POLITICAL commentators, particularly English ones, had no difficulty calling this party unreconstructed, doomed to a life-term of opposition. Its lead candidate, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, dropped out of the sky faster than Icarus, after the former head of the IMF was accused of attempting to rape a chambermaid in New York, and conventional wisdom had it that the French Socialist party would be landed with the also-rans. An unpopular right-wing president in Nicolas Sarkozy was getting another lucky break. But conventional wisdom was wrong. More than 1.5 million people who paid a minimum of €1 and signed a form saying they shared the values of the left voted on Sunday in France's first open primary election for a presidential candidate. The televised debates between the six candidates have not degenerated into slanging matches, as many predicted they would, and the first debate got 5 million viewers – more than the French remake of MasterChef. In other words, the idea to throw open the doors to a debate, which has traditionally been the preserve of the backroom, has been a political success. It has given a national platform to younger candidates – Arnaud Montebourg and Manuel Valls – who would otherwise have struggled to get the airtime, and it has allowed the frontrunners, François Hollande and Martine Aubry, to grow in stature. The two-round primary – the second is in a week's time – will have done much to consign the image of a party dominated by political barons to the past. That said, there is still a mountain to climb for a party that last held the presidency a generation ago and which has spent most of the last decade recovering from the shock of being defeated by a far-right candidate in 2002. Hollande's campaign centered less on ideological differences, which are anyway hard to define (the centrist Strauss-Kahn voted on Sunday for Ms Aubry, the architect of the 35-hour week), than on personality. Hollande could only have styled himself as the ordinary guy who goes to work on a moped after five years of Latin drama with Sarkozy at the helm. Normality means staying calm and carrying on. The political ambition of such a pitch lies well beyond his own party. As the ever-astute Jacques Chirac inferred, the centre-right might well prefer Hollande to their own man. Ms. Aubry's campaign has centered on housing, health and education and comes across as steely and in control. Ségolène Royal will pick up votes for the fightback she's conducted since her failed 2007 bid, but it is above all this for which she will be remembered. The number of voters have done more than confer legitimacy on the winning candidate. They may have turned elegant losers into ambitious and capable contenders.
