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“And you,” Rainer asked me the other day, “what are you going to vote for in September?
I really don't know who to choose anymore.
Maybe I won't vote at all. "
What do you say on it?
I hear this more and more often, especially from my peers.
Many of those born in the 1960s are disaffected.
For some, the ideals have evaporated, others no longer recognize themselves in "their" parties because they have changed.
I can understand both: sometimes in the course of a lifetime dreams turn out to be dreams, and sometimes you develop apart because not only the voters change, but also "their" party develops.
Then at some point it just doesn't fit anymore.
What I can no longer understand is when you react to it with refusal.
Like our parents, many of us primarily choose what has always been chosen in the family / peer group / in the neighborhood / in the region. We choose what our biography and social origin seem to tell us. Too many of us put our crosses at the ballot box as we always do, completely unreflective. And if we don't do that, then too many of us don't vote at all "out of protest" or choose absurd weirdos to punish "the established ones" for whatever. That is the basic attitude of an offended liver sausage: »They are no longer my party because they no longer want what I think. And I can't choose the others, although it actually fits because I've never chosen them. "
Which shows that "identity politics" is absolutely nothing new and that democracy is a term that many of us have not sufficiently internalized. Goals and content should be the only thing that counts, regardless of age.
When my children began to be involved in politics, I tried to explain to them about the parties. That on the one hand it is about programs that do not necessarily differ very clearly. I told them that the contradictions in the general attitude of these parties towards life and people are becoming clearer. What, I asked, does such a CDU, SPD, FDP, the NPD (today I would use AfD) stand for, what do the Greens stand for? Look at the people, I said, and what and how they are presented. Who they really care about, who they ignore or reject. And then ask yourself where and next to whom you want to stand.
Should I care about tax breaks for the wealthy?
Is it more important to me to expand social benefits?
Am I for or against armament, participation in wars?
Do I think coal-fired heating is great because it creates jobs, or does fear for the environment weigh more?
Am I in favor of integration or exclusion?
Progress, standstill or regression?
In politics there have always been these fundamental decisions, often made for a lifetime.
But I also said to my children: It is important that you feel that you belong, that the goals that are right for you are the focus.
A request for flexibility and comparison that I myself have not followed for far too long.
Today there are instruments for this that make such a comparison easier.
For example, anyone who wanted to know where the parties that are running for the Bundestag election in September set their priorities in their often book-thick programs can now get an overview more easily than ever before.
This helps to sort out the chaos of claims.
And what then seems appropriate, you can take a closer look at it.
Everything is public, everything is transparent.
The argument "I don't know what they stand for" no longer works.
Basically we are a caste society
Having finally understood this, I am in line with the social trend: The number of "swing voters" is growing. The term still sounds like a swear word, in old ears it sounds unsteady and fluttering. In truth, however, it describes a democratic virtue: you should choose what you support in terms of content and not what you have "inherited" politically.
"My" party also had my vote, so to speak. I grew up in the red stronghold of the north of Duisburg. In my youth, people voted for the SPD or the DKP, I personally didn't know anyone who voted for the CDU. I mean that literally: nobody. Which wasn't because it didn't exist. I just knew next to no one from a middle-class background, and one would have been ashamed of that among the working class children (if one of us voted for the CDU, it would have been secretly). You could have made yourself a complete pariah by choosing FDP, but the risk was low: the lobby of the dentists and real estate dealers even temporarily dissolved their local association because there were no more members.
In my family, at least the fourth generation voted red.
The Greens came at the end of the seventies, and I was approached early on, but it didn't speak to me.
"FDP with dungarees," we said at the time, a very sharp observation: these moving people were citizens' children.
I shared many of her goals, but not her perspective on life.
"Wouldn't you like to take part?" Asked a prominent Green man on the night after the federal election in 1994, which I had reported on as a young reporter.
I would never have done that, journalists with a party membership were always suspicious to me.
But something else was even more important to me: "If you had had something to say in the eighties," I answered, "then I would probably never have been able to finish my studies".
What was true: working-class children who were precariously self-financed did not have them on their radar.
"You probably won't choose green now?" Rainer asked me now, and I answered: "Why not?"
More midlife columns
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The USA in UFO fever: Better alien than oldA midlife column by Marc Pitzke, US correspondent
We won't get any further if we all stick to old loyalties, antipathies or somehow defined identities.
Frustration that you no longer feel represented by your old main party is nonsense: You have a choice for that.
The party that wants my vote must win it with the right offers.
I told Rainer about Wahl-O-Mat, which you can use to compare your own preferences with those of the parties. I've been doing this with pleasure since the thing was first presented, and SPIEGEL will certainly have it on its side again in the fall. For me, the SPD is still mostly in the top third, the CDU and FDP very far below. Who ends up at the top also depends on the respective choice: The humanist European party VOLT can be there, the left or the pirates.
Which does not necessarily mean that I have to choose them: I take that seriously as a suggestion to deal with the content of these parties.
“Protest elections don't work,” I said to Rainer, “and we know what happens if we don't vote at all: nothing changes.
And the lunatic definitely know how to mobilize their clientele.
Not voting is always good for the wrong person. ”And“ choosing the smallest evil ”is pure laziness.
Born in 1963, I am the offspring of a political generation.
In my middle-aged days I do not intend to freeze politically, to give up, to look the other way: I will vote in such a way that I can see my ideals best represented and what I consider to be the most urgent goals in order to advance our society.
I don't find idealism embarrassing, but necessary.
And you like that?