A Non-Campaign in Germany

Angela Merkel, seule gagnante d'une non-campagne électorale, par Marie de Vergès - Opinions - Le Monde.fr: "Elections allemandes, morne plaine. Les citoyens de la République fédérale sont appelés aux urnes le 27 septembre pour renouveler leur Parlement. Mais l'échéance a beau se rapprocher, ce grand rendez-vous de la vie politique outre-Rhin suscite bien peu d'émoi : sans grands débats d'idées ni même quelques empoignades entre les principaux candidats, rarement bataille électorale aura été aussi molle. 'Nous sommes en période de campagne et personne ne veut y participer', soupirait, récemment, l'influent magazine Der Spiegel."

Well, as they wrote in Der Spiegel the other day and now in Le Monde, Germany is entering a Non-Campaign without debating ideas and without fights between the candidates. The polls show that Angela Merkel, more popular even than her party CDU, is going to win the election. Just back from a nice vacation in Italy, Merkel is not going to risk any scandals by arguing anything.

The SPD, like the social democrats in Sweden, have lost voters and it might even be so that the liberals can form a coalition with CDU/CSU thus avoiding the input from the left entirely. I argued in my last post that there might not be any ideological difference between the social democrats and the liberals any longer. Especially so after a couple of debate articles on DN.se the last days by moderate social democrats fishing for votes among the Swedish Alliance.