SIGforum.com Main Page The Lounge UPDATE FROM 2018 and 2020: Merkel on the way out. No, seriously this time.
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| SIGforum's Berlin Correspondent  |
The last test before September were state elections in Saxony-Anhalt last Sunday. There was some recent excitement when polls showed the AfD neck-and-neck with or even slightly ahead of the CDU. But as so often in recent years, pollsters had it wrong, and the Conservatives actually gained seven points over their previous result while all major competitors lost a couple; or in the case of the Greens, remained far from doubling their numbers as suggested by the same polls. The Greens are also holding their (virtual) convention this weekend and just confirmed their candidate Annalena Baerbock with 98.5 percent of the vote despite a slew of mistakes she made. Besides the belated reporting of extra income and her suggestion of gas tax hikes on the eve of the Saxony-Anhalt election (which got panned even by other leftist parties as unsocial towards lower-income and rural folks), the most damaging may have been a string of bit-by-bit corrections to her official vita after various media found the statements of posts and memberships in different organizations to be a bit lose on details. Again it's nothing egregious - others have certainly embellished their careers more - but has caused even sympathetic commentators to suggest that it may have destroyed the winning chances of a candidate with no prior record in government who was running on personal sympathy and credibility. That she was nowhere to be seen for a week or so when the questions arose and her co-chair Robert Habeck had to stand in answering those certainly didn't help. Some media have cast fundamental doubt on the decision for her candidacy vs. going with Habeck, and one commentator - formerly of the Green-affiliated daily "tageszeitung" - even suggested in "Spiegel" that she should announce at the convention she had fucked up, and hand the mantle to the latter. The same comment rejected attempts to denounce the criticism of her as misogynistic. There's certainly some of that in general attacks on her, and the Greens have stated that there are internet campaigns against her orchestrated out of Russia and Turkey, which is entirely credible. A new campaign by a pro-market lobby group which depicted her as Moses carrying tablets with supposed Green commandments like "Thou Shalt Not Fly", entitled "Why we don't need a state religion", also met with widespread criticism of questionable taste, though automatic charges of anti-Semitism are probably overblown. But then the same is true for a guest speaker at the Green convention sorta comparing attacks against climate researchers with the persecution of the Jews. With three months to go, Baerbock shouldn't be written off just yet, either. People are still trying to predict what the defining issues of the national campaign will be. It's certainly not going to be decided on the foreign policy topics which have dominated news recently with Israel and Belarus, or maybe relations with China, Russia and the US. For all their individual nuances, positions of the main contenders are too close, and while such topics may be good for momentary flares of public opinion, in the end they are too far from the average voters' everyday life. Which doesn't mean that decisive issues must be very tangible; recently everyone seized on the point of gender-neutral language after the head of the Hamburg CDU proposed a legal ban on official authorities using such. Polls show that a slight majority would actually approve of such a step, including pluralities among SPD and Left Party supporters. Only among Green supporters there is a clear majority against a ban. However, the Greens have to tread lightly around such issues of cultural conflict if they indeed want to broaden their voter base beyond their traditional clientele and become a new big-tent party. Of course the conundrum is that a ban would still be government interference with use of language. Mind, there have long been suggestions that the legalese of official texts should become more comprehensible to the average citizen, even before we come to making German words even longer by mashing together male and female forms via attachment with a big I, or a *, _, :, etc. | |||
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| SIGforum's Berlin Correspondent |
Well, natural disasters always have the potential to impact election campaigns, and so does the major flooding which hit parts of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate in Western Germany this week. After days of heavy rain, normally docile rivers in mountainous terrain ran wild, and landslides collapsed a number of buildings. Current death toll is at 133 and expected to rise further, though the number of 1,300 persons unaccounted for reported yesterday is probably largely due to the breakdown of communications networks and multiple reportings. Either way, this is certainly the worst event of this type in Germany since the North Sea Flood of 1962 which killed 315 in Hamburg. That one famously boosted the political career of later chancellor Helmut Schmidt of the SPD, then the city-state's senator (minister) of the interior. Floods are always an opportunity for politicians to don rubber boots and look engaged before cameras; Gerhard Schröder made good use of that before his 2002 re-election, and in this case CDU candidate Armin Laschet is NRW state premier. SPD candidate Olaf Scholz is already being seen next to his co-partisan Malu Dreyer, state premier of RLP. Since both parties are part of the current federal government, they can also expected to promote national relief measures.    