Enlarge image
CSU boss Markus Söder in the ARD "summer interview", August 29, 2021
Photo: Michael Kappeler / dpa
It is not so rare that someone puffs up their cheeks who actually have no reason to do so.
The Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder refined this technique up to the championship - although this does not seem to be widely noticed.
There are reasons for that.
The CSU has undeservedly good luck that their polls are almost always combined with those of the CDU and published together, otherwise the pseudo giant Söder would have long since been disenchanted. But sometimes it happens that someone is actually interested in the country party. On August 21, the Institute Civey determined for the »Augsburger Allgemeine« that the CSU in Bavaria was currently 34.5 percent - eight percent less than a month earlier. General Secretary Markus Blume, who is surprised, puts responsibility for the downward trend on the sister party CDU: "We cannot completely decouple."
Söder, not surprisingly, sees it very similarly.
Only in the state elections is the CSU "really solely responsible, since we cannot talk ourselves into a national trend."
Talking out of it.
That's what he said.
You have to let the formulation melt in your mouth.
Nice for him that at least the public's memory is notoriously bad.
Otherwise, more people would remember that the CSU 2018 with their top candidate Söder had their worst result since 1950, namely 37.2 percent.
So over ten percent less than five years earlier.
At that time, Horst Seehofer, often reviled by Söder, was Bavarian Prime Minister and CSU top candidate.
Where does Markus Söder get the chutzpah from, to play himself as the savior of the nation, who is longed for by imagined majorities across the country?
And, more interestingly, why on earth is he getting away with it?
Because hardly anyone is interested in pointing out that the emperor is naked - and because the few who would be very happy to do so cannot do it.
Armin Laschet, for example.
Sometimes I imagine the CDU chancellor candidate at home in a secluded chamber, passed out with rage, drummed his fists on the floor and shouts: "Now take a closer look at the damned polls!" And then he tugs his jacket rightly, leaves the chamber, puts on a tight smile and says as little as possible about Markus Söder in public.
What can he do?
Anyone who does not belong to the Union can only be pleased that the impression was created that the CDU and CSU had the wrong candidate for the Chancellery. The SPD and the Greens think so anyway. From their point of view, the right people ultimately have them. From this side, Markus Söder does not face any danger either. Life could be so good for him - if only it weren't for the stupid voters. They threaten to ruin his image on September 26th.
Imagine if the CSU got so few votes in the election that it was not enough to make the mandatory nationwide jump over the five percent hurdle. Before too many eyes start to shine: She would still be allowed to move into the Bundestag, because she gets three - or significantly more - direct mandates in any case, and with that she could compensate for a broken five percent hurdle.
But the shame!
The shame!
The last time in a Bundestag election so far, a party had benefited from the basic mandate clause in 1994, namely the PDS, the forerunner of the left.
And now maybe the CSU?
Laschet would have to go back to his room, this time so that no one would see his dance of joy.
And Markus Söder?
He would never need to straighten a jacket again.
Sackcloth and ashes do not need any cosmetic corrections.
It remains to be seen whether it will come to that.
That depends, among other things, on the voter turnout, which no one can know up to now.
But the writing on the wall is in sight.
