Debate between Angela Merkel (CDU) and Peer Steinbrück (SPD) in a photo of Reuters
Germans Persons will do democratic options about «forking paths» for Germany and Europe
Die Spiegel show to us some points of view by two works about German elections of September 2013 that make us dream in a failure of CDU/CSU/FDP that support the actual German Government so badly to Europe because don´t influence the necessary State reforms and vulnerabilisate civil societies (brutal taxation over companies and families was the way to don´t solve nothing, only wining time to decrease risk exposures in risked countries):
Die Spiegel show to us some points of view by two works about German elections of September 2013 that make us dream in a failure of CDU/CSU/FDP that support the actual German Government so badly to Europe because don´t influence the necessary State reforms and vulnerabilisate civil societies (brutal taxation over companies and families was the way to don´t solve nothing, only wining time to decrease risk exposures in risked countries):
«The Undecided: How Merkel Could Lose» September 03, 2013
By Melanie Amann, Peter Müller and Gordon Repinski
«(...) the days and hours just before the election have become an incalculable risk. That's when up to one third of all voters, almost twice as many as in the 2002 election, will decide what party to vote for. In the worst case, it could cost the chancellor the majority she needs to form her preferred coalition with the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP).
All German parties have taken note. They will spend more money in the final week of the campaign than in any other week, with the majority of expensive TV spots airing in the final seven days.
The number of undecided voters highlights a fundamental shift in voter behavior in Germany. For decades, voters were as loyal to their political party as to their football club, church or trade union. In the old Germany, the parties knew that they could count on their core supporters, and that all they had to worry about in the final days of a campaign were a few swing voters.
(...)
But now German voters have become emancipated and are as unpredictable as the weather in April. Until just recently, many Germans weren't even aware that a parliamentary election was scheduled for this fall. Now the campaigns are slowly gaining momentum, and yet voters refuse to be pressured. Some won't even decide which box to check until they're on their way to the polling place.
This is particularly aggravating for the chancellor. Although her challenger, Social Democrat Peer Steinbrück, may seem to be down on his luck and trailing far behind at the moment, there is one piece of good news for him: Undecided voters are voters who can still be convinced. Indeed, the SPD is focusing heavily on the final three days with door-to-door campaigning set to continue right through election day. The SPD clearly remembers 2005, when Gerhard Schröder almost managed to defeat Merkel despite what seemed to be a hopeless deficit in the polls immediately prior to the vote.
On the other hand, Merkel's poll numbers are so high that the only possible direction for her would seem to be down.
But it's a delicate situation. For the first time in postwar German history, Bavaria will hold its state elections one week before the national election. Merkel is worried that the FDP might not clear the five-percent hurdle needed to enter the state parliament there. That, in turn, could motivate several conservative voters to cast their ballots for the FDP out of tactical reasons -- to make sure the FDP managed to jump the five-percent hurdle in the national election. Surveys currently indicate that election night will be a nail-biter for the FDP; the party has been hovering around the 5 percent mark for months.
(...)
There is a recent precedent. In January, the FDP looked so weak ahead of the Lower Saxony state election that many CDU voters decided at the last minute to switch their vote. The result was a surprisingly strong 10 percent result for the FDP, a much lower than expected total for the CDU -- and an election loss to a Social Democrats/Green Party coalition.
In Bavaria, the FDP is currently polling at about 4 percent. It will be a debacle for both the FDP and the Christian Social Union -- the Bavarian sister party to Merkel's Christian Democrats -- if the liberals don't improve on that number on election day. "If the FDP loses its seats in the Bavarian state parliament, we can expect an excessive rescue campaign at the national level," say top CDU officials. CDU warhorse Wolfgang Bosbach adds that, in such a scenario, "the FDP's results will be in the double digits."
Merkel's position is made more difficult by Germany's complicated election system, whereby each voter actually has two votes -- a circumstance which could lead many to split their pair of votes between the CDU and the FDP. Merkel is hell-bent on preventing this from happening. Unlike in 2005 and 2009, the CDU TV ad that will air primarily in the last week of the campaign doesn't end with a nebulous message, but with a clear statement: "Both votes for the CDU." In the last days of the campaign, the party's state organizations will place a sticker on CDU posters that reads: "Your second vote is a vote for Merkel."