While such disasters thus tend to benefit current governments, the Greens are naturally gonna make this an issue of climate change to turn their campaign beset by mistakes of candidate Annalena Baerbock around. It may be not quite as good as a nuclear disaster for them, but a lot more immediate; that conservatives are in fact first to talk of climate change already shows they're trying to pre-empt them. Previously Baerbock's campaign had taken another hit because she absolutely had to publish a sorta-autobiography laying out her political convictions and aims for the start of the hot campaign phase, like politicians do when they don't have much of a prior executive record to run on. Of course several text parts presenting underlying facts turned out to be copy-and-paste from other sources without acknowledgement, as the same Austrian plagiarism hunter who got the ball rolling on her embellished vita found. Plagiarism is a touchy subject in Germany as several national politicians, mostly on the conservative and classical liberal side, had to resign over plagiarized PhD theses in recent year. After their previous timid response to the vita issues, the party completely overreacted to the new accusations. Sure they pointed out all the right things, that this isn't a work of science, that it cites facts well-known in the public domain, and this doesn't amount to copyright infringements. They may even be right that it's an orchestrated campaign - reportedly some group first approached a German plagiarism hunter to check out Baerbock's public vita and turned to his Austrian colleague when he declined. They could have calmly stated all of the above though without rolling out a VIP media lawyer to come down on the copyright infringement claim which was a byline in the whole attack, and accusing one public broadcaster of promoting fake news just for reporting the accusations while linking to the lengthy Twitter defense by a legal expert from another, who happens to be a former co-worker of said lawyer. That way the were just giving the thing more exposure, and came off looking inconfident. The main problem for them was once more that this hit a party with professed super-high morals which always knows what can and cannot be said and done by others even if it's formally legal, who once wrote an article in a right-wing publication 20 years ago as a student, etc. It also reinforced the image of Baerbock as a typical representative of self-promoting Gen Y-ers, and there were again opinions even from the Green-affiliated media camp that chosing her as a candidate over male party co-leader Robert Habeck (who has actual government experience, and has actually written several non-fiction books) was the wrong decision, and not least a disservice to feminism. The complaints that Baerbock is being treated differently as a woman may have some basis, but fall kinda flat when Angela Merkel was elected four times without ever claiming any special treatment even while people called her "Kohl's girl" for having been promoted by former chancellor Helmut Kohl, "zone quail" for being the first East German, female, protestant CDU leader, or "chancellorette", talked of her hair rather than her politics, or accused her of not caring for future generations because she never had children. Incidentally, another recent disturbance to the Greens was when their Saarland state chapter chose a male top candidate after the original female contender failed to be elected in three subsequent unopposed rounds. This technically violated the party statute that odd places on election lists should go to women, and various suits over voting irregularities, resignation of state board members and interference by the national leadership later, he was forced to withdraw. As a result of all this trouble, the party has dropped in polls to around 20 percent while CDU/CSU are approaching 30 again. So the Greens are in dire need of an issue- rather than personality-based debate they have demanded on the defensive, and the flooding may provide them with one. Not that they are above overblown personal attacks over issues like climate change themselves; their Bundestag deputy floor leader recently attacked CDU candidate Laschet on Twitter over his state government law requiring wind generators to have a 1,000 meter distance to residential housing, trying to connect it to the current heat wave in the Pacific Northwest with "this Laschet policy is costing human lifes in Canada right now!" Since the FT poll tracker seems stuck in May, I'm linking to the Wikipedia one which gets updated at least every other week or so.  | |||
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| Get my pies outta the oven!  |
Re: Germany floods Most of these areas hit seem to be built in very low lying areas near rivers and on floodplains and even in old river bends. What did you all think would happen? That it would NEVER flood? We also had a rainstorm last summer where literally 2-3 months of rain fell in one day, everyone’s basements flooded, a poor pregnant woman near here was swept into a creek in her car and drowned along with her 7 or 8 year old son. Water is nothing to mess with and it always wins. | |||
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"Member" |
No no, it's climate change, I heard the European reporter say it on the radio.  And THAT's why you must vote right Deutschländers! (I guess that works both ways don't it) _____________________________________________________ Sliced bread, the greatest thing since the 1911. | |||
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Frangas non Flectes |
This idea that the climate is this immutable thing and we can build whatever we want anywhere we want because it should never change and if it does, it’s because we’ve damaged the earth as a standard set of operating principles is beyond blind and arrogant at this point in human history. “We had floods that killed people because we voted for the wrong politician!” smacks of pre-historical “our king has angered the gods and we must sacrifice him and install another whom the gods favor” nonsense. How far we’ve come. Oh, and the deaths in Canada have got fuck-all to do with Germany. “Bad weather across the world killed people because we voted for the wrong politicians!” How forward-thinking. ______________________________________________ Carthago delenda est | |||
