Marie-Segolene Royal; Socialism UltraLight

The working class of France certainly has little good place to turn in the upcoming runoff election on May 6. Nicolas Sarkozy certainly represents fringe right wing politics, while the politics of Socialist Marie-Segolene Royal seems to be socialist in name only. Neither seem to seriously address issues of poverty or the working class of France.

Royal could use her party to rally working class and studeny voters if only she were a far better candidate. Instead her main issues have been "nanny state" issues such as concerns over TV violence and other petty little concerns while poverty in France grows among the poor of France, especially among the huge growing Muslim immigrant population, creating a fresh breeding ground for alienation and a growing appetite for some to embrace Muslim fundamentalism or other religious radicalism.

Instead of Royal voicing support for economics that working people can embrace, her past issues seemed to involve an abnormal drive to attack Japanese animated cartoons for children, and her own nonsense conclusions supposedly linking both pornography and violence on TV to violence in society. Her wacky moralist views are some of the most absurd since Madame De Gaulle in the 1950's. Postwar 1950's France was dominated by Madame De Gaulle's screwy morality crackdowns on seemy culture.

Royal has barely even bothered to construct many viable opinions on most foreign policy matters. Sarkozy will have little difficulty making that clear in the May 2, national debate.

On the other hand. her right wing opponent, Nicolas Sarkozy does represent a whole other set of goofy "not ready for primetime" values as well. Sarkosky is your typical "law and order" type politician, who prefers not to comprehend why problems exist, but just thinks that more laws or crackdowns are the answer to any problem. Again this fails to address the serious growing alienation problems among Muslim youths in France that are a breeding ground for future terrorism problems.

Sarkozy is seen as a highly skilled politician by both his supporters as well as left leaning opponents. And he is seen as far more proU.S. than most French politicians, even supporting the 2003 George Bush war in Iraq as well at one time.

Reasonable persons might find it hard to find the lesser of the two evils. And that is of course very difficult. No lesser of the two evils seems to really exist in this runoff race. Normally the Socialists would be a good choice, but under the leadership of Royal they just don't represent very much for the working class of France this time around.

This choice is so bad that sitting out the May 6 runoff may prove to be the best choice. France won't be well served by either party. The Socialist Party has lost their sense of class identity and is no longer worthy of a vote this year. But then again, the working class are sure to suffer under Sarkozy, a George Bushlike demagogue politician who represents nothing good for France either.

French voters cetainly have little choice in this runoff, and no choice is good. Both promise few answers to the real problems within French society.