Today's Figaro shows Villepin cozying up to Sarko and saying that he's a man "constant and faithful". And MAM is saying that she's going to be Sarko's attack dog because it's better for a woman to attack another woman.
Looks to me like Sarko has got his ducks all in a row and their quacking in unison.
Villepin's move is interesting.
He does not want to be left behind.
His benefactor will be sliding off the stage into the oblivion of retirement, and Villepin now knows that Chirac hadn't the horsepower to propel Villepin into Elysee. So now Villepin must cozy up to Sarkozy, and he is.
Sarkozy needs to keep his enemy, Villepin, close. The two can be fruitfully engaged with each other for the benefit of France, assuming Sarkozy wins.
It will be a really tight election.
I was a lot more sanguine on Royal early on, but she has put all her cards on the table. It is not a matter of my liking her policies or not - I can't vote (although my wife does). Just being analytical and objective about it, Royal did a brilliant PR job to capture the Socialists, and she has the attention of everyone. But she has been, what is the best word here?, flat. She is honest. She has stated her platform. Nobody really doubts that she'll try to do that if she's elected. A nice, solid technocrat who is honest and who communicates with her constituents. These are plusses. But there are things that are gimmicky here - though sincere. Gimmicky isn't enough to win, or to lose either. On foreign policy she appears naive...to me anyway, also to others.
Sarkozy is in many ways an asshole. But he is decisive. And on security matters he has been hard, and France wants some hardness now. People don't want street protests suppressed - that's France, it's a right, it moves the country, etc. But they DO want the willy-nilly destruction of property in these Muslim riots suppressed. That is over the top and expensive. And people are feeling insecure, too, because of the crime.
Sarkozy looks better on these things than Royal.
On the other hand, Sarkozy wants to frankly Americanize the French economy. This is a clear weakness.
How will the people vote?
My relatives, who are generally socialists, are uninspired by Royal. They don't like Sarkozy.
They don't like the idea of the "Vote vaginale" taking the elections.
I think that the election in France is going to be so uninspiring, so rote, and so close as a result, that it will actually be finally decided in the DOM. I noted that Villepin, Sarkozy, Royal, and Le Pen - all of them are pitching woo at the Guadeloupeens, Martiniquais, et al. They've done the math and realize that the million or so votes from the DOM could be the pivot, given that the DOM are not as sown into the usual fabric of internal French politics.
I think Sarkozy and Villepin realize that the Muslim ethnic vote in France is going to go socialist, but that can be balanced somewhat by the non-Muslim ethnic vote in the DOM. Hence the push. Le Pen, for his part, likes to get up there on stage with blacks and declare solidarity as Frenchmen and get their support, because it allows him to needle his opposition in the metropole with the pictures, etc.
If the election were held TODAY, who would win?
I don't know.
It would be very, very close.