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German politics xth attempt


kiko

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7 minutes ago, The guy from the Vale said:

I sense a vote of no confidence in the next 12 months. Possibly even this year.

Ain't no such thing. It would have to be Merkel asking for a vote of confidence (Vertrauensfrage). Or the Bundestag would have to elect a new chancellor (konstruktives Misstrauensvotum). Not so easy to get rid of a chancellor but the coalition might lose a vote and Merkel come under pressure to step down.

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But every possible challenger to Merkel will hardly be/look stronger or more confident, quite the contrary. Who would be the backstabber in the hope to become successor? I wouldn't trust any of them but I don't see anyone with the guts or the desperation to try this.

I think they will try to weather the next two elections because no big surprises will happen. Sure, both CSU in Bavaria and CDU in Hesse will be weakened but they will still be the strongest party and very probably lead some coalition government. The AfD will not become too strong in these regions.

The shit will hit the fan next year with lots of elections, most importantly Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg

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1 hour ago, The guy from the Vale said:

I know, but depending on how bad the shellacking of the CSU turns out to be next month (and I'll be happily involved in said shellacking), Seehofer may well force Merkel's hand on the former. 

Possibly, but I think Seehofer will have to shoulder the majority of the blame for election result in Bavaria, so I think it's more likely that he will first lose the party chair, and then be forced out of the goverment as the next step.

Too bad the SPD is in such a pitiful state. It's self inflicted, but when I think that my grandfather went to jail for that party, and that the current lot is struggling to come up with a strong dismissal of right wing extremists, it's in equal parts sad and infuriating to me.

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13 hours ago, Jo498 said:

But every possible challenger to Merkel will hardly be/look stronger or more confident, quite the contrary. Who would be the backstabber in the hope to become successor? I wouldn't trust any of them but I don't see anyone with the guts or the desperation to try this.

I think they will try to weather the next two elections because no big surprises will happen. Sure, both CSU in Bavaria and CDU in Hesse will be weakened but they will still be the strongest party and very probably lead some coalition government. The AfD will not become too strong in these regions.

The shit will hit the fan next year with lots of elections, most importantly Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg

There is also the elections for the European Parliament in May. And the CDU has a party convention in December, where the whole leadership is up for re-election. Will be interesting to see if somebody runs against Merkel. Right now it doesn't look like there is any chance of her being overthrown but maybe she gets a poor result or one of her cronies gets kicked out. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, looks like you lot in the south actually managed to get a normal election result. Congratulations to that.

The Greens duly delivered, and manged to turn their poll numbers into votes. Well done.

The CSU managed has posted the result we more or less wished for (35.6% I hoped they'd drop below the 35% mark, but I was probably a bit too greedy there).

The SPD dropped below 10%, this is sad, even by Bavarian standards.

Freie Wähler and AfD above the 10% mark.

One last wish, please make the FDP drop below the 5% mark. C'mon on Bavaria, show me you can provide a proper result.

Anyway, it looks like CSU and Freie Wähler would be enough to govern.

ANd now, I just hope that both Söder and Seehofer are off to the chopping block.

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Well, it could have been worse for the CSU. They can form a two party coalition and form a coalition against them. The poor result for the Social Democrats is probably more dangerous for Merkel. Opinion polls for Hesse aren't very favourable for the big parties either. 

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Hessen will be another beat down for the SPD. It won't be as bad big a horror show as Bavaria, but it should be enough to make Nahles'es position pretty uncomfortable to say the least.

I think the real question is how bad will be the bleeding for the CDU. As a very broad rule, the further you travel south the more to the right the local CDU leans (same applies to the movement to the east). So trying to copy the Schleswig-Holstein appraoch for dealing with the AfD (just ignore them) was never gonna work there. And their coalition with the Greens pretty much stopped him from acting all tough and law and order shit. So I don't think he can keep those strong conservative value voters onboard.

