This “Berlin Round” initially looks like an appendix to the election campaign. Comparable formats are known from private television, where dating formats are often extended to include a partially therapeutic and, in larger parts, meaningless pronunciation. At “The Bachelorette – the great reunion”, tattooed men sit, whom hardly anyone could tell apart with certainty when facing each other, and talk about why things didn’t go quite so well for them.
The “Berliner Runde” is similar, only without tattoos, but with Alice Weidel from the AfD. Weidel whispers a few creepy times in between when it is not her turn (“real?”), Then presents an interpretation of the result of her party that would be awarded an asterisk at a milkmaid boarding school. From the perspective of the AfD, the votes drawn by the parties The Base and Free Voters must be assessed as “special effects”. Adjusted for this, the AfD’s election result is even better than 2017. It’s so funny that it hurts. Maybe the other way around.
Above all, however, it leads directly to the core of the format, which is a mixture of tiring sober election gleanings and political lead pouring – everyone has a different shaped lump in the bowl, almost all of them say that the shape of their lump is absolutely undeniable: a clear government mandate!
Armin Laschet and Markus Söder in particular are trying to act like this on Sunday. After Söder fought Laschet for months and Laschet the Greens, one now hugs the other (“my respect and my support”) and the other the one he just “ugh spider!” found. It is really astonishing how Laschet and Söder strive to govern like moths the light, regardless of at least the details of the election result. Even if this striving should be successful once more, it still seems sad and somewhat delusional, with all the love for the parameter fighting spirit.
The audience went through a lot in this election campaign
Christian Lindner and Annalena Baerbock “with Robert Habeck”, as she adds on almost every occasion, will largely determine this. That could seem collegial in a better world, but in the present it has the effect of making you small. While Laschet, after mask deals by Union politicians, after significant losses and 16 years of CDU-led governments, is again quibbling about words and promising a “future coalition” with the FDP and the Greens, Baerbock admits after significant Greens gains compared to 2017 in the “Berlin Round” “own mistake. Self-denial or damage assessment, the choice is a challenge for top politicians even after 6 p.m. But not only did the actors involved, the audience also went through a lot in this election campaign and they are now rubbing their eyes again at the latest.
Lindner sits there like a sphinx for a long time. Perhaps he is already leafing through the Vitra catalog in his mind for a chair that could soon be in the office that currently belongs to Olaf Scholz. After all, Scholz made the point twice in the election review part that some parties had gained ground in the round (SPD, Greens, FDP), while others did not (Union, AfD, Left). Otherwise he continues to practice Merkel mimicry and tries to convince with the restraint that Merkel did so well in the – you really can’t put it otherwise – legendary “Berliner Runde” in 2005. At that time, too, the first question was who would soon be a cook and who would be a waiter – until Hömma and Samma Chancellor Schröder answered another question, namely how tough you can let yourself go on national television.
Now nobody seriously believes that his party (SPD) or that of Laschet (CDU) should make announcements in this highly complicated result situation. In the “Berlin Round” an interesting strategic message of the election evening was rather condensed, namely that with the FDP and the Greens, the potentially smaller partners could first talk to each other in order to then examine who would best be chancellor above or below or, unheard of thought : should even rule with them.
This was where the audience began pouring lead. Some already saw a clear tendency towards Jamaica in the group, others towards the traffic light. Nothing precise will be known tomorrow either. Not much is certain after this evening, but this: Further special effects cannot be ruled out at all.
Cornelius Pollmer loves Helmut Dietl’s film “Late Show”, especially its last scene. In a talk show moderated by Thomas Gottschalk, the group pulls over German television. For him, the best thing about it are “animal films anyway”, states one guest – and Veronica Ferres, sitting opposite, confirms, “They are so human!”