Eight weeks before the German general elections and there appears to be very little movement in the polls: CDU/CSU has cemented its position with 36% of likely voters, making a coalition with the Liberal FDP (14%) highly likely. The SPD lags with only 24%.
The SPD's candidate for chancellor, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, has made a good attempt to shift the momentum with a comprehensive speech that focuses on job creation. Specifically, Steinmeier has promised with his Deutschland-Plan to create 4 million new jobs. You can read Steinmeier's speech here and here is the video:
Much of what Steinmeier says in his speech makes a great deal of sense. Steinmeier sees a renewal of manufacturing production in Germany as leading to a blossoming of the software sector:
Steinmeier's Deutschland-Plan is filled with good ideas such as this. And Germany is suffering from higher unemployment as the global economic crisis has lead to an alarming falloff in exports. So why aren't voters jumping on the SPD bandwagon? Steinmeier's speech itself contains clues as to why voters are turned off from the SPD, for Steinmeier constantly makes references to everything he wants to achieve by the year 2020. 2020 brings to mind the Agenda 2010 reforms promoted by Steinmeier and former (SPD) Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. These reforms, in their design and execution, were seen by the base voters of the SPD as a betrayal of social democratic principles.
The party has simply lost credibility. The SPD has been in power as part of a governing coalition since 1998. During that period, the average German has seen his/her economic prospects diminish considerably. Poverty has increased, good jobs have been exported, the German middle class is shrinking. Meanwhile, bankers and managers have seen their pay packages explode even as their reckless behavior has led to ruin (see Hypo Real Estate).
The agony of the SPD is not likely to end anytime soon, as Wolgang Lieb points out today in NachDenkSeiten:
Die SPD hat es versäumt einen „öffentlichen Willen“ für eine „eine produktive, leistungsorientierte, soziale und solidarische Gesellschaft“
zu schaffen. Sie konnte das auch gar nicht, weil sie das Bild der
Menschen von einer sozialen und solidarischen Gesellschaft eigenhändig
zerstört hat. Sie hat die Hoffnungen gerade der Wähler, die auf die
Sozialdemokratie angewiesen gewesen wären, enttäuscht. Deswegen kann
auch die beste Wahlkampfinszenierung nicht mehr viel retten. (The SPD has neglected to create a "public will" for a "performance-oriented, just and equitable society". It was unable to do this, because the party itself destroyed the vision of a just and equitable society in the minds of people. The SPD dashed the hopes of precisely those voters who were attracted to the principles of social democracy. Now there is not much to salvage, even with the best election campaign.)
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I may be wrong on this one, but at first glance I’m not sure if software developers or wannabe software developers are the kind of constituency likely to vote for the SPD….unless Steinemeier is promising massive public investment in the sector.
Re. the election, I predict schwarz-gelb will fall just short and the schwarz-rot government will be reconstituted.
Kind of a sad fall for the SPD, but basically inevitable. Someday soon a new democratic right-conservative party will emerge and the CDU/CSU will be in roughly the same boat as the SPD today.