Of course it will happen again. It happens constantly already, it just generally doesn't involve foreign powers. But French banks are reticent to fund campaigns now, because Sarkozy made them lose a lot of money with his shady accounts in 2007 and 2012. Which means Le Pen is merely a precursor and next time more candidates will ask foreign banks for funds.
This time it was Russia, next time may very well be Qatar.
This particular hack wasn't necessarily Russia's doing. Putin certainly isn't above doing it, but the hack could also have been some of Le Pen's friends, or Macron's enemies, in France itself. Or it could have been somebody else entirely.
The Russian government isn't the only group in the world that would do this.
Russia merely has a motive for the hack. But unlike the DNC hack in 2016, we don't have solid proof of Russian's involvement in the Macron hack just yet.
Macron's IT team seems to be convinced this is Russia's doing but yeah there is no actual proof yet (and probably never will). At the end of the day it didn't change much - Le Pen referring to her potential victory as a "divine surprise" (the expression Charles Maurras used to welcome Hitler and the Vichy government) did a lot more to decide this result than the hack.
LePen didn't just get beat, she got annihilated. A 30 point loss puts you on the absolute fringe of what a country will accept. France categorically rejected the favored canidate of Trump and Putin, and sent her home with an embarrassing performance. And it's not because they are so enamored with Macron. They looked at the US and said "no f'n way we're doing that". And quite a sad day for those with online avatars of cartoon frogs. Though how they'll spin this will certainly be the height of mental gymnastics.
Wasn't her dad an actual fascist? Probably not very good optics. I'm none too surprised personally as it was the consensus opinion from those i'd spoken to.
Wasn't her dad an actual fascist? Probably not very good optics. I'm none too surprised personally as it was the consensus opinion from those i'd spoken to.
Yeah, he was. And her choice to continue to represent his party, even if just in name, doesn't do much to taper accusations that you have fascist leanings yourself.
Well, that's 5 years of good ol' fashioned fun for the whole family right there. More of the same... when will they ever learn?
They did learn. They learned they have first world problems, which aren't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, and decided not to push their country over the cliff. They learned from the mistakes the USA made.
France had a 75% turnout for their Election. Or, to put it another way, FAR higher than any US Election since 1896, but their lowest since 1969. Why?? For one, they vote on wknds, and not Tuesdays when nearly all of the population is working. No voter suppression efforts being aimed at college students, minorities and the poor in certain States. A news media that goes into a blackout near the Election so as not to unduly influence it. And no Electoral College, but a system where everyone's vote carries the same weight. In other words, France (and most other sane countries) have a system that ENCOURAGES it's populace to vote. America has nothing of the sort. We still vote on Tuesday because farmers in the late 1700s needed the extra days to travel by horse to get to town to cast votes. Now?? It's just a way to depress turnout because some people simply can't get away from work to vote, despite laws that say they technically have to allowed to. We claim to be world's greatest experiment in democracy, yet can't even manage to have a national holiday to make sure everyone can participate in their most sacred right. Meanwhile, some banks and schools still close on Columbus Day. American exceptionalism?? Hardly......
I only just found now out about the French election... life isn't so bad without TV/Internet for a while. I am glad I chickened out of making an official call on who will win as I would have lost some serious coin if I put money on my Le Pen odds.
Anyway Congrats to Macron on the decisive win. Also congrats to Le Pen's National front party that has become more powerful than it ever has been for a long time.
Now with the pleasantries aside... Since people here are talking about "5 years" I wonder how much more Islamic migration and Islamic Terror attacks will occur in France over the next 5 years? Maybe Macron's own words of "France has no culture" will actually come to fruition 5 years from now?
There has been a general problem with the arguments put forth here, and that people are triangulating their personal social issue's with some incident in some country.
You should evaluate an incident by itself, and not look at it through the prism of your own issue's.
In terms of France's election, this has very little to do with Trump or Putin themselves and it is bizarre to even object to either party because of Trump, French people don't vote because of the American President (Or Ex-President taking Obama's retarded attempt to endorse Macron).
