Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Finally. The CDU painted itself into a corner by simultaneously claiming that the state of the welfare & migrant issues is germany's greatest crisis, but also that they will not work together with the only party which is both large enough and actually agrees on this. This went as far as that they took a (binding!) vote back after they realized only the CDU & AfD would vote in favor, pretty much just to avoid the bad optics. They seriously claimed that the voters just have to vote CDU (or at least CDU+FDP) into an absolute majority.
This was just not very credible, especially since Merkel (CDU) arguably started the whole mess. Correspondingly many AfD-voters explicitly said that they don't really agree with the AfD's platform on many issues, but they consider solving the welfare & migrant crisis so important that they're willing to bite the bullet. Hell, I've never voted AfD but strongly consider it for basically the same reasons, but the AfD's platform is just very unappealing to me overall except for those two points of agreement.
Worse yet, before this vote it was heavily implied that the CDU would coalition with the greens or the SPD, neither of which would vote with them, and the AfD was already steadily gaining in the polls. Imo if they had kept the Brandmauer up, the most likely outcome would be a lame duck 2025 government, with an ever-increasing risk of an absolute AfD majority. Which isn't even something most AfD voters want. They were basically just redoing the Weimar Republic.
Now, we can move forward. A CDU-AfD (maybe +FDP) government would still clearly be dominated by the CDU both in terms of votes and in experience & knowledge. It would most likely result in a significant loss of votes for the AfD unless the CDU does some very stupid things, though it would also likely cement the AfD as a long-term mainstream party (probably in the 10% range), again unless the AfD is very stupid. But as you say, the vote is non-binding, and Merz is known to be a little chicken who is eager to be accepted by mainstream journalism, which still leans heavily left.
Yep. Doesn't matter how incompetent or odious the party is; if they're the only ones opposing the national suicide pact, then for the time being they have my vote.
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