Bundestag election: the SPD is back – politics

It is as if something is loosening, something breaks, after such a long time. A few seconds after 6 p.m. There is cheering as it has not been heard for a long time in the Willy Brandt House. The red bar for the SPD has just moved slightly over the black bar for the Union. At this moment, ZDF sees the SPD in front. In the ARD Union and SPD are on par. But nobody in here really cares. It is a single shrill “Jaaaaa” that resounds through the atrium.

Heiko Maas, the Foreign Minister, observes the scene from above. Leaning against the parapet on the sixth floor, he looks down at his party, which is now unrecognizable. The SPD on the way to the Chancellery? In any case, the chances are not bad.

At 7 p.m. sharp, Olaf Scholz takes the stage. He doesn’t get a word in for a good three minutes because the jubilation doesn’t end. Then he says: “I am delighted with this election result.” This appearance could hardly be more sober.

But the situation is still confusing. Ten minutes ago, his rival for the Chancellery, Armin Laschet, spoke to the Union supporters. His appearance is followed on the television in the Willy-Brandt-Haus. It was as quiet as a mouse for a short time, then when Laschet said that all democratic forces must now work to form a government “under the leadership of the Union”.

Under the leadership of the Union?

Will Scholz now also lay claim to the formation of a government? He takes a little detour: Many voters voted for the SPD because they wanted a change of government – “and that the next Federal Chancellor is Olaf Scholz”. But that can of course still take a while.

Now he first thanks him for being allowed to stand up here on stage as a winner without knowing exactly how much the success will be rewarded. But the SPD is probably back at around 25 percent. “That is a great success,” says Scholz. It’s a kind of Hanseatic euphoria.

Nevertheless, the Social Democrats have been determined to celebrate for hours. It can get late – and loud. Everything is prepared for the band in the passage under the Willy-Brandt-Haus, between Stresemann-Strasse and Wilhelm-Strasse, where it echoes particularly beautifully Lounge Society. Bright red balloons float in the air around the house. The house in Berlin-Kreuzberg has not been seen like this for a long time. Life has returned to the Willy Brandt House.

Yes, actually, this is an election party. At the SPD.

Outside, dusk is already falling over the Willy-Brandt-Haus, is Peter Tschentscher. He rules Hamburg. Scholz was his predecessor as First Mayor. In Hamburg, Scholz had once led the SPD back to the town hall. Now, with him as candidate for chancellor, the SPD has also worked its way back in the federal government.

Tschentscher holds a plastic cup with water in his hand. He must also have copied the celebration from Scholz. But his mood is great. “If the result is confirmed, then we have made real progress in the SPD,” says Tschentscher. “No matter what else happens.”

He tells how the party found its way back to unity last year. After Scholz became a candidate for chancellor, the cross-shots in the SPD that had been common up until then had ceased. The chairmen, Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans, have lined up behind Scholz. Tschentscher says: “I am sure that the we-feeling will persist.”

Anyone who wants to know what a miserable state the party had been in in the meantime only had to look at the Willy Brandt House from time to time in the past few years. A house of history. For the party and for individuals.

From the air it looks like a sumptuous piece of cake. When the SPD moved into the building in 1996, it was said that even the carpet in the building still breathed the will to power. At that time, however, the SPD was also a party that was heading for 40 percent in elections. Since then, the glass cake slice in Kreuzberg has remained unchanged in size, but the red cake slices in the result diagrams have become increasingly narrow for the SPD.

The Willy Brandt House as a fateful place

For Scholz, one way or another the man of the evening, the house is still a fateful place to this day. In 2018 he announced here as the managing party leader – Martin Schulz had already resigned – the positive result of the member survey on the grand coalition in which he became finance minister and vice chancellor. Without this government and without this office, Scholz would probably never have come as close to the chancellorship as he is now, also because he could not have portrayed himself as the man for continuity after 16 years of Angela Merkel.

In the years since then, however, the party has first looked deep into the abyss. In the 2017 election, which ended with a historic low for the comrades, the SPD only managed 20.5 percent. And then it went even lower in the surveys to sometimes only 12 or 13 percent. This was followed by low blows in state elections and the election to the European Parliament. The chairwoman Andrea Nahles failed due to the circumstances, to herself and to the party. She stepped back. It was June 3, 2019, when she said goodbye outside, in front of the Willy-Brandt-Haus, in the drafty passage, with the words: “Do it well.”