In France, the prior parties (Socialist and Republic Party) have been in power since 1958, They have been soundly rejected (collapsed) by the rise of Front National/ En Marche.
I don't know who would argue Front National is some 'fringe movement' which really hearkens back to rhetoric of 'Deplorables' because any analysis of the data shows a far more revealing fact.
Front National, Prior to the last few years, hovered around 14% in all voting areas since 1980 (Assembly, Regional and Presidential) and skyrocketed to 25-34% in all those area's in the last few years, 30% (although 25% didn't vote so such a statement is not accurate) is no fringe movement.
The voting patterns for support of Front National perfectly mirror the Exact voting patterns of Brexit and the American Elections, In other words it is driven by economic and financial state of the voters and can be seen by Geography (because industries are geographic still).
So indeed you may try to argue that the voters for Front National are 'the fringe of what society deems acceptable' just as was argued for supporters of Brexit or the Republican Party, But per the voting patterns.
What you'd be arguing is that the poor are the fringes of acceptable society.
Not a great statement to make now, and what this reveals is the a massive class conflict since Socio-Economic class differences are now reflected in political parties.
Do you think its a good thing whereby political parties now completely reflect either the rich, OR the poor? That sounds like the start of oppression from something like the Middle-Ages where the Noble Aristocrats ruled everything and treated the peasants like Outcasts.
The Front National just got routed by 33 points in the Election. Macron got DOUBLE the amount of votes. Double. And your argument is Urban vs Rural, which we don't need a map to tell us. And there are massive areas to the south of Paris on your map that also went more heavily for Front National that have the second lowest color-coded unemployment rate. Also, this is from two years ago, here's one from 3 HOURS ago:
In areas with more than 10% unemployment, yeah, LePen did better. BETTER being the key word. Because she still lost those areas across the country by 15%. She lost sparsely populated areas by 19%. LePen couldn't even eek out a win in her strongholds. According to this map, she was able to manage a win in two regions in the North. Every single other section of the country went to Macron. And even MY map is totally misleading because it is grading LePen on an INSANE curve. Areas that went strongly for Macron are colored LePen's color of yellow because.....well who the hell knows why, I have never seen a Election map like this in my life. It's as misleading as the maps people post of swaths of red in the United States as if that's where the most people actually live.
I realize Trump and LePen are held to an entirely different standard, but these are the mental gymnastics I am talking about. A total and utter drubbing painted as some kind of harbinger, if only a third of the ENTIRE country had voted a different way.
According to @jjstraka34's source, Macron won by significant margins even in rural areas with high unemployment... It seems France does not have the same kind of partisan geographic divide that the U.S. does.
And though turnout was high compared to the U.S., apparently France's voter turnout was the lowest in almost 50 years.
Lets be perfectly honest, you have personal issue's with Le Pen's party and so want to argue their loss as some astounding defeat, which doesn't agree with the facts (which you ignored).
The trend is that her party, and Nationalist parties are growing at a very alarming rate.
A party that goes from 14% (and a true fringe party) and in only a few short years becomes the second competing party (33%) is no real loss but an astounding victory.
This also comes on top of this fact, The media in France was almost universally against Le Pen. much the same way as Brexit, a fact quite often ignored honestly.
If the Libertarian party in U.S. went from 5% (what it is now) and in one election jumps to 30%, it would be an astounding victory and any political analysis would agree with that.
Lets be perfectly honest, you have personal issue's with Le Pen's party and so want to argue their loss as some astounding defeat, which doesn't agree with the facts (which you ignored).
The trend is that her party, and Nationalist parties are growing at a very alarming rate.
A party that goes from 14% (and a true fringe party) and in only a few short years becomes the second competing party (33%) is no real loss but an astounding victory.
This also comes on top of this fact, The media in France was almost universally against Le Pen..
