Schroeder quits as party leader

[minionofmidas]

Good to see Schröder going, slimy guy. The CDU will definitely win the next election, and Angela Merkel has been compared to Thatcher. But I don't know how true a comparison that is...

That comparison looks nothing but absurd to me.
Don't expect Clement to be going anywhere. Elections in Germany are won by mobilizing the base, not in the scarcely-existing center. We wouldn't vote for Clement.
This also explains the low standing in the opinion polls. The Social Democrats will rally behind Schroeder again when the election draws near and they take a closer look at the alternative.
There is also the non-small matter of the age structure of the CDU  voters. That party is effectively dying out.
They still may win in 2006 of course. But don't count on it until three days before polls close maximum.

[minionofmidas]

Lewis is right... at the last election Schroeder, who had been written off by the polling firms after the SPD's appalling showing in Sachsen-Anhalt and by the huge lead that the Chief Redneck of Bavaria had, came back from the dead to scrape out a narrow win.

BTW 2002 was the CDU(not including the CSU)'s 3rd worst ever result... their worst ever result was in 1949 and their second worst ever result was in 1998.

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There is no way that the SPD is going to win anything in Bavaria.
Trust me on this...

Teh SPD always wins some tiny corners of bavaria. Its traditional strength in the state's far eat and in Nuremberg is waning, but even at their 2003 debacle they still held one direct election seat in Inner city Munich. Meanwhile, in the Munich suburban district of Freising (or was it Erding? Why do all those places have to sound so similar?), they were overtaken by the Greens...
They weren't really written off by the polling firms, btw. All those polls come with a little anaysis, which regularly gets ignored by lazy journalists the world over, but which never failed to mention the extremely high mobilization rate for such an early date in the CDU and the abysmally low one on the left, and the possibility of a scenario like the one that actually happened.

[minionofmidas]

Teh SPD always wins some tiny corners of bavaria. Its traditional strength in the state's far eat...

Now it's me turning into John...
The SPD always wins some tiny corners of Bavaria. It's traditional strength in the state's far North east...
That's what I was trying to say.

[minionofmidas]

Ah... So the media misrepresented something? Theres a suprise

Do you know where I can find a map of direct election seats for the 2002 election?
I have the results for each one but without a map I'm not sure where they are (eg. Potsdam-Potsdam-Mittelmark II-Teltow-Fläming II)

http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/wahlen/bundestagswahl2002/deutsch/wkeint2002/karten/index.html

[minionofmidas]

Good to see Schröder going, slimy guy. The CDU will definitely win the next election, and Angela Merkel has been compared to Thatcher. But I don't know how true a comparison that is...

That comparison looks nothing but absurd to me.
Don't expect Clement to be going anywhere. Elections in Germany are won by mobilizing the base, not in the scarcely-existing center. We wouldn't vote for Clement.
This also explains the low standing in the opinion polls. The Social Democrats will rally behind Schroeder again when the election draws near and they take a closer look at the alternative.
There is also the non-small matter of the age structure of the CDU  voters. That party is effectively dying out.
They still may win in 2006 of course. But don't count on it until three days before polls close maximum.

Clement? That's the name of that new patry leader, right?

The last time Schröder managed to cling on by moving against the Iraq War. I don't think the Germans will buy him again, but if they do, it's their loss, imo. And if you try to excite the base, huge cuts in welfare might not be the way to go. And I don't think too much shold be read into age structure, there is always the tendency of people to grow more conservative when they get old.

Clement is the finance minister. The new party leader will be Franz Muentefering. Not that he'd win an Election either, he's just too boring.
The Gulf War issue was probably not decisive. That flood in East Germany probably helped more...
"if you try to excite the base, huge cuts in welfare might not be the way to go' - true, of course. That's the reason for the current dismal poll standing.
Age structure - have a look at the age structure of the German parties and think again. It's really extreme. And I mean EXTREME. Iran is probably the only country in the world where your age says more about how you vote.

[minionofmidas]

Basically you have two peoples living in West Germany - the 60+ and the under 60s. The first go to the polls in large numbers, vote well over 50% CDU/CSU, the rest SPD and a very few FDP. No Greens. The others have much higher abstention rates, SPD usually strongest and Greens weakest in what is effectively a three party system of equals, plus somewhat higher FDP and much higher "protest" vote totals.
East Germany is different, though. PDS, CDU and SPD all get voted for across all age groups, others are purely a phenomenon of the young, turnout is generally lower but I don't know how it breaks by age.

