And We Are Off To The Races

[Simon Tan]

Berlin to send Princess to St. Petersburg. Then all will be ordnung. Secure the East then deal with the trouble in Europe. Like kicking out Greece and spiking Ottomanic ambition. Hell, there is even the possibility of reaching out to Hanover.

[Panzermann]

Not unexpectedly to me the debate was boring. And not much of a debate at all. And I expected pretty much a draw anyway. The only clear statements were the no Autobahn fee from Merkel already mentioned and Steinbrück's talk about unified healthcare. The rest was very squishy.

 

A real downer were the moderators which did not keep the candidates on track. A question was asked and the candidates answered something different. The moderators over all came across as... well,... jaded? With the occasional exception of Raab. He looked actually upset at times by the evasive answers.

Edited September 3, 2013 by Panzermann

[Ssnake]

The really disturbing thing about that whole "event" was that neither the candidates nor anyone of the moderators seriously discussed the economy. They were all going "we're going to (not) raise the taxes", "we'll (not) shift the state spending focus towards (x)", but nobody asked from where the taxes are coming, whether the record cash flow will continue to flood the treasure, and how cutting spending might actually be the better answer.

 

Once again proof that the SPD has entirely usurped the CDU culturally and mentally. Merkel is a CDU member only by accident.

 

I guess some countries in Europe may envy us for the inherent stability that this brings. But economically competent politicians have been relegated to the third and fourth row, the Mittelstandsvereinigung has been emaciated, eloquent high profile economists like Merz have been bullied out of the game. The banking sector all over Europe has inflated even bigger in relation to the GDP than it was in 2008. We haven't accomplished anything except stupid overregulation in largely irrelevant areas, and piled up debt to feed zombie banks. It's a disgrace.

[Simon Tan]

So Steinbruck would be a male Merkel?

[BansheeOne]

I just read a "Stern" article about acquaintances talking about how Merkel is, personally - which is a rare thing, as one of the statements was that she is severely guarding her private life and will rapidly un-friend anybody blabbing about details therein she doesn't want to become public. However, one of the things everybody agreed on is that she's not a party politician and running things as the natural scientist she is by training rather than as an ideologue. Actor Ulrich Matthes (Goebbels in "Downfall") made a quite pertinent remark: "If she had fallen in love with some coming SPD politician in 1990 and not been together with [her husband] Joachim Sauer already, she would be chancellor for the SPD today. And her politics would look just the same!"

 

Which incidentially is something both the left and right are accusing her of, though with different intentions; that she is taking over any position that emerges as potentially harmful to her, and that she has no passion. Conservatives in the CDU/CSU are decrying the "social democratization" of the party; leftist intellectuals about the boring static state of politics she has inflicted upon Germany. To which I use to sigh: Ah, the desire of the well-fed intellectual for passionate, exciting, even radical and revolutionary politics - as long as his own standard of living is not affected, of course.

 

Steinbrück is in fact a very passionate character, whose tendency to speak his mind is a quite sympathetic difference to Merkel's controlled public persona; his problem is that his convictions are often at odds with his party. I don't actually think his politics would be too different from Merkel's overall (if only because the latter's aforementioned modus operandi), though there are marked divides in fiscal policy in particular. His impulsive streak and the habit of shooting his mouth off would probably satisfy most intellectual desires, though again, personally I will take boring and solid over exciting and unpredictable anytime when it comes to running the country.

[Panzermann]

In effect politics would not change much. The tone and style would change. Where Merkel is quiet, Steinbrück is rather loud and brash. And both are friends with TINA.

 

 

 

Edith would like to add that I got ninjad.

Edited September 5, 2013 by Panzermann

[sunday]

What is the role of the Mittelstandsvereinigung in formuling CDU policy?

 

I found that term translated as Small Business Association, basically.

 

OTH, as a fellow European I very much prefer solid and predictable CDU rather than a new Schroeder, but What happened to that stop to German nuke plant construction after the tsunami?

