AS FRANCE GOES – AT 9:17 A.M. ET:  The French presidential runoff election is this Sunday.  It is important, as France is a key nation in Europe and one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.   If France should choose an anti-European leader and pull out of the EU, as Britain is doing, the EU would collapse.  I'm not saying that would be a bad thing.  From AFP:

Paris (AFP) - French presidential candidates Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen face off in a final televised debate on Wednesday which is expected to be bitter, personal and potentially decisive ahead of the run-off vote this weekend.

The stakes are high ahead of the contest between the pro-European Macron, a 39-year-old former investment banker, and far-right leader Le Pen, the 48-year-old scion of the National Front party.

Their starkly different views on Europe, immigration, the economy and French identity will be explored for the first time face-to-face, after a week marked by bruising clashes between them.

Polls show Macron holding a hefty but narrowing lead in the polls of 59 percent versus 41 percent, but previous debates during the rollercoaster French campaign have quickly shifted public opinion.

"Our goal is to avoid being dragged into mud-slinging," an aide to Macron told AFP on condition of anonymity ahead of the two hours and 20 minutes of exchanges between the candidates.

Whatever the outcome, the event marks a new step into the mainstream for Le Pen, whose party was once considered by France's political establishment to be an extremist fringe of racists to be boycotted.

When her father Jean-Marie made it into the final round of the presidential election in 2002, his conservative opponent Jacques Chirac refused to debate him out of fear of "normalising hate and intolerance".

Fifteen years later, Le Pen scored 21.3 percent in the first round of the French election on April 23 after successfully softening the FN's image -- but without fully removing doubt about the party's core beliefs.

COMMENT:   I'd imagine Macron will win.  I have no idea what that ultimately means.  France has become a major terror target, despite a tilt toward appeasement toward Islamic radicalism.  It's economy could be much better.  Its people exhibit the same anger toward their plight that American workers showed during the last election.

May 3, 2017