By all rights, given Brexit and Trump, LePen SHOULD have had the wind at her back. Except in the wake of Brexit, the leaders of that movement were revealed to have been total frauds who lied about nearly every aspect of what it would do for the country, followed up by Theresa May calling for Elections after she swore she wouldn't. Meanwhile, in the US, you have a President elected who promised not to TOUCH Medicaid and just had his House pass the first part of a bill that slashes it by nearly a trillion dollars. Now, no, these aren't the immediate concerns of French voters (though Brexit is more so), but maybe, just maybe, French voters saw the two major Electoral events of the past year, saw what the so-called right-wing populists actually did once they won, and said "yeah, turns out these people are full of shit".
I mean, I don't have to argue LePen suffered a major defeat. Math is arguing it. Even the most pessimistic view of LePen going into today had her losing by 20%, which is still an astronomical beating. She didn't even sniff those kind of numbers.
By all rights, given Brexit and Trump, LePen SHOULD have had the wind at her back. Except in the wake of Brexit, the leaders of that movement were revealed to have been total frauds who lied about nearly every aspect of what it would do for the country, followed up by Theresa May calling for Elections after she swore she wouldn't. Meanwhile, in the US, you have a President elected who promised not to TOUCH Medicaid and just had his House pass the first part of a bill that slashes it by nearly a trillion dollars. Now, no, these aren't the immediate concerns of French voters (though Brexit is more so), but maybe, just maybe, French voters saw the two major Electoral events of the past year, saw what the so-called right-wing populists actually did once they won, and said "yeah, turns out these people are full of shit".
I mean, I don't have to argue LePen suffered a major defeat. Math is arguing it.
No, if you believe this then you don't understand that each country is different.
Not every country is America, not every country is the U.K, did i not say that we need to address each incident on its own merits? You can't understand them by looking at them through a prism of your distaste for Trump.
I don't know why your posting an assortment of random attacks on Trump or Theresa May either, we are discussing the French election here (Are you lumping everyone under the same Umbrella or something?).
In terms of media influence, this is a massive factor in their elections, even more-so then America because in France (And Germany) their media is far more singular.
Of course once you acknowledge media bias, the argument that any election is completely 'fair and rationale' goes out the window, which makes Brexit all the more stunning honestly.
Le Pen was never going to win, indeed i wrote this in this thread long before the election was underway but thats not how politics works, Her party jumped from 14% to 33% is a stunning victory for her movement because it means they have unprecedented power to shape national agenda which they had absolutely none before.
By all rights, given Brexit and Trump, LePen SHOULD have had the wind at her back. Except in the wake of Brexit, the leaders of that movement were revealed to have been total frauds who lied about nearly every aspect of what it would do for the country, followed up by Theresa May calling for Elections after she swore she wouldn't. Meanwhile, in the US, you have a President elected who promised not to TOUCH Medicaid and just had his House pass the first part of a bill that slashes it by nearly a trillion dollars. Now, no, these aren't the immediate concerns of French voters (though Brexit is more so), but maybe, just maybe, French voters saw the two major Electoral events of the past year, saw what the so-called right-wing populists actually did once they won, and said "yeah, turns out these people are full of shit".
I mean, I don't have to argue LePen suffered a major defeat. Math is arguing it.
No, if you believe this then you don't understand that each country is different.
Not every country is America, not every country is the U.K, did i not say that we need to address each incident on its own merits? You can't understand them by looking at them through a prism of your distaste for Trump.
I don't know why your posting an assortment of random attacks on Trump or Theresa May either, we are discussing the French election here (Are you lumping everyone under the same Umbrella or something?).
In terms of media influence, this is a massive factor in their elections, even more-so then America because in France (And Germany) their media is far more singular.
Of course once you acknowledge media bias, the argument that any election is completely 'fair and rationale' goes out the window, which makes Brexit all the more stunning honestly.
