Who's afraid of Sarah Wagenknecht?
The Left's leadership fears their one-time star and a looming split in the party, but are now pretending that this is not the case.
With their "Leipzig Declaration", the leaders of the Left Party encouraged themselves at a crisis meeting.
Hooray, we're still alive and fighting for the project of a "united, plural socialist party."
That is the tenor of the paper, which is intended as a strong signal to its own base and to the public.
As a signal of the unity of a party that is torn apart by power and factional struggles.
A party that is far removed from the former size of a left-wing East German people's and protest party with potential in the West as well.
Many former left-wing voters in East Germany (perhaps least so in Thuringia, ruled in SPD-style by Ramelow) have turned to the far-right AfD.
This electorate is what Wagenknecht and her followers have in mind when they criticize the identity politics of the left leadership and think aloud about founding a new party that also blinks to the right.
Wagenknecht and her husband Lafontaine had already tried something similar with the “Get Up” movement – and failed.
This time it could be enough to destroy the left.