[BansheeOne]

Mittelstand is somewhat of a holy cow in German politics; literally medium-sized businesses (or in other words anybody who actually employs other people but is not big enough to entertain thoughts of going on the stock market), the mythical bedrock of the economy which pays most of the employees and contributes the largest part to the GNP. Whenever there is debate on economic politics, they will get trotted out for or against the alleged effect of changes. Notably, the tax plans of SPD and Greens were decried by the government parties as mittelstandsfeindlich on the grounds that many companies in that segment are personally-owned and run on private financial assets.

 

Accordingly, the MIT is one of the stronger interest groups within CDU/CSU. Others worth mentioning are those of the young, woman and senior citizens, Junge Union, Frauen Union and Senioren Union respectively; and speaking of unions, there is the Christlich-Demokratische Arbeitnehmervereinigung (CDA), also a fairly powerful association promoting workers' rights. They have no formal role, but are interest groups you better involve in inner-party decision-making regarding their pet issues.

 

Regarding nuclear power, the great project of the Energiewende to shift towards regenerative energy - in fact a typical Merkelian operation as she went from rolling back runtime limitations of nuclear powerplants agreed upon under the earlier Red-Green government to getting out of nuclear energy even faster in the space of a few weeks after Fukushima - is still on and even one of the major campaign topics as the opposition accuses the government of mishandling it and complaining about the urprisingly climbing energy prices. Of course they're complaining about something here they would have liked to enact themselves, but never got around to ... and as far as I'm concerned, The Voter demanded that the tsunami-endangered nuke plants on the Upper Rhine be shut down, so The Voter can pay the resulting higher prices.

 

It's not like nobody warned of that effect, after all. The government is bravely selling the shift as but a minor adaption of their previous policy which always stated nuclear power to be a "bridge technology" until renewables could economically fill the need, just speeding up the process a little. Of course this means, among other things, building huge offshore wind farms on the North Sea coast where they are most dependable, though most of the power consumption is down south, requiring new high-voltage lines. Which run into all sorts of local resistance against masts going up in the unspoiled countryside home to The Voter, concerns about the impact of magnetic fields etc., so progress has been slow.

Edited September 5, 2013 by BansheeOne

[sunday]

And on top of the increasing electricity price, renewables also cause other problems:

 

http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2013/01/23/germanys-green-energy-destabilizing-electric-grids/

 

And that's a pity, since the German power supply used to be a byword for reliability.

Edited September 5, 2013 by sunday

[BansheeOne]

Some interesting info there I didn't know of, though that site is obviously run by the Big Coal, Oil and Nuke guys from "The Naked Gun 2" ...

 

The first regular polls after the TV debate and Tuesday's special session of the Bundestag to introduce a provisional 2014 budget with the usual big government-opposition bashfest are in. There seems to be little impact, with CDU/CSU still at 41; the SPD had already gained one point or so ahead of the debate and seems stabilized at 26-27, though at the expense of the Greens who are down to 10 - less than their 2009 result of 10.7, and pretty much reduced to their core constituency according to pollsters. Particularly hard for them as they had all-time highs of up to 24 after Fukushima only two years ago.

 

That might have contributed to their current sorry state though as it seduced them to play one of the big boys and broaden their programmatic Schwerpunkt as a popular leftist party, particularly into social justice which is the core competence of the SPD. Which led to their exorbitant tax plans as the center plank of their campaign program, chasing off the higher middleclass voters with a conscience which had flocked to them. The pedophilia debate and their image as a prohibition party highlighted by the "veggy day" proposal seem to have done the rest.

 

With the Liberals at 5-6 and the Left at 8, the margin between the current government and opposition camps remains 1-3 points though, so a continuation of the current and a new grand coalition are still about equally likely; moreover, nearly 60 percent of voters are reportedly still undecided. Conservative media are alleging of secret plans within the opposition for the SPD to leave a potential great coalition halfway in the term and enter an all-left coalition, thereby absolving them and the Greens of their campaign promise not to go with the Left after the election.

 

That's certainly what the bored leftist intellectuals are demanding, but might just as much be spin by the government camp. CDU/CSU in particular have had good success with scaring voters with the image of a popular front government, termed a "red sock campaign" after a famous poster picturing a pair of same, labeled SPD and PDS (the Left Party's eastern predecessor) respectively.