In the wake of Brexit and Trump's win, there has been ENDLESS speculation about the rise of nationalism in the West. LePen is a rock star to the most hardcore Trump supporters. Trump himself called his win the American Brexit, and many prominent American conservatives (including Trump himself) were actively rooting for LePen to win. I didn't start this conversation, but it's been happening for the past year, all over the place. And LePen was viewed as the cherry on top of that sundae.
The media, yes. Always the media. If not for the French media I'm sure LePen would have won by 10 points. Maybe she could have cracked the fact that Marcon got 90% of the votes in Paris down to something like only 70 or 80%. If LePen was going to win anything, taking advantage of running against a person who is essentially a centrist cypher (again, it's not like Macron is some sort of beloved figure here) would have seemed like the time to do so. For another thing, if we are talking about an ACTUAL smashing victory, how about the fact that Macron's Party didn't even EXIST 13 months ago??
In the wake of Brexit and Trump's win, there has been ENDLESS speculation about the rise of nationalism in the West. LePen is a rock star to the most hardcore Trump supporters. Trump himself called his win the American Brexit, and many prominent American conservatives (including Trump himself) were actively rooting for LePen to win. I didn't start this conversation, but it's been happening for the past year, all over the place. And LePen was viewed as the cherry on top of that sundae.
Sure, which the results confirm with your statement with the meteoric rise of her own party, and parties in general across Europe.
But Le Pen was never going to win, this was obvious to anyone really, I knew it.
Just because Nationalism is on the rise doesn't mean they automatically win every election in every country in a few short years, It is rising sharply, but that doesn't mean it suddenly flips the entire country in 2 years.
The media, yes. Always the media. If not for the French media I'm sure LePen would have won by 10 points. Maybe she could have cracked the fact that Marcon got 90% of the votes in Paris down to something like only 70 or 80%. If LePen was going to win anything, taking advantage of running against a person who is essentially a centrist cypher (again, it's not like Macron is some sort of beloved figure here) would have seemed like the time to do so. For another thing, if we are talking about an ACTUAL smashing victory, how about the fact that Macron's Party didn't even EXIST 13 months ago??
Macron's party is fundamentally different to Le Pen, because his party is actually less defined and simply aping the status quo (quite literally actually saying there is no problems).
One of the major reasons why he won, apart from complete media push for him to win, is that The other parties endorsed him. (Hamon and melenchon).
Which means virtually the entire media and political machinery was aiding Macron, and if you look at the slice of voters for them during the election, it actually does work out that he simply got the voters of who endorsed him.
If the Libertarian party in U.S. went from 5% (what it is now) and in one election jumps to 30%, it would be an astounding victory and any political analysis would agree with that.
Only if they were able to keep those numbers for the next election. If not, it was a one off incident, much like what the NDPs 2011 "Orange Crush" in Canada. It went from a minor party to official opposition and back again in the last 3 elections.
The orange crush (and other such movements in Canada like the Reform and Bloc) was more a rejection of the usual ruling parties (Liberal & Conservative) than it was an embracement of their ideas and agendas.
Le Pen also received a lot of media attention, even if the media opposed her compared to other candidates, especially internationally. That exposure, even if it is negative, drives up a candidates popularity. Trump is a good example of that.
Only if they were able to keep those numbers for the next election. If not, it was a one off incident, much like what the NDPs 2011 "Orange Crush" in Canada. It went from a minor party to official opposition and back again in the last 3 elections.
The orange crush (and other such movements in Canada like the Reform and Bloc) was more a rejection of the usual ruling parties (Liberal & Conservative) than it was an embracement of their ideas and agendas.
All indications is that Nationalistic parties will continue to rise because the geopolitical and socio-economic conditions will increasingly be favorable to them.
However there is a little bit more to it then that, under many countries when you get past a certain amount of vote percentage, you are afforded actual help (funding and infrastructure) by State and Government.
Le Pen also received a lot of media attention, even if the media opposed her compared to other candidates, especially internationally. That exposure, even if it is negative, drives up a candidates popularity. Trump is a good example of that.
Sort of, Trump is a known quantity in America from very long time ago, he has been popular and well-known then most people have been alive.
