DanRoM
Forum Addict
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2009
- Messages
- 10,492
- Location
- Ruhr Area, Germany
- Car(s)
- MX-5 ND, Tracer 900 GT & two bikes
Recenty there was some activity in the Random Political Thoughts thread on the topic of the upcoming federal election in Germany, starting here.
I think this topic is sufficiently non-random to open as thread, so here it is.
Wikipedia also has a page: 2021 German Federal Election.
For starters, the main points:
Three parties have announced "chancellor candicates", i.e. if they get the most votes, this person will be the next chancellor;
Obviously, the main topic in the political arena right now, and probably until the election, is the Covid crisis. As was discussed in length in the Covid thread, the German populace is less than enthusiastic about the federal and state governments have been handling this. The media is also all over this and does their best to fuel the rage. In all fairness, not only is the fight against the pandemic a total mess for the most part, the political communication of it all is nothing short of disastrous. It's as if it is a deliberate attempt to write a textbook case on how not to do political communication and government.
Because CDU/CSU is heading the government on federal level as well as on state level in most important states - and their lead candidate Laschet has been making a fool of himself in his role as prime minister of Northrhine-Westphalia - they do really badly in polls right now. Still on first or second place, but at only between 25 and 30%, which is quite low for them. The Greens are at a steady 20%+, although they too are the government in some states.
Interestingly, the AfD cannot cash in on the general dissatisfaction with government performance. Seems like - hopefully - people finally noticed that a) it's a Nazi party and b) they don't offer solutions at all. Both have been apparent almost since their founding, but latest since about 2015.
The coming months will be interesting. Much will depend on how the vaccination campaign - which, despite being badmouthed constantly as a "vaccination disaster", is about the only thing working as planned right now - succeeds. If current predictions hold and basically everyone who wants to gets vaccinated during the summer school vacations latest, this combined with most people's capacity of forgetting bad government performance very quickly will probably save the CDU/CSU and bring them out top. Otherwise, the Greens might actually win.
Of course, there are other important topics that the government, whoever it might be, will have to tackle in the coming years - like taking measures against (or rather, dealing with) climate change, the growing social disparity, repairing the EU (whatever that means), various foreign policy issues, ...
In any case, the next government will - this is my prediction - be formed by a coalition between CDU/CSU and Greens. Who will get to name the chancellor is undecided yet. And perhaps they'll need a third party to cover 50% of parliamentary votes, which would be provided by taking the FDP into the fold (completing the Black/Green/Yellow "Jamaica" coalition).
Also theoretically possible are the following coalitions:
Personally, I'm still torn between three or maybe four choices for my vote. All of them leaning more or less to the left, of course.
So, let's discuss...
I think this topic is sufficiently non-random to open as thread, so here it is.
Wikipedia also has a page: 2021 German Federal Election.
For starters, the main points:
- Election will take place on Sept. 26, 2021 (with mail-in voting starting a few weeks prior).
- Angela Merkel, chancellor since 2005, does not run again, looking forward to retire after the end of her current term. So an entire generation will learn that it is indeed possible to have someone else as head of government.
- The running parties are
- conservative/right-leaning CDU/CSU (the "Union" between two sister parties, CSU being the Bavarian special edition of the CDU),
- the formerly left, but for a long time nothing meaningful middle-of-the-road SPD,
- the liberal (not in the American sense, but mostly in a "we need to have less taxes" way) FDP,
- the Greens
- the leftist (you don't say) The Left,
- the current Nazi party AfD (a good English backronym would be: Assholes fighting Democracy),
- and various smaller parties who don't stand a chance to jump over the threshold of 5% of votes to get into parliament. Which is a shame in three cases in my opinion: The Pirate Party (good concept, imploded a few years ago, but some people still hang onto it), the satire party Die PARTEI (despite being a satire project - or because of it - the most sincere party there is), and the fairly new pan-EU party/movement Volt.
Three parties have announced "chancellor candicates", i.e. if they get the most votes, this person will be the next chancellor;
- CDU/CSU: Armin Laschet, the head of the CDU itself and current prime minister of the biggest state, Northrhine-Westphalia. He beat Markus Söder, head of the CSU and prime minister of Bavaria, in a particular ugly struggle over the past two weeks or so. While the whole of Germany looked on and asked themselves how those idiots can waste their time and energy on this while there is a pandemic raging through the country, instead of doing their jobs and govern.
