The French Socialists
It is tempting to believe that only the Democrats can be so incompetent as to not be able to choose their candidate, and when they finally do, to risk an open war between two significant elements of their coalition, women and blacks. Four years before their Presidential election, the French Socialist Party has started early their process with two campaigns already active, and another one all but announced, and are already beginning their state of outright war.
Since the defeat of Socialist Segolene Royal to Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007, the party is attempting to rebuild. Three candidates have all but announced their desires to be the party’s next Presidential candidate and their early divisions seem to be largely ideological.
Bertrand Delanoe, the Mayor of Paris, recently published a book referring to himself as both (classically) liberal and socialist, endorsing individual rights and communitarian economic policies. The two other leading candidates, 2007 Socialist Party Presidential nominee Segolene Royal, and the mayor of Lille, a small city on the border of Belgium Martine Aubry, have attacked Delanoe for this ideological heresy. Aubry in particular has collected around herself a large group of Socialists who are wary of Delanoe and disillusioned with Royal, particularly after her unsuccessful Presidential campaign in 2007. This group, calling itself Les Reconstructeurs (The Reconstructers) believes in what Aubry describes as an unhyphenated Socialism. This more traditional leftist campaign will probably hope to gain support from the smaller leftist parties, most specifically the Green Party and the various smaller Marxist groupings.
What these ideological debates will do to the French Socialist Party is as of yet uncertain, but considering the political debates of one country often travel to the next, like Margaret Thatcher to Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton to Tony Blair, the Socialist debates may provide hints to internal Democratic arguments.