A comeback for Oskar? Well, I have to remind you I haven't been to Germany for about three months. I know there was some, I don't know how serious but apparently not entirely baseless, talk of running him for CM in the Saarland elections in the fall. But they decided against that. I can't really see Lafontaine making a comeback in the SPD, he burned too many bridges behind him when he left. The PDS would certainly take him if he wanted to, but I don't know how many voters he could pull with him in that case. Anyway, he seems not to want to do that, otherwise he could have done it years ago.
 

[minionofmidas]

It would have been worth it just to annoy The Sun...

Over here the 60+ vote Tory and most of the under 25's would never vote Tory under any circumstances...

I saw a table on that a while ago and the trends certainly pointed in the same direction, but it was nowhere as extreme as in Germany. But if you look at the US, or Italy, or even France, you don't get this split (you get an embryonic verson of it in France, I think)
Then again, I think the main difference is in Labour's strength among old working class people. The turnout problem is worse on your island, and the decline of the Conservatives even more developed.

[minionofmidas]

Oops.
you're right of course.

[minionofmidas]

Stoiber tried to hide the fact that he didn't have any opinion on it and not the slightest inkling of why the Americans might want to go into Iraq. He didn't want to say yes because that would have angered the moderates and didn't want to say no because that would have angered the ideologists, many of whom are almost religiously pro-AMerican on foreign policy issues(though at the same time many of the very same people are easily the most anti-American in terms of "regional" prejudices). So he was caught in a bind there. I remember him saying something very like "Well, can't we decide this when it becomes really urgent, ie after the Election?" during the televised debate. (There were two debates, the first ones ever, and I only saw the second one.)
The CDU voters were and still are bitterly divided on the Iraq war, with a majority against.
Yes, they are nominally for lower taxes and for cutting subsidies, but they stop short of allowing any cuts in subsidies to those who don't need them. They pretty much block any kind of reform, demand one thing then block it the next year when Schroeder takes it up. The German constitution makes this easy, but it's extremely destructive of course.
As per 14 polls... there are state polls in Hamburg on 29th Feb, European Elections and state polls in Thuringia on 13th June, state polls in the Saarland on September fifth and in Brandenburg and Sachsen on 19th September. All the others would have to be local elections I reckon, which are not very important.
Of those state polls, Brandenburg is the only one where the SPD is currently at the helm, so they don't really have anything to lose. 1999 was another anno horribilis for the Social Democrats, after all.

[minionofmidas]

I think at the root of the problem is a basic incapacity among many on the German Right to accept the fact that they are not the majority and they don't own the country. Add a topping of strategy to that (demoralizing the enemy helps winning state polls), and that's what I think is going on.
But when I said they demand one thing and then block it, it's usually minor things. For example:
There was a reform in the Tax Code that was going to be implemented in stages. I think the second stage was two years after the first. Hessen's CM Roland Koch very publicly demanded in 2002 that the second stage be rescheduled to one year earlier to provide relief to tax payers because of the economic downturn. Some months later, Schroeder had the same idea, and Koch led the succesful fight against it in the Bundesrat, because - and he was kind of right in that - part of the revenue lost would have been lost by the states rather than the Bund, and they couldn't afford it because of the Economic downturn. See what I mean?

[minionofmidas]

The media, the media...
Well, they made Schroeder chancellor, so maybe I shouldn't write it off.
But Clement is older than Schroeder and his relations with the Green party are. or at least were when he was CM of NRW, more than a bit strained. So I doubt it.

[minionofmidas]

According to the Spiegel, when Schroeder announced his decision in some leadership circle, Clement was the only one who tried to argue against it. He seems not to like the increase in power of his former colleague at the NRW cabinet table...
Also, the General Secretary of the SPD Olaf Scholz has also been sacked (yeah, asked to resign). He will be replaced by Klaus Uwe Benneter. Benneter once was a far leftie, in fact he was expelled from the SPD in 1977 and readmitted in 1983. He seems to be quite close to Schroeder though. He's not exactly well known, I don't know why they chose him. Anyway, he too ,like Muentefering will take over sometime in march.