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delicately calloused |
Maybe it’s time to sacrifice a virgin to the volcano gods. Clearly we’ll need to import some. You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier | |||
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Member |
It's not just the Germans. New Orleans is essentially built in a hole below see level and we all saw what happens when the levies break as a result of a hurricane. And we spent billions afterwards rebuilding the city...in the same location. Insanity. ----------------------------- Guns are awesome because they shoot solid lead freedom. Every man should have several guns. And several dogs, because a man with a cat is a woman. Kurt Schlichter | |||
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Member |
"I understood that reference!"  Has anyone tried to blame Germany's loss to England in the Euros on a particular party? Seriously, thanks for your usual informative update. Truth: The New Hate Speech | |||
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| SIGforum's Berlin Correspondent |
The, let's say, environmentalist basics have been well-communicated throughout half a dozen major floodings in the last 20 years (though without much if any loss of life): if you canalize meandering rivers, pave over areas and cut down forests which used to absorb the rain and build up right next to the embankments, you shouldn't wonder if you find the river running through your house one day. The extent of the current disaster just highlights the long-standing predictions that climate change will increase occurrence of extreme weather events. With ten weeks to go to elections, there will likely be other issues which will impact short-term debate, though with the death toll now up to 156 and probably still not final, it's not going to just go away either. For the moment, it'll almost certainly stop the slide of the Greens, simply because it'll end the so-far almost solitary focus on Annalena Baerbock's personality; if only because the other candidates now get the chance for fuckups, too, like Armin Laschet being seen joking in the background while President Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed his condolences to the victims on TV yesterday. While Steinmeier was later seen laughing in the same footage, even conservative commentators said it shows Laschet hasn't yet internalized that as a national leader, you have to control yourself in public at any moment, because any inappropriate image will bite you in the ass. At a minimum he should have remembered the shitstorm Berlin Central MP Eva Högl of the SPD got in 2017 when she was cheerfully waving to someone while standing behind the party's then-chancellor candidate Martin Schulz as he expressed condolences for the victims of that year's Barcelona terror attack. So far the worst misstep the CDU could be accused of was dressing up some staffers from their party HQ as police officers and nurses to put them on their campaign posters promoting public security; police unions didn't particularly like their uniforms being used as political props like that. There has also been some question mark journalism asking how close Laschet is to ... Opus Dei, because the brother of his father-in-law and the father of his chief of staff Nathanael Liminski are/were members of same. Now Laschet is of course a devout Catholic, but as liberal as they come. In fact he hired Liminski as a floor whip to gain some cred with the conservative, pro-life wing of the NRW CDU back in 2012 when he was elected state chapter head for lack of alternatives; this guy was some kind of conservative prodigy, founded a Pope Benedict Fan club as a student which promoted no sex before marriage etc., and famously duelled over the issue with a female rapper who tried to hit on him in a talkshow. He also constructed the campaign that made Laschet state premier in 2017 against all expectations and has since pretty much stepped back from the public as unbecoming his function, still talking to media at length, but never on the record. His image is now that of a Darth Rove, and there are suggestions he would become minister of the chancellery under Laschet. I doubt that he would roll back Bismarck's reforms on state-church relations or something though; in the end Liminski's first kid was born two years before he married his wife, so he's entirely human. | |||
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| SIGforum's Berlin Correspondent |
Well that's certainly the most interesting race for 15 years. It was always going to be of course since it's the first time ever the incumbent chancellor doesn't run again, and a party other than the former big two fielded a serious candidate. But over the last three weeks, the Social Democrats have pulled even with the Conservatives as both the latter and the Greens kept dropping in polls; two pollsters actually have them ahead by one or two points. Suddenly, Olaf Scholz has a realistic shot at chancellorship. If you had told people that two months ago, you would have been laughed out of the room. Nobody could have foreseen the impact of crises like the flooding in the Southwest and now the Afghanistan debacle, either. The latter has actually injected security politics into the campaigns, probably for the first time in 60 years or so; which members of the community have said is a nice effect, cynically speaking. Usually that should benefit the Conservatives for which security is considered a core competence, though a disastrous end to a war which has always been unpopular might also give those who always opposed it a boost. However, the parties of the critics from both the left and right fringe have presented themselves divided on the German evacuation operation. The Left Party can rightfully claim to have opposed deployment to Afghanistan from the start, but now were faced