 

The high point of the week however was SPD secretary-general Andrea Nahles mocking the government's outlook at reality in the budget debate by singing the theme song from the Swedish "Pippi Longstocking" series. Critiques of her artistic prowess were not particularly positive though.

 

Edited September 5, 2013 by BansheeOne

[sunday]

There was also the blackout of November 4th, 2006, in which the disconnection of a power line in Germany needed measures to be taken as far as Greece and Portugal.

 

http://www.energy-regulators.eu/portal/page/portal/EER_HOME/EER_PUBLICATIONS/CEER_PAPERS/Electricity/2007/E06-BAG-01-06_Blackout-FinalReport_2007-02-06.pdf

 

Summary (bit partial, though)

[BansheeOne]

A bit partial is polite. There is so much spin, exaggerations, strawmen and downright falsehoods in there compared to the ERGEG report you could probably power all of Europe with it for a day.

 

I remember that incident - it was not particularly embarrassing for many people here who had ridiculed the US for its ramshackle powergrid in the great 2003 blackout only because they had already been thoroughly embarrassed the previous winter when parts of Northwest Germany were out of power for up to five days due to severe ice and snow conditions causing widespread damage to power lines.

[sunday]

I had a more comprehensive report on the incident that was truly a fascinating reading - for an engineer. It got down to every affected power station and substation, had maps. The bee's knees.

 

Could not find it however...

 

But yes, the European electrical grid needs some more HV lines built, and as this is very OT, I'd like to end here.

[Soren Ras]

Yeah, there will be time for plenty of TN threads on the European power grids if current trends continue.

 

Now back to the scheduled Teutonic hi-jinks!

 

--
Soren

[BansheeOne]

I keep saying our campaigns are getting ever more American. Allegedly somebody tried to blackmail Peer Steinbrück into resigning his candidacy over an alleged illegal housemaid his wife employed 14 years ago. He filed charges and went public though, and by his account the Philippina in question was actually employed by his mother-in-law (who died in 2003) and "borrowed" to her daughter once a week for half a year in 1999, both parties balancing cost among themselves.

 

Supposedly his wife would have liked to keep her legally employed afterwards, but the maid declined being put on the record since her husband had lost his job as a gardener with the Phillipine embassy when it moved from Bonn to Berlin and the couple had lost legal residency status as a result; so she was sent on her way with 500 marks. The lady, now a legal alien once more, seems to have confirmed that story. Some airtime today after national tabloid "Bild" went public with it yesterday, but I think it's mostly another sign of the lack of serious controversial campaign topics.

 

The League of Taxpayers freaked this week about the additional cost connected to the alleged increase of seats in the Bundestag due to the new election law which will have supernumerary mandates completely compensated for; apparently the Bundestag administration has prepared for up to 60 additional seats with an increase of staff. The LoT demanded to reform the law again and downsize parliament to 500 members by enlarging districts. However, election.de who actually follow individual district races only see 620 seats in their latest projection today; while that is more than the regular 598, it's really exactly what we have currently, and two less than we started the term with.

 

Election.de also mirrors the latest slight trends which sees the SPD gaining at the expense of the Greens for no overall change between camps; and also a slight gain of the Euro-sceptic AfD which is likely due to the latest debate about possible new aids for Greece. They are still only at between three and four percent, but pollsters say that up to eight percent of voters are entertaining thoughts about going with them, and are warning that as a new party there is no data from previous elections to base models on.

 

The possibility that they might still jump the five-percent threshold and enter parliament is viewed with some apprehension by the government camp and a certain hopeful hype by opposition-friendly media, as it would likely prevent continuation of the current conservative-liberal coalition. However, they would not only draw votes from CDU/CSU and FDP but also the opposition parties as there are sceptics among the constituencies of all, proportionally most from the SPD and probably disproportionally from the Left which has tried to run with some Euro-criticism too; so it would likely end in a grand CDU/CSU-SPD coalition again.

