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SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz in the ARD summer interview, August 15, 2021
Photo: Omer Messinger / Getty Images
If you can avert your gaze for a brief moment from the downfall of Afghanistan and the shameful failure of the federal government, then this Monday could be the day for a personal confession: Yes, I indulged in ridicule and continued to sin. I made fun of the diligent efforts of the German Social Democrats to contest or even win a Bundestag election this time around. Until then, it reminded me of trying to wiggle my toes in a bucket full of cement before being pushed into the harbor basin. Like 2009, 2013 and 2017. Humor is when you compete anyway.
But the faint regret does not just fly to me alone. Last week, under the impression of the latest polls, a colleague in SPIEGEL imagined that Olaf Scholz would "still" become chancellor. He would then not meet his closest confidante, who would remind all journalists "for about one legislative period that the plan that we laughed so heartily about worked out".
This closest confidante is called Wolfgang Schmidt, he is currently State Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, very pleasant to deal with and a decent table football player. Whether he dedicates himself without exception to the state of the German state finances or that of the SPD candidate for chancellor, that will certainly come up later. But he has been championing the plan of Scholz's chancellorship with great vehemence since the end of November 2019. Strictly speaking, since the day when his boss's previous plan (to take over the SPD chairmanship) had failed. Afterwards, the Chancellor's plan was advocated with just as natural vehemence, which is one of the reasons why so many journalists smiled at it. It went through all the months in which Scholz was already a declared candidate for Chancellor,but his SPD seemed stapled at 15, 16 percent in the polls, well behind the Greens and half a light year behind the CDU / CSU. Now the SPD has overtaken the Greens for the first time in a survey and Olaf Scholz has surpassed his two competitors in terms of personal values anyway.
Scholz and the SPD therefore have momentum at the beginning of the last phase of the election campaign.
Her plan is captivating or laughable simplicity (depending on whether you have just spoken to Wolfgang Schmidt).
It is based on the assumption that Angela Merkel's successor will be the one who is most like her.
It is also based on the assumption that there are a sufficient number of so-called »Merkel Sozis«, those voters who have voted for the CDU in recent years simply because of the person of the Chancellor - so the SPD can be reached if Merkel is not more starts, which is the case now.
Yes ... you will ask.
So what's the plan now?
The answer is: That
's
the plan, it doesn't get any more demanding.
»Respect«, the
catchword of
the current SPD election program, was also the focal point of Martin Schulz's 2017 campaign.
And how little the honorable idea sparked among the supposedly disrespectful electorate, we still know.
In my opinion, that will not change much, just because one is now consistently used on the SPD's election posters.
Personally, I even find that a bit overbearing, but maybe I am not meant at all.
But before we start again to mock the peculiarities of social democracy: What did the then American Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner say at the beginning of the great financial and economic crisis more than ten years ago?
"Plan beats no plan".
And ›no plan‹ is currently not a completely wrong description of the situation with the CDU / CSU and the Greens.
From my point of view, it is at least consoling that, with Olaf Scholz (and Franziska Giffey in Berlin), it is the conservatives of the SPD who are getting the upper hand.
You can trust these two best that everything doesn't end up on the table as it was cooked.
Even the gaudy program popcorn such as the wealth tax would have to be put back in the drawer after the election if a coalition majority is involved, which Scholz would not be able to imagine without the FDP.
And this FDP can participate in a lot, but not with a wealth tax that conscientiously brings the middle class and its millions of jobs around the corner.
more on the subject
SPD chancellor candidate in the SPIEGEL interview: Olaf Scholz can imagine Saskia Esken as ministerAn interview by Christian Teevs and Konstantin von Hammerstein
At the moment, the social democratic south curve may be largely silent on this, but Kevin Kühnert does not do that because he has nothing more to say or suddenly believes that it is okay to own several apartments.
He is silent because it is much more fun not to speak the big word until one's own husband is in the Chancellery.
It is precisely this discipline that should give the CDU pause for thought, because it is defeating it at its own pace.
By the way, the only indiscipline against his own plan was that Olaf Scholz got himself into debt.
He called the SPD party leader Saskia Esken ministrabel.
That is weaker than
no plan
, that is
no go
.
