Merkel’s power is waning

The decline in power in Berlin has accelerated. According to a survey, the CDU is only at 19 percent – Chancellor Merkel warns of a slide to the left.

In his book “Machtverfall” (Power Decay) – we reviewed it here – the “Welt” journalist R. Alexander describes how Chancellor Merkel has gradually lost control of Berlin politics.

When the book was written, the CDU was still at 25 percent in the polls. Now it is at 19 (a historic low). In the Forsa poll, the SPD can improve by two points to 25 per cent.

How can this be explained? Is it only due to SPD candidate Scholz, who successfully “merkels” his way to the top? Or his CDU rival Laschet, who wanted to come to power in a sleeper car and is now being left behind?

No, these figures also reflect on Chancellor Merkel. After all, it was she who left the CDU, which she once led unchallenged, in its current desolate state.

Sure, she tried to build a successor. But then she dropped A. Kramp-Karrenbauer in the dispute over the state election in Thuringia. “This election must be reversed,” Merkel declared.

After that AKK threw in the towel. And the left-wing politician B. Ramelow got a new term. He leads Thuringia pragmatically, the state is far from introducing socialism.

Against this background, the warnings of a slide to the left are not particularly credible. Merkel should rather warn of a collapse of the bourgeois-conservative camp – that is, of her own base.

They are running away from the CDU (and CSU) in droves – to the SPD and the Greens. Because that’s where Merkel had repeatedly borrowed votes during her time in government. Now they are gone, the queen is naked…

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) The original post (in German) is here