The self-confidence with which Poland's national conservatives have subjugated one sector of the state after another in recent years is no longer there.
During the debate on the new media law, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki's coalition broke up.
For several months now there has been a loud and audible crunch between the partners, who mainly agree on what they do not want.
But in the end, all the controversy did not prevent the media law from clearing the first parliamentary hurdle, and in the form of the Sejm, the most important.
When the going gets tough, Jaroslav Kaczynski's PiS evidently still has the strength to find allies.
The fact that it is not choosy when it comes to searching fits into the image of a party that sees itself being persecuted by evil forces.
Happy too early
Poland's opposition, in which the former Prime Minister and EU Council President Donald Tusk is once again taking a leading position, has been happy again too soon.
The coalition's formal breakup did not topple the government.
Tusk and his supporters shouldn't wait either for the PiS and its allies to trip themselves up one day.
It would be more productive if the Liberals prepared for the next election with a convincing program and convincing candidates.
As the presidential election last year showed, Poland is politically divided pretty much in the middle.
A relatively moderate turnaround in the mood of the electorate can go a long way here.
In the end, the fact that the government has irritated the United States with the media law could play an important role. If Kaczynski thinks he can turn the partners in the European Union and the United States against him at the same time, he must have miscalculated. Much of his program is still popular with many Poles. But the electorate would not let him get away with a political ghost trip into no man's land.