with the dilemma that the evil Bundeswehr was needed to get refugees out. The Bundestag group settled on abstaining from retroactively authorizing the mission in parliament this week, for the first time not rejecting a military mandate outright. In their typical fashion, they said they would only consent if a) not just German citizens and former local hires, but anyone was explicitely included among eligible evacuees, and b) no armed force was authorized to get them out, and everyone else should adapt to their position rather than vice versa. Several Left Party members had announced in advance already to vote either for or against. Neither helped the party which had framed abstention as a step forward towards a possible all-left Red-Red-Green government coalition which by current poll numbers might just about get a majority; however SPD and Greens slammed them for still putting ideology over necessity even when lives were at stake. The AfD as the other party which has never been in government for the duration of the deployment was also divided between former Bundeswehr officers in particular who argued that it was a national duty to evacuate former Afghan helpers, and the anti-Western wing celebrating the breakdown as a defeat of liberal Western globalism as much as the hard Left as a defeat of neoliberal Western imperialism, plus hoping for another anti-immigration campaign. So their Bundestag group mostly abstained, too, but with more votes in favor and a single one against. It's too soon to gauge a real impact of Afghanistan on the race; that will be seen in the remaining four weeks. It does counteract the previous focus on the flooding and possible relation to climate change, so spoils Green hopes of resurging on that topic. But that may still come back if attention to Afghanistan wanes quickly, or yet another new hot issue eclipses this, too. This is now the "hot" phase with election posters and TV ads out. German law limits the timeframe for their use, which makes local campaigns rather cheap by American standards. Candidates running directly for district seats still have to raise money on top of the national party budgets mentioned in that article, but we're talking thousands, at most ten thousands of Euros rather than millions of dollars.This message has been edited. Last edited by: BansheeOne, | |||
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| Member |
When she's actually voted out/removed from office, then I will believe the title of this thread. Good luck, Germans, you deserve better. | |||
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| Get my pies outta the oven! |
That flood damage is amazingly bad but knowing you Germans, you probably already have all the debris cleared and that all filled in again but higher. Am I right??? | |||
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| SIGforum's Berlin Correspondent |
Let's say that three weeks later, streets in the affected towns are cleared of debris, though in many cases it has just been piled up outside town as recycling facilities are overwhelmed with the sheer volume. Obviously it's going to take a little longer to rebuild structures which were washed away, and obviously there's debate whether you should simply rebuild it all in the same place. Last I heard, 15 people are still missing, too, with the death toll at nearly 190.   As alluded to above, effectivity of both pre- and post-disaster public action is actually hotly discussed, exacerbated by the campaign background. There were warnings of strong rains and extreme floodings from a European weather forecast system as much as nine days earlier, and the national weather service issued accurate predictions 48 hours in advance. A criminal investigation has been launched against the commissioner of the worst-affected county in Rhineland-Palatinate and a public servant he delegated emergency response on - reportedly the former was with the local crisis team for less than an hour that night, though by law responsibility for disaster response is on him - because they didn't have residents evacuated in time; probably because they feared the criticism if they chased people out of their houses for nothing. Of course it has been noted that singling those two out falls a little short when state-level authorities maintain they fulfilled their duty by having automated e-mail warnings sent to the affected counties. A national civil protection reform was underway even before recent events, and an obvious debate now is whether more authority should be given to federal authorities, or it doesn't make any sense to move control away from the areas where it happens. Post-flood, so many volunteers flocked to the region that police eventually asked them to stop because the traffic was blocking constricted roads for professional helpers. As noted, some of the former were from the Querdenker scene which pushed the narrative that the government was failing people, and they were the only ones really providing aid. There was at least one of the "peace vehicles" made up to look like a police van which have been seen at Querdenker protests going around the area, making loudspeaker announcements that relief organizations were being pulled out.  At one point the THW federal disaster relief organization complained that their volunteers were being pelted with insults and garbage. Then QAnon types raised the claim that the bodies of 600 children had washed up from secret government underground installations, based upon a snippet of a TV report which mentioned some individual instances of residents finding dead kids from elsewhere in their houses, but never stated a number. Sign of the times I guess. | |||
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| SIGforum's Berlin Correspondent |
Argh, I fucked up and edited my post from three weeks ago rather than quoting it, deleting most of the old content in the process. Oh well, nothing's as outdated as last week's campaign news, anyway. Here's the latest update ... again.
