Les Grésilles neighborhood of Dijon, street battles between Chechens and North Africans erupted over five days after a 16-year-old Chechen boy was assaulted by drug dealers from the Maghreb. In another depressed area, called Fontaine d’Ouche, some stores are still boarded up after drive-by shootings late last year.Mathieu Depoil — who heads a social center in Fontaine d’Ouche that tries to improve people’s lives through sports, carpentry, gardening and other activities — said the area’s roughly 7,000 inhabitants, mostly immigrants, formed a “zone of precariousness” with a 25 percent poverty rate, high unemployment and many single-parent families.“People complain to me that if they say where they live, they are told, ‘Oh, you live with savages,’” he added.A mock election he organized recently with a debate on the 12 official presidential candidates drew only a handful of people. “I am not sure people will go vote,” he said. “They are disillusioned, they feel alone and isolated after Covid-19. They have lost any faith in collective solutions.”The Fontaine d’Ouche neighborhood in Dijon. Many French people feel left out from the economic growth Mr. Macron has delivered to the country and anxious about the violence they see in their neighborhoods.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesWe went for a stroll through the neighborhood, visited late last month by Mr. Macron as he finally woke up to the need to get out of Paris and hear the concerns of people struggling to get by. The posters of him that were hurriedly put up are now gone.Instead, the bespectacled face of Mr. Mélenchon, the hard-left candidate, adorns many walls with the slogan, “Another world is possible.”Who Is Running for President of France?Card 1 of 6The campaign begins. More

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      How Marine Le Pen Threatens to Upend French Elections

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      The far-right presidential candidate has opened up about her personal life and tweaked her policies to gain sympathy and credibility among more mainstream voters.STIRING-WENDEL, France — Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader making her third attempt to become president of France, already had the backing of voters who came to listen to her recently in Stiring-Wendel, a former coal-mining town struggling to reinvent itself.But after a 40-minute speech focusing on the rising cost of living, Ms. Le Pen succeeded in doing what even few of her supporters would have predicted just months ago: impressing them. Voters trickling out of an auditorium into the cold evening said she had become “less extreme,” more “mature” and “self-assured” — even “presidential.”“She has softened, she is more composed, calmer, more serene,” said Yohan Brun, 19, a student who grew up in Stiring-Wendel and had come to listen to Ms. Le Pen because “she cares more about the French people than the other candidates.”As France votes on Sunday, polls are predicting that this election will be a rematch of the previous one, pitting Ms. Le Pen against President Emmanuel Macron in a second-round showdown. But that does not mean that precisely the same Ms. Le Pen is running.Ms. Le Pen has revamped her image since the last election five years ago. She has pragmatically abandoned certain ideas that had alienated mainstream voters. She has held on to others that certify her far-right credentials. And she has shifted emphasis toward pocketbook issues.Some who attended Ms. Le Pen’s speech in Stiring-Wendel said she had become “less extreme,” more “mature” and even “presidential.”Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesBut as important, she has self-consciously sanded the rough edges off her persona in an effort to make herself appear more presidential and voter-friendly.The makeover is part of a long and deliberate strategy by Ms. Le Pen to “undemonize” herself and her party, and ultimately gain the French presidency. While the effort remains unconvincing to many who consider her a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it has nonetheless succeeded in giving her a last-minute surge in the polls before Sunday’s election that is worrying Mr. Macron’s camp.“Marine Le Pen appears more sympathetic than Emmanuel Macron,” said Pierre Person, a national lawmaker of the president’s party, adding that he was worried that she could win. More

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      French Election Opens Up as Marine Le Pen Surges