As a result, this is probably the weakest candidate their had for like... ever. But Söder as an alternative would also be risky, because to many non-Bavarians having a CSU chancellor is a no-go. - SPD: Olaf Scholz, current "vice chancellor" and minister for finance. The SPD used to be the other really big party in Germany, cashing in over 35% of votes for decades, but they have done so much shit in the past 20 years that they currently stand at about 10 - 15% in polls.
Declaring a chancellor candidate at all is a mix of tradition and defiance; there is no chance they'll actually win. On the plus side, the SPD announced their choice last summer already. - The Greens: Annalena Baerbock, co-chair of the party. This was also announced this Monday, same as with the CDU/CSU, but the Greens had their decision made behind closed doors between the two co-chairs, Baerbock and Robert Habeck. Perhaps they decided it by playing rock-paper-scissors, perhaps their had an unironically civil discussion.
This is the first time the Greens have announced a chancellor candidate, as according to polls they have been estabished as the second-biggest force in German politics for a few years now.
Obviously, the main topic in the political arena right now, and probably until the election, is the Covid crisis. As was discussed in length in the Covid thread, the German populace is less than enthusiastic about the federal and state governments have been handling this. The media is also all over this and does their best to fuel the rage. In all fairness, not only is the fight against the pandemic a total mess for the most part, the political communication of it all is nothing short of disastrous. It's as if it is a deliberate attempt to write a textbook case on how not to do political communication and government.
Because CDU/CSU is heading the government on federal level as well as on state level in most important states - and their lead candidate Laschet has been making a fool of himself in his role as prime minister of Northrhine-Westphalia - they do really badly in polls right now. Still on first or second place, but at only between 25 and 30%, which is quite low for them. The Greens are at a steady 20%+, although they too are the government in some states.
Interestingly, the AfD cannot cash in on the general dissatisfaction with government performance. Seems like - hopefully - people finally noticed that a) it's a Nazi party and b) they don't offer solutions at all. Both have been apparent almost since their founding, but latest since about 2015.
The coming months will be interesting. Much will depend on how the vaccination campaign - which, despite being badmouthed constantly as a "vaccination disaster", is about the only thing working as planned right now - succeeds. If current predictions hold and basically everyone who wants to gets vaccinated during the summer school vacations latest, this combined with most people's capacity of forgetting bad government performance very quickly will probably save the CDU/CSU and bring them out top. Otherwise, the Greens might actually win.
Of course, there are other important topics that the government, whoever it might be, will have to tackle in the coming years - like taking measures against (or rather, dealing with) climate change, the growing social disparity, repairing the EU (whatever that means), various foreign policy issues, ...
In any case, the next government will - this is my prediction - be formed by a coalition between CDU/CSU and Greens. Who will get to name the chancellor is undecided yet. And perhaps they'll need a third party to cover 50% of parliamentary votes, which would be provided by taking the FDP into the fold (completing the Black/Green/Yellow "Jamaica" coalition).
Also theoretically possible are the following coalitions:
- "Kenya" a.k.a. CDU/CSU/Greens/SPD: If the former two can't cover 50% and the FDP chickens out like they did last time (famous quote by their chairman Christian Lindner upon walking out of coalition talks back then: "We'd rather not govern at all than govern badly").
- "Traffic lights": Red/Yellow/Green a.k.a. SPD/FDP/Greens. Might be possible, but substituting the CDU/CSU for the SPD would be a risky move for the other two, votes-wise. These three parties can barely cover 45 - 50% according to current polls; the CDU/CSU would easily bring double of what the SPD can contribute.
- "Green/Red/Red" a.k.a. Greens/SPD/Left. The old dream of actually using the left-wing majority to form a government. Won't happen even if by some miracle they get enough votes (currently it looks more like those three together can barely get to just over 40%) because The Left and the SPD don't want to play together. As everywhere else, the left in general is better at infighting than at fighting the right.
- "Traffic light with an extra red" ak.a. Greens/SPD/FDP/The Left: Yeah right. Would be fun to see for the five minutes until it explodes.
- CDU/CSU/FDP/AfD: Right-wing coalition. Would likely generate a shitstorm destroying the CDU for collaborating with an actual Nazi party, at least in most of the country (but there would be cheers in Saxony).
Personally, I'm still torn between three or maybe four choices for my vote. All of them leaning more or less to the left, of course.
So, let's discuss...
Last edited:
I would have to invest in popcorn producers if that were to happen!
while they may say they’ve asked a representative selection of the populace, results always seem slightly skewed one way or another depending on the institution…