Le Pen isn't quite like that.
French media influence is also greater then America as well, So it is in fact a bigger obstacle to her.
It can hardly be denied that progressives are happy just to hold ground at this point, while 'closed' parties feel that the momentum is with them. However at this point it is still hard for them to obtain outright majorities- in my opinion even Brexit would probably not have taken place had the public understood that the idea of a 'soft' Brexit was a chimera. However the conservatives in the UK are showing one way toward temporary dominance- nationalist appeals which attract the increasing demographic of older voters and which promise the disaffected lower classes a balm for their ills. This strikes me as being rather astute electorally, especially with the EU right there as a punching bag for any and all policy failures. (Trump would love to have that kind of ready made scapegoat.) By contrast it is not clear what progressives can offer when the general public takes peace & liberal values as a given, and questions the results of present economic policies.
Edit: Really Macron was lucky that Fillon blew up though. After Hollande this election was there for the right to win.
The biggest obstacle of Le Pen isn't the media. It's all the refuse gravitating around the party: the GUD, the neo-nazis, the actual ex-nazis... She tried to sweep them under the rug but they kept resurfacing during the campaign. April 28 Jean-Francois Jalkh had to step down from his position of party substitute chairman for saying the SS couldn't possible have used gas chambers.
Things like this might be okay in the US or able to be passed off a joke but this isn't the US. Not even 100 years since the Occupation, it's a dealbreaker.
It's also rather telling Le Pen only managed to make the FN mainstream by pretending to be less nationalist than her father.
Edit: Also today is the holiday celebrating May 8th 1945 so you'll excuse me if I don't stay here reading posts from people who might have wanted Le Pen to win.
You can say this welfare program is bad or this welfare program is unconstitutional because X, Y, and Z, but you can't very well say the government isn't supposed to provide for the general welfare, because the Preamble says the exact opposite in completely explicit terms. And you can't very well say the federal government doesn't have the power to provide for the general welfare when the general welfare clause says it has at least one power--taxation--which it can use for that explicit purpose.
If you're looking for an original interpretation of the United States Constitution, the words are right there. There's no modern ideological over-interpretation here--that's what the Constitution literally says.
In this we would need to read the entirety of the constitution and the founding fathers writings.
In general per the Constitution and the Founding Fathers, Congress (Or Federal Government) may only act upon the duties specifically elaborated for it in the Constitution, any and all other things not mentioned in the Constitution is to be delineated by the States.
This is per the Tenth Amendment. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people.
The Constitution is therefore called, in relation to Congress, Powers of Enumeration, The Constitution specifically outlines what Congress Can do, and only that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumerated_powers
The various Founding Fathers held this same view, somewhat misleadingly some claim Hamilton held an opposing view but this is not true per the Federalist Powers that he co-wrote (and he only talked about it in terms of taxation).
"This specification of particulars evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd, as well as useless, if a general authority was intended"
"No objection ought to arise to this construction from a supposition that it would imply a power to do whatever else should appear to Congress conducive to the General Welfare. A power to appropriate money with this latitude which is granted too in express terms would not carry a power to do any other thing, not authorised in the constitution, either expressly or by fair implication."
So to put it short, Congress may only legislate and act upon the specific powers given to it by the Constitution, nothing else (Of course they get away with alot).
Comments
As expected of course. Score isn't completely finalized yet but with such a large gap this is over.
There is, however, no reason to think that this sort of hack would not happen again. Whoever committed the hack has not been punished.
This time it was Russia, next time may very well be Qatar.
The Russian government isn't the only group in the world that would do this.
Russia merely has a motive for the hack. But unlike the DNC hack in 2016, we don't have solid proof of Russian's involvement in the Macron hack just yet.
Well, that's 5 years of good ol' fashioned fun for the whole family right there. More of the same... when will they ever learn?
And in regards to a previous post:
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/332310-national-front-party-to-change-name-after-le-pen-election-defeat?rnd=1494193252
Same ideas, new name. Sad thing is, that's probably worth 15% points right there.
