It's a defining moment for the party, but it's also a defining moment for democracy and political debate in France. We need a clear political line.

We expected a different speech by the head of state, who merely repeated the measures announced by his prime minister last week.

Even though the party has been open to intellectual debate and even though the prime minister said he wanted a battle of ideas, it became apparent that this government could not face the party through such avenues and resorted to such draconian measures.

One of the building blocks of democracy is that you have to separate the governing party from the political party.

Democracy is at stake here. It's an undeniable fact that (Le Pen's) political party is a fascist party.

The debate going on between us is really a debate about whether we want to take the Democratic Party back to where it was before Bill Clinton transformed it in 1992, or whether we want to take it forward,