for this former TF1 correspondent, “American democracy is sick”

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Installed at Rémalard (Orne) for many years, journalist Michel Floquet has not forgotten to carefully follow the American campaign which is coming to an end.

While the results have not yet been made official this Wednesday November 6, 2024, the former correspondent of TF1 et LCI in the USA delivers its analysis of a totally fractured country.

You are a former TF1 White House correspondent. How are you following these elections today?

I am following these elections with passion. They are decisive for the future of the United States and also to a large extent ours. I simply inform myself through the press, French or American, more on the issues than on the projections as the election seems uncertain.

The results are very close. No winner has been given yet. Do you remember a similar situation?

Yes of course. This is not the first time that the American electoral system has struggled to choose a winner. Remember the 2000 election. Al Gore versus George W Bush. We had to wait more than a month before we had the winner, in this case Bush. And under what conditions! It was Florida that swung the election. Bush was finally declared the winner with a little more than… 500 votes in advance and therefore won all the major voters in the state. Too bad if Al Gore had a majority in the entire country. This is also what happened to Hillary Clinton, who had a majority in votes but was ultimately beaten by Trump in terms of the number of electors in 2O16.

Tump had already contested the 2020 elections. Will he be able to accept another defeat, if it is finally recorded?

Trump has already warned that he will not accept his defeat, except perhaps if it were to be massive, and even then. His team began challenging the terms of the election in several states before voting even opened. Everything indicates that he and many of his supporters are not ready to recognize the verdict of the polls if it is unfavorable to them with all the risks of unrest that this generates.

Are the two candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump like the USA: a totally divided country?

Never, except of course during the Civil War, has the country been so divided. Two Americas that no longer speak to each other and that everything is in opposition. The world view like major societal issues, abortion for example. The emergence of woke thinking has largely contributed to dividing the country. Each of the two candidates embodies a model of society radically opposed to the other. It will be very complicated, not to reconcile them, but simply to make them coexist.

What is your view on the state of health of American democracy since you left the country?

American democracy is sick, that much is obvious. It is incapable of renewing political personnel and bipartisanship freezes the debate in a confrontation without nuance. This election will also be the most expensive in history: more than 14 billion dollars with an increased weight of billionaires, look at Elon Musk's commitment to Trump.

The campaign was incredibly violent. Assassination attempts, constant invective, mentions of numerous untruths, notably from Donald Trump. But this does not affect his electorate. How to explain it?

Not all Trump voters appreciate his style, his vulgarity, his violence and his lies. But they are ready to do anything to oust the Democratic candidate. It embodies the end of the societal values ​​to which they are attached and represents, according to them, a mortal danger for the economy with a program that they do not hesitate to describe as “socialist”.

Can we envisage this type of campaign, of political debate, becoming a norm here in France, in a few years?

France is a country where the political debate, whatever one thinks of it, appears very subtle compared to the United States even if here too some behave in a caricatured manner. So I want to be relatively optimistic but vigilant because often what happens in America reaches us 15 or 20 years late…

Practical
Michel Floquet is the author of Sad America, which evokes the USA of Donald Trump, published in 2016 by Arènes.

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