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      President Emmanuel Macron’s belated entry into the campaign and his focus on Ukraine have left him vulnerable to a strong challenge from the right.PARIS — At last, Emmanuel Macron stepped forth. The French president entered a vast arena this weekend, plunged into darkness and lit only by spotlights and glow sticks, before a crowd of 30,000 supporters in a domed stadium in the Paris suburbs.It was a highly choreographed appearance — his first campaign rally for an election now less than a week away — with something of the air of a rock concert. But Mr. Macron had come to sound an alarm.Do not think “it’s all decided, that it’s all going to go well,” he told the crowd, a belated acknowledgment that a presidential election that had seemed almost certain to return him to power is suddenly wide open.Saturday’s campaign rally was Mr. Macron’s first for an election that is now less than a week away.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesThe diplomatic attempt to end the war in Ukraine has been time-consuming for Mr. Macron, so much so that he has had little time for the French election, only to awaken to the growing danger that France could lurch to the anti-immigrant right, with its Moscow-friendly politics and its skepticism of NATO.Marine Le Pen, the hard-right leader making her third attempt to gain power, has surged over the past couple of weeks, as her patient focus on cost-of-living issues has resonated with the millions of French people struggling to make ends meet after an increase of more than 35 percent in gas prices over the past year.The most recent poll from the respected Ifop-Fiducial group showed Ms. Le Pen gaining 21.5 percent of the vote in the first round of voting next Sunday, almost double the vote share of the fading extreme-right upstart Éric Zemmour, with 11 percent, and closing the gap on Mr. Macron with 28 percent. The two leading candidates go through to a runoff on April 24.Marine Le Pen, the hard-right leader making her third attempt to gain power, has surged over the past couple of weeks.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesMore worrying for Mr. Macron, the poll suggested he would edge Ms. Le Pen by just 53.5 percent to 46.5 percent in the second round. In the last presidential election, in 2017, Mr. Macron trounced Ms. Le Pen by 66.1 percent to 33.9 percent in the runoff.“It’s an illusion that this election is won for Mr. Macron,” said Nicolas Tenzer, an author who teaches political science at Sciences Po university. “With a high abstention rate, which is possible, and the level of hatred toward the president among some people, there could be a real surprise. The idea that Le Pen wins is not impossible.”Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionThe run-up to the first round of the election has been dominated by issues such as security, immigration and national identity.On Stage: As the vote approaches, theaters and comedy venues are tackling the campaign with one message: Don’t trust politicians. Behind the Scene: In France, where political finance laws are strict, control over the media has provided an avenue for billionaires to influence the election.A Political Bellwether: Auxerre has backed the winner in the presidential race for 40 years. This time, many residents see little to vote for.Private Consultants: A report showing that firms like McKinsey earned large sums of money to do work for his government has put President Emmannuel Macron on the defensive.Édouard Philippe, a former prime minister in Mr. Macron’s government, warned this past week that “of course Ms. Le Pen can win.”A migrant family waiting for emergency accommodation with a host family last year in front of the Paris City Hall. With Ms. Le Pen gaining momentum, there are fears that France could lurch toward the anti-immigrant right.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesThis notion would have seemed ridiculous a month ago. Ms. Le Pen looked like a has-been after trying and failing in 2012 and 2017. Mr. Zemmour, a glib anti-immigrant TV pundit turned politician with more than a touch of Donald Trump about him, had upstaged her on the right of the political spectrum by suggesting that Islam and France were incompatible.Now, however, Mr. Zemmour’s campaign appears to be sinking in a welter of bombast, as Ms. Le Pen, who said last year that “Ukraine belongs to Russia’s sphere of influence,” reaps the benefits of her milquetoast makeover.Mr. Zemmour may in the end have done Ms. Le Pen a service. By outflanking her on the right, by becoming the go-to candidate for outright xenophobia, he has helped the candidate of the National Rally (formerly the National Front) in her “banalization” quest — the attempt to gain legitimacy and look more “presidential” by becoming part of the French political mainstream.Mr. Macron has fallen two or three percentage points in polls over the past week, increasingly criticized for his refusal to debate other candidates and his general air of having more important matters on his mind, like war and peace in Europe, than the laborious machinations of French democracy.A front-page cartoon in the daily newspaper Le Monde last week showed Mr. Macron clutching his cellphone and turning away from the crowd at a rally. “Vladimir, I’m just finishing with this chore and I’ll call you back,” he says.Supporters of Ms. Le Pen sticking campaign posters next to those of Éric Zemmour, another far-right candidate, in Vigneux-De-Bretagne, in western France. Jeremias Gonzalez/Associated PressWith