Last night in Paris, Aubry was granted victory by 102 ballots, or 0.07 percent of the more than 134,700 votes cast. In a vast room above the art deco amphitheater where the party’s national council okayed her slim win, Aubry, seated, spoke to the press. She made all the predictable noises. She reached out to her defeated opponent, saying the party had to get back to work. She even took a few jabs at President Nicolas Sarkozy’s policies. But she hardly electrified her audience. Here and there among the jaded reporters were empty pink chairs.
 
Then, moments after Aubry had gone, losing candidate Ségolène Royal made her appearance, and suddenly there was media mayhem. Television crews, surprised by her audacious arrival, scrambled for their positions, screamed instructions as they ran. A scrum of cameramen, competing to capture Royal’s entrance up close and ignoring warnings barked by colleagues, backed into a row of tripods that fell with a clatter.

Royal gave her statement standing up, a phalanx of allies behind her, as photographers teetered on the pink chairs. She had just begun to speak -- “We have led a beautiful battle to transform to Socialist Party. And that battle continues” -- when a photographer lost his footing, knocking over a drinking glass that hit the floor with a loud crash. “There's the proof!” laughed Royal, without missing a beat.
 
Yes, Aubry's going to have her work cut out for her. For the last 18 months, since Sarkozy beat Royal in the presidential eleciton, he has utterly dominated French politics. Having obliterated the far right last year, he's now moved in on the center left. At a time of financial crisis, he’s shifted his discourse toward what might easily have been Socialist Party policies. He declared the end of laissez-fairism in September and he’s going to launch a major economic stimulus package during Aubry’s first full week in power.
 
Meanwhile Aubry's got to start her party slogging toward the June 2009 European elections, when second-string parties like the Greens already look like they'll be chipping away at Socialist constituencies. And in the 2010 regional elections, the party has everything to lose, since it nearly swept the field in 2004. “Martine Aubry has almost no margin for error," says political analyst Dominique Reynié, who heads the Foundation for Political Innovation in Paris, adding "she’ll be endlessly reminded that she has a job that she maybe shouldn’t have."

Last night, Ségolène Royal released a video for her supporters in which she reluctantly acquiesced (albeit with a bit of schadenfreude) to the results. She noted she'd gotten half the vote, then said, “Half? What am I saying? Surely a little bit more, because we weren’t allowed a new vote. That’s how it is.” C’est comme ça. More importantly, though, she sounded like she was hitting the campaign trail. Again. “We’re going to continue, because 2012 is soon, 2012 is tomorrow,” she said, promising initiatives like cheaper party memberships in districts she won. “I’m going to commit myself all the way. Because I have some time on my hands, with the way things turned out,” she laughed.
 
Aubry, for her part, has to worry not only about her avowed rival, Royal, but about her own ostensible allies. The motley coalition of old-guard heavyweights that brought her the party leadership had more distaste for Royal than political affinities with her. Keeping Royal out of office also keeps their presidential hopes alive. Now that they’ve (barely) slayed that dragon, finding common cause could be tough.
 
Outside the party, the Socialists’ enduring divisions create opportunities for reshaping France’s political landscape.
 
Centrist leader François Bayrou finished third to Royal and Sarkozy in the 2007 presidential race, but a split Socialist Party may widen the avenue for him to march up the middle. Whether or not to ally with Bayrou for the 2012 race became a major fault-line during the Socialist leadership battle (Royal is for, Aubry against), and if exasperated center-leftist Socialists choose him directly, it may be Bayrou who's troubling Sarkozy’s bid for a second term, not the Socialists.
 
Olivier Besancenot - mailman by day, charismatic young far-left leader by night - has been putting persistent pressure on the Socialists’ left flank. Now the increasingly popular communist revolutionary is using his momentum to mount a new anti-capitalist party (for now called, catchily, the New Anti-Capitalist Party). There, too, disappointed left-of-the-left Socialists could go postal and return the Socialists to sender.
 
But the big winner is Sarkozy. He's been spared any convincing opposition to his presidency thus far, and the new Socialist order – a divided party with its own well-oiled, internal opposition -- poses little threat in the immediate future. “The Socialist Party was supposed to come out of a complicated period with this convention and this election, to find its place again in the national opposition. On the contrary, they’re headed deeper into difficulty,” says Reynié. “In the months and years to come, they could perpetuate this scene of a party more opposed to itself than to Nicolas Sarkozy.” And in any case, Sarkozy has already dealt a deathblow to the widely discredited 35-hour workweek – Aubry’s best-known oeuvre.
 
In the street outside the amphitheatre last night, a handful of Ségolène Royal supporters from the suburbs north of Paris braved bitter cold with protest slogans hand-printed out on copy-machine paper. The veteran group of card-carrying lefties clearly had encyclopaedic knowledge of more glorious battles. They ticked off ancient history to support Royal’s stances. One cited an alliance with the center in the 1930s. “But Mitterrand, too! In ’71," chimed in another, looking for all the world as if she'd been there. Yet even these greying comrades wanted the old guard out,  and with Aubry in, they felt frustrated. “The headquarters," said one, "smells like mothballs.”