Democracy - not dead yet

Laschet, Baerbock, Scholz

Still watching the German elections up close. Still impressed at how alive German democracy is, when set against our situation where we're down to a single political party in the center of the political spectrum and a runaway train where the other party used to be. Germany still has a clearly marked line between progressives and conservatives. America's line is between people holding onto democracy by their fingernails and the other side stomping on their fingers trying to get them out of the way so they can run the show for the superrich, for white folk who fear black folk, and for people who believe if they could get to sit down with Jesus personally, he'd reveal that when he said, "Let the little children come unto me," he meant to say, "unless they're Mexicans."

In Germany, you still have a conservative block of decent people. Listen to the two union party chiefs, Armin Laschet of the CDU and Markus Söder оf the CSU (the Union is Angela Merkel's party, remember), and you sense earnest conviction and basic decency, even if you don't like everything they say and do as policy makers. That's the biggest difference between Germany and the U.S. - they still have a conservative party.

If I were voting in the German election, I would vote for the SPD, the Socialists, and their leader, Olaf Scholz. I see little difference in the challenges facing both Germany and the United States. The two biggies that concern me the most, climate change and the hollowing out of the Middle Class by greed, are the same no matter where in the democratic world you live. In Germany, as in the U.S., the rich are getting richer and the poor are going nowhere. Germany has a much better net for those who fall through the cracks, but the equity gap still threatens the sense of a national community, and the "haves" of both countries show little interest in sharing the wealth as they once did, in the U.S., up until Reagan's reign, and in Germany, also in the post-war years.

It's a three-way race. The third party in the race are the Greens, actually a union party also, with the cumbersome name Bündnis 90/die Grünen - Alliance 90/The Greens - made up of three formerly non-communist East German parties and the East German Greens in 1990 - hence the 90 - who joined with the West German Greens three years later. They are headed by a woman named Annalena Baerbock.

The arguments are the same. The conservatives worry that the call to distribute the national wealth equitably is an excuse to reward the unproductive elements of society. In the U.S., the Republicans

AOC with her dress designer

believe that Biden has turned out to be a stealth candidate, that Bernie Sanders may have lost his chance to lead the Democrats, but is getting his way in terms of social policies and the radical left, in the person of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example (see that wonderful dress she wore to the MET opening this week, with "Tax the Rich" written all over it), is getting away with murder. Murder being taxing the rich, obviously.

In Germany, where the campaign is focused on how the winner of the election (realistically, it's only a two-way between Laschet's CDU and Scholz's SPD, the socialists) will form the coalition he will need to govern, the conservatives (CDU/CSU Union Parties) are sounding the alarm that if Scholz wins he will form a red-red-green alliance (See my previous posting for an explanation of this color scheme). Specifically, it will join up with the Greens, whom opponents charge with "talking left and living right" (i.e., same as America's Berkeley-type lefties who are accused of being hypocrites who talk big on climate change and aiding the blacks and the poor, but at the same time live in their own exclusive neighborhoods and send their kids to the best private schools.) And even worse, they will join up with "The Left" - the party that actually advocates withdrawal from NATO and working closer with Russia. When I said alarm bells, I mean alarm bells!

How healthy you view German democracy depends on how you assess the fractured nature of popular opinion. Both progressives and conservatives, i.e., even "The Left" and the CDU agree the dark specter of the new-right party, the AfD (Alternative for Germany), is a neo-fascist party, not unlike America's Trumpist Republican Party, a real and present danger to democracy. Neither side will work with the AfD, who nonetheless have just over 12% of the seats in the Bundestag (Parliament). And if you look at the polls on where people stand in anticipation of the election on September 26, the undecided - or "none of the above" on some days, actually outnumber the supporters of either the conservatives or the socialists.

"Fractured" can be said to be in the eye of the beholder, however. Remember, although today the race is a tight one between the CDU's Laschet and the SPD's Scholz, until recently the two parties were in coalition, and Scholz was actually Merkel's Vice-Chancellor and the nation's Finance Minister. Hard to imagine an American government with a Republican president and a Democratic (much less socialist) serving as VP and Secretary of the Treasury. Defenders of the coalition system call this flexibility, not fracture.

Scholz is a moderate socialist. He has worked closely with The Greens before and is not keen on forming a coalition with The Left. But who knows what will happen when it comes time to divvy up the governing tasks.

It's probably of no consequence, but I note that both Scholz and Baerbock are from Lower Saxony, where my family originates. Scholz has a pretty good record as mayor of Hamburg, and they both currently live in Potsdam, just outside Berlin, where I would live if I could pick up the dogs and the husband and go (Berlin, not Potsdam). And if the husband spoke German. And if I didn't have to leave behind my nears and dears in the Bay Area, but could take them with me. Don't know if that makes it easier for the two of them to see eye-to-eye on political issues. Probably not.

I view the passion now emerging in the confrontations as healthy for a democracy. I was taken by surprise the other day watching a program (Markus Lanz) in which a conservative publisher, Wolfram Weimer, faces the leader of the Left Party, Katja Kipping, and says to her, in so many words, how dare you, the party of the Wall and the East German Secret Police, think you can speak for modern-day Germans? ("Die Linke" - "The Left" was formed on the ashes of the East German SED, the party that ran East Germany back in the day when everybody was pressed into spying on their neighbors. ) Kipping insists that her party has done a hell of a lot better job of clearing out the retrograde old guard and reforming itself into a modern-day supporter of democracy and says, again in so many words, "I don't take my orders from the likes of (you and) the CDU - you are the party that got started with the active participation of all the old Nazis, post 1945.

Ouch. Getting down and dirty there.

Like I said.

Real democracy.

Credits: 

Laschet, Baerbock, Scholz

AOC's "tax the rich" dress