I think that pretty much everything you say here is right-on. Quick point of information, though:

“In the last Presidential election, Chirac ran against Dominique de Villpin (sp), a far-right xenophobe, and the left was forced to vote for a conservative incumbent who took their support for granted.”

Dominique de Villepin is a political ally of Chirac’s, just recently elevated to the position of Prime Minister. The fascist revivalist that Chirac faced in the most recent Presidential election was Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the “Front National”. (France has multiparty presidential races with a single run-off round; what happened was that the Left vote was split between several unpopular candidates, so by a fluke Le Pen came in #2 in the first round and went to the one-on-one run-off with Chirac, where he was crushed by an alliance between Chirac and the Left voters, by a margin of 82%-18%.)

Hope this helps.