It shows how politicians are out of touch.

Nothing to do with elections. Daily business. On the news yesterday. ARD.

Another state election, another state parliament gets AfD representation. and for a change, SPD comes away looking good.

http://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/nieder...017/index.html

The end-result is now pretty much the same as before the election: SPD+Green miss one seat for a majority.

This election was held because a representative of the Green party switched to CDU.
As the SPD+Greens were already operating with only a one seat majority, an early election was required.

Now, SPD+Greens still don't have a majority, but CDU+FDP have less seats and AfD is in parliament - though with much less seats than they hoped.

FDP have ruled out a "Traffic-Light-Coalition" (Red+Yellow+Green), but they haven't ruled out a "Jamaica-Coalition" (Black+Green+Yellow). Of course, the "Grand Coalition" (SPD+CDU) would still be possbile.

German coalition talks close to collapse!

Source

Woohoo! Another election! #strongandstable

Aaaaaand they've collapsed. A post war first? The Greens, who have the fewest number of seats, demanding that migrants can send for their families proving to be a stumbling block. Exciting times.

Around Easter, is the word on the street.

Another couple of millions down the drain.
(ah, it's almost 100 millions: http://www.bild.de/storytelling/topi...3490.bild.html )


Will be interesting to see how this plays out in Spring.

As far as I know this would be the first time in the history of post-war Germany that freshly (re-)elected representatives failed to form a government.

Will the voters punish the parties for refusing to compromise?

Or will they reward them for sticking with their principles?

I guess this will boild own to how public perception interprets what happened. Whose fault was it talks broke down? The Greens for insisting on stuff they know they can't have, the SPD for not wanting to talk in the first place, the FDP for sticking to their guns on obscure technicalities, the CDU for being spiness and faceless, the CSU for being more concerned with looking good at home in Bavaria election than with doing the right thing for Germany?

Both AfD and Linke are up in the polls, but these are early days and the election campaign will be a tough one.

German president calls on party leaders to return to coalition talks

Source

Maybe they can find a compromise?

To be fair, this is really the cheapest form of government: keeping the status-quo.

No new laws, no new politicians other than the parliamentarians.
Though nothing get's done, nothing get's b0rked either.

And most of the plans of the wanna-be Jamaica-coaltion would have been quite expensive (as usual, when you have a lot of opposing views and positions, you try to sweeten it with money).

This is one of the reasons corporations like Switzerland: the government rarely changes and most things stay the same for decades at times.

I guess they've got to pass a budget at some point - but they'll get that done, too. Somehow.

Meanwhile, Mutti will still sit in the Kanzleramt (if she doesn't travel the 1st world), while newly slimmed-down foreign secretary Sigmar Gabriel will continue to travel the 3rd-world. Perfect distribution of responsibilities, if you ask me ;-)

I stumbled across this article while reading my daily news. Unexpectedly self-reflexive

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...a-1179807.html

Well yes, that is so typically Spiegel.

Take a dig at Trump. Take a swipe at Orban. Also imply stuff about China. Blame Brexit. All the Spiegel's favourite topics and bogeymen rattled off in holy litany. But I don't think you can really blame any of those for the inability of Merkel - supposedly is the only pillar of stability left standing in a world of change - to actually get a government together.

Maybe I will be proven correct?

I bet that most people who voted SPD did so because they wanted the SPD to rule, not to go into opposition.

A posion chalice, maybe? But blaming all the SPD's problems on Merkel is not helping either.

Would be funny if SPD do go into coalition again, would make the AfD the official opposition.

Speaking of which, here are some AfD delegates getting physically assaulted by ANTIFA. Who's the fascists again?

https://twitter.com/walden_david/sta...38000664989697

I think it's pretty clear that this was one of the reasons the SPd refused to go into coalition first time round.

Happens all the time unfortunately. One AfD politician who is Jewish had his car windows smashed. You would think that in view of Germany's history, even the Anitfas wouldn't stoop so low.

Schulz was a complete idiot to proclaim the SPD as "opposition-only" - hours after the first results were published.

It's very difficult to backtrack on that - and very damaging.

Germany has a special word for this: "Umfaller".

It's the noun of "to topple" (which doesn't really exist, but we (Germans) are quite good at substantivizing verbs (and at verbalizing (verbanizing? nouns, too)) ;-)


The problem is actually two-fold: first, the sheer act of trying to remove himself from the responsibility without even trying and second, the contempt for the other parties in the way it was done.
That will haunt him for a long time.


Personally, I think he (Schulz) would be quite appropriate as a mayor in a small-ish town. There, his hands-on, rooting-for-the-small-guy approach might be mildly successful.
But federal or world-politics?

He'll just be crushed between the things he's said and the things he has to do. Or run up a huge deficit trying to do both (which is incidentally what Obama happened to do...).

I think more than that, it was contempt for his own voters.

Well, before he went to the EU, he was mayor of Würselen, 39,000 inhabitants (Wikipedia link)

Apparently he was quite succesful there.

But I don't see how that qualified him to be chancellor.

Obama may have had many failings, but at least he had an understanding of the issues. With Schultz I don't see even that.

I think it just highlights the problem the SPD has if they honestly thought he was a good idea.

I suspect Germany itself would do just fine without a government, especially if its government only creates more problems than it actually solves.