The nicest quote from Anne Will’s issue on the evening of the election: “Today was the high office of democracy – that we voted.” It comes from the Green Cem Özdemir, who won a direct mandate for the Bundestag for the first time in Stuttgart. He remembered this picture of the Triell when the three candidates stood together. That is not the case in most other countries. Not even the result would be disputed, so now you have to try to make the best of the results.
In other countries, however, there is not such a collective tremor when more than two parties come into question for a coalition. While some neighbors only shrug their shoulders briefly when half a dozen parties grind their teeth together to come to power, the prospect of a three-party solution for Germany is: pure thrill.
From a purely mathematical point of view, it seems to the people that a life in the GroKo will continue to be possible in the future, but it is pointless. So it’s about: Jamaica or traffic lights. Which is why FDP General Secretary Volker Wissing and Cem Özdemir from the Greens play the main roles in this talk show, because their parties are now – regardless of the government mandate of the SPD or CDU – the Chancellor-makers.
Lars Klingbeil, SPD election campaign manager and general secretary, is quite proud of the fact that the Social Democrats were down at 13 percent a few weeks ago and are now ahead with almost 26 percent. And Saxony-Anhalt’s Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff was busy rescuing his honor (“The grand coalition wasn’t completely the devil”) and spraying CDU coolness (“Some want to raise taxes, others lower. We offer constancy.”).
Will the SPD only remain a Sunday climate party?
But the FDP and the Greens have long been dancing the tango. Wissing says that renewal is not the Union’s strength, but that it is of course closer to it in terms of tax policy. In terms of modernization, however, you can also discover exciting things at the other parties. Özdemir, on the other hand, gets really nickely once when Klingbeil talks about restarting. When will the SPD – officially the Greens’ dream partner – finally no longer be just a Sunday climate party?
Here with Anne Will it becomes clear: In Germany everything is really open now. It is agreed that Jamaica failed in 2017 because the FDP was only offered to join a black-green government, so to speak. That shouldn’t happen anymore. Neither Wissing nor Özdemir want a kind of patchwork government in which one department slows down the other, but rather large headlines that determine the actions and actions of each individual ministry (but as a precaution, the FDP still wants the finances).
Klingbeil is bright enough to agree: There hasn’t been a government with a real narrative since Schröder! With so much vision for the future, Haseloff loses his composure a bit: “As Germans, we weren’t like duds. You still look at us with amazement!” And that there are no good guys and no bad guys, that with the constituencies lost to the AfD should no longer happen. But nobody is interested in this evening, when the FDP and the Greens sniff each other as excitedly as dogs in the English Garden.
The rest are already details: How are tax increases (green) to be reconciled with climate investments? And how tax cuts (FDP) with a debt brake? Will the FDP insist on the complete abolition of the solos that only the rich are paying at the moment? And would the SPD participate in an earlier coal exit?
The viewer already gets an idea of how difficult the negotiations will be. Which is why it is also emphasized that they all agree on the major goal, namely climate protection. So the question is not whether, only how. Kristina Dunz, journalist from the editorial network Germany, states, however, that no party has presented a program that really does justice to the limitation of global warming. And that this election only shows that the majority do not really want change. “That some would have to give up and others get more, that is still a great fear in this country.”
But the country wants a bit of punk rock, at least not the GroKo anymore. Or to put it with Klingbeil: “Not guaranteed with the broken Union.” However, everything is really open in Germany right now.
Julia Werner, who also writes the “Ladies and Gentlemen” style column in the SZ, just manages not to be distracted by ugly politician socks while watching the talk show.