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| SIGforum's Berlin Correspondent |
With one week to go, poll numbers have somewhat stabilized, with CDU/CSU maybe recovering slightly at the cost of the Greens. After two TV "triels" between the three top contenders, several townhall-type one-on-audience shows with the individual candidates and a couple televised debates between the also-rans, the SPD is still leading with 25-26 percent, CDU/CSU 20-23, Greens 15-17, FDP 10-13, AfD 11-12, Left 6-8. Things remain as-you-wish - as it looks now, theoretically the Social Democrats could form a government with any two partners out of CDU/CSU, Greens and the classically liberal FDP, or even the dreaded all-left coalition with Greens and Left Party. CDU/CSU could still lead even if they make second place by going with Greens and FDP, if the SPD fails to offer them better conditions. Much will hinge on what the Liberals demand - unless the Left spoils the prices by suddenly signing up for a responsible foreign policy. After the usual protestations that nobody could make them swear allegiance to NATO and EU in response to statements from SPD and Greens that no coalition could be thought of with a partner not committed to German membership in either, Left Party co-leader Janine Wissler pointed out this week that they didn't demand to leave NATO, but want to disband it for a new security system including Russia; which was a long-time goal they were aware wouldn't happen soon, and by Germany alone. She remained opposed to increased defense spending and arms exports, though. While no single issue - defense, climate, immigration, pandemic - has crystalized as possibly decisive, the campaigns have actually become quite harsh after a long runup of the candidates being nice to the point of boring to each other. Among the more exciting events was police and prosecutors searching SPD contender Olaf Scholz's Ministry of Finances in the course of allegations that the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Customs Service - which has been notoriously ineffective since its 2017 transfer from the Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigations - failed to pass on various complaints about possible money laundering schemes to prosecutors. The SPD was livid over the prosecutor in charge - who happens to have been chief of office for a former CDU Lower Saxony state minister of justice - issuing a press statement saying the purpose of the raid was, inter alia, to establish possible responsibility of the ministry's leadership (read: Scholz). One of Scholz's state secretaries tweeted an excerpt of the warrant showing that the information sought was actually just responsibilities within the unit, which was claimed could also have been gained by simply asking, or googling, for them. Said state secretary then promptly got hit with an investigation for publishing an internal judicial document. Regardless of detail, the publicity is inconvenient for Scholz since it reminds of last year's Wirecard scandal, when that payment processor collapsed over acounting irregularities which another watchdog reporting to his ministry failed to detect. OTOH the CDU accused Social Democrats of spreading disinformation after they tweeted a truncated clip of the former's candidate Armin Laschet claiming in his recent convention speech that the SPD had been on the wrong side of any financial policy decision since WW II. The posted bit left out the "financial policy" part, and the SPD blasted Laschet for his apparently generalizing statement, listing their post-war achievements to good public effect. As for the Greens, the "Spiegel" is already running a post-mortem of their campaign failures as this week's title story. Even the Green-affiliated "tageszeitung" was irritated about their lapse into old images they had tried hard to overcome, namely as the party of fears and bans. The last straw was their candidate Annalena Baerbock claiming in the second TV "triel" that bans were always drivers of innovation. The best PR the Greens got lately was when the right-wing "III. Way" fringe party hung posters reading "Hang the Greens" next to the former's campaign posters in some Bavarian and Saxonian towns - which they cutely said refered to their own dark green party color. Bavarian authorities had them removed, while the Saxonian court system had to be prompted into finding that there was "no personal threat" expressed, but ordered a 100 meter distance from the Greens' posters. The Greens promptly had extra ones hung, reading "This poster is keeping the surrounding 100 meters Nazi-free. You're welcome." As usual at this point of election season, there are disclaimers that a third of voters haven't made up their minds yet, along with more recent warnings that polling is becoming harder to get right because less people readily participate, they are more difficult to pin down geographically due to the retreat of landlines, and established preferences are becoming more volatile. That's on top of the statistical two-point margin of error which actually puts CDU/CSU and SPD in touching range of each other. So the outcome is rather open. We'll know more next Sunday at 1800 local time when exit poll projections are published as polling stations close. | |||
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| SIGforum's Berlin Correspondent |
