Enlarge image
Green election posters: what is the SPD actually doing?
Photo: Michael Kappeler / dpa
What about the SPD?
Was there anything yet, is that still to come?
According to the strategists from the Union, the Greens presented their campaign for 2021 on Monday.
That's right, the most digital election campaign of all time is being called in this camp too, with Instagram and such - but special attention is paid to the posters.
Would these posters look limp and depressed?
Not even close!
They should be “fresh and optimistic”, “with a clear focus on the great challenges of our time”.
Michael Kellner, political director of the party, recently explained it to the taz.
The color alone is as fresh as a young linden tree whose leaves are kissed by the sun after a brief rain shower.
No poisonous neon green, no toad-like warty green, no "I should have saved the last beer better!" - green.
But optimistic chlorophyll, as it - at least in nature - makes the yellow or even blue competition effortlessly disappear.
Maybe such sentences don't matter
The other color palette offers no gimmicks like the Union, where a thin border of black, red, gold has to frame a lot of white.
The greens remain green in the basic color, the font is italicized white.
Photos are not color photos here, but presumably environmentally friendly shades of gray, which sometimes (hair and pants by Robert Habeck) can darken to black.
All posters are supplemented with the yellow dab of the stylized sunflower.
As a plant in the field, the sunflower is usually a weather-addicted part of an equated mass.
As a political symbol, it is a unique selling point, like the socialist rose.
In the field of political communication, she shares the task of reconciling traditionalists and nostalgics with the current state of the party.
The yellow of the sunflower is taken up by the party's claim: "Ready because it's you".
The three-part iambus stubbornly refuses any patriarchal rhythm, a bourgeois metric.
Presumably, as is usual with the Greens, because there are "more important things".
According to Michael Kellner, the slogan should express that the country has long wanted change - and only the right politicians are missing to initiate them.
"Ready
when
you are," would have been all too timid.
Not?
Well, then not.
However
, the green side's claim to power can hardly be brought forward in a gentler
and more suggestive way than in "Ready,
because
it is you" - but it also has its pitfalls.
Most recently, the Greens galloped with a motif that showed an ideal ecological family in a cargo bike.
On the right, the usual was criticized, on the left, the patriarchal gender relationship with the cyclist and the chauffeured mother.
In "Ready,
because
it is you", adversity could also storm up from this direction.
The sentence assumes that "we" are ready.
The slogan could be maliciously paraphrased with a sleazy "Come on, you want it too";
and not only the Greens really cannot want that.
Maybe such sentences don't matter. During the presentation, Kellner stands in front of the main poster, the campaign's flagship, and recites its slogan: "Our country can do more if you let it." In fact, it says: "Our country can do a lot if you let it." What now, much or more? Should Germany really be let off the leash? Annalena Baerbock and a shirt-sleeved Robert Habeck stand there and laugh like optimistic dog owners just before they have to shout "He's not doing anything, he just wants to play!"
Baerbock solo promises »economy and climate without a crisis«, and she doesn't laugh anymore.
The promise is serious.
No climate crisis, no economic crisis, a connecting »and«, where the political opponent likes to insert »or«.
Habeck solo lolls on a stool and promises a "country that simply works" for "trains, schools, the Internet".
His "now butter by the fish" look, the furrowed forehead and the hand raised to act indicate that he knows exactly how it could work.
The rest of the staff is spread over the important subject areas.
Two people who can be read as "women" are in each other's arms because all forms of discrimination have been overcome: "Racism should be excluded", period, "Nobody else", period.
This is supposed to appeal to the "woke" audience.
A stroke of genius: the young participant of »Jugend imkt«
A Markus Lüpertz in casual clothes and with Le Corbusier glasses, on the other hand, is supposed to attract older groups of voters, and not with the help of a bad conscience towards their grandchildren (that's why there is the »grandchildren flyer»).
No, the gentleman is just quietly happy about the good reception on his smartphone: "Doesn't charge, doesn't exist" because Robert Habeck took care of it.
The focus is on the next generation.
A little girl crumples a little boy's face for the sake of consolation, not the other way around, here, as if by the way, the roles are reversed, as well as: "Wealth is when all children are free from poverty".
The young Erasmus student next door is just starting to feel ecstasy.
But it does not say: "Come on, I'll show you love", but rather: "Come on, we will build the new Europe".
A boy like in “War of the Buttons” jumps into a pond or over an obstacle, perhaps the lignite lobby, and calls out to us because he has a lot of staying power and likes it trite: “Let's protect the earth, it's the only one we have". A little stroke of genius, on the other hand, is the young participant in »Jugend imkt«, who is also not alien to the rhetorical stylistic device of the Zeugma: »We save bees save us«.
In their campaign for votes, the Greens graze on the same meadow as the Union.
This campaign leaves no doubt about that either.
However, they seem to advertise the less dreary part of a middle that - as evidenced by their posters - reaches into the at least reactionary spectrum among the CDU and CSU.
The green balancing act is more demanding, he wants to reach Markus Lüpertz as well as his Fridays for Future grandchildren - and the lesbian niece with her father from Morocco at that.
Not represented, at least so far, is the "honest worker" in the vineyard of the gross national product, the woman in overalls, the holy cow of left-wing politics.
A nurse with a face mask ("Quite simply: same work, same pay"), that's it and will be left to the left or the SPD.
Exactly what is the SPD actually doing?
You vaguely remember photos of Olaf Scholz standing around somewhere and having himself photographed - presumably for posters that are still to come. In the meantime, the Social Democrats have succeeded in an act of creative piracy in securing the Greens' claim ("Ready because you are") - so that anyone looking for it on the Internet ends up with the SPD. Bravo.
