S&D

S&D: No, it isn't some new form of kinkiness to set alongside S&M. It's Pierre Moscovici's folksy way of referring to his courant, "Socialisme et Démocratie," within the Socialist Party. It's also a way of avoiding the name of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the absent-present leader of this faction. Moscovici tiptoes around this delicate point:

De plus, nous étions, nous sommes un peu orphelins de DSK, fidèles à ce que nous avons fait ensemble, contraints d’avance sans lui aussi. Cela nous avait affaiblis, rendus peu lisibles : il fallait trancher.

I think that's a typo for "contraints d'avancer sans lui aussi," but the lapse is rather eloquent: S&D is indeed "constrained in advance without him." It lacks a candidate with the heft of the Royal and Delanoë factions. Moscovici is more than a little cagey about whether he's a temporary stand-in for DSK or a permanent replacement--which is evidently not the understanding of either DSK or Moscovici's principal ally Arnaud Montebourg, who declared over the weekend that he liked the idea of a DSK candidacy. Meanwhile, Moscovici is keen to let us know that he has won the intrafactional battle for supremacy. His principal rival J.-C. Cambadélis has capitulated:

Jean-Christophe Cambadélis m’a proposé, avec beaucoup d’élégance, d’être le premier signataire de cette contribution.

So now it's up to Mosco to figure out how to keep S&D from being crushed between R&D (by which I mean not Research and Development but Royal and Delanoë). A little R&D in the former sense might be helpful, though. If Royal has her smile and Delanoë his suavité, S&D will need a good deal of substance if it is to make itself heard. We will see if Moscovici is up to the job.