Right. Preliminary results are a straight continuation of recent poll trends. SPD - 25.7 (+5.2), 206 seats. Nice comeback; though it would have been considered abysmal 15 years ago, looking from just three months earlier it's a completely unexpected success. CSU/CSU - 24.1 (-8.9), 196 seats. This is their all-time worst national result, though they rebounded somewhat in polls on the home stretch and came in better than predicted by most. Greens - 14.8 (+5.8), 118 seats. While that's actually their best result ever, it's just half of what seemed possible in summer when they were leading polls, so there's tangible disappointment. FDP - 11.5 (+0.7), 92 seats. For the first time they managed double-digit results in two successive elections. They actually placed first among young voters, usually the preserve of the Greens. AfD - 10.3 (-2.3), 83 seats. They can't be happy, but it could have come worse for them. In their stronghold state of Saxony, they actually got the biggest share of votes. The Left Party missed the five-percent threshold at 4.9 (-4.3), but managed to defend two of their previous three direct mandates in East Berlin and win one in Leipzig, thereby making another threshold which allows them to enter the Bundestag with all of their proportional 39 seats. It's not the first time for them, either. The South Schleswig Voter League did in fact win a seat for the first time in over 60 years with about 0.1 percent of the national vote, by virtue of being relieved of the five-percent threshold in Schleswig-Holstein for representing the Danish minority there. The Free Voters failed to enter at 2.4. Total seats thus 735, not as huge a further blowup as some feared, but still the biggest Bundestag ever. This is an artefact of typical German overengineering applied to the national election system: mixing both first-past-the post and proportional voting, and distributing seats at the state level. The problem is that sometimes a party will actually win more direct seats in a state than supported by the proportional vote share there, and get "overhang mandates" added to the regular number. That was not too bad while there were two major parties sucking up 80-plus percent of both the direct and proportional vote between them, and one or two smaller ones accounting for the rest. However, as the former lost votes to more and increasingly popular minor parties while still largely deciding direct races between themselves, the phenomenon increased. So in 2012 compensatory seats were introduced for the Bundestag. This solved the skewing problem, but created a new one: To achieve balance with the national proportional vote result, a multiple of the overhang mandates must be added in seats, and the number of the former is still increasing. There have been various proposals for thorough reform, but parties in power have little incentive to change a system which brought them there; particularly CDU/CSU, which have so far benefitted most from overhang mandates. It remains to be seen whether the next government will seriously tackle the issue. Anyway, geographical distribution of districts directly won by the different parties in this election is rather tidy:  Turnout looks to be 76-78 percent, not bad. Both SPD and CDU/CSU have claimed a mandate to form the next government. My money is on a "Jamaica" coalition, named for the colors associated with CDU/CSU, Greens and FDP; conservative candidate Armin Laschet wasted no time to make offers of both more climate protection and less bureaucracy to Greens and FDP in his first post-election speech. The latter are more likely to want a coalition with the Conservatives; certainly party leader Christian Lindner, who has already done that with Laschet in their native North Rhine-Westphalia. The Greens will be divided, but after Annalena Baerbock's messed-up candidacy, her co-chair Robert Habeck is likely to be the one calling the shots (in fact there are suggestions that their pre-campaign agreement included this in case she failed). He was the chief architect of "Jamaica" in Schleswig-Holstein of course, and is reportedly of the camp within the Greens which wants to free the party of its traditional role as a majority enabler on the left only. Last night he ostentatively stated that back in SH after the last state elections, they started coalition building by talks between Greens and FDP first, then chose their bigger partner with common interests already widely agreed. There is still a chance for the SPD which is pointing out that not only did they come out ahead of CDU/CSU, but gained considerable votes while the Conservatives lost even more; in fact there is considerable unrest and criticism of Laschet within the latter. But the SPD's position for negotiations has gotten much worse with the absence of even the theoretical option for an all-left coalition with the Greens and Left Party, which has no majority. The only alternative to a coalition including both Greens and FDP would be yet another grand coalition, this time led by the SPD, which would in fact have quite a comfortable majority. But CDU/CSU won't go for that if they can lead themselves, and after all the discontent about the last three grand coalitions, the SPD is unlikely to want yet another one with the barely weaker Conservatives, even with themselves on top. | |||
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Festina Lente |
flood marks on a wall in Western Germany. clearly driven by climate change over the past 20 years... NRA Life Member - "Fear God and Dreadnaught" | |||
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| SIGforum's Berlin Correspondent |
