Limited? Conservative Marine LePen was on the ballot. She was the French Trump, but the voters chose the leftist Macron instead.
Apparently the French people believe their media a lot more than we believe ours.
If one sets the issue of immigration aside, I think you’ll find that LePen and Macron are just different flavors of Socialist. Macron is more “in bed with” the elites and the big businesses, but I hardly think you’ll find LePen chopping entitlements by half, and so on, which would still leave France more Socialist than even a Bernie Sanders administration with Dem majorities in Congress, in the US.
Without hacking out most of the Socialist “give-aways” / social programs, there’s no way to reduce the “take-aways” (taxes, etc.) That is the “black hole” of socialism which rears it’s ugly head after a while, especially when there is no powerful economic force, such as the energy industry, in the US, to help pay for the largesse. Then add in the effects of lack of reward and incentive for most citizens, on the one hand, and the sense of entitlement on the other, and the “black hole” becomes ever more difficult to escape. LePen might slow down the descent a little?
It really is a LOT like an addiction, and as most any Freeper knows from observation (hopefully only that!), in most cases of addiction, a truly wretched state (”hitting bottom”) must be reached before a true reset can be accomplished. (I don’t know if you know the song “Snowblind”, by Styx — a truly frightening song — but IMO it applies to the trap of socialism almost as well as it does to addiction to cocaine...)
Resetting societies is usually a hell of a mess, with no guarantee “We Won’t Get Fooled Again”. (The Who) But when, not if, France gets to a point similar to what is happening in Venezuela, well, I just hope not too much blood is shed, and crazies don’t get their hands on the nukes.