I am not so pessimistic about the socialists as you are. Don't forget that whoever the socialist candidate is, s/he will benefit from the "guilt" effect of 2002, i.e. all the lefties that found Jospin too centrist and voted for the "real thing" to send him a pessage and got Chirac instead. The main risk is that a fucker like Fabius or Lang goes for a dissident candidature after losign the internal primary.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes