German Elections & Politics

[Middle-aged Europe]

Meanwhile, both CDU deputy chairman Armin Laschet and CSU Bundestag member Hans-Peter Uhl have demanded that the leaders of the SPD sign statements under oath that they didn't personally inform Edathy.

[Middle-aged Europe]

"His IP address has been recorded with a Canada-based child pornography ring. However - a politician with focus on crime prevention may also have professional reasons to check out such a site."

This is proof he is a pedo. You do not need to see pictures of little kids getting penetrated to know it's bad.

Well, policemen happen to look at child porn for the very same reason, so it wasn't that far-fetched an assumption.

However, the state of affairs seems to be that Edathy is in fact a pedophile, even though the authorities won't be able to prosecute him for anything.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Wait a couple of years, then get elected to the EP. I'm sure Cohn-Bendit wouldn't mind having Edathy in his caucus.

Cohn-Bendit is gonna retire after this May, duh.

I just read on stern.de that the SPD suspects Sebastian Edathy in Denmark, but they don't have any confirmation for this. Apparently, his interview with SPIEGEL was conducted via e-mail.

After Friedrich has stepped down the attention has now turned to SPD parliamentary group leader Thomas Oppermann who apparently would be "next in line" for a resignation in this affair.

And the authorities are considering to launch an investigation against unknown members of the Bundestag on the suspicion of obstruction of justice.

[Middle-aged Europe]

CSU general secretary Andreas Scheuer has demanded Thomas Oppermann's resignation. Oppermann was the one who had leaked Hans-Peter Friedrich's name to the press and now they want him gone.

If the CSU doesn't back off from that demand the SPD has two choices: Sacrificing Oppermann or risking early elections. The former might be considered the lesser evil, even though it would make look vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel weak. Yesterday or so, Gabriel had declared that nobody from the SPD will resign.

The alternative is that Merkel tries to talk the CSU out of it.

On Tuesday, there will be an meeting of the leaders of the governing parties and we'll know more after that, at the latest.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Oppermann is their parliamentary whip - no government post, no CDU/CSU influence on that position.

If the CSU wants Oppermann gone and the alternative is risking an end to the coalition and the SPD doesn't want the coalition to end this effectively means that the CSU holds an influence over the position.

It's not a question of which position Oppermann currently holds, it's a question of who will blink first. If the CSU is just bluffing, everything's fine... if they're not then it's not.

And I don't think it's a realistic scenario that the CDU is wiling to end their historic union with the CSU over someone like Thomas Oppermann. The question is whether CSU and/or SPD are willing to end the coalition over someone like Oppermann.

That being said, I still think that either the CSU backing off or the SPD sacrificing Oppermann are far more likely than early elections.

[Middle-aged Europe]

I doubt that this is about pedophilia at the moment, although some politicians have of course demanded tougher laws against child porn as a result of the Edathy affair.

I think the main narrative at this point is that the Grand coalition has become dysfunctional. For the last couple of days, CDU/CSU and SPD mainly seemed busy with getting rid of office-holders from the opposite party.

That and the fact that various people in the government may have willingly or unwittingly helped Edathy escape the authorities and the ramifications from that.

So, the issues are a) cabinet crisis and b) obstruction of justice. Edathy himself only serves as a backdrop.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Thomas Oppermann says he can't go because he's an "anchor of stability" for this coalition.

My first thought :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37OWL7AzvHo

[Middle-aged Europe]

Everything seems to have calmed down a bit at the moment. Merkel, Seehofer, and Gabriel have met but won't tell what they have talked about. Perhaps they have told their own forces to shut the f**k up for the moment though. Plus, the Edathy scandal is starting to get overshadowed by Ukraine in the media.

Merkel should thank Yanukovych for doing her a favour. 

[Middle-aged Europe]

Yup, pretty much.

Just for the record, they were recent calls for the resignation of Federal Criminal Police chief Jörg Ziercke und there's gonna be a Bundestag committee of inquiry on the Edathy affair. And Edathy is still at some unknown location outside of Germany.

But nobody cares right now... not the media anyway. Steinmeier is busy travelling between Kiev, Berlin, Paris, and Brussels. And Sigmar Gabriel wanted to go to Moscow this week too, I think.

[Middle-aged Europe]

FDP drops to 3% again.

CDU/CSU 42%
SPD 23%
Greens 10%
Left 10%
AfD 5%
FDP 3%

(Emnid, 03/09)

[Middle-aged Europe]

I doubt that the FDP will manage to make a comeback as long as the younger* and more aggressive competition in the form of the AfD is around.

(Little known fun fact: The current press secretary of the AfD, Christian Lüth, worked as a chief of staff for a FDP Bundestag member until the FDP was obliterated at the polls last year. Some have already jumped the ship. )

* figuratively speaking, the individual members of the AfD leadership are actually not of a younger age than the FDP leadership's

[Middle-aged Europe]

The facebook likes of the major German parties. First, because I like to be Tender Branson in disguise for Mr Bear, King of Animals, and secondly, because we have the first party with more than 100,000 likes.

100.007 AfD
89.341 Pirates
77.894 CDU
70.505 SPD
66.954 Left
48.639 Greens
27.634 FDP
21.730 CSU

So, AfD and Pirates have more Facebook likes than they have party members, and CDU, SPD, Greens, FDP, and CSU have more party members than they have Facebook likes.

(Coincidentally, the Left has about the same number of likes as they have members, although I strongly suspect that both groups aren't remotely identical.)

If anything, it could tell something about the structure of a party's supporter base and their level of commitment. While AfD and Pirate supporters are more likely to publicly declare their support for their party on the Web, they're also more unlikely to actually engage in real-life political activities. This leads to a phenomenon which I would describe as "desk activists". People who are posting loads of stuff on the Web from their home or at work, but lack the will or the interest to go to party events or participate in more "active activities".

Secondly, it also reflects the form of communication AfD and Pirates conduct as newer, and less established political parties. Facebook is probably used as a cheaper and easyily managable  alternative to other channels of communication which the more established parties regularly use, but AfD and Pirates don't (yet) possess because of a lack of ressources.

And thirdly, it's also a matter of age structure and how familiar with the Internet someone's base is. Pirate supporters are obviously much younger and much more Web-orentied than CSU supporters.

[Middle-aged Europe]

The main surprise that when I first saw them was the Greens. I assumed they would have a younger, savvy base that competes with the Pirates. I suppose that shows how much the German Greens have become part of the furniture.

The average age of party members (not voters) in Germany, according to numbers on Wikipedia:

Left: 60

CDU, CSU & SPD: 59

FDP: 53

AfD: 51

Greens: 48

Pirates: 39

NPD: 37

[Middle-aged Europe]

And regarding Facebook, I would like to add that you're not necessarily a supporter of a party if you "like" it on FB.

I know from personal experience, that a lot of the active "fans" on the Green party profile are in fact not Green supporters, but AfD trolls. Don't know whether this means in return that a lot of the active AfD profile fans are in fact anti-AfD trolls and this contributes to the high number of "likes" for the AfD on Facebook.

Liking a profile enables you to post stuff there. So if you want to post on a certain party profile that this party sucks you need to "like" them.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Results of the Tempelhof Airport referendum in Berlin:

Bill drafted by initiators of the referendum (THF 100%)
Yes 64.4%
No 35.6%

Alternate bill drafted by the Berlin state government
Yes 40.6%
No 59.4%

The former airport is currently used as a huge city park. The referendum dealt with the question whether parts of the former airport's area should be used to build appartments on it, resulting in a reduction of the park's area.

According to the THF 100% bill everything should stay as it is now (no appartment buildungs), and according to the state government bill the appartments should be build.

At least in part, the referendum also had become a vote of (no) confidence on Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit who currently has a 70% disapproval rating or something like that.

Yesterday, I had also seen an editorial on SPIEGEL ONLINE which basically argued that building the appartments would essentially be a good idea, but given the continued proof of the Wowereit administration's general incompetence this government couldn't be trusted with implementing a project of such magnitude properly. So, SPIEGEL endorsed the THF 100% bill on the grounds that it would effectively postpone the building project until such time Wowereit is not in office any longer.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Btw, all boroughs of Berlin voted Yes/No on the Tempelhof referendum, except Marzahn-Hellersdorf where voters managed to approve of both bills... although the THF 100% bill ultimately won more votes than the state governmen's bill.

"THF 100%"
Yes 57.5%
No 42.5%

State government
Yes 51.5%
No 48.5%



And the clearest message came - as usual - from the borough of Friedrichhain-Kreuzberg:

"THF 100%"
Yes 77.0%
No 23.0%

State government
Yes 26.8%
No 73.2%

[Middle-aged Europe]

July 3, 2014: The Bundestag passes the first minmum wage law in German history.

[Middle-aged Europe]

But the authorites didn't manage to find any meth at his home during their search! Granted, he could have flushed it down the toilet beforehand, just like he did with his career.

WWWWD (What would Walter White do?)

[Middle-aged Europe]

Does reverse psychology work in political campaigns??

[Middle-aged Europe]

It's basically saying "the FDP is superfluous".

For the most part, their campaign is trying to troll the media.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Breaking: Three-term Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit intends to resign on December 11.

Thank god, I say. The SPD is probably pretty relieved too to get rid of Berlin's most unpopular politician and Germany's most unpopular state premier.

The most likely successor for Wowereit at this point seems to be SPD state chairman Jan Stöß (who would in fact be Berlin's second openly gay mayor ).

[Middle-aged Europe]

SPIEGEL ONLINE has a Best of Wowereit gallery of which I'll post a Best Of. Sums up his mayorship pretty well...

[Middle-aged Europe]

Front-runners for Wowereit's succession as Berlin mayor are state party chairman Jan Stöß and state parliament caucus leader Raed Saleh.

Both are considered members of the SPD's left wing, even though Saleh seems to be Wowereit's preferred choice to succeed him. Stöß had defeated Wowereit's man Michael Müller during the last SPD chairmanship election. Stöß would be Berlin's second gay mayor and Saleh would be Berlin's first mayor of Arab descent.

Since there are some doubts concerning the competence/experience of both front-runners, the federal SPD apparently also tried to recruit President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz for the job. But he already turned them down.

[Middle-aged Europe]

FDP: Foreign media mean, that Lindner's strategy is to ignore Berlin and focus on NRW, so that he achieves a strong result there in spring 2017, boosting the federal FDP in autumn.

NRW is in mid-2017. That's an eternity for the FDP. Nobody knows in what state the party will be by then and whether participating in the NRW election would serve any purpose anymore tbh.

I think the FDP's short term strategy right now is to ignore Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg in August/September (because they don't have a chance there anyway), and try to get past 5% in Hamburg next February. At this point the FDP tries to find state parliaments were it has a realistic chance of getting into, and doesn't really put its mind on the Bundestag.

[Middle-aged Europe]

The fight over Klaus Wowereit's succession as Berlin mayor has now become a three-way race. Michael Müller, former SPD state chairman and current minister for urban development, joins Jan Stöß and Raed Saleh as candidate.

The members of the Berlin SPD are going to vote on who will succeed Wowereit in a primary-like election this fall.