Scholz gambled away.
Now Laschet could still make it to the Chancellery.
Voters may need a lot of patience until it is clear how the poker for power will end.
A comment by Merkur editor-in-chief Georg Anastadiadis.
Munich - they like to call him Scholz-o-mat in the SPD, half mockingly, half reverently. Olaf Scholz, the unmoved, who hardly shows any emotion. And yet it looks as if the poker face gambled away at the end of an almost ingenious election campaign: the SPD chancellor candidate wanted to create an optimal basis for negotiations for coalition talks, not to rule out a red-red-green government alliance - and delivered the seemingly dead Union with an election campaign bang for free. The CDU and CSU together with their colorless candidate for Chancellor Armin Laschet at least saved the last few meters from complete ruin. Whether the election triumphant Scholz moves into the Chancellery or whether the loser Armin Laschet still uses his remaining chance,the German citizens will probably only know in months.
Federal election 2021: Actually, the Union is bankrupt after 16 years Merkel
That's right: Actually, after 16 years Merkel, the Union is bankrupt, programmatically gutted, emptied of staff and deeply divided. The once proud People's Party is finished, and only the (justified) concern of many voters that things would have turned out much worse under red-red-green keeps them in the game for the time being. Not only will Laschet's helplessness as an electoral campaigner be forgotten, but also Söder's dirty work against his own top candidate. But what he lacks in charisma, Laschet has always made up for with strong nerves. This is exactly what will now be important in the struggle for partners for a three-party coalition. Will Scholz manage the traffic lights with the Greens and FDP - or will Laschet build Jamaica? The Aachener has three trumps in his hand. The first: FDP leader Christian Lindner, who clearly gained in stature in the election battle,stands firmly by his side. The second: Union friend Söder, who would have loved to push Laschet away on election evening in order to be able to lead the Bavarian state election campaign in 2023 against a left-wing federal government in Berlin, is forcing the close result - at least for the time being - on Laschet's side.
Even his own CSU would not forgive him a stab in the back of the CDU boss, who is still exploring.
And thirdly: Scholz now has to live with the strategic disadvantage that the voters have taken off the table the red-red-green option, which he defended at high political expense.
In coalition talks he cannot blackmail the liberals with the threat, as he had hoped, that he would otherwise try with the left.
If the traffic lights were still at the end of the talks, it would not be one in which the FDP gives the cheap August.
That would also have an advantage for Scholz: The Eskens and Kühnerts couldn't just dance around on his head.
