Europe German Federal Election, 23/02/25 - Everybody Hates Olaf

[Johnny Bananas]

The German governing coalition collapsed after the SPD (analogous to our ALP) and the Greens fell out with the libertarian FDP. The Chancellor (analogous to Prime Minister) Olaf Scholz has set things in motion for an election on February 23. Problem is, everybody hates him. He has the lowest approval rating of any Chancellor in history and the SPD has slid to third in the polls behind the CDU (Angela Merkel's old party, like the moderate wing of our Liberals) and AFD (racist Islamophobic climate deniers, basically a more competent One Nation).

So now his own party are trying to Joe Biden him.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germanys-scholz-faces-calls-his-party-abandon-re-election-bid-2024-11-15/

While that didn't work out in the US, his mooted replacement, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, is much more popular than Kamala Harris ever was. So there's a chance for the SPD, if Scholz will do the right thing and leave.

But will he? And in a world where the similarly Islamophobic and Western chauvinist Trump is US leader once again, will the AFD become more palatable as a coalition partner for the CDU, who have previously refused to have anything to do with them?

I ppredict a CDU victory, and every other party being happy to support them in a confidence vote simply to keep the AFD out of government.

 

[Baldur]

Hell, even I hate Olaf.

 

[spinynorman]

Damn, he’s about to go away? And I only just remembered his name!

He never really rose to the dominance of Merkel, with Macron kind of filling that space on a geopolitical stage.

Hopefully the AfD don’t do as well as predicted, but there really aren’t many good options there. Die Linke is in a rut, BSW have some qualities but also some major negatives, and the Greens are a joke (the No Other Land controversy, where an Israeli-Palestinian documentary won a prize at the Berlin Film Festival and the Green Arts Minister apologised for applauding, saying she was clapping the Israeli director but not the Palestinian one, shows the patheticness of that party - the movie comes out in Australia this week though!).

If the UK, USA and France gave the hope of an equal radical left riding to match the newly aggressive right, then Germany has a shocking vacuum on this front (electorally, at least).

 

[Hank Scorpion]

He needed to embrace the eyepatch



CDU-SPD Großkoalition incoming

 

[Andre]

Hopefully he's replaced by a CDU Chancellor who isn't afraid of the dark, who gives Ukraine Taurus missiles. Not a blatant Putin appeaser like Merkel, but Olaf is a coward. Always had to wait for multiple other countries to provide any weapons system firstly and still one's like Taurus he won't allow.