If you thought it couldn’t get any worse for the CDU in Germany following the party’s horrible showing in the September 6 Saxony-Anhalt state election, think again.
On Sunday, exit polls showed the CDU with just 5.5% of the vote in another local election, raising the specter of expulsion from state parliament in Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania.
This appeared to be another instance of the CDU underperforming already low expectations. Pollsters expected the CDU to win 6%. More complete results suggested the party didn’t meet the 5% threshold for securing seats. If that result stands, it’ll be the first time since World War II that the CDU found itself sidelined entirely.
The prospect of being excluded from participation in state government constituted a veritable disaster for the party. And don’t take my word for it, just ask Friedrich Merz, who’s well on his way to being remembered as the least successful chancellor in the history of the federal republic.
“It was a disaster,” Merz said Sunday, addressing reporters in Berlin. “We can’t sugarcoat it.” (No, “we” can’t. And even if “we” wanted to, we’d be lampooned mercilessly.)
For the past three or so decades, Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania was governed by the Social Democrats in various coalitions. The SPD managed 35.5% of the vote on Sunday, good for second place. You’ll never guess who came in first: The AfD, with around 38%.
Although double the party’s share from the last election in the state, that’s nowhere near the absolute majority threshold, thank God. Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania, unlike Saxony-Anhalt, isn’t going to fall entirely to the far-Reich-right.
But the AfD’s leadership will doubtlessly call this yet another rebuke of the establishment and, more importantly, a testament to the notion that the “Brandmauer” — Germany’s version of France’s “cordon sanitaire” — is increasingly incompatible with the will of voters.
That, in turn, raises an all-too-familiar question in the post-2015 world: What do you do when the electorate seems determined to vote away democracy by putting unapologetically illiberal people in power? There’s no good answer to that question. It’s a riddle. A conundrum. A brain teaser. And an existential concern.
Needless to say, Sunday’s result makes Merz’s position even more untenable than it was already. He’s the least-popular German chancellor since… well, since ever maybe. Nationally, his approval rating was 14% as of last month, and it’s perilously close to the single-digits in Germany’s eastern states.
It’s hard to say how unpopular mustache man was when he and Eva settled in for that long nap on April 30, 1945, in the Führerbunker, but I gotta think it’s at least possible that 14% of Germans still supported “the cause.”
It’s likely Merz will be pushed aside by the CDU. And the sooner the better. I don’t personally think he’s a “bad” leader, but his unpopularity’s translating directly into gains for the far-right, and that’s no good.
Some caveats are in order. The same sentiments that explain AfD’s outperformance in Saxony-Anhalt are pervasive in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. It’s thus not surprising that AfD put in a strong showing there. Further, the party appears to have underperformed in Berlin on Sunday. That’s no consolation for Merz, though. CDU was bested there by Die Linke, which means Merz now has something in common with Hitler: He was beaten in the capital by communists.
Merz pretended Sunday that he’ll soldier on. “I want to move our country forward,” he said, pledging to forge ahead with his reform agenda. “I’d even go so far as to say these reforms are the antidote to the authoritarian poison that’s penetrating ever deeper into our society.”
“How combustible the situation has become was illustrated by Merz himself, who gave a short speech once the ballots closed and the first exit polls were out,” ING’s Carsten Brzeski remarked. “That is unprecedented: Comments from national government figures on state election results normally come later in the evening, if at all.”
For those of you who didn’t read “The Craft,” now’s a good time.
Reminds me of that number from The Producers:
_”Germany was having trouble
What a sad sad story.
Needed a new leader
To restore its former glory.
Where oh where was he,
Where could that man be,
We looked around,
And then we found,
The man for you and me.
And now it’s . . .
Springtime for Hitler and Germany,
Deutschland is happy and gay.
We’re marching to a faster pace,
Look out, here comes the Master Race.”_
Looks like CDU didn’t get to 5%.
There’s no good answer to that question. It’s a riddle. A conundrum. A brain teaser. And an existential concern.
I will pick the last option. 🙁
Achtung Baby was released almost 35 years ago.. H you’re making me feel old
I was actually pondering this the other day. While I think the rise of streaming and the extent to which artists are now able to exert a lot more control over their own music, masters, creative process and so on, is fantastic and a net win for everyone other than record labels, I think we lost something in the process.
If you go back and listen to the albums released in the 1990s, even the stuff that was just pure, pointless pop, it was all well-structured and carefully thought out. Stuff like, for example, Blues Traveler’s 4, Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, Counting Crows’ August and Everything After, and just on and on, they’re all a testament to the power of collaborative efforts aimed at creating music that resonates with a lot of people, even if the music isn’t actually very good and/or just asinine pop. And that’s to say nothing of the stuff that was actually great, e.g., everything from U2, everything from REM, 2Pac’s third and fourth albums, and so on. They would’ve been great regardless, but a lot of credit goes, I dare say, to the executive production process which is largely absent these days.
With the exception of Taylor Swift, Adele and a handful of other enormous acts, albums today all feel like mixtapes, even when they aren’t rap albums. Like bands and artists are just in the studio doing their own thing with no oversight or creative input from record executives who might say, you know, “Hey, that song isn’t going to do well,” or “Hey, that one’s a hit even if you don’t realize it,” or “No, don’t arrange the tracklist that way, do it this way.”
Anyway, maybe that’s just nostalgia / age talking, but all I know is I stopped being able to tolerate music — any kind of music more or less — in or around 2003. I like some modern niche rap (e.g., Boldy James) for the storytelling and clever wordplay, but it often seems to me like the days of being able to hear a song and think “I like that, even if it’s not really my thing and/or even though I can’t relate to it” ended a very long time ago.