Taubira: "when it's blurry, there's a wolf"

Nicolas Beytout 11:05 a.m., February 04, 2022

EDITORIAL

Let's take a close look at Christiane Taubira's first week of election campaign.

A week that was important since, having been designated Sunday evening by the popular Primary, Christiane Taubira only had ten short weeks to campaign.

For that, it was necessary that the first days of this mad race towards the Elysee Palace set the tone, that they mark the spirits and that they install the first elements of language of the candidate.

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After all, she had been "considering" her candidacy for months, she had prepared a lot, with the organizers of the popular Primary, her irruption in the battle, so we expected something substantial.

When you are very prepared, you have a structured team, a detailed program, ten weeks, that can be enough.

But that's not quite what I took away from it.

Catastrophic interventions

We must remember this little murderous phrase launched by Martine Aubry, invited to react to a promise from François Hollande: "When it's blurry, it means there is a wolf".

This time, it's not a wolf but a real pack.

Since Monday morning, his first day of campaigning, his appearances in the media and his speeches at conferences have been catastrophic.

The candidate threads the banalities, connects the generalities and accumulates the errors.

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Monday morning, Christiane Taubira gives a great oral on a public service radio, which is not a priori enemy territory.

There she goes in a long tirade on tax injustice, a must, of course, with a bunch of figures supposed to be spectacular but which are all approximate at best, at worst false.

The journalists who interrogate her make incredulous faces, remind her, try to get her to clarify her announcements, until the moment when she lets go of this incredible sentence: "The objective is that all the people who have worked all their life can bequeath their patrimony without paying an inheritance".

In short, this means that it only taxes pensioners.

We had to go to his campaign site to understand that, no, the rich would be taxed more (we should have guessed) and that the exemptions from duties would be increased from 100 to 200,000 euros per child.

Shade.

Taubira hesitates, stammers

Wednesday, rebelote, she speaks on housing in front of the Abbé Pierre Foundation.

All the candidates are there, or represented.

All have worked on their file.

Except her.

But there, it reaches the sublime.

She is first asked about her mess around inheritance rights, and she replies that yes, she was told that there had been a misunderstanding, but that hey, you know what it is, on the radio , on TV, we have to go fast.

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She then launches into a lyrical development on housing (housing is important), on the poorly housed (the poorly housed are not good), and on the increase of the RSA by 30%.

It is pointed out to him that this increase would not even bring the RSA to the level of the poverty line, and there, it is the shipwreck.

She hesitates, she stammers (I won't repeat her terms for fear of giving material to Matthieu Noël), but I'm only giving you the reactions that were expressed live in the room: "fuzzy", "draft", " bla-bla", "hollow" and "imprecise".

It is urgent to raise its level

There are only nine weeks left for Christiane Taubira to work out her speech.

She will present her team on Monday, so that may change.

But she will have to very quickly raise her level of play. As a leader of the Greens said cruelly, “poetry is very nice, but it does not allow people to eat”.

It is sure, the strategy which was to count on a surprise effect in the polls to create from there a political dynamic, failed.

Being a candidate cannot be improvised, even less being president.