Macron wins 2:1 - hacking for nought, or maybe counter-productive. EU comes out in much better shape. perhaps end of Le Pen?

I would just like to say I think his win is fabulous news for the world situation.  Precisely because it is going to be taken like this globally: pro-stability, anti-Trump and anti-Putin. The trends of zany nonsensical populism and zany xenophobia stopped in their tracks, the psychology of this is everything, It may be temporary but it's a major boost.

I've been known to be quite cynical and sarcastic about French culture in general. Not today. They really did "do the right thing" in a real tough voting situation.

Anne Applebaum op-ed @ WaPo:

Emmanuel Macron’s extraordinary political achievement

Before you do anything else, spend a moment thinking about the extraordinary achievement of modern France’s youngest president-elect, Emmanuel Macron. Not since Napoleon has anybody leapt to the top of French public life with such speed. Not since World War II has anybody won the French presidency without a political party and a parliamentary base. Aside from some belated endorsements, he had little real support from the French establishment, few of whose members rated the chances of a man from an unfashionable town when he launched his candidacy last year.

He was, it is true, extraordinarily lucky (luck being the quality that Napoleon said he most preferred in his generals). He benefited both from the flameout of Socialist President François Hollande, who decided not even to contest the election, and from a surprise series of personal scandals that dragged down the center-right’s candidate, François Fillon. But Macron was also extraordinarily prescient. He saw that there was an opening in France for a socially liberal, economically liberal, internationalist and optimistic voice. Fillon, like Prime Minister Theresa May in Britain, wanted to repackage nationalist policies into more acceptable language. Macron instead argued openly against the fear, nostalgia, nativism, statism and stagnation on offer from the rest of the political class.

He made no populist promises, he offered no impossible schemes or unattainable riches. And then he won.

Not only did Macron defeat the national socialism of Marine Le Pen, he also defeated what looks like a joint Russian/American attempt to derail him [....]