 

The state elections in Bavaria and Hesse are also getting more in focus as they approach, the former going down a week ahead of the latter and the national one, eight days from now. Bavaria looks like a solid new absolute majority for the CSU at 47-48 in the polls, SPD 20-21, Greens 10-11, Free Voters 7-8; the FDP is doubtful to make it back in at 3-4, and the Left even more so at 3. Hesse is very tight at CDU 38-39, SPD 28-30, Greens 15, FDP 5-6 and Left 4; essentially both camps are at 43-45 unless the Left makes it in, which has provided the current CDU-FDP state government with the opportunity for another "red socks" campaign.

 

Hesse is a traditionally polarized state where the CDU is actually rather conservative, and the SPD and Greens particularly leftist. In 2008, SPD candidate Andrea Ypsilanti had ruled out to go with a Red-Green-Red coalition during the campaign only to try just that when neither CDU-FDP nor SPD and Greens achieved a majority - but didn't get enough votes in two attempts and resigned as state party chairwoman, leading to new elections within the year which confirmed the current CDU-FDP government.

 

This year's SPD candidate Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel was a proponent of the popular front approach then, and has tried to evade the question in this campaign. It looked good for him for some time as Red-Green was leading in the polls and the Left was just below the five-percent threshold; however, CDU-FDP have been catching up and managed to put the topic back in the limelight just two weeks prior to the election.

 

For some pretty colorful graphics, Spiegel Online has quite instructive charts on where the parties have their strongholds among secondary voters, based upon the interactive maps at wahlatlas.de; quite good supplement to the primary vote projection of election.de. Easy to see CDU/CSU have theirs in Bavaria and the Catholic Münsterland in the West, SPD on the North Sea Coast, southern Lower Saxony and northern Hesse plus of course the Ruhr area. The Left is of course still a largely East German party except for the Saarland, home of long-time party godfather Oskar Lafontaine (and incidentially, also of former DDR leader Erich Honecker).

 

Both the FDP and Greens are strong in the well-off Southwest as in fact their voters tend to be higher-income - though they may have different definitions of liberalism - plus for the Greens the major cities; the Green blotch in central Germany is my home county of Göttingen and neighboring Kassel to the south across the Hesse state line, both defined by their university population. The other one farther north is the Wendland where battles have been raging over the national nuclear waste storage site for decades.

[TonyE]

Is it wrong to be obsessed about the central Berlin elections?

[Mike Steele]

Is it wrong to be obsessed about the central Berlin elections?

If you are a German, no. Everybody else, ehhhh

[BansheeOne]

He's probably just IMPRESSED by Vera Lengsfeld's 2009 campaign poster I posted earlier. Though it didn't help her to win Berlin-Kreuzberg which is the only district to have directly elected a Green MP so far.

 

This year her son Philipp is running in my own district of Berlin-Mitte against SPD incumbent Eva Högl. Who is not unattractive in person herself but has a toothy smile that tends to look menacing in pictures. Though her posters this time are better than in 2009, when I just had to play with them in Photoshop for my private amusement.

 

[Soren Ras]

I have seen movie velociraptors look less threatening.

 

--

Soren

[sunday]

Is this the 2009 poster?

 

[BansheeOne]

Nah, that's her current picture. The 2009 original was this:

 

 

There was a less threatening banner with the tagline of "With [heart] for Mitte":

 

 

Another of my photoshop variants therefore was entitled "I want your heart. For Mitte."

[Max H]

Anyone accentuated her teeth on the posters yet, like this brit poster?

 

 

[BansheeOne]

Of course she gets gaps inked into her teeth on the current poster; I even saw that on her campaign car when I passed it on my way to work during the last week. But "improving" campaign posters is probably a popular pastime everywhere.

 

The guy who tried to blackmail SPD candidate over the housemaid issue has reportedly turned himself in to prosecutors. Allegedly he had written the letter in an angry moment but never intended to send it, only noticing he must have had put into the mail with other letters when the media reported on it. That might be an entry for the "Stupid Criminals" thread, too ...

 

An INSA poll today sees the SPD two points up, the Greens two points down, and the Liberals below the five-percent threshold at four for the first time in weeks. However, INSA is polling exclusively online, which casts some doubt on their accuracy. They have consistently gauged CDU/CSU below 40 in contrast to all other pollsters, probably because they're missing the little old ladies who have voted conservative all their lifes but don't have internet. On the other hand, election.de with their very good record at projecting aggregate poll data have CDU/CSU at 39.5 too, and in fact the Conservatives usually stay a bit below predictions; but then the site has the FDP at 6.5, well above current poll numbers, so I guess it all evens out.

