🇩🇪 Germany: ⬛️ CDU/CSU chancellor candidate for 2021

[parochial boy]

Pretty obvious that the best term would be Das Kanzlerkandidatchen anyway.

Especially if it's Laschet.

[parochial boy]

It made me laugh, and the Heute show doesn’t always do that.

Other than that, it’s pretty much exactly the line you would expect a satirical show to take against someone like Söder, so it’s not any more shocking that that. Like the bit about him not being the kind of guy you’d want to go on holiday with - of course they are going to use a line like that. They’ve definitely been meaner on other subjects (eg Saxony) in the past

[parochial boy]

You are right, the only democratic way is direct democracy, i.e. a primary. If they cannnot do that then they should follow the polls.

Democracy means people+power, nothing more, nothing less.

In practice, open primaries in European countries have tended to backfire though (thinking very much of the French experience here), because unlike in the USA there is normally more than one alternative that people can choose if their preferred candidate doesn't win the role (and because, thankfully, of the lack of winner takes all elections. I'm not sure taking the US route of increased personification of politics, ie where one person gets to determine an entire government programme based on winning a plurality of the vote, would be especially good for democracy really).

Probably the "most democratic" option would be open list PR and allowing panachage, where the candidate with the most individual votes becomes the de facto chancellor pick.

[parochial boy]

Re how conservative the CSU is, the funny thing is that Laschet actually does have some fairly close links to nutcase ultra-conservative catholics

Anywa, given his seemingly unending ability to eventually pull it out of the bag, it might be worth admitting that he might be a rather better political operator than is usually accepted?

[parochial boy]

Laschet had some pivotal key allies from deep within the party's establishment on his side. Notably the CDU's elder statesman no. 1, Wolfgang Schäuble, who had pushed heavily for Laschet both in media interviews and in the executive board's sessions during the past week. And I guess nobody dared to go against he old man's wishes.

Also, the whole situation had started to contain at least an implied threat: Either you make Laschet Chancellor-candidate or you can start looking for a new party chairman. That kind of thing usually works, unless they really wanted to get rid of their chairman three months after the start of his first term and five months before the next Bundestag election.

Implied question as to why this is the case though, these things don't happen in a vacuum, so there is clearly some reason as to why Laschet landed in the position he has, with the support he has. Like he oveperformed in NRW in 2017, in the leadership race - it happens often enough that I don't think we should necessarily run around with the perception that he is just completely crap that seems to have mostly been developed post-hoc in the placing him head to head with Söder

CDU < 27% with Laschet. >35% with Söder.

February 2017: "the electorate loves Martin Schulz".

(and ftr, I would be very happy for Laschet to turn out to be a crap candidate who hands the chancellorship over to the Greens )

Might be a good idea to drop the german memes too / or at least translate them (admitting I've been guilty of the same in the past), as has been mentioned, most of the people reading this thread aren't going to be able to understand them.