Will it do any good? Merkel's problem is that she has reversed course on many of the CDU's core issues in recent years. She has eliminated compulsory military service and jettisoned her party's support for nuclear energy, and now the party even favors gender quotas. If content has so little meaning, party loyalty also begins to fade. Why shouldn't a middle-class voter cast a tactical ballot for the FDP?The CDU hopes that poll results will prevent such a scenario. For the first time in postwar German history, a poll will be released on the Thursday before the election. The poll, to be conducted by the ZDF television network, is likely to reflect the effects of the Bavarian election: Should the FDP manage to capture 6 or 7 percent in Bavaria, voters in the national election will be less concerned about the party failing to clear the five percent threshold nationally.
(...)»
All German parties have taken note. They will spend more money in the final week of the campaign than in any other week, with the majority of expensive TV spots airing in the final seven days.
The number of undecided voters highlights a fundamental shift in voter behavior in Germany. For decades, voters were as loyal to their political party as to their football club, church or trade union. In the old Germany, the parties knew that they could count on their core supporters, and that all they had to worry about in the final days of a campaign were a few swing voters.
(...)
But now German voters have become emancipated and are as unpredictable as the weather in April. Until just recently, many Germans weren't even aware that a parliamentary election was scheduled for this fall. Now the campaigns are slowly gaining momentum, and yet voters refuse to be pressured. Some won't even decide which box to check until they're on their way to the polling place.
This is particularly aggravating for the chancellor. Although her challenger, Social Democrat Peer Steinbrück, may seem to be down on his luck and trailing far behind at the moment, there is one piece of good news for him: Undecided voters are voters who can still be convinced. Indeed, the SPD is focusing heavily on the final three days with door-to-door campaigning set to continue right through election day. The SPD clearly remembers 2005, when Gerhard Schröder almost managed to defeat Merkel despite what seemed to be a hopeless deficit in the polls immediately prior to the vote.
On the other hand, Merkel's poll numbers are so high that the only possible direction for her would seem to be down.
But it's a delicate situation. For the first time in postwar German history, Bavaria will hold its state elections one week before the national election. Merkel is worried that the FDP might not clear the five-percent hurdle needed to enter the state parliament there. That, in turn, could motivate several conservative voters to cast their ballots for the FDP out of tactical reasons -- to make sure the FDP managed to jump the five-percent hurdle in the national election. Surveys currently indicate that election night will be a nail-biter for the FDP; the party has been hovering around the 5 percent mark for months.
(...)
There is a recent precedent. In January, the FDP looked so weak ahead of the Lower Saxony state election that many CDU voters decided at the last minute to switch their vote. The result was a surprisingly strong 10 percent result for the FDP, a much lower than expected total for the CDU -- and an election loss to a Social Democrats/Green Party coalition.
In Bavaria, the FDP is currently polling at about 4 percent. It will be a debacle for both the FDP and the Christian Social Union -- the Bavarian sister party to Merkel's Christian Democrats -- if the liberals don't improve on that number on election day. "If the FDP loses its seats in the Bavarian state parliament, we can expect an excessive rescue campaign at the national level," say top CDU officials. CDU warhorse Wolfgang Bosbach adds that, in such a scenario, "the FDP's results will be in the double digits."
Merkel's position is made more difficult by Germany's complicated election system, whereby each voter actually has two votes -- a circumstance which could lead many to split their pair of votes between the CDU and the FDP. Merkel is hell-bent on preventing this from happening. Unlike in 2005 and 2009, the CDU TV ad that will air primarily in the last week of the campaign doesn't end with a nebulous message, but with a clear statement: "Both votes for the CDU." In the last days of the campaign, the party's state organizations will place a sticker on CDU posters that reads: "Your second vote is a vote for Merkel."
(...)»
«Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan»
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/steinbrueck-struggles-to-score-against-merkel-in-german-debate-a-919851.html
«Shadow Boxing: Merkel´s Rival Swings and Misses in Debate»
«(...)
The 90-minute debate on Sunday evening was the only time the two candidates are to meet for a face-to-face chat ahead of the general election on Sept. 22. Merkel has done her best throughout the campaign to ignore her challenger as best she can, and limiting the number of debates to one was also her way of sending the central message: My challenger is hardly worth talking about.
