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CDU Chancellor candidate Laschet in Wesseling, North Rhine-Westphalia: Performatively harmless
Photo: Jens Krick / picture alliance / Flashpic
Imagine Angela Merkel running for the first time as candidate for chancellor this year; she would campaign for the first time. What would she say in interviews? How would she play her television appearances with Anne Will and Markus Lanz, Linda Zervakis and Louis Klamroth or with »Brigitte Live«? Imagine how she would keep talking about what the citizens of this country want and what she, Merkel, would do to achieve what she stood for.
Do you have that in mind?
Good, and now suppose Merkel had no idea about science and would, when it matters - for questions about the climate crisis or pandemic - only call up anecdotal evidence, cheerful personal stories and calendar sayings instead of expertise and facts.
Can you imagine that?
Very nice.
Then you swap Merkel's laconic, sometimes somewhat leisurely manner with a middle-class, sociable high-table posture, plus occasional impulsive outbursts and a cramped displeasure.
Could you follow me this far?
Very good!
That would bring us to Armin Laschet's election campaign.
Asymmetrical demobilization
What else did I expect? The Union is currently running exactly the same collectively sedating election campaign as the last three federal elections before. However, the candidate Laschet succeeds in a new way in dulling the election campaigns, which are currently hard to beat in terms of triviality, with strategically deployed ignorance. Laschet was evidently very successfully inspired by the asymmetrical demobilization for which Merkel became so famous, particularly in terms of thematic restraint.
The so-called "asymmetrical demobilization" is a tactic that election researcher Mathias Jung, head of the Elections Research Group and responsible for the ZDF "Politbarometer", has successfully implemented for Merkel over the past decade. Its goal is to prevent voters from feeling provoked enough to go to the polls because of the debates and their emotionalization by leveling party differences and avoiding public, party-political controversies. That means that SPD, Greens or FDP voters should be discouraged, i.e. demobilized, by the general wattage, but of course the Union voters should continue to be motivated at the same time - therefore: asymmetrically.
Merkel's election campaigns were always characterized by such an exemplary asymmetrical demobilization that from a democratic-theoretical point of view it almost became questionable: The Chancellor did not allow any controversial topics that would have allowed another party to profile itself, because friction would make the political core of the other visible - and In the worst case, the Chancellor would have to take a stand herself.
In election campaigns, Merkel only worked with topics that offered no attack surface and no possibility of delimitation and at the same time approached the SPD and the Greens on crucial political issues, such as the introduction of same-sex marriage, the minimum wage, the withdrawal from compulsory military service or nuclear energy.
That is why there were hardly any reasons for many voters not to simply continue to vote for the one party that was already in power.
With this strategy (or non-strategy) Merkel paralyzed the political discussion into the stagnation of a democratic zero-sum game.
It was less about election campaigns than about electoral coma.
Performative harmlessness
The asymmetrical demobilization adopted by Merkel allows Laschet in the current election campaign to transform one of his most striking weaknesses into a strength: his performative harmlessness. Union supporters vote for him anyway. Voters from the other parties may vote for it because they have the impression that it doesn't make a big difference in party politics. Or they don't feel provoked enough by his lack of need to get out of their role of #specialhero from the sofa and prevent his election at the urns. Laschet is basically the climate change of the little man - what can you do against him individually? If so, everyone would have to take part; but the majority are not really interested.
A controversial issue that is dangerous for the Union is currently how the party deals with Hans-Georg Maaßen, who has just called for an attitude test for journalists.
more on the subject
Laschet, Maaßen and the Media: The Limits of the Acceptable A column by Bettina Gaus
Here Laschet avoids public disputes as much as possible with distractions and opportunistic ignorance (such as on Wednesday in the »Brigitte« conversation).
Unfortunately, this incomprehensible evasion is not sufficiently criticized for him.
And, of all things, on the one topic where asymmetrical demobilization should not bear fruit, namely the discussion about the climate crisis, the Union still benefits - because the one party that wants to bring this debate to the agenda is currently caught up in a tangle of crisis communication caught and stumbled upon formal errors that detract from the urgency of their party agenda.
Lotus laschet
The fact that the public jumped so excited or disproportionately on the Baerbock case could be an effect of the asymmetrical demobilization, as this creates a vacuum of journalistic relevance that had to be filled: Because otherwise there were hardly any frictions about which one relates the competition between the parties because the election campaign up to this point had been so boring that literally quoting errors in a non-fiction book or campaign posters with policewomen in disguise offered the greatest potential for conflict and spectacle.
Lotus-Laschet can simply let everything roll off itself, stumble through the arguments like a sleepwalker, defiantly forbid the criticism of others - and let the mistakes of its political opponents work for you.
New pan, same Teflon.
Somehow there is also something reassuring about the whole thing: Germany is now obviously voting for Merkel for another four years, just with less understanding of science.
