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--- offtopic:german_politics [2019/10/28 14:53] – [Coalitions] max_sinister
+++ offtopic:german_politics [2019/10/28 15:00] – [Political Parties] max_sinister
@@ Line 53: / Line 53: @@
 Due to his influence, and due to being in government now, the party moderated itself, against much resistance from the party base. While many complained the party had lost its profile this way, it opened up new possibilities of coalitions: While before the Greens could only ally with the SPD, coalitions with the CDU now are rare but possible. The pro-business FDP remains the environmentalists' archnemesis in a rather petty (by both sides) feud.
-== Die Linke ("Red") ==
+== Die Linke ("Red" -- or "Dark-Red" for pedants) ==
 Die Linke ("//The Left//") is the current German party "left of the mainstream left party", though despite popular accusations from the CDU it cannot accurately be described as Communist. It was formed by the fusion of the WASG, a recent (post-2000) leftist SPD splinter, with the Linkspartei (Left Party), itself a renaming of the PDS (//Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus// - Party of Democratic Socialism).
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 The WASG meanwhile was the project of one Oskar Lafontaine, longtime leader of the SPD's left wing with a personal power base in the [[Saarland]], where he also was Minister President for some years. As this shows, Lafontaine (often pictured in political cartoons as a Napoleon, for being of similar size and having similar ambitions and coming from France-near Saarland) enjoyed quite a career inside the SPD for years - amongst other things, he led the party for a few years and tried to become chancellor in 1990 but failed miserably. During that time, officially the SPD was ruled by a "troika" of him, Schröder and Scharping forgot about him, Germany has, too), but Schröder, the champion of the SPD's moderate wing, eventually won out and became SPD chancellor, as we know - something Lafontaine took rather badly. Despite becoming Minister of Finance in Schröder's government 1998, he withdrew from all offices in 1999 and left the SPD in 2005. He then set out to form his own party, the WASG ("//Wahlalternative für Arbeit und Soziale Gerechtigkeit//" - The Electoral Alternative for Work and Social Justice). The WASG was from the beginning thought as a provisorium until unification with the PDS could be achieved. Which still strangely took some years, party bureaucracies at work.
-Of course, the PDS was overjoyed to gain a foothold in the West, and so the merger eventually did happen in 2007. Since then, the SPD has lost dramatically in polls and elections, as its left wing flocks to the new Die Linke. Additionally, it has created a huge spat inside the SPD about whether to ally with them or not. Before, the SPD had allowed its Eastern sections to cooperate with the PDS, but forbidden all Western sections and the federal level to do likewise. Now, though, that consensus is broken up, but there are still some SPD members with acute cases of paranoid commiephobia who exclude all possibilities of a coalition.
+Of course, the PDS was overjoyed to gain a foothold in the West, and so the merger eventually did happen in 2007. Since then, the SPD has lost dramatically in polls and elections, as its left wing flocks to the new Die Linke. Additionally, it has created a huge spat inside the SPD about whether to ally with them or not. Before, the SPD had allowed its Eastern sections to cooperate with the PDS, but forbidden all Western sections and the federal level to do likewise. Now, though, that consensus is broken up, but there are still some SPD members with acute cases of paranoid commiephobia who exclude all possibilities of a coalition. Either that, or they're still pissed because they consider their former boss Lafontaine a traitor.
-Which is because Die Linke is of course still associated with the SED's taint, because it can't distance itself from its past as the governing party in a dictatorship. However, nonetheless it has gone from one victory to the next, and it seemed likely it would sit in about all state parliaments
+Which is because Die Linke is of course still associated with the SED's taint, because it can't distance itself from its past as the governing party in a dictatorship. However, nonetheless it has gone from one victory to the next, and it seemed likely it would sit in about all state parliaments -- even in conservative Bavaria (where they failed in 2008), but since 2012 they're on the retreat in the west. Its main ideology is mostly still populism and welfare state with little idea how to finance it, though.
-- even in conservative Bavaria (where they failed in 2008), but since 2012 they're on the retreat in the west. Its main ideology is mostly still populism and welfare state with little idea how to finance it, though.