[BansheeOne]

Merkel and Steinbrück did separate townhall meeting-style events on public TV with representative audiences selected by pollsters this week. Both performed as expected; the only impact on public debate stemmed from Merkel replying that she had "trouble" with homosexual adoptions to the question of a gay guy. There was a predictable minor backlash by the opposition and gay rights groups as well as criticism from the Liberals, but not much grass-roots resonance; even in the notoriously anti-Merkel comments section of Spiegel Online, many rather commended her for expressing an actual personal feeling rather than the usual campaign polispeak (and showed some bias of their own on the issue).

 

Merkel has faced more criticism about her conceived zigzagging on Syria after she didn't sign the US-initiated declaration calling for action after the alleged use of chemical weapons by Assad at the G 20 summit. Since other major European powers did so after she had already left, Germany suddenly faced ending up in the same inconvenient spot as over Libya when we isolated us from our allies with the abstention in the UNSC. That was rectified the next day after the EU had agreed on a joint stance and all other members signed jointly - something Merkel said was the plan all along, blaming the early starters for disrespecting minor EU members by failing to wait. Regardless, SPD and Greens accused her of hazardous politics.

 

Some other campaign moves by the opposition have backfired rather spectacularly lately. The Young Socialists planned to distribute postcards showing Merkel shaking hands with allegedly tax-evading Bayern München president Uli Hoeneß at soccer games, but got kicked in the shin by the clubs playing there which stressed their political neutrality; even the SPD distanced themselves from their youth organization. This week the daily "tageszeitung" which is close to the Greens got themselves in hot water with their own readership over an interview with liberal Minister of Economy Philipp Rösler.

 

From the allegedly far-ranging talk with Rösler they had distilled mostly questions which concerned his Vietnamese origins and his experience with his Asian looks in German society - a topic which he hates and tries to avoid, maintaining that since he was adopted as a baby he has grown up and feels like a German, full stop. Now the custom in Germany is to have the final guise of interviews "authorized" by the interviewee since legally, he or she shares the copyright; something that is controversial since while it prevents journalists from making up content, it also allows the other party to change statements after the fact. Sometimes when the latter goes too far, papers will just not publish the distorted result, or else put in a blank space or just their questions in protest.

 

The taz did the latter after the FDP's press office didn't authorize the Rösler interview. What they obviously hadn't counted on was that their politically correct readership also took offense at the selected questions pretty much reducing him to his foreign origins, and their blog was inundated with cries of "Racism!". The defense of the paper that they were really getting at other people's racism didn't really help; also, this came on the heels of their editor-in-chief having recently kicked out a critical comment on the Green pedophilia affair and a rather uncritical interview with national Green chairwoman Claudia Roth, so the taz didn't look too good in all this.

 

The Greens as a party are obviously worried at their sagging poll numbers; Forsa with their penchant for sensationally different numbers even had them at nine percent behind a strengthened Left this week. The Euro-sceptic AfD remains the big unknown due to their possible entry into parliament despite still being polled at three percent. In a retort for the government's alleging about the SPD and Greens going with the Left, SPD and Greens have demanded that the government parties rule out a coalition with the "right-wing populist" AfD. Which the CDU promptly did, and in fact the AfD's calls for getting out of the Euro makes them an impossible partner for the government's generally pro-European politics;

 

But of course the SPD and Greens ruling out a coalition with the Left (which really isn't too different from the AfD at their base when it comes to Europe) hasn't kept the government parties from stirring fears about that option, and two can play that game. The renewed "red sock campaign" of CDU/CSU has reportedly long been planned for the campaign end phase to counter a sense of complaceny among the government's voter base, which might depress turnout due to poll numbers giving an impression of "having already won".

 

Bavaria is having state elections this Sunday, with every camp spinning the expected big win of the CSU to fit the respective interests regarding mobilization of voter bases. The latest numbers for Hesse, voting along with the national elections next week, see CDU-FDP and SPD-Greens tied with the Left just back up at the five-percent threshold at the expense of the Greens, so this race remains very interesting.

