An unlikely creature has become the symbol of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s latest bid for the French presidency. On a flawless Sunday afternoon on March 20, a large papier-mâché tortoise was tugged along the two-kilometer stretch from the Bastille in central Paris to the Place de la République, where the seventy-year-old MP addressed tens of thousands of supporters.

The tortoise may not be the most galvanizing of political metaphors. But it aptly captures the uphill battle that France’s leading left-wing politician has had to fight since entering the presidential race last summer. The 2022 election cycle, Mélenchon’s third consecutive attempt at the presidency, has been a perfect storm of complications for the French left.

First, the COVID-19 pandemic has dampened political enthusiasm and mobilization, bringing to an abrupt halt the cycle of organizing that dominated French politics in the years before the health crisis. In an election that many party machines have written off as a foregone victory for the incumbent president Emmanuel Macron, the Greens, Socialists, and Communists are each running their own independent candidacies — forcing Mélenchon to contend with a packed left-wing field.