Here in the Brandt House, Comrades Scholz also inflicted the bitterest defeat in his political life in 2019. At that time, the party was looking for a new leadership after the departure of Nahles. Members should vote. At first Scholz did not want to apply for the chair, but then he did, together with Klara Geywitz from Brandenburg. He had already prepared to give the winner’s speech on the day of the decision in the Willy Brandt House. And then, to their great astonishment, the base chose two outsiders at the top, Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans. His comrades did not trust him to lead the party.

Back then, in winter 2019, he could have thrown anything. But he didn’t. He let time work for itself. And now, almost two years later, he’s actually delivering a winner’s speech in here.

To his left on the stage is party leader Esken, to his right is party leader Walter-Borjans. When the two of them presented Scholz as candidate for chancellor a year ago, they talk first and then for a remarkably long time, just as if it were about them. Now Esken says it was Scholz who convinced the people that the SPD could be entrusted with the land. “This is your success,” she says. And Norbert Walter-Borjans, he now wants to celebrate quickly. For him, one thing is certain: “We won this election.”

Scholz doesn’t seem so sure about that yet. He wants to wait for the end result. “Then we get to work.” But outside the queue at the beer stand is getting longer and longer.

Esken was a backbencher from the Bundestag when she moved to the top of the party. Norbert Walter-Borjans, former finance minister in North Rhine-Westphalia, actually already retired. In those days when the two of them moved into the Willy Brandt House as chairpersons, Esken was almost in awe of the Willy Brandt statue that stands in the atrium and that evening looks as if it was holding a protective hand over the stage.

To this day, Scholz avoided the house for big appearances.

Open detailed view

The SPD has changed over the past few weeks

The SPD has become a different party in the past few weeks. The mere fact of being traded at 25 percent and more in the polls and being ahead of the Union before the polls with the polls did something to the comrades. The party organism suddenly radiates self-confidence again.

In the office of Kevin Kühnert, who rose to become SPD vice-president and now has his office in the boardroom in the Willy-Brandt-Haus, there is a framed slogan on the shelf: “Connected even the weak are powerful”, and recently there were autograph cards on the conference table – those with Scholz on the front.

At the beginning of the week, Norbert Walter-Borjans told the Willy-Brandt-Haus how people approached him when he was sitting on the train, for example, and told him that this time the SPD would get its vote again. Now you can vote for the party again. The mood at the election rallies could not be compared with the atmosphere of previous years. Members of the Bundestag who thought they were unemployed after September 26th, when defeat still loomed, have started again to forge future plans for Berlin. Of course, some are already thinking about posts again. And Scholz himself? He’s been making plans for a long time. For example, when he turned to Annalena Baerbock in the talk rounds of the top candidates in order to advertise red-green as the core of a future coalition before that day.

And now? What does that mean – to be at the forefront, possibly not only forming a government but also being able to lead it? In the grand coalitions under Angela Merkel, who had been elected Chancellor three times with votes from the SPD, the coalition’s successes benefited the Union above all, while the SPD continued to wither over the years. It was she who enforced large parts of her policy. Seen in this way, it is actually a kind of resurrection that the party is celebrating on this Sunday evening in the Willy Brandt House.

A campaign that the competition could learn a lot from

The social democratic idea is far from dead. Cohesion, respect – these were the terms that Scholz used to campaign. For a long time the concept of respect was vague. But the corona pandemic helped because suddenly the focus was on many employees – nurses, carers, saleswomen, truck drivers – without whom little works in a society that is often not only badly paid but also little appreciated. Respect had become a political issue. And the SPD responded with a campaign that the competition could learn something from. In August a year ago, the party was ridiculed for naming its candidate so early. But the SPD then had more than a year to tailor the campaign to Scholz. If Armin Laschet got into a tailspin when asked which three topics he wanted to tackle as head of government, Scholz was able to give an entire lecture: he, the SPD and the 2020s. Higher minimum wages, secure pensions, more apartments, faster climate protection. For this purpose, the party, bright red like it has not been for a long time, was staged.

The better the polls for Scholz in the past few weeks, the easier it was for him to jump across the political stage.

The question now is: what is the SPD doing with this new strength? And who will it be who will manage it? Scholz? One thing is clear: without him, this success would not have happened. It is also clear that behind him is a party that in large parts ticks differently from him. SPD co-leader Esken and Vice Kevin Kühnert flirted with red-green-red. But it didn’t look like it would be enough for that. Scholz prefers the traffic light – there should be enough for that. The exploratory talks are likely to take a long time. And the SPD should actually be ahead in the end. But that the SPD can hold talks at all, the party owes primarily to Scholz. He waves long before he leaves the stage in the Willy-Brandt-Haus. “Thank you very much,” he says. Then we wait. And celebrated.