With CDU/CSU in disarray over their result and who's to blame for it, momentum is actually going towards an SPD-led government. At least post-election polls shows a clear bandwagoning effect for the winners: SPD, Greens and FDP all rising about 1.5-2 points over their election results, CDU/CSU dropping another four. Other polls suggested two thirds of voters are for a red-yellow-green "traffic light" rather than a "Jamaica" coalition. What happened first though was in fact Greens and FDP entering in exploratory talks among themselves to find common ground before looking for a major partner, dubbed a "citrus coalition" after their colors of green and yellow. It is notable that both parties got most of the young/first-time vote, previously the distinguishing feature of the Greens alone. Depending upon ideology of commentators, the youth turnout for the classically liberal FDP which has long been considered a party for millionaires has elicited puzzlement, exasperation or glee. Points made are the younger generation's experience with Corona restrictions, of which the Liberals have managed to be critical without descending into lunacy like other parties one could name, their promotion of digitalization where Germany so far is mediocre at best; and above all that just as the Green voters of their age, they simply don't feel represented by the topics of other parties. Three-way probing talks between the national SPD, Greens and FDP started on Thursday. Both Greens and FDP haven't yet ruled out a "Jamaica" coalition with CDU/CSU instead, with the Liberals stating they clearly had a greater overlap with the latter. The major sticking point, as usual, will be money: the FDP says their red lines are no tax increases, and no lifting of the national debt cap, where SPD and Greens want major investions to fight climate change etc. But both minor parties were pissed that their earlier individual talks with the Conservatives were the only ones from which details got promptly leaked to media. Which may have method as fighting is going on within and between CDU/CSU, where some want regeneration in opposition, not least because it may serve their personal ambitions. CDU candidate Armin Laschet's fate of course hinges on the possibility of becoming chancellor yet. He has so far only hinted at resignation as party head if he doesn't, but also suggested a successor for his current position as North Rhine-Westphalia state premier, since either way he isn't going back there. All of his previous contenders - popular conservative Friedrich Merz, foreign politician Norbert Röttgen and Bavarian state premier Markus Söder of the CSU - clearly have hopes for another shot and becoming chancellor in four or maybe eight years, and thus no interest in Jamaica now. Söder for one, who also kicked Laschet in the back of his knees all throughout the campaign, has already pretty much stated it isn't going to happen. A word on election organization: Most of it went largely flawless as usual - except of course in the city and state of Berlin, where public administration couldn't organize a pissup in a brewery under the best of circumstances. We were one of two states to have concurrent regional elections, plus municipial elections and a proposition by a left-wing initiative to expropriate major housing companies here; on top of it, the annual Berlin Marathon apparently had to be absolutely held on the same day, too. Predictable chaos ensued: polling stations running out of ballots because some districts had withheld a large amount for the expected high share of postal voting, some boxes were labeled for the wrong district at the printshop already, and resupply was then hindered by streets being blocked off for the marathon. Some stations suspended voting for up to 90 minutes or offered only ballots for the national elections. Residual COVID distancing rules also led to long lines, and many voters went home in frustration while the last cast their ballots only one-and-a-half hours after official closing time. Now the atypically unteutonic character of Berlin can be endearing if the usual anal German approach to regulations gets on your nerves; but after this display, "banana republic" was a frequently-used term. As it looks now there may be local repeat elections in three Berlin city and state districts, or maybe individual precincts within those where possible errors might exceed the margin where they become relevant for seat distribution. The national elections seem unaffected, but there may yet be an impact on forming the next city and state government. Designated governing mayor Franziska Giffey, from the more conservative wing of the otherwise rather left-wing Berlin SPD, has stated she will also explore a coalition with Greens and the liberal FDP to follow the emerging trend at the national level in addition to just continuing the current coalition with Greens and Left Party. Of course three of her party's twelve district chapters have already resolved they want to do the latter, an option clearly prefered by the also very left-wing Berlin Greens. | |||
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| SIGforum's Berlin Correspondent |
This Friday Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals agreed rather swiftly to open formal coalition talks, presenting a twelve-page paper of preliminary agreements to serve as a basis for negotiations on details. It's an interesting product of two more left-wing and one classically liberal party finding common ground; or put another way, one bigger traditional labor party which has been trending further left except for their chancellor-elect and two smaller ones with different interpretations of liberalism - one classical, one progressive but trending towards the center lately. If the FDP's handwriting is most clear in the paper, it probably is because they were the odd guys out which the other two had to accommodate if they wanted the thing to work rather than yet hand lead of the next government to the defeated Conservatives instead of the SPD. For example: No lifting of the constitutional debt cap, though that's no surprise - it would have needed a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag plus assent of the Bundesrat (the assembly of the states), and could never have been done against CDU/CSU even if the FDP somehow agreed. No tax hikes, no autobahn speed limits, no national housing rent cap, no "citizen insurance" to replace the current mix of public and private health insurance as demanded by SPD and Greens either. Of course everyone had to move a little, and the other two had their red