[minionofmidas]

Yeesssss... but it's still morally wrong...

What you mean, morally? This is Politics.
And do not be led to a wrong conclusion by that "Christian" in the name.

Does Germany have a Trades Description Act?

I'm not sure it's applied to political parties...Anyway this used to be Johannes Dyba's point. He was the Catholic bishop of Fulda, he was quite ultraconservative and quite vocal and quite witty at times, too, and he said something on those lines several times.
Always got some CDU backbenchers up to protest...

[minionofmidas]

I wouldn't include Schily either, actually. Yes, he defended RAF terrorists as a lawyer, but by that definiton one good friend of mine is an Islamist now. Yes, he was a member of the Green party in the 80's (when kiddo me explained the way to the next Ice Cream Parlour to him), but he was on the party's moderate wing. Yes, he was involved in the campaigns of the CND period, but by that definition Neil Kinnock and Walter Mondale are far left (rather than just left). So, no, Schily was never on the far left, though he once wasn't nearly as centrist as he is now.

[minionofmidas]

While we´re at... asked about the possibility of coalitions between the CDU and the Greens on state level Michael Glos, leader of the CSU regional group within the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, said today that he opposes coalitions with "eco-stalinists" and "former terrorists" like Fischer or Trittin (what the hell is an "eco-stalinist"?).

LOL, that's overreacting just a little. Didn't Kohl try similar (if not equally extreme) slurs against Schily and the Green Party in the 1998 election? I suppose it goes to show that negative campaigning doesn't always pay off.

Well, the "former terrorists" bit is part of CDU/FDP/CSU radical wing standard rhetoric. Glos always was a man for tough soundbites. Consider it part of his inofficial job description...Anyways it isn't a possibility because very few Greens would be ready to do that. Green/CDU coalitions on the local level (and there've been a few) have always caused collapses of the Green vote at the next poll.

[minionofmidas]

Sorry, I think I got some memories mixed up there...The standard jibe is the one about defending terrorists (aimed at Schily, Stroebele, Hessen's former attorney general Rupert von Plottnitz (Greens), all of whom did that, or sometimes just at the Green party).
I've heard Fischer called a former terrorist before, but it is well of the "acceptable" radar, or used to be.
Fischer was no terrorist, of course. But he definitely was a Street Fighting Man, and he and his friends did some kind of illegal militia training in the Taunus for a while, and some of these people later ended up in the Terrorist groups. Definitely Fischer was lucky never to have been banged up in jail (he spent nights in prison, but that's all. Heck, my father did the same.)

[minionofmidas]

The term is "Sponti", ie one who believes in spontaneous action (rather than in having an organization, participating in elections etc)

[minionofmidas]

As per 14 polls... there are state polls in Hamburg on 29th Feb, European Elections and state polls in Thuringia on 13th June, state polls in the Saarland on September fifth and in Brandenburg and Sachsen on 19th September. All the others would have to be local elections I reckon, which are not very important.

We may well see a change in Saxony. Apparently Milbradt himself secretly expects a SPD-PDS coalition to beat the CDU. The Hamburg elections should be interesting, especially now that the whole Schill soap opera is finally over and done with.

Btw, about Clement: I always thought he was a bit of a Chancellor-in-the-making? Or at least that's how the media seem to portay him.

Well, Hamburg...
1997
SPD 36,2
CDU 30,7
Greens 13,9
DVU 4,9 (right-wing extremist - that's just below the threshold to win seats)
StattPartei 3,8 (local outfit, SPD's partner in government 93-97)
FDP 3,5
others 7,0 (that seems awfully high to me, but I don't have any details)

These elections led to a Red-Green coalition.

2001
SPD 36,5
CDU 26,2
Schill 19,4 (the party was actually called Partei Rechtsstaatliche Offensive, Law and Order Offensive Party, but the official abbreviation was Schill)
Greens 8,5
FDP 5,1
others 4,3

This led to a CDU-Schill-FDP coalition, which recently collapsed

Last poll (margin of error for major parties: 4%points either way)
CDU 46
SPD 29
Greens 14
FDP 3,5
Schill 3 (his new shop)
pro 1,5 (the remainder of his old shop after they kicked him out)
others 3

That would be enough for von Beust to govern alone, but a red-green victory is easily inside the margin of error.