The campaign has been excruciatingly boring. Most observers take Angela Merkel’s victory as a foregone conclusion. The televised debate between the current chancellor and the Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) lead candidate Martin Schulz on September 3 got mixed, but altogether negative, reviews, ranging from pure indifference to bewilderment and anger at the candidates’ painfully inoffensive style. This reaction is all the more remarkable given that German politics isn’t known for its confrontational style. [...]
The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) casts its shadow not only over Merkel and Schulz but also over the resurgent liberals of the Free Democratic Party (FDP). For example, approximately 47 percent of the Merkel-Schulz debate concerned migration and refugees. No AfD spokesperson participated, but the party’s presence nevertheless permeated the room. [...]
We should not take such equations lightly. In recent months, Germany has been rocked by a series of neo-fascist scandals, including the discovery of Nazi cells within the army. Furthermore, the trial of the National Socialist Underground group, responsible for deadly attacks on Turkish and Greek residents over several years, has produced a constant stream of evidence that demonstrates authorities’ chronic negligence in response to the threat of far-right terrorism. [...]
Unfortunately, the CDU isn’t the only party that has tried to weaken the AfD by attacking the Left. In recent months, the liberal — but fiscally much more neoliberal — FDP has experienced a remarkable resurgence after being kicked out of the Bundestag during the last elections. [...]
The SPD has also joined this race to the right. When Schulz announced his bid for the chancellorship, he appeared somewhat popular: more honest than Gerhard Schröder and less tainted with the legacy of the Agenda 2010 neoliberal reforms than the rest of his party. But this image soon began falling apart. Trying to appeal to both the bosses and the German workers, Schulz pleased no one. While talking about scaling back some elements of Agenda 2010 at the start of his campaign, a series of electoral defeats on the state level saw Schulz orienting himself towards the center and proclaiming Emmanuel Macron his role model. This was a hopeless move, and not only because this political space is already occupied by Angela Merkel. The SPD has problems beyond its candidate. Most importantly, it belonged to a coalition with the CDU between 2005 and 2009 and another from 2013 until the present, a history that prevents the party from assuming a plausible anti-establishment posture.
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