lines, too. For the SPD: Increase minimum wage from currently planned 10.45 to twelve Euro per hour (actually the task of an independent commission). No cutting of retirement pay (currently 48 percent of last wage), no raise of retirement age. For the Greens: End of coal power "ideally" until 2030 rather than 2038, though the phrasing is very cautious. Increase of renewable energies and modern gas power stations. OTOH, reduction of energy prices for private consumers by taking out the cost of subsidizing renewables "as quickly as possible" within the term. Support for EU proposal to commission only CO²-neutral vehicles from 2035, which would need an "appropriately earlier" target for E-fuel cars only in Germany. There were areas where all three could agree pretty easily, like more digitalization, less bureaucracy: authorization procedures for public and private investions to be cut "at least" in half. Make the law on immigration of skilled professionals more practicable, introduce a score system as a second pillar; the Canadian model has long been advocated by proponents. An interesting convergence is on lowering national voting age to 16; long supported by SPD and Greens who thought they had the youth vote locked up, but with the FDP being right up there with the Greens among first-time voters in this election, they likely had no problem to agree. Foreign and security: Create a more integrated national security strategy, but no mention of an oft-demanded national security council. Strengthen multilateral cooperation with democratic states, not least due to the systemic competition with authoritarian states and dictatorships. Affirmation of the "Merkel Doctrine" that Israel's security is a reason of state for Germany. Commitment to NATO, more cooperation among European armies, improve Bundeswehr equipment; but no mention of the two-percent-of-GDP spending target, armed UAVs and nuclear participation, some hot-button issues. Parliamentary inquiry into the Afghanistan evacuation and an overall look into the deployment. The devil will be in the details, and as always a lot will come down to money. You can very well make lofty declarations on spending more on this or that while not raising taxes or debts, but in the end any promises will need to be paid for to implement them. So the actual coalition negotiations may take a good bit longer than indicated by the quick agreement to start them. The stated goal is to have a new government by Christmas; we'll see. | |||
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| SIGforum's Berlin Correspondent |
The new Bundestag convened last week and yo, ma girl Yvonne Magwas be a vice speaker of da house. We were both staffers for MPs on the defense committee before she ran on a bottom place of the CDU's Saxony state list in 2013 and suddenly found herself elected the morning after due to the better-than-expected result of the party combined with the Bundestag growth. By the next election the local district chapters had dumped her old boss to nominate her as the direct candidate. Realized only upon the recent news that she beat her AfD contender by less than one point to defend her seat this time, bucking the state trend which saw the AfD emerge as the strongest party in Saxony. Looks to me like her nomination as vice speaker for the CDU is part of a rejuvenation drive as the party realizes they have to push the next generation in their decimated Bundestag group. Notably, both outgoing defense minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and minister of economy Peter Altmaier resigned their seats after being re-elected so that younger members of their already-small Saarland state chapter could keep theirs. As official coalition talks between SPD, Greens and FDP started the same week, reports of friction points began to emerge. One disagreement that seems to be flanked by skirmishing in the media is, unsurprisingly, taxes. SPD and Greens have let on that they would have liked to reduce them for low and medium incomes as they campaigned for, but alas, the FDP won't agree to raise them for higher ones to pay for it. The FDP retorted that this is a false dilemma and they want to lower taxes on all incomes, but SPD and Greens can't be seen doing that after their campaigns. At the heart of this is of course the basic contradiction already noted after the exploratory talks: that you can't raise investitions, leave the constitutional debt cap alone, and not increase taxes at the same time. The ultimate price being fought over is the Ministry of Finances, which both Green co-leader Robert Habeck and his FDP colleague Christian Lindner want to lead. There is somewhat of a media campaign against the latter by people to whom a classical liberal as finance minister is a horror vision; not least due to his opposition against abandoning the principle that there can be no common EU debts, which would allow less creditable members to get money at lower interest. Additional disagreements are being reported this week in foreign policy. Let's see if they can stick to the aim of having Olaf Scholz elected chancellor in the week from 6 December, which would mean Angela Merkel would miss Helmut Kohl's record of time in office by a couple days. The military ceremony for her retirement is already planned for 2 December at any rate. Meanwhile people are making a big deal out of how she is taking her likely successor Scholz along for international meetings, but he still is the current vice chancellor; so the distinction is more in nuance than essence. See Churchill and Attlee at the 1945 Potsdam Conference.
https://www.spiegel.de/interna...83-ac7a-538784f92160 | |||
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SIGforum.com Main Page The Lounge UPDATE FROM 2018 and 2020: Merkel on the way out. No, seriously this time.
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