SPD party congress: Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz at Eskenazy Castle

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The whole problem of the SPD can be seen in the “Deutschlandtrend” survey that was published three days before the Social Democrats' electoral congress.

In terms of party competence for important policy areas, the CDU has almost without exception lost percentage points compared to September 2020, often even in the higher double-digit range - and the election campaign opponent SPD has not gained any of these areas, even if it is at least one percentage point.

On the contrary: The party of the Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz has also lost approval for some of its already low competence points.

The Greens, the FDP and, to a lesser extent, the AfD have won, in some cases considerably.

When it comes to the Sunday question, the SPD stands there helplessly pinned to the ground.

Although the Union lost double digits within weeks.

So is everything lost four months before the election?

No.

But the road to an election victory is so narrow, so slippery, the arrival at the destination now so dependent on sheer coincidence that the SPD needs a superhuman effort - and the uneasy hope that some things will go wrong for others.

Only then might the effort still be successful.

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Even before his first federal election, Olaf Scholz is a candidate for chancellor where Helmut Schmidt had come to the end of his last term of office - his party conference speeches are no longer worth anything. You don't believe that he represents the SPD instead of Norbert Walter-Borjans, Saskia Esken or Kevin Kühnert, any more than Schmidt was believed in 1982, that he stood for the party and not Willy Brandt, who was then turned to the left, the rebellious Oskar Lafontaine or the left Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul.

Schmidt seemed to speak only for a north German group from Hanseatic and Lower Saxony, plus a few loyal comrades-in-arms, perhaps Karl Ravens, Horst Ehmke a little, Herbert Ehrenberg or Manfred Lahnstein. The others had long been on their way to red-green or, with their own political survival in view, evaded the Schmidtians with a sincere smile.

Scholz knows this well, at that time he was deputy federal chairman of the Young Socialists on their left wing and made life difficult for Schmidt.

In April 1982, before his last SPD Chancellor's party conference, he wrote that one could not rule if people from one's own ranks were constantly entering the media with dissenting opinions.

And what is Saskia Esken doing today?

Goes into the media and raves about red-green-red and green-red-red, about the Antifa, about the identity politics against old white men and about abstaining from consumption for the climate.

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Scholz, Walter-Borjans and Esken, that looks like a dishonest relationship despite their stage smile. This SPD only stands together because of the voters, a bit like a married couple who only stays together because of the children, and people think they can feel that. In the SPD, there are social democrats of the old Schmidt nature, such as the mayor Peter Tschentscher, who grew up in Schmidt's former district association Hamburg-Nord and whose energy can be heard in the proud Hamburg town hall. And Olaf Scholz thinks that he is one of them. Of course he thinks so, after all, exactly ten years ago, he led the Hamburg SPD, which was lying on the ground, to an absolute majority again, and since then it has governed there uninterruptedly.

Successor and predecessor: Hamburg's First Mayor Peter Tschentscher (SPD, left) with Olaf Scholz

Source: pa / dpa / Markus Scholz

The looting scenes at the Hamburg World Economic Summit in 2017, when left-wing extremists robbed the villa owners on Elbchaussee as well as the small shopkeepers in the Schanzenviertel and Mayor Scholz turned from a major political manager to the face of pride and hubris within 48 hours - these scenes are hopefully with his SPD not too deeply anchored in the memory.

In addition to this SPD, there are also those with a social democratic sentiment (male / female) from Saskia Eskens' nobility of feeling and emotion, who plunge into every Twitter dispute in the virtual Eskenazy Castle and find fulfillment and distraction from bad numbers for a working day.

One does not want to call this knight round socialist, that sounds too much like a pointed and long beard.

But the CDU and FDP and their voters are in any case completely alien to the younger ones, and the word “expropriation” has a poetic overtone for them like the word “appropriation” in Romanticism.

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For this part of the SPD, Olaf Scholz is only a marketing offer to yesterday's Social Democrats to elect the SPD again. With the sentence “Out of respect for your future” and a black and white photo of Scholz, the party announced the program party conference, in red credit card format. Does she mean a voter with this motto, or does she mean Scholz? The SPD brings Klinsmann again as a coach, you have to try everything.

Scholz gives the left fodder with a property levy, a nationwide rent cap or a worldwide minimum tax for Internet companies, but he would also like to make the SPD compatible again for the middle class and the bourgeoisie.