Anyway Congrats to Macron on the decisive win.
Also congrats to Le Pen's National front party that has become more powerful than it ever has been for a long time.
Now with the pleasantries aside... Since people here are talking about "5 years" I wonder how much more Islamic migration and Islamic Terror attacks will occur in France over the next 5 years? Maybe Macron's own words of "France has no culture" will actually come to fruition 5 years from now?
You should evaluate an incident by itself, and not look at it through the prism of your own issue's.
In terms of France's election, this has very little to do with Trump or Putin themselves and it is bizarre to even object to either party because of Trump, French people don't vote because of the American President (Or Ex-President taking Obama's retarded attempt to endorse Macron).
In France, the prior parties (Socialist and Republic Party) have been in power since 1958, They have been soundly rejected (collapsed) by the rise of Front National/ En Marche.
I don't know who would argue Front National is some 'fringe movement' which really hearkens back to rhetoric of 'Deplorables' because any analysis of the data shows a far more revealing fact.
Front National, Prior to the last few years, hovered around 14% in all voting areas since 1980 (Assembly, Regional and Presidential) and skyrocketed to 25-34% in all those area's in the last few years, 30% (although 25% didn't vote so such a statement is not accurate) is no fringe movement.
The voting patterns for support of Front National perfectly mirror the Exact voting patterns of Brexit and the American Elections, In other words it is driven by economic and financial state of the voters and can be seen by Geography (because industries are geographic still).
So indeed you may try to argue that the voters for Front National are 'the fringe of what society deems acceptable' just as was argued for supporters of Brexit or the Republican Party, But per the voting patterns.
What you'd be arguing is that the poor are the fringes of acceptable society.
Not a great statement to make now, and what this reveals is the a massive class conflict since Socio-Economic class differences are now reflected in political parties.
Do you think its a good thing whereby political parties now completely reflect either the rich, OR the poor? That sounds like the start of oppression from something like the Middle-Ages where the Noble Aristocrats ruled everything and treated the peasants like Outcasts.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/07/world/europe/france-election-results-maps.html?_r=0
In areas with more than 10% unemployment, yeah, LePen did better. BETTER being the key word. Because she still lost those areas across the country by 15%. She lost sparsely populated areas by 19%. LePen couldn't even eek out a win in her strongholds. According to this map, she was able to manage a win in two regions in the North. Every single other section of the country went to Macron. And even MY map is totally misleading because it is grading LePen on an INSANE curve. Areas that went strongly for Macron are colored LePen's color of yellow because.....well who the hell knows why, I have never seen a Election map like this in my life. It's as misleading as the maps people post of swaths of red in the United States as if that's where the most people actually live.
I realize Trump and LePen are held to an entirely different standard, but these are the mental gymnastics I am talking about. A total and utter drubbing painted as some kind of harbinger, if only a third of the ENTIRE country had voted a different way.
And though turnout was high compared to the U.S., apparently France's voter turnout was the lowest in almost 50 years.
The trend is that her party, and Nationalist parties are growing at a very alarming rate.
A party that goes from 14% (and a true fringe party) and in only a few short years becomes the second competing party (33%) is no real loss but an astounding victory.
This also comes on top of this fact, The media in France was almost universally against Le Pen. much the same way as Brexit, a fact quite often ignored honestly.
If the Libertarian party in U.S. went from 5% (what it is now) and in one election jumps to 30%, it would be an astounding victory and any political analysis would agree with that.
I mean, I don't have to argue LePen suffered a major defeat. Math is arguing it. Even the most pessimistic view of LePen going into today had her losing by 20%, which is still an astronomical beating. She didn't even sniff those kind of numbers.
Not every country is America, not every country is the U.K, did i not say that we need to address each incident on its own merits? You can't understand them by looking at them through a prism of your distaste for Trump.
I don't know why your posting an assortment of random attacks on Trump or Theresa May either, we are discussing the French election here (Are you lumping everyone under the same Umbrella or something?).
