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Yes, really. My alternative would have been any progressive party and failing that any centralist party, and failing that the CDU with any centralist leader, but all of those failed and now we have Merz. He will damage the working class, exasperate the issues that promote the AFD, and he will normalize them. He is, and the CDU are, Republicans 20 years ago in the US. He will lead to Germany's Trump and the decline of the standard of living for the common man.
Well of course, me too but that ship has long sailed. I meant what would now be the alternative to Merz winning the chancellor election? No good ones
Well your original comment translates to defending Merz. To answer your follow up question, I don't know the names of individual politicians in the CDU as I'm still new to German politics and learning as fast as I can. But I have no doubt the CDU has a handful of less ambitious people who could strive to produce some form of centralist policies. Will any of them be good in an absolute sense? No, if Merkel was the best they could do then no. But could someone be relatively better than Merz, who from what I can see would sell his mother down the river for more power and money, yes - most likely.
It really doesn't, I think you misinterpreted my answer. But I was actually scared of him failing the chancellor vote because that would have meant even more chaos, the weakening of the Democratic parties and a strengthening of the AfD. There wouldnt have been another CDU politician who would or could have just taken over. What I was saying was: No, not 'Fuck', rather thank god. Even though I hate it, there are no good alternatives right now.
Again, you're defending him under the notion that the ~3 political parties in this coalition couldn't produce a single other valid candidate from among them. That's unbelievable and if true should be punished by the voters. There's just no way 3 massive political parties contain zero candidates as willing and as qualified as Merz (if not exceedingly more so) and if all of them can't put the country first instead of their ambitions (which is arguably evident already) then we deserve chaos at the government level. And quite frankly I don't know how much better we are with CDU in power vs no one in power. For most policies I'd argue the CDU in power means a decline in quality of life for Germans not an improvement.
The AFD grows not because of chaos at the federal level but because of the decline in quality of life for Germans. CDU is not fixing that they're worsening it. I think there's a solid basis to challenge the notion that a CDU government ran by Merz is better than any other candidate within those three parties and even a basis for argument on the notion that Merz over no one is better. I think the CDU actively harm this country based on their actions.
So no, I don't think I'm misinterpreting what you're saying - that only Merz exists as a viable option. And yes I do believe you're defending him on the basis that it's him or the AfD growing and I think that's incorrect. The AfD will grow regardless because he won't improve things and arguably faster because as corporate taxes go down and public services lose funding, quality of living goes down and more people become amendable to radical change which by their nature centralist parties don't propose. I'm not seeing a left party capitalize on this in the same way the right is, probably because the funding for facism/racism is larger than for wealth equality but that's off topic.