a colorless prime minister in Jean Castex — Mr. Macron has tended to be wary of anyone who might impinge on his aura — there have been few other compelling political figures able to carry the president’s campaign in his absence. His centrist political party, La République en Marche, has gained no traction in municipal and regional politics. It is widely viewed as a mere vessel for Mr. Macron’s agenda.His government’s wide use of consulting firms, including McKinsey — involving spending of more than $1.1 billion, some of it on the best ways to confront Covid-19 — has also led to a wave of criticism of Mr. Macron in recent days. A former banker, Mr. Macron has often been attacked as “the president of the rich” in a country with deeply ambivalent feelings about wealth and capitalism.Still, Mr. Macron has proved adept at occupying the entire central spectrum of French politics through his insistence that freeing up the economy is compatible with maintaining, and even increasing, the French state’s role in social protection. Prominent figures of the center-left and center-right attended his rally on Saturday.Over the course of the past five years, he has shown both faces of his politics, first simplifying the labyrinthine labor code and spurring a start-up business culture, then adopting a policy of “whatever it costs” to save people’s livelihoods during the coronavirus pandemic. His handling of that crisis, after a slow start, is widely viewed as successful.“He absolutely proved up to the task,” Mr. Tenzer said.Mr. Macron adopted a policy of “whatever it costs” to save people’s livelihoods during the pandemic.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesStill, much of the left feels betrayed by his policies, whether on the environment, the economy or the place of Islam in French society, and Mr. Macron was at pains on Saturday to counter the view that his heart lies on the right. Citing investments in education, promising to raise minimum pensions and give a tax-free bonus to employees this summer, Mr. Macron proclaimed his concern for those whose salaries vanish in “gasoline, bills, rents.”It felt like catch-up time after Mr. Macron had judged that his image as a statesman-peacemaker would be enough to ensure him a second term. Vincent Martigny, a professor of political science at the University of Nice, said of Mr. Macron that “his choice to remain head of state until the end prevented him from becoming a real candidate.”Who Is Running for President of France?Card 1 of 6The campaign begins. More

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      How Macron Stands as France's Presidential Election Looms

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      The president, not even a formal candidate yet, seems to benefit from standing above the anti-immigrant fray.PARIS — France faces an unusual presidential election in seven weeks, with no credible left-wing contender, an electorate so disenchanted that abstention could be high, and a clear favorite who has not even announced his candidacy.That favorite is President Emmanuel Macron, 44, who has opted to stay above the fray, delaying his decision to declare he is running until some time close to the March deadline, yet another way to indulge his penchant for keeping his opponents guessing.Comfortable in his lofty centrist perch, Mr. Macron has watched as the right and extreme-right tear one another to shreds. Immigration and security have largely pushed out other themes, from climate change to the ballooning debt France has accumulated in fighting the coronavirus crisis.“To call your child ‘Mohammed’ is to colonize France,” says Éric Zemmour, the far-right upstart of the election who has parlayed his notoriety as a TV pundit into a platform of anti-immigrant vitriol.Only he, in his telling, stands between French civilization and its conquest by Islam and “woke” American political correctness. Like former President Donald J. Trump, to whom he spoke this week, Mr. Zemmour uses constant provocation to stay at the top of the news.Éric Zemmour, the far-right presidential candidate, at a campaign rally last month in Cannes. He uses constant provocation to stay at the top of the news.Daniel Cole/Associated PressStill, Mr. Macron has a clear lead in polls, which give him about 25 percent of the vote in the first round of the election on April 10. Mr. Zemmour and two other right-wing candidates are in the 12 to 18 percent range. Splintered left-wing parties are trailing and, for now, seem like virtual spectators for the first time since the foundation of the Fifth Republic in 1958.France generally leans right; this time it has lurched. “The left lost the popular classes, many of whom moved to the far right because it had no answer on immigration and Islam,” said Pascal Bruckner, an author and political philosopher. “So it’s the unknowable chameleon, Macron, against the right.”The beneficiary of a perception that he has beaten the coronavirus pandemic and steered the economy through its challenges, Mr. Macron appears stronger today than for some time. The economy grew 7 percent in the last quarter. Unemployment is at 7.4 percent, low for France. The lifting of Covid-19 measures before the election, including mask requirements in many public places, seems probable, a step of potent symbolism.It is a measure of the difficulty of attacking Mr. Macron that he seems at once to embody what is left of social democracy in France — once the preserve of a Socialist Party that is now on life support — and policies embraced by the right, like his tough stand against what he has called “Islamist separatism.”Paris in December. Many in the country are struggling to pay rising energy bills and are weary from the two-year struggle against the pandemic.Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times“He is supple,” said Bruno Le Maire, the economy minister. Mr. Macron’s predecessor as president, François Hollande, a Socialist who feels betrayed by the incumbent’s shift rightward, put it less kindly in a recent book: “He hops, like a frog on water lilies, from one conviction to another.”The two leading candidates in the first round go through to a second on April 24. The crux of the election has therefore become a fierce right-on-right battle for a second-place passage to a runoff against Mr. Macron.Marine Le Pen, the perennial anti-immigrant candidate, has become Mr. Zemmour’s fiercest critic, as defections to him from her party have grown. She has said his supporters include “some Nazis” and accused him of seeking “the death” of her National Rally party, formerly called the National Front.Mr. Zemmour, whose own extremist view is that Islam is “incompatible” with France, has ridiculed her for trying to distinguish between extremist Islamism and the faith itself. He has attacked her for not embracing the idea of the “great replacement” — a racist conspiracy theory that white Christian populations are being intentionally replaced by nonwhite immigrants, leading to what Mr. Zemmour calls the “Creolization” of societies.The president would be confident of his chances against either Ms. Le Pen, whom he beat handily in the second round in 2017, or Mr. Zemmour, even if the glib intellectualism of this descendant of an Algerian Jewish family has overcome many of the taboos that kept conservative French voters from embracing the hard right.Marine Le Pen, the perennial anti-immigrant candidate, has become Mr. Zemmour’s fiercest critic.Valery Hache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFrance is troubled, with many people struggling to pay rising energy bills and weary from the two-year struggle against the pandemic, but a blow-up-the-system choice, like the vote for Mr. Trump in the United States or Britain’s choice of Brexit, would be a surprise.Paulette Brémond, a retiree who voted for Mr. Macron in 2017, said she was hesitating between the president and Mr. Zemmour. “The immigration question is grave,” she said. “I am waiting to see what Mr. Macron says about it. He probably won’t go as far as Mr. Zemmour, but if he sounds effective, I may vote for him again.”Until Mr. Macron declares his candidacy, she added, “the campaign feels like it has not started” — a common sentiment in a country where for now the political jostling can feel like shadow boxing.That is scarcely a concern to the president, who has portrayed himself as obliged to focus on high matters of state. These include his prominent diplomatic role in trying to stop a war in Ukraine through his relationship with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and ending, along with allies, the troubled French anti-terrorist campaign in Mali.If Mali has been a conspicuous failure, albeit one that seems unlikely to sway many voters, the Ukraine crisis, as long as it does not lead to war, has allowed Mr. Macron to look like Europe’s de facto leader in the quest for constructive engagement with Russia. Mr. Zemmour and Ms. Le Pen, who between them represent some 30 percent of the vote, make no secret of their admiration for Mr. Putin.Ukrainian soldiers at a front-line position in eastern Ukraine this week. Mr. Macron has portrayed himself as obliged to focus on high-level matters of state like trying to stop a war in Ukraine.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesOne member of Mr. Macron’s putative re-election team, who insisted on anonymity per government practice, said the possibility of a runoff against the center-right Republican candidate, Valérie Pécresse, was more concerning than facing either Ms. Le Pen or Mr. Zemmour in the second round.A graduate of the same elite school as Mr. Macron, a competent two-term president of France’s most populous region and a centrist by instinct, Ms. Pécresse might appeal in the second round to center-left and left-wing voters who regard Mr. Macron as a traitor.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 6The campaign begins. More

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      In France, a Racist Conspiracy Theory Edges Into the Mainstream

