In what has been forecast in the polls for weeks (months?) Francois Holland defeated president “Bling Bling”:

Socialist Francois Hollande defeated conservative incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy today to become France’s next president, heralding a change in how Europe tackles its debt crisis and how France flexes its military and diplomatic muscle around the world.

Exuberant, diverse crowds filled the Place de la Bastille, the iconic plaza of the French Revolution, to fete Hollande’s victory, waving French, European and labor union flags and climbing its central column. Leftists are overjoyed to have one of their own in power for the first time since Socialist Francois Mitterrand was president from 1981 to 1995.

“Austerity can no longer be inevitable!” Hollande declared in his victory speech Sunday night after a surprising campaign that saw him transform from an unremarkable, mild figure to an increasingly statesmanlike one.

It helps to be standing next Nicolas Sarkozy. Standing next to him, I would look “increasingly statesmanlike.”

I think that the money quote is toward the end:

People of all ages and different ethnicities celebrated Hollande’s victory at the Bastille. Ghylaine Lambrecht, 60, who celebrated the 1981 victory of Mitterrand at the Bastille, was among them.

“I’m so happy. We had to put up with Sarko for 10 years,” she said referring to Sarkozy’s time as interior and finance minister and five years as president. “In the last few years the rich have been getting richer. Now long live France, an open democratic France.”

I think that Sarkozy showed everyone who he really was when he decided pander to bigots when it looked like he was losing.

It’s also a referendum on Angela Merkel, who, in a real breach of the political norms, openly endorsed Sarko in the election.

That being said (I really use that phrase too much, don’t I), if the French rejected the idea of Merkel as ally, the Greeks pretty much firebombed the Reichstag:

Alexis Tsipras became the surprise package of the Greek election by telling Angela Merkel to get lost.

“The people of Europe can no longer be reconciled with the bailouts of barbarism,” Tsipras, 37, said on state-run NET TV late yesterday after his Syriza party unexpectedly came second in the country’s election. “European leaders, and especially Ms. Merkel, should realize that her policies have undergone a crushing defeat.”

Tsipras’s calls to tax the rich, delay debt repayments and cut defense spending struck a chord with voters angry at austerity measures imposed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in return for bailouts. As far as euro membership is concerned, Tsipras told voters that a Greek exit would put the currency itself in jeopardy and they shouldn’t feel “blackmailed” into more austerity.

The result put Syriza ahead of the Socialist Pasok party, potentially derailing efforts to implement the terms of the country’s financial lifeline. Syriza, which means Coalition of the Radical Left, won 16 percent of the vote, projections showed. That exceeded the 13 percent won by Pasok, one of the two pillars of the political establishment since 1974. New Democracy, led by Antonis Samaras, topped the poll with 20 percent.

The result, the best since the party was founded in 2004, puts Tsipras in a position to try and form a government should New Democracy fail to put a coalition together in the first round of talks.

BTW, New Democracy has already given up on forming a government, because together they can’t get anyone but the Socialists (Pasok) to agree to continuing austerity.  (Merkel and the EE demanded that both leading parties agree to the terms in order to get the loans, with the predictable result that both together got about ⅓ of the vote.)

It’s pretty complex, because, in order to make a coalition without New Democracy and Pasok, almost all the other parties have to join the coalition, and somehow I don’t think that the Leftist Tsipras, the Communists, and the Neo-Nazi in everything but name Golden Dawn will find common ground.