France’s Fifth Republic hands extensive powers to its president — and incumbent Emmanuel Macron is widely accused of ruling more like a king than a democrat. But today, faced with the most hotly contested parliamentary race in decades, left-winger Jean-Luc Mélenchon is betting that he can build a counterpower to Macron’s monarchical executive. In April’s presidential election, even Mélenchon’s 22 percent wasn’t enough, leaving him agonizingly short of making the runoff. But today, the France Insoumise leader suddenly again seems to be on the verge of power.

On April 6, I had watched Mélenchon’s last speech as a presidential candidate in Lille, an event simultaneously broadcast by hologram to a dozen other locations at the end of his seemingly final campaign. When he failed to make the second round a few days later, I had the bittersweet realization that I might have seen the great tribune address a vast crowd like this for the last time. But I shouldn’t have kidded myself. Even before Macron had sealed his second-round victory over far-right Marine Le Pen, Mélenchon was preparing for what he called the “third round”: this month’s elections to the National Assembly.

At Paris’s Maison de La Chimie in Paris on April 21, Mélenchon was already talking about the combined power of the left-wing parties that hadn’t backed him. Most disappointing had been the French Communist Party (PCF), which had supported him in 2012 and 2017; this time it ran separately. The party’s candidate, Fabien Roussel, took eight hundred thousand votes — double the margin Mélenchon needed to beat Le Pen to the runoff.