Well, congrats Black Rock...
And of course congratulations, Fotzenfritz...
this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
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Fuck
Well, it was to be expected. But yes.
Hope dies last
But it dies.
So this is how democracy dies? With thunderous applause?
- Padme
Not really, what would have been the alternative you would have wished for?
Habeck.. obviously :)
The timeline I want to be in.. :(
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
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.
Why did he loose the first vote? I don't know enough German politics to answer it myself.
It's a shot before the bow. His behaviour in the past had been quite autocratic, trying to pressure parliament etc so this is people telling him that he may be in charge, but he's not in charge.
And he seems to have understood, judging by his face when he was told so in no uncertain terms by one of the speakers. That shot stung.
Slim majority of 18 votes, and a lot of people don't like him.
Merkel actively kept him from power until she was done with politics, privately saying he's dangerous.
He's a ruthless, but not very good, power player with little empathy or ability to reach across the aisle.
The Social Democrats were basically forced into the coalition as the only option to get a majority without the Nazis.
Cause nobody likes him
As others have already answered he lost because he didn't get the required votes, despite his coalition having a majority. Which is why this was expected to be a formailty and no one in a similar situation had ever lost this vote.
However i would add that unlike some other votes of parliament this one was a secret one, so we will never know who voted which way. Since everyone was present we can deduce that people of his coalition broke rank in the first round and voted against him. But we likely will never know who and why, since i doubt anyone would reveal it (which would be political suicide).
Since they changed their votes for the second round that immediately followed, i assume they wanted to voice their disapproval of Merz, which they succeded in. But (again as already mentioned) Merz is not really well liked.
He left politics for a while during most of Merkels reign and only crawled back out of his hole after she left. And even then he wasn't the first choice (he failed to become the CDU candidate in 2021). So there might be quite a few people that just dislike him enough in general to do this.
Other more recent reasons might be his 180Β° turn on the debt brake (ran his campaign on not changing it, just to immediately do so after the election) or his attempt for harsher migration rules just before the recent election, where he won a vote in pariament with the help of the far right AfD (ofc he distanced himself from them, but you only bring stuff to a vote if you plan to win, and the only way to win that one was with the far right).
Technically because of not having enought votes, but it came as a surprise because the two coalition parties have a big enough majrority - the vote was secret and nobody knows who voted against party lines. So nobody knows why, bubasically comes down to that there are people in the coalition parties that don't like him and just voted against him.
big enough majority
The smallest majority a government of the federal republic ever had though.
Lol, gottya