The left at Eskenazy Castle could live with it as long as Scholz doesn't bother them there.

But she has a strange feeling in his stomach with him.

He was also one of the Hartz IV advocates, and is there really nothing to do with Scholz and Wirecard?

The left one goes to breakfast suspiciously, and gets up from supper suspiciously.

In between, she ponders whether the hundred-year-old split in the labor movement could not be overcome again in the 21st century, even if it is through green-red-red.

Is there really nothing there?

Scholz in April 2021 in the Wirecard investigation committee

Source: Getty Images / Pool

The longing for the old, clear, true SPD leads to strange moments, for example in the video that the SPD federal executive board has been offering since December under the strangely applicable title “What does the SPD actually stand for?”.

At the end, a very committed female voice says: “We're doing social politics!” The sentence is big and red on a white background.

Then suddenly a photo of a neo-Nazi demonstration follows for a few seconds, and the voice warns: "Not for everyone!" The picture disappears, a new lettering forms red on white, the voice reads it out: "But for you!"

And that's exactly what sticks in the memory: The SPD does not make social policy for everyone, but only for friends.

Politically, neo-Nazis are truly not sympathetic.

But if the SPD excludes a group from the welfare state in the election campaign, does it mean that at some point?

What if you are a landlord or a climate sinner?

At the moment it looks like the answer to that is superfluous.

Because the future to the left of Laschet is spelled out today with a green A for Annalena and B for Baerbock, female, young, optimistic, fortunately very inexperienced, like Kamala Harris or the heads of government of Finland and New Zealand.

Those who are willing to change yearn for such a new beginning, not for gray hair and red traditional flags.

Baerbock is E-Type, E for electrifying. Scholz is the political internal combustion engine whose time is running out. Even his constituency in Potsdam is pure symbolism. Scholz takes on Baerbock of all people, and no matter how he does it, it can only go wrong. Either he takes to the field against the green candidate for chancellor, then one does not believe him and the SPD the red-green ability to form alliances, and the SPD left as well as young voters will refuse to follow him. Or Scholz treats the candidate for chancellor like the future chancellor. Then the submissive SPD finally gets the call to possibly become the smallest of the three parties in a traffic light coalition and to have to leave the post of vice chancellor to the FDP.

That will happen if the SPD continues to alienate regular voters.

Someone like Luisa Neubauer, whose family origins indicate that she came from the once classic upper-class Hamburg SPD.

In very earlier times she would have been a star of the Brandt-SPD.

But Neubauer has already finally signed off in the direction of the Greens, and most of her followers with her.

The SPD also flew away the electorate in the north of Mannheim, for example, once most loyal supporters, but suddenly switched to the AfD in no small number in the state elections in 2017 and in the election in March, the moods were so unpredictable, to the Greens.

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The same picture emerges in Rüsselsheim's Opelbe districts: long SPD, then CDU, now Free Voters.

The old sense of belonging is gone.

At first the workers' party SPD almost dissolved, now the academics and middle class party is melting away.

Can that change until September?

Yes, under two conditions, which are of course as likely as a fiver in the lottery.

At least a five, not a six.

First, the Greens take absurd election campaign decisions at the last minute, such as five marks per liter of petrol in 1998 or “Veggie Day” in 2013 - and Baerbock is also making a major political mistake. For example, to philosophize about more climate protection and less consumption, when at the same time the feared wave of bankruptcies after the end of the corona aid reaches visually depressing proportions. Restaurants, theaters, kiosks, shops are closing in rows, the inner cities and marketplaces are boarded up and boarded up and look godforsaken - everyone is talking about bankruptcies and rescue aid, but the Greens are talking about the weather.

Second, the CDU takes absurd election campaign decisions at the last minute, such as the professor's capital-friendly beer mat tax model in 2005, and Laschet makes a capital political mistake at the same time. For example, philosophizing about a more market economy and less state, when at the same time the feared bankruptcy wave after the end of the Corona aid reaches visually depressing proportions. Restaurants, theaters, kiosks, shops are closing in rows, the inner cities and marketplaces are boarded up and boarded up and look godforsaken - everyone is talking about bankruptcies and rescue aid, but the Union is calling for the black zero.

Then Olaf Scholz, the man of the cash registers with the bazooka heart for quick help, could intervene. If by then he has managed to make Eskenazy Castle forget and to protect the SPD from too much likeness to God, i.e. too much Baerbock and Habeck imitation.