For all those who still want a strong bourgeois people's party in Germany, it is a good development that the CDU is beginning to seriously consider the reasons for its deep fall.
The defeat in the federal election was certainly not only due to the weak candidate for chancellor and the barrage from Munich.
Merz rightly points out that the CDU no longer has the opinion leadership on any topic.
(The wetterwendische CSU, by the way, not either.) That is a bitter realization even for a party that saw itself as a chancellor's electoral association for a long time.
It is only for management skills that you are not chosen, because the Union was misled by the surveys at the beginning of the pandemic.
It currently seems unlikely that election results of 40 percent or more are realistic, not only for the CDU.
Society has become more heterogeneous and with it the party landscape.
But there is still the middle part of society: the families who raise children, perform at work and in voluntary work, pay taxes and duties and comply with the law.
In politics, they are often only marginally concerned, although they keep things going.
To a large extent, they form the (potential) clientele of the CDU.
If the party listened to them better again, it would have a chance of a successful renewal.