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      Valérie Pécresse, the center-right presidential candidate, used the phrase ‘great replacement’ in a speech punctuated with coded attacks on immigrants and Muslims.PARIS — Until a couple of years ago, the “great replacement” — a racist conspiracy theory that white Christian populations are being intentionally replaced by nonwhite immigrants — was so toxic in France that even Marine Le Pen, the longtime leader of the country’s far right, pointedly refused to use it.But in a presidential race that has widened the boundaries of political acceptability in France, Valérie Pécresse, the candidate of the mainstream center-right party in the coming election, used the phrase over the weekend in a speech punctuated with coded attacks against immigrants and Muslims.The use of the slogan — in what had been billed as the most important speech so far by Ms. Pécresse, a top rival of President Emmanuel Macron — has fueled intense criticism from both her opponents as well as allies within her party. It also underscored France’s further shift to the right, especially among middle-class voters, and the overwhelming influence of right-wing ideas and candidates in this campaign, political experts said.The “great replacement,” a conspiracy theory adopted by many white supremacists worldwide, has inspired mass killings in the United States and New Zealand.Éric Zemmour, a far-right author, television pundit and now presidential candidate, was the leading figure to popularize the concept in France in the past decade — describing it as a civilizational threat against the country and the rest of Europe.In a 75-minute speech before 7,000 supporters in Paris — intended to introduce Ms. Pécresse, 54, the current leader of the Paris region and a former national minister of the budget and then higher education, to voters nationwide — Ms. Pécresse adopted Mr. Zemmour’s themes, saying the election would determine whether France is a “a united nation or a divided nation.”The far-right presidential candidate Éric Zemmour, center, was the leading figure to popularize the concept of the “great replacement” in France in the past decade.Daniel Cole/Associated PressShe said that France was not doomed to the “great replacement” and called on her supporters “to rise up.” In the same speech, she drew a distinction between “French of the heart” and “French of papers” — an expression used by the extreme right to point to naturalized citizens. Vowing not to let France be subjugated, she said of the symbol of France, “Marianne is not a veiled woman” — referring to the Muslim veil.“By using the ‘great replacement,’ she gave it legitimacy and put the ideas of the extreme right at the heart of the debate of the presidential race,” said Philippe Corcuff, an expert on the far right who teaches at the Institute of Political Studies in Lyon. “When she talks of ‘French of papers,’ she’s saying that distinctions will be made between French people according to ethnic criteria. Her stigmatization of the Muslim veil is in the same logic of the extreme right.”The use of a term once limited to the extreme right by Ms. Pécresse — who is the candidate of the Republicans, the party of former Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac — marked a “Rubicon,” said Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist presidential candidate and current mayor of Paris.But it also made uneasy people inside her own party, who still want to draw clear lines between it and the extreme right. Xavier Bertrand, a party heavyweight, said, “The great replacement, that’s not us,” according to French news media.Polls show Ms. Pécresse, Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Zemmour neck and neck for second place behind Mr. Macron in the first round of voting, scheduled for April 10. One of them would face off against Mr. Macron, who has also shifted to the right, especially in the past two years of his presidency, in the second round on April 24.The sudden rise of Mr. Zemmour as a candidate has injected the “great replacement” and other explosive issues into the race, forcing other candidates on the right to fine-tune their positions at the risk of losing support to him.Ms. Le Pen had expressly rejected the slogan, criticizing it as a conspiracy theory. While she has kept her distance from the term, her party’s president, Jordan Bardella, has started referring to it in recent months.Marine Le Pen, the longtime leader of the country’s far right, had expressly rejected the slogan, criticizing it as a conspiracy.Raymond Roig/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFacing criticism, Ms. Pécresse backpedaled a little, saying her use of the expression had been misconstrued.But Nicolas Lebourg, a political scientist specializing in the right and far right, said that her use of the term simply reflected a political calculation: the center right’s traditional middle-class supporters have also shifted rightward in recent years.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 6The campaign begins. More