In terms of media influence, this is a massive factor in their elections, even more-so then America because in France (And Germany) their media is far more singular.
Of course once you acknowledge media bias, the argument that any election is completely 'fair and rationale' goes out the window, which makes Brexit all the more stunning honestly.
Le Pen was never going to win, indeed i wrote this in this thread long before the election was underway but thats not how politics works, Her party jumped from 14% to 33% is a stunning victory for her movement because it means they have unprecedented power to shape national agenda which they had absolutely none before.
The media, yes. Always the media. If not for the French media I'm sure LePen would have won by 10 points. Maybe she could have cracked the fact that Marcon got 90% of the votes in Paris down to something like only 70 or 80%. If LePen was going to win anything, taking advantage of running against a person who is essentially a centrist cypher (again, it's not like Macron is some sort of beloved figure here) would have seemed like the time to do so. For another thing, if we are talking about an ACTUAL smashing victory, how about the fact that Macron's Party didn't even EXIST 13 months ago??
But Le Pen was never going to win, this was obvious to anyone really, I knew it.
Just because Nationalism is on the rise doesn't mean they automatically win every election in every country in a few short years, It is rising sharply, but that doesn't mean it suddenly flips the entire country in 2 years. Macron's party is fundamentally different to Le Pen, because his party is actually less defined and simply aping the status quo (quite literally actually saying there is no problems).
One of the major reasons why he won, apart from complete media push for him to win, is that The other parties endorsed him. (Hamon and melenchon).
Which means virtually the entire media and political machinery was aiding Macron, and if you look at the slice of voters for them during the election, it actually does work out that he simply got the voters of who endorsed him.
The orange crush (and other such movements in Canada like the Reform and Bloc) was more a rejection of the usual ruling parties (Liberal & Conservative) than it was an embracement of their ideas and agendas.
Le Pen also received a lot of media attention, even if the media opposed her compared to other candidates, especially internationally. That exposure, even if it is negative, drives up a candidates popularity. Trump is a good example of that.
However there is a little bit more to it then that, under many countries when you get past a certain amount of vote percentage, you are afforded actual help (funding and infrastructure) by State and Government. Sort of, Trump is a known quantity in America from very long time ago, he has been popular and well-known then most people have been alive.
Le Pen isn't quite like that.
French media influence is also greater then America as well, So it is in fact a bigger obstacle to her.
Edit: Really Macron was lucky that Fillon blew up though. After Hollande this election was there for the right to win.
Things like this might be okay in the US or able to be passed off a joke but this isn't the US. Not even 100 years since the Occupation, it's a dealbreaker.
It's also rather telling Le Pen only managed to make the FN mainstream by pretending to be less nationalist than her father.
Edit: Also today is the holiday celebrating May 8th 1945 so you'll excuse me if I don't stay here reading posts from people who might have wanted Le Pen to win.
In general per the Constitution and the Founding Fathers, Congress (Or Federal Government) may only act upon the duties specifically elaborated for it in the Constitution, any and all other things not mentioned in the Constitution is to be delineated by the States.
This is per the Tenth Amendment.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people.
The Constitution is therefore called, in relation to Congress, Powers of Enumeration, The Constitution specifically outlines what Congress Can do, and only that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumerated_powers
The various Founding Fathers held this same view, somewhat misleadingly some claim Hamilton held an opposing view but this is not true per the Federalist Powers that he co-wrote (and he only talked about it in terms of taxation).
"This specification of particulars evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd, as well as useless, if a general authority was intended"
"No objection ought to arise to this construction from a supposition that it would imply a power to do whatever else should appear to Congress conducive to the General Welfare. A power to appropriate money with this latitude which is granted too in express terms would not carry a power to do any other thing, not authorised in the constitution, either expressly or by fair implication."
So to put it short, Congress may only legislate and act upon the specific powers given to it by the Constitution, nothing else (Of course they get away with alot).
That means Obamacare is not Constitutional.