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I am not sure about this rule of thumb. Hesse is right in the middle and the CDU used to be among the most right wing of all, except the special case of Bavaria. That's why the black-green seemed so incredible. Recall that only 10 years ago this CDU had a slogan using the foreign-sounding names of Ypsilanti (only acquired by marriage to a Greek!) and Al-Wazir to evoke xenophobia. Before that they had used money from illegal donations to finance a campaign against dual citizenship. In brief, they were among the most corrupt and despicable bunch imaginable. And then the Greens showed extreme spinelessness by entering into a coalition with them. I sometimes wonder if I will live to see the day when the Greens suffer for their many 180° turns, I really hope so. But right now they are riding an incredible wave.

Anyway, Hesse could become more interesting than Bavaria. If black-green does not get enough votes, the SPD might grasp the opportunity for another black-red-coalition, to their temporary relief but certainly their final decay. Or three-party-coalitions would become necessary. Also, the AfD percentage will be more significant as an indicator without another strong conservative party (as the Bavarian Freie Wähler, there is an analogue in Hesse but they are way below the 5% threshold) around.

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Well, what's south to Hessen (int he old republic at least)?

BW. And they had some giant size arseholes in the past. Öttinger, Späth, Teufel, before them the old Nazis Filbinger and Kiesinger.

5 hours ago, Jo498 said:

And then the Greens showed extreme spinelessness by entering into a coalition with them. I sometimes wonder if I will live to see the day when the Greens suffer for their many 180° turns, I really hope so. But right now they are riding an incredible wave.

Ah, well, the Greens usually manage to push at the very least one clearly Green Project into the coalition treaties, which has thus far been enough to somewhat justify their Faustian bargains. In the process they have thus far also usually managed to syphon off enough votes from their coalition partners, so that they could live with a pushback from their own base.

I mean, they are the bloody senior partner in a coalition with the CDU in bloody BW.

Edit:

In addition there's also no real alternative to them on the left right now.

The SPD is in such a shambolic state, I doubt they know themselves what they are for or against anymore.

The so called Left is unelectable (to me and for most of my friends) because of Lafontaine and Wagenknecht. Their Nationalism is just too much to stomach.

If you take those two out of your consideration, then you are left with the Greens more or less by default as your only voting option.

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Saarland and Rheinland-Pfalz are certainly not north of Hesse.

The Greens aren't on the left in any meaningful sense, even considering that this word hardly means anything anymore (they are as "left" as Hilary Clinton, i.e. on the left of Trump but not much else). They are completely disconnected from the lower half of the populace and don't care for them, even if they have not publicly used "deplorables" or similar language. They are insufferably paternalist, smugly self-righteous and have hardly achieved anything on their original main topic, environmentalism in the last 10 years. (Remember that RWE was granted the right to raze that forest by a red-green government in NRW.)

A few weeks ago there was a good commentary in the taz but I cannot find it anymore and it was from a guest (their regulars are not that smart) who said that the two major parties, namely the CDU and the SPD have allowed two large gaps. These gaps are a (traditional) conservative party and a social democratic party. And these gaps are filled respectively by the AfD and the "Aufstehen" movement or the Wagenknecht/Lafo wing of the Left. I largely agree with that. The only dim hope is that the SPD finally will be waking up now and change their ways. But it is probably too late.

Similarly (although I am not sure if this is hopeful), the AfD will maybe achieve only one thing: Push the CDU/CSU a little further to the Right. Probably mainly in bad ways like law and order etc. But as long as there is a "coalition" (basically all but a few of the Left, and the AfD) claiming that there IS NO ALTERNATIVE on a large number of policies (EU, immigration etc.), so these issues are de facto not democratically controlled but rather bureaucratically administered, the AfD will keep growing because, bad and incompetent as they are, they are the only ones who at least claim that there are alternatives and that people should be able to decide between them. Apart from that more general "gap hypothesis" above, I think there are around three issues that made the AfD possible. All three were administered without any democratic control (not to speak of plebiscite) and many people disliked them: the Euro and yielding lots of control to EU bureaucrats since the late 1990s, Saving the banks in 2008 and open borders in 2015. (A fourth factor might be the slashing of pensions, welfare etc. by Red-Green as well as entering several wars that clearly were not defending German (or NATO terrain.)

