Berlin – The postal vote is running, the German electorate is voting – very early, much too early. Who knows what will still happen, what knowledge will mature before the election and what will still make one and the other ponder. “The election will take place on September 26,” says the order issued by the Federal President on December 8, 2020. The place of the election act should be an official room for good reason – it is the central act of representative democracy. Don’t forget that.
When postal voting was introduced in 1957, it was intended for exceptional cases: illness or travel, but not because it disturbs the Sunday rest. If up to 40 percent of those entitled to vote in the cities do not feel like going to the polls and exercise their power as sovereign at the mailbox, this is constitutionally questionable.
In these cases, the voting decision did not take place unaffected in a shielded cabin, but somehow somewhere. The grandpa is shown where the “right” box for the cross is. When postal voting was hotly debated in the US last year, the loser Trump wanted to spread suspicion of election fraud. Germany will not have the problem in 2021 – but there is reason to think about excessive postal voting.
There are still almost three weeks left to observe, ask questions, form opinions and sharpen judgments. Party stands stand in the streets; Pleasingly detailed, varied TV appearances by the candidates for the Chancellery run on many television channels. Treat yourself to the Democracy Days! It may be that the big parties didn’t put their most interesting people at the top, but even boring people have a chance in Germany – that’s not a bad sign! The experience with visionaries was all too bad.
With a Merkel diamond and a “smurfy grin” (Söder about Scholz), SPD man Olaf Scholz invites voters to join him in the place in the middle of society that has been vacated by the Union. Scholz is the man the SPD did not want to be its chairman, but he should be good for the whole country. How is he supposed to rule with this party? Why people vote for Social Democrats has never been described better than Kurt Tucholsky in 1930: “It’s such a calming jefiehl. One does something for de Revolutzjon, but one knows exactly: it doesn’t come with this lease. And that is very important for an independent Jemieseladen! “
The anti-Scholz parliamentary group within the party consumes a large portion of chalk every day during the election campaign; recently, Saskia Esken and Kevin Kühnert attacked their comrade Wolfgang Thierse because he had disapproved of the party’s divisive identity politics and had called for more togetherness. The two party leaders were ashamed of this.
Mainly, the SPD owes its high in the polls to the Union, its arrogance and overconfidence. The men were so sure that they could always do better than this woman Merkel. You can’t; the little slides are too puny for real fights. Thematically, one of the Union election campaigns teaches the creeps: For the core topic of digitization, on which Germany’s future will decide, Laschet brings Dorothea Bär into the “team” – that is the woman who, as State Secretary for Digitization, has not bothered the country with digitization for four years .
The Greens use the optics of American night vision devices to advertise their campaigns: design behind the green veil that is reminiscent of the uncleaned school aquarium. The green election platform “Germany, everything in it” uses heavily gendered language to resist reading by the majority of the electorate. And Annalena Baerbock couldn’t resist the temptation. For them, the 2021 election comes too early. To run as the second-best choice without government experience is going to hurt you. An immature decision, Ms. Merkel was smarter.
Finally, the left: after years of identity politics turned away from reality, it is dangerously close to the seven-six-five percent, has given up its carer image and still dreams of participating in government in the federal government. She can be happy about the red socks campaign of the fear-driven union. There hasn’t been so much attention for a long time.
There is something going on at the “little man’s fairground,” as Tucholsky called the election preparation. The last sentence also belongs to him: “Because I wanna give you a vajniechte choice!”
.