Yet another LeMonde article laments the lack of a credible 'moderate' candidate to challenge what it defines as extreme right and left (Le Pen v Mélenchon) - https://archive.is/20261110043359/https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2026/11/10/french-presidential-election-beyond-le-pen-and-melenchon-the-political-landscape-resembles-a-murky-swamp_6776596_5.html#selection-3537.38-3537.58
But it's yet another so-called 'analysis' in terms of personalities and party shenanigans - the narrowly defined 'politics' of mainstream media.
The absent questions - the questions the political centre is not allowed to ask - are about the economic interests in play. The 'what if no 'moderate' candidate can light on a winning policy because there aren't any answers inside the status-quo?' question; the 'what if the status-quo has utterly failed, and there are now no non-radical solutions?' question.
The political centre, 'moderation', has one idea. one plan, and it's this: 'things are not too bad, radical change is risky, best not to meddle too much with the way things are' - which is fine if things are genuinely not that bad, but fails utterly when they really are bad.
I had to laugh at the article's mention of one new candidate's platform - 'a message of unity that is "neither right nor left"' - precisely that which Macron ran on, nearly a decade ago - a decade of, precisely, incoherent and ineffective meddling.
The political centre, the bastions of the status-quo, the Establishment, facilitated the coming to power of the fascists in Europe in the 1920s and 30s. Mussolini, Franco, Salazar, Dollfuss, Hitler - none of them were elected to government, all were eased into power by dodgy constitutional manipulations, by royalty, aristocracy, high courts, military top brass, newspapers.
Will they never learn ? You can't blame most French people looking to LePen or Mélenchon - but make no mistake, it is the myopia of the moderates that is to blame for the tragedy of equivalence: seeing radical departure from the status-quo for exploitation and oppression as no worse than departure for economic and social justice.