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9 hours ago, Jo498 said:

A few weeks ago there was a good commentary in the taz but I cannot find it anymore and it was from a guest (their regulars are not that smart) who said that the two major parties, namely the CDU and the SPD have allowed two large gaps. These gaps are a (traditional) conservative party and a social democratic party. And these gaps are filled respectively by the AfD and the "Aufstehen" movement or the Wagenknecht/Lafo wing of the Left. I largely agree with that. The only dim hope is that the SPD finally will be waking up now and change their ways. But it is probably too late. 

That is a somewhat bold claim.  Aufstehen as new social democratic party? Apart from the obvious flaw that a party and a movement are two seperate things, the idea that Wagenknecht and Lafontaine of all people could lead a party to anything but civil war is really rich in itself. Furhtermore the main idae, that the Wagenknecht wing of the so called Left is infact the Social Democrats, that is simply absurd and not backed by reality. That's the faction of the party the SPD (or anybody else who hasn't gone bonkers) avoids like the plague. Hell, even not so small parts of her own party want her gone. She commands a group of true believers.

I repeat what I said earlier, I never had an issue with old Gregor Gysi, or with Katja Kipping, but as long Wagenknecht and Lafo are there, there'll always be that very unappealing nationalist element.

Fun anecdote (you can believe or not). A friend of mine once had an apprenticeship at their Bundestagsfraktion. It's been a while (Lafontaine's ex-wife was still with him, and in the Bundestag), but even back then the people there loathed Lafontaine and the people in his proximity. But him and Wagenknecht are now the saviours of the political left in Germany? Seven save us.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So the Greens managed to cannibalize CDU and SPD.

The CDU managed to lose voters left (Greens) and right (AfD).

This is a really interesting result.

Right now, that CDU Green coalition might have sufficient votes to continue (the margin being exactly one vote). The FDP would volunteer to prop them up.

The Left coalition (Greens, SPD, and the socalled Left) fall short, by one or two votes (as of now). Part of it being the heavy losses of the SPD, and also the so called left somewhat underperforming. Yes, it's their best result ever in Hessen, but still they fell a bit short of the expectations.

Let's see, who finishes higher. The Greens or the SPD. That's a really tight race.

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Well, it's a tie between SPD and Greens. CDU can still claim to have won as Bouffier will stay in office. Pressure on the coalition in Berlin increases. Has there been any statement by Merkel yet? Looks like Nahles is the one whose position is becoming more precarious right now. Still that CDU convention in December where Merkel is up for re-election as chair could be interesting. I guess the coalition will continue till the European elections in Mai. Problem is that both CDU/CSU and SPD would lose big time in new elections. So they'll go on for now.

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Merkel announced she will give up her position as party chairman (chairperson?), which is generally viewed as being the first step to giving up her candidacy for another turn as chancellor when her term is up. ETA: Press conference. She just explicitly (for her, that is) confirmed she won't try for another term.

My money as to who will try to step up is still my special friend Jens Spahn.

I would like to point out that recent elections in Bavaria and Hessen by no means represent a shift to the left, rather the contrary. That's even being very generous with the term, counting the SPD and The Greens as "left(-ish)".

ETA: Yup. Jens Spahn, Kramp-Karrenbauer and possibly Maerz are going to fight for party leadership. My money is on my boy Spahn.

http://taz.de/Kanzlerin-zieht-sich-aus-der-Politik-zurueck/!5546277/

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I am somewhat more curious whether Nahles will survive this in her position as party chair. I've never been particularly fond of her, but the SPD burning more party chairs then H$V managers is not going to help them either.

Anyway, as for the next CDU leader, this will indeed be interesting, on who wins it. Yes, the more conservative bells like Spahn or Maerz look like the most probable picks. But I wouldn't write off the moderates. They didn't throw any public tantrums or have as big a media presence as Spahn, but they didn't need to. So I am not sure, that Spahn has better chances than Kramp-Karrenbauer or Laschet. The idea of Laschet running against Scholz for the next election might be enough to put anybody with a pulse to sleep, but Laschet is PM of NRW afterall, which by itself gives him some political juice. Also, Günther in SH is also in the moderate camp. So I have no idea, where the center of power lies within the CDU atm.

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I don't have any inside scoop on the CDU, either, so it's just an educated guess.

