Left Party Election Campaign: In Search of Success

For the Left Party, the general election is about the whole. Surveys see them dangerously close to the five percent hurdle. Her socio-political ideas have hardly got through to date.

The base is mobilized. There is still room for improvement in the surveys. “Time to act! For social security, peace and climate justice” – that is on the election manifesto of the left and something like that on the posters. They are already hanging on lampposts and stand on the median. Right from the start, the comrades put up posters until two or three in the morning, says top candidate and party leader Janine Wissler.

The doorstep election campaign of the members from the local groups is therefore already in full swing. So the party base is mobilized. According to surveys, it only looks different with the voters. Just seven percent and thus dangerously close to the five percent hurdle. And far from the self-set goal: the left wanted to create double digits.

With abstention from Afghanistan from the deep?

Now the party is trying to use the current situation for itself. After all, the Afghanistan disaster seems like belated satisfaction for many on the left – according to the motto: You see, we were always against it anyway. At the Bundestag special session on Wednesday, the party wants to abstain. Reason given by top candidate Dietmar Bartsch: “Of course the people have to be saved. But there is simply too much to criticize about what the federal government is doing there.” The intervention policy of the West had failed terribly. The mandate in question is therefore a combat mission and is therefore not properly defined.

Pension “like in Kohl’s time”

Another campaign issue for the left could be retirement. In a press conference on Monday, the top duo Wissler and Bartsch promoted the party’s pension concept. Seven points that should especially appeal to those who have little: Firstly, pension insurance for everyone – self-employed, people who work as freelancers or in management, as well as politicians. The contributions of these payers could relieve the system.

Second, the pension level should rise – to 53 percent: “As in Helmut Kohl’s time,” says Bartsch. Point three: There should be a minimum pension of 1200 euros. Fourth: from the age of 65 everyone should be able to retire – without any deductions. Fifth: no more taxation of pensions and no more subsidies for the Riester pension. Sixth: More recognition when calculating pensions for periods of raising children, caring for relatives or even unemployment. And as the last point, the alignment of the eastern pensions to the western level.

Wissler and Bartsch warned that many people in the German pension system are at risk of old-age poverty – for example carers and educators, sales or cleaning staff. So those who were applauded as everyday heroes during the Corona crisis. The party bases its ideas on the pension systems in Austria and Holland, where pensioners are better protected against poverty in old age.

New worries, old worries and again and again Wagenknecht

The new party leadership lost time because of Corona, sighs Wissler. The party congress at which she was to be elected had to be postponed twice. The new team made up of Susanne Hennig-Welsow and Janine Wissler could not start work until the spring, much later than planned.

And then there is the argument about Sahra Wagenknecht. In her latest book “Die Selbstgerechte” (The Self-Righteous), the prominent Wagenknecht attacks those whom she calls the “Lifestyle Left”. These are those who advocate gender-equitable language or also for refugee rescue, animal welfare or cycling rights. Wagenknecht claims that such lifestyle leftists, well-off big city dwellers, look down on more traditionally minded people who live differently from them and impose their values ​​on them. Wagenknecht contemptuously calls the attempt to express himself gender-equitable “gender stuttering”.

The left’s dilemma

In fact, there has been a gap between progressive party leadership and traditional left voters for a long time. Especially in the east. The party used to make up for this with its caretaker image with on-site social counseling.

Political scientist Torsten Oppelland from the University of Jena argues that, especially in the 1990s, when many people got into difficult situations as a result of the upheaval, the PDS with long-serving members helped people to cope with forms, regulations and pension applications to find. It was also the only real protest party between Stralsund and Suhl.

Today there are no longer many of the caretakers of yore. And as a protest party, the AFD somehow comes across as tougher, while the left is almost part of it. Oppelland says: “Sahra Wagenknecht is trying to win back or keep the electorate, which has partially collapsed. And then the paths simply part ways and the minds part. And to that extent this is a very structural conflict, but one that is basically not solvable is.”

Election campaign with Wagenknecht in Weimar

The left is reacting to this structural conflict by first placing a focus on social policy, i.e. looking at those who have little and who earn badly. Wagenknecht also agrees with this – and all those who are close to her. On Wednesday evening, she wants to come to Weimar with her husband Oskar Lafontaine for a joint election campaign with party leader Susanne Hennig-Wellsow. Perhaps a signal: it is no longer as big as the gap between the previous chairmen Katja Kipping and Bernd Riexinger.

The newcomers try to circumvent the contradiction between cosmopolitan aspirations on the one hand and more traditionally oriented voters on the other by placing justice in the foreground for everyone, regardless of where he or she lives or comes from: “The question of justice is a drag through all topics. That is the gap between rich and poor, which has also widened further due to Corona, “says Wissler.

According to her, this includes questions of educational equity and of course climate justice. The left wants to set a particularly high pace: According to the electoral program, the country should be climate-neutral by 2035. The main burden of this transformation should be borne by those who are rich and also burden the climate more than the poor, who – according to Wissler – often enough cannot even afford climate-damaging behavior. The decisive phase of the election campaign has long since begun for the left – with posters, home visits and local meetings. Now all she needs is success.