Wilfred McClay speculates that there will be an extremely ugly populist backlash against the French rioters, with Sarkozy swept aside by someone more like Jean Marie Le Pen:

It will come as a surprise because such Americans falsely and simplistically see the countries of Western Europe as gigantic blue states. But the survey data do not bear this out. Yes, “blue state” values are far more predominant in the nations of Western Europe, especially France. But none of these nations is culturally monolithic, and the divisions that we now see burning on our TV screens are not the only ones. There are others, too, that may be on the verge of emerging into fuller view.

Read the whole thing.