The
fall and fall of German social democracy
The
SPD has lost voters to the left and the right, and needs to get them
back fast to avoid becoming irrelevant.
By JANOSCH DELCKER
3/30/16, 5:33 AM CET
BERLIN — It’s
not just Angela Merkel’s conservatives who are licking their wounds
after a crushing defeat in German regional elections — the Social
Democratic party is hurting too, and badly.
The major losses the
SPD suffered in two of the three German states that held elections
this month plunged a party that had been in steady decline for years
into the worst crisis in its post-war history.
Nowhere illustrates
the SPD’s woes as vividly as Mannheim I. For the first time in 64
years, the working-class electoral district on the outskirts of
Mannheim, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, is no longer in SPD
control.
Not only that, the
SPD lost Mannheim I to the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD).
“This loss really
hurts,” Ralf Stegner, deputy national leader of the SPD said in an
interview.
Local SPD leaders
believe voters punished the SPD for decisions taken in Berlin, where
the party is the junior coalition partner of Merkel’s Christian
Democrats.
“We are the ones
who take the hit because the national government in Berlin promises
things and afterwards doesn’t deliver,” said Andrea Safferling,
one of the SPD’s candidates in Mannheim I.
Aside from the
charismatic Malu Dreyer in Rhineland-Palatinate, the Social Democrats
suffered defeats across the board, finishing a humiliating fourth in
Baden-Württemberg and Saxony-Anhalt. Nationally, the party’s
support has slumped to 22 percent from 38 percent in 2002.
Looking its age
For 150 years the
SPD, Germany’s oldest party, has promoted social justice and the
rights of the working class. In recent years, it has been losing
voters to parties on the far-right and the far-left — voters who
feel the party has lost touch with its core values.
Safferling felt the
disenchantment first-hand when campaigning before the recent
election. The dissatisfaction, she believes, is mostly due to the
SPD’s support for Merkel’s controversial migration policy.
The SPD’s decline
predates the AfD and the migration crisis by years.
“In a constituency
like ours … I am being told ‘We don’t have a lot of money, but
our government is spending all the money on refugees,’”
Safferling said.
“They have heard
about Austria capping the number of refugees and then they ask us,
“Why is this working for the Austrians, and not for us?’” she
added.
Daring to speak out
in support of the “open doors” migration policy can have worrying
consequences. Safferling said that after speaking out against the
AfD, which campaigned with great success on an anti-migrant platform,
a swastika was spray-painted onto her car.
The SPD’s decline
predates the AfD and the migration crisis by years.
“This downward
spiral began with [Gerhard] Schröder’s Agenda 2010,” Safferling
said, referring to the reform program the former SPD chancellor
launched in 2003. It targeted Germany’s welfare system and its
labor market to boost economic growth and reduce unemployment in a
country that was dubbed the “sick man of Europe” at the time.
Many SPD supporters
said Schröder’s reform plan, which included cuts to pensions and
unemployment benefits, trampled on the party’s core values.
“We have lost so
many supporters because people don’t trust anymore that we are
truly committed to social justice,” said Stegner, who is at the
far-left of the party. “It’s difficult to reverse this, and it’s
a slow process.”
Left behind
Many of those who
have abandoned the SPD because of Agenda 2010 have gone to the Left
party.
“Questions of fair
distribution of money and resources are no longer at the forefront of
social democratic politics,” said Matthias Micus, a political
scientist at the University of Göttingen.
“Being ‘left’
the way the SPD understands it today is no longer primarily about
economic questions, but much more about cultural issues like gender
politics, the protection of minorities, or when it comes to cultural
diversity or immigration,” Micus said.
However, he added,
the traditional SPD electorate — the working class — does not
really care about those topics.
“This has led to
an estrangement of the SPD from its traditional electorate,” Micus
said.
It’s about more
than policy, there’s personality problems too.
While the party has
a few rising stars on the state level — alongside Malu Dreyer there
are the popular state premiers Hannelore Kraft in North
Rhine-Westphalia and Olaf Scholz in Hamburg — it lacks popular
figures on the national stage.
Sigmar Gabriel, the
vice chancellor, economy minister and SPD chief, is seen by many as a
fickle provocateur and is deeply unpopular, even among the party
faithful.
Only 14 percent of
voters in Germany would like to see Gabriel as chancellor, compared
to 50 percent who approve of Merkel. Even among SPD voters, only 36
percent would like to see Gabriel as chancellor versus 38 percent who
favor Merkel, according to a recent Forsa poll.
Yet Gabriel’s
position at the top of the SPD remains unchallenged. The main reason
is that the SPD’s candidate for chancellor in 2017 has no chance of
winning and is viewed as a kamikaze mission, party officials say
privately.
That may well be the
reason why the popular Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and
Labor Minister Andrea Naples are not exactly pushing hard to get
their names on the ballot paper, leaving Gabriel alone at the
forefront of the party.
In February, he
annoyed Merkel by demanding greater social spending on Germans to
balance out the costs of increased spending on refugees.
It was his attempt
to distance the SPD from Merkel’s CDU and its Bavarian sister
party, the Christian Social Union.
“Of course we want
to make sure people see the difference between us and the
conservative parties,” said the SPD’s Stegner. “If Germany’s
two large parties are being perceived as too similar, people tend to
cast a protest vote for more extreme parties, or they don’t vote at
all.”
“Over the last
couple of months, people have begun to understand how important it is
to distance ourselves more from the union parties,” Stegner added,
“and days like [March 13] are yet another warning signal.”
Roughly 500
kilometres from Berlin, in northern Mannheim, Andrea Safferling
sometimes thinks about withdrawing from local politics. But deep in
her heart, she says, she is too much of a Social Democrat to throw
away decades of unpaid party work.
Berlin needs to make
sure more money is available for local communities, she says, so that
she can go back to focusing on the core issues of Social Democratic
politics, like expanding childcare facilities, providing affordable
inner-city housing and fixing potholes in the streets of Mannheim.
The SPD needs to
climb out of its own hole before it can start fixing others.
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