As for the SPD, I don't think it matters much... They are done for in the long run, and deservedly so. Time and time again they betrayed their core base and their party's original ideas, and blew every chance they got to change. And even after their massive losses in Bavaria and Hessen they decided it was just because people couldn't see their great work within the federal government (because of internal struggles within the CDU/ CSU). Granted, all the bickering and power struggles didn't help, but if Nahles et al believe that is their biggest problem... Well, honey, think again.

On a sidenote, turncloak Kevin Kühnert is doing another 180 now...

Anyway, that's why I'm more interested in what happens with the CDU (as it's still the biggest party) and, of course, those who really gained votes, i.e. Greens and, well, those who shall not be named...

Of course, the greens have also betrayed many of their former ideals, but they're so damn positive and excited about it, look at Ken & Barbie in Bavaria!

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I still think the SPD's biggest issue is still that they don't have a real profile in any field.

The latest of the more prominent issues was their Hambacher Forst stand up. What was it again they put forward as their position?

While we disagree with the protesters, we also support their right to protest.  They are really busy fighting yesteryears' battles. While we agree, that climate change is a problem, we also need to protect those precious jobs in the coal industry, as that was our core voting base in the last century. Fundamentally ignoring, that those jobs are for most parts gone already. I don't mean to sound mean or anything, but the coal industry is in its deathbed. So a forward looking policy might feature ideas of what to do with those regions, that still heavily rely on those jobs instead of keeping that industry somewhat on life support. That's less of an NRW issue, that goes more towards the Lausitz. I mean, even the ones employed in the coal sector know, that it doesn't really have a future.

Then we have their fight with the legacy of Schröder and his chancellorship. On the one hand, a part of them still like to have him around as their last living chancellor and a symbol of better times. On the other hand, he is Putin's puppet, and there's the Agenda 2010. It has helped boost Germany's economy, but it's socially unbalanced and unfair, but it's also helped boost Germany's economy. We also want to invest in xyz, but we don't want to risk our budget surplus.

Migration/refugee crisis. We disagree with the AfD, but we should listen more to the concerns of their voters. We can't positon us too much on either side, because it would alienate parts of our electorate. We can't take sides in this CDU-CSU spat, for whatever reason.

There's really a total void on most issues. But they passed the Good Daycare Law. I lack expertise on the field, to judge whether this thing is really good, or if it's just a label.

 

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Some more thoughts on Hessen and the CDU leadership.

I don't think Spahn will win it. Here's why. Part of his appeal was to stick it (or rather him) to Merkel. But since Merkel's leaving now anyway, that reason to vote for him is gone. And Spahn by himself is (at least imho) too divisive to lead them. Plus he lacks somewhat in stature, as he was never governor of a state, and this is his first gig as minister in the federal goverment, so he has that going against him. Maerz has been out of the political life for over a decade, after he was axed by Merkel. So, I also think that he lacks stature.

I go for an outsider bet on their leadership. I say Bouffier will run and win it. He has enough appeal for the more conservatives (as he is essentially a bell), and he can also go to the more moderates and say: Look, I am not as hardline as people think, I was perfectly fine with governing and coalition with the Greens. And like Kramp-Karrenbauer, I also managed to defend my govenership in a state.

Now with regards to Hessen.

On 10/29/2018 at 1:07 PM, Mindwalker said:

I would like to point out that recent elections in Bavaria and Hessen by no means represent a shift to the left, rather the contrary. That's even being very generous with the term, counting the SPD and The Greens as "left(-ish)".

I would rather draw your attention to soething else.

BTW 2017 results for Hessen.

CDU 30.9%

SPD 23.5

Linke 8.1

Greens 9.7

FDP 11.5

AfD 11.9

So the parties right to the center (CDU FDP AfD) did get 54.3% percent of the votes. The parties to the left were 41.3%

Now let's compare it to the results from sunday.

CDU 27.2%

SPD 19.8

Greens 19.8

AfD 13.1

FDP 7.5

Linke 6.3

The right wing block (CDU, AfD, FDP) only got 47.8% of the votes this time around. The voting block to the left  got 45.9%. So they have closed the gap quite a bit. From 13% last year, to a mere 1.9%. So it's not all doom and gloom.

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