German Elections - Part III

The German election is now over with and the results are in. Olaf Scholz got 25.7% of the votes, a huge gain for the Socialists over the last election, while Armin Laschet of the Union Parties got only 23.1% of the votes, a huge drop in support for the party ruled by Angela Merkel these past sixteen years. Peek through the windows at Socialist Party headquarters and you’ll see them popping champagne corks. Tune in to the CDU/CSU headquarters, on the other hand, and you’ll see them crying in their beer. The Socialists have won.

Right?

Wrong.

The election is over, but as I mentioned in an earlier blog, the real story is just beginning to play out, and that is how the next German government will be formed by means of painstakingly negotiated coalition building.

Remember the names of the coalitions, based on the colors assigned to the parties? We’re down to three possibilities, two coalitions and a continued partnership:

1. A Jamaica coalition: black (CDU/CSU Union Parties); Green; and Yellow (the FDP - Free Democratic Party)

2. A “Traffic Light (Ampel, in German) Coalition: Red (SPD - Socialist Party of Germany, a “social democratic” party); Yellow (FDP); Green

Since the Union and the Socialists pulled in close to the same number of votes, this means it’s all up to the Greens and the FDP (yellow) which of them they want to work with. They are now officially “kingmaker” parties. The Greens are closer to the Socialists and the FDP is closer to the Union. Something’s got to give.

Both of these would require compromises the party leaders have sworn they’d never make. The Green Party’s original raison d’etre was to save the environment, and they, along with the Socialists, want to tax the super rich in order to make that happen. The FDP is the party that represents the interests of the super rich, and their leader, Christian Lindner, is on record for having turned down a coalition before with the comment, “Rather than to govern badly, I’d rather not govern at all.” And think of them as Republicans shouting “No new taxes!”

The good news, to most German ears, is the fact that the party on the extreme left, “The Left,” is out. They got less than 5% of the votes, and will be in parliament thanks only to a peculiar rule which allows them to by-pass the 5% limit restriction because they have three “direct mandates” (which I won’t go into here). In any case they are now largely irrelevant, and their desire to pull Germany out of NATO is no longer a serious threat. At the other extreme, the AfD dropped 2.3% down to no more than 10.3% of the vote, so they too are unable to make waves. The government, whatever it turns out to be, will be a government of the middle.

The third option, a “Groko” (Grand Coalition)  would seem to be a reasonable one, with the two leading parties sharing power with their combined forces of 49.8% of the total vote. They’d need to throw a bone to somebody to get them over the 50% mark, and I have to admit I don’t know how that would work. But it’s not a serious proposition, since the government has been a Groko government for many years now, with Angela Merkel the senior partner and Olaf Scholz and the Socialists as the junior partner. They could just switch places, of course, and make Scholz the senior partner and Laschet the junior partner, except for the fact that 1) Laschet has been adamant about not wanting to play second fiddle, and 2) the huge drop in support for the Union indicates that Germans are looking for a change. Carrying on with business as usual would be a very bad idea.

So my money is on a socialist-led coalition with the Greens and the FDP - a Traffic Light coalition. But that is going to take some very powerful give-and-take negotiations. There’s huge pressure on both the greens and the FDP to put German unity ahead of party policy.

That, as we know, would never fly in America where the Republicans now openly support a right-wing power center under Trump’s influence, America be damned.  Can the Germans show they are better than that?