Steinbrück was clearly eager to change that narrative on Sunday. He was quick to list the numerous things that Merkel had not managed to accomplish in her last eight years in the Chancellery: Improvements to old-age care, establishment of a comprehensive minimum wage, a clear plan to control energy prices and sufficient attention to economic stimulus in Southern Europe.
On almost every single one of those issues, Steinbrück was able to clearly, if a bit wonkily, pinpoint Merkel's shortcomings and gain the rhetorical upper hand. At least temporarily. Repeatedly, however, Merkel was able to wriggle out of the trap that Steinbrück had set, returning to her talking points and placidly listing her government's accomplishments. It is, she said at one point, "relatively sensational" what her center-right coalition has accomplished in the last four years. She followed up with such trenchant observations as "our work is not over yet," "we have demonstrated that we are capable" and "Germany is a motor for growth" and an "anchor of stability."
(...)
And that is the central problem facing Steinbrück as the campaign enters its final weeks. Even as Merkel's wait-and-see leadership style is often infuriating, the economic numbers make Steinbrück's uphill battle even steeper. The job market is strong, growth is returning to both Germany and the euro zone and, for all the current discussion about a third aid package for Greece, the euro crisis has faded temporarily into the background.
The result was a strikingly confident, almost smug, Merkel calmly responding to the attacks from Steinbrück, only occasionally raising her voice so as to be allowed to finish some oft-repeated campaign platitude before being interrupted by one of the debate's four moderators. She was more like a grandmother at a fireside chat -- albeit one wearing a necklace in the colors of Germany's flag -- than a politician battling for re-election. Whereas Steinbrück repeatedly broke out his unbecoming open-mouthed sneer coupled with a clipped, biting tone, Merkel would only give him a condescending smile. If the SPD candidate was trying to demonstrate why he lags so far behind the chancellor in personal popularity ratings, he was successful.
Even in the discussion over the possible third aid package for Greece, an issue on which Steinbrück has been consistently blasting the chancellor for not being honest with the German electorate, the SPD candidate was unable to score many points. To be sure, he repeated his charge that Merkel's crisis policies were doing more to harm Southern Europe than help it -- and accused her of not coming clean about how much saving Greece will ultimately cost. But when he himself was asked what the price tag might ultimately be, he -- perhaps unwisely -- answered honestly, professing that it was impossible to know.
There was, however, one moment in the debate when Merkel was completely out of sorts. Towards the end of what was largely a tedious hour-and-a-half, one of the moderators drilled Merkel about the vast data surveillance undertaken in Germany and around the world by the US intelligence agency NSA. If, Merkel was asked, a German sent an email from one German city to another German city, but it was routed across a server in the US and landed in the American surveillance net there, was that a violation of German law?
(...)
Merkel is not one who fidgets often. But she fidgeted while formulating the only answer possible. No, that would not represent a violation of German law, she said, attempting to wrap the answer in sufficient rhetoric about the intricacies of data privacy and Internet law. Steinbrück, in response, accused Merkel's government of not doing enough to defend Germans' constitutional rights and called Edward Snowden, the man responsible for the revelations of NSA surveilance, "courageous."
Still, as the SPD candidate repeatedly said toward the end of the evening, a few weeks remain in the campaign and his passable performance in the debate could ultimately help him close the wide gap separating him and Merkel. Most surveys taken immediately after the show ended indicated that viewers felt that Steinbrück had won. One flash poll taken after the debate Sunday night also showed that he had massively reduced the "likeability" gap between himself and Merkel by 17 percentage points and now trails her by just 3 points at 45 percent.
Such ephemera, however, is often just that. And pinning down Merkel will only become more difficult as the campaign reaches its end. The chancellor, after all, can now go back to largely ignoring her challenger, a strategy which has proven wildly successful thus far.»
Greek protests ...
We can see the capital flight from countries like Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece by German banks exposure in this work for Financial Times: «Last updated:
March 26, 2013 8:20 pm»
«Bank exposure: The eurozone risk»
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9686c004-fca4-11df-bfdd-00144feab49a.html#axzz2dxJ7oR2l
In the last months of first half of 2013 English and German investors flying from Portuguese public debt (IGCP - «Portugal: Moving Ahead» September 2013 http://www.igcp.pt/fotos/editor2/2013/Apresentaaao_Investidores/IGCP_September_2013.pdf)
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