The Real Lessons of the French Election

Yascha Mounk wrote for Slate about how the French election indicates broader changes in the Western political landscape: 

According to a number of analysts, a new political cleavage is coming to define our politics. The battles of the future will, in this view, not be fought between leftists and rightists or liberals and conservatives. Rather, they will pit the advocates of an open society against the partisans of a closed society and nationalists who see the world as a threat against globalists who make it their home.

It would be difficult to dream up two candidates who better personify this divide than Macron and Le Pen. Macron, after all, is a proud internationalist who defends the benefits of globalization. Le Pen is a fierce nationalist who rails against immigrants, capitalists, and the European Union. “The divide is no longer between the left and the right,” Le Pen herself claimed in a recent campaign speech, “but between patriots and globalists.”