 

As part of the national bring-out-the-vote effort, youths between 14 and 17 who will be eligible in the next national elections can have a "test vote" this Saturday which is treated just like the real thing, polls and all. The latter show some interesting results; as can be expected, the Greens are strong at 18 percent (down from a "vote" of 19.9 in 2009) compared to the "adult" polls, as are the Pirates at nine (8.7 in 2009). However, CDU/CSU and SPD are approaching their overall numbers at 36 (up from 19.3!) and 24 (up from 20.4) respectively. FDP and Left are down to three (from 7.6) and four (from 10.4) respectively. Future voters seem to go more mainstream - last time the Animal Rights Party scored 5.2 and would have entered the Bundestag.

 

And now for some light entertainment. All parties admitted to the race have the right to some free airtime on public TV, though obviously they have to produce the spots with their own means - which leads to the full range of hilariousness. Spiegel Online has a selection of the best and worst. Also see sidebar; the clip with the blurred couple having sex showing up in one video is from one of the fun groups, "The Party", founded by editors of satiric magazine "Titanic". Obviously that one keeps getting thrown off Youtube despite their protestations that they are a legitimately admitted party in the German elections ...

 

Even the bigger groups have their foul-ups; recently it turned out that the same stock footage of a happy family on bicycles was used in clips of the Liberals, the neo-Nazi NPD and a Finish advertisment for curd. Also, Left Party pin-up Sarah Wagenknecht, once hard-left bordering on Stalinism but somewhat mellowed over the last years, posed for "Gala" - a fashion-and-celebrity weekly magazine for the bored housewife, of all things - in pictures inspired by Frida Kahlo. She's looking quite a bit better than the original of course; whatever her politics, nobody has ever accused her of not being hot, Iranian father and all.

 

[BansheeOne]

The latest polls of ARD and ZDF largely agree on CDU/CSU being slightly down at 40, though ARD sees the SPD at 28 - a gain of four points over the last three weeks - while ZDF still has them at 26; FDP 5-6, Greens 10-11, Left 8. The dangerous neighborhood of the Liberals to the five-percent threshold is resulting in increased campaign moves to get CDU/CSU voters to give their secondary vote to the FDP. Former chancellor Helmut Kohl already quietly held a photo op with Liberal top candidate Rainer Brüderle recently which was widely interpreted to that effect, and today both parties struck an agreement in Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle's home district of Bonn to call upon their voters to support the local CDU candidate directly, and give the FDP their secondary vote.

 

The Social Democrats are definitely doing better since Steinbrück's performance in the TV debate, and while their gain is the loss of the Greens, they exhibit a new confidence. Maybe a bit too much; Steinbrück did the "interview without words" of the weekly magazine of the daily "Süddeutsche Zeitung" this week which demands you have to reply to questions by striking a pose rather than with words. Steinbrück being Steinbrück, he answered a question about the unsavory nicknames he has gathered throughout the bumbling SPD campaign by giving the finger to the camera - an image he expressively okayed over some objections of his press adviser, and which promptly showed up on the magazine cover yesterday.

 

 

Of course it fits his personality very well, though I'm not sure if it will help or hurt him more ... the public reaction was mixed, with some government politicians obviously denouncing him for conduct unbecoming a chancellor candidate though most in the CDU seem intent on just letting the picture speak for itself. The blogosphere had immediate fun with it of course, photoshopping Steinbrück's finger into SPD campaign posters, shots of various celebrity or a swearing-in scene in parliament. Needless to say, the finger also has a fake twitter account now and is having words with Merkel's necklace from the TV debate. I don't see why all those intellectuals are complaining about a boring campaign.

 

 

 

 

http://jensipresident.tumblr.com/

 

Closer to real life, the SPD has now set its planned post-election convention to 27 September rather than the day immediately after. While Steinbrück sticks to his announcement that he will not become a minister in a grand coalition under Merkel, he has claimed the position of leading coalition talks with any possible partners. Some consider this backpedalling, but Gerhard Schröder id the same after he was voted out in 2005.