Art Goldhammer writes:
The [French] Socialist Party is no longer a workers’ party. Most of the “workers” it retains are in fact public sector employees: schoolteachers, government workers, etc. Socially liberal professionals are plentiful in both Socialist and centrist ranks. Many of these people do not share the anti-EU, anti-globalization sentiments of either the extreme right or the extreme light, and they are put off not only by the droitisation of the center right but also by its crass pursuit of wealth (the bling-bling factor) to the exclusion of other cultural values.
Just as, in the U.S., the Democrats take up the space formerly occupied by the liberal Republicans, “permissive on social issues and at ease with big government, yet ever faithful to the gods of business and finance.”