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Post by iainbhx on Aug 24, 2024 9:07:22 GMT
79% FDP, 71% SPD, 70% BStasiW !, As the FDP have no chance, I'd vote tactically on the first vote and grudgingly for the SPD on the second. Oddly enough, BSW aren't standing many direct candidates. |
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Aug 25, 2024 17:44:43 GMT
79% FDP, 71% SPD, 70% BStasiW !, As the FDP have no chance, I'd vote tactically on the first vote and grudgingly for the SPD on the second. Oddly enough, BSW aren't standing many direct candidates. That is a surprise. Maybe they have not attracted as many Linke activists as expected, but will attract their voters! |
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Post by iainbhx on Aug 25, 2024 17:59:39 GMT
79% FDP, 71% SPD, 70% BStasiW !, As the FDP have no chance, I'd vote tactically on the first vote and grudgingly for the SPD on the second. Oddly enough, BSW aren't standing many direct candidates. That is a surprise. Maybe they have not attracted as many Linke activists as expected, but will attract their voters! That‘s my thoughts on the matter. |
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jamie
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Post by jamie on Aug 25, 2024 18:03:31 GMT
Oddly enough, BSW aren't standing many direct candidates. That is a surprise. Maybe they have not attracted as many Linke activists as expected, but will attract their voters! Because of German laws on the power of party membership, they have been very slow to admit members. Add in the fact they are unlikely to win many direct mandates anyways and it makes some sense. Wagenknecht also doesn’t strike me as someone that fussed about building a bottom up movement after the failure of Aufstehen, and tbf ‘socially conservative, economically left wing’ has always been the sort of platform that lacks as many activists as its potential appeal among the general public. |
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jamie
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Post by jamie on Aug 25, 2024 18:12:30 GMT
It’s worth mentioning in advance that the exit polls will show surprisingly little switching from AFD to BSW. The BSW’s appeal is fairly limited among the sort of voters who stuck with the AFD when they were on 10% nationwide. Instead, their appeal is more with the sort of voters considering voting AFD when they’re on 20% nationwide. It’s more successful at stopping the leakage of votes to the AFD than actually winning them back once they’ve got used to making the switch.
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Aug 25, 2024 18:46:33 GMT
That is a surprise. Maybe they have not attracted as many Linke activists as expected, but will attract their voters! Because of German laws on the power of party membership, they have been very slow to admit members. Add in the fact they are unlikely to win many direct mandates anyways and it makes some sense. Wagenknecht also doesn’t strike me as someone that fussed about building a bottom up movement after the failure of Aufstehen, and tbf ‘socially conservative, economically left wing’ has always been the sort of platform that lacks as many activists as its potential appeal among the general public. Eminently sensible given other parties' problems with their weirder members. Especially when even she knows that her party will attract a fair number of cranks. |
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Post by aargauer on Aug 25, 2024 20:16:30 GMT
Saxony and Thuringia vote on 1st September. It is likely that the FDP and Greens won't make it in Thuringia, and the SPD are on the edge. Meanwhile in Saxony, the FDP aren't even showing up in polling. They were last seen at 2 per cent. The Greens and SPD are both on the cusp as well. It's incredible but not impossible that each Landtag could be just CDU, AfD and BSW. Forming a coalition is going to be ... interesting |
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Aug 26, 2024 7:16:13 GMT
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Post by stodge on Aug 26, 2024 9:04:55 GMT
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some. Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting state intervention (money) to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they don't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across with the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany). |
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jamie
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Post by jamie on Aug 26, 2024 9:59:42 GMT
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some. Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting state intervention (money) to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they don't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across with the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany). Lee Anderson says he is now a fan of Margaret Thatcher and famously made those comments on people being able to survive on a 30p meal, so I wouldn’t consider him anything but right wing now. Reform more generally are clearly right wing imo, but a bit more populist at it than the Conservatives (as were UKIP). Supporting a bit of money being spent on things like infrastructure is perfectly compatible with being right wing overall unless you want a truly radical reduction in government spending. Wagenknecht herself is fundamentally a left wing conservative. She believes that things were better in the past than they are now. This applies to immigration, crime, energy, foreign relations (Russia), welfare, jobs etc etc. She doesn’t talk about it now, but this includes believing the East was better off in the Soviet Union than united Germany. I mean, Wagenknecht was the only member of Die Linke’s leadership to vote against condemning the murder of people who crossed the Berlin Wall, this is not close to the position of anyone in Reform (I hope!). We have become too used to defining left (including far left) and right wing based on social issues like immigration or diversity when someone like Wagenknecht is still clearly on the left as it would traditionally be understood, and if anything her ‘populist’ views are closer to Soviet communism than many of the people who would now be labelled far left. |
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The Bishop
Labour
Down With Factionalism!
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Post by The Bishop on Aug 26, 2024 11:21:56 GMT
I would say that the mid-decade version of UKIP was significantly less straightforwardly right wing than Reform is now. And I agree about Anderson - he has simply gone right wing (as quite a few once on the left have done throughout the ages)
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Post by stodge on Aug 26, 2024 11:59:39 GMT
I would say that the mid-decade version of UKIP was significantly less straightforwardly right wing than Reform is now. And I agree about Anderson - he has simply gone right wing (as quite a few once on the left have done throughout the ages) Indeed, Thatcher's Conservatives wouldn't have won in 1979 and after had they not attracted support from those who had formerly voted Labour just as Blair attracted former Conservatives in 1997. Johnson's majority in 2019 was built on ex-Labour voters switching over but the rise in the Conservative vote across swathes of the north and midlands didn't begin in 2019 or even in 2010, it began in 2001 as a result of those inheriting ex-Council Owned properties from parents or grandparents and becoming traditional Tory home owners (there were other reasons of course). Reform, like Wagenknecht's BSW I suspect and other parties of the so-called "populist" ilk play the nostalgia card strongly. Curiously, however, Reform scored better among 50-64 year olds in July rather than among the 65+ group which stayed loyal to the Conservatives. It's that age group which grew up in the 1970s and 1980s which felt drawn to Reform. MY contention is those ex-Labour voters who backed Thatcher and Johnson weren't natural conservatives but they saw in what was being promised a possible solution to what seemed a stagnant or declining local society and economy. |
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Georg Ebner
Non-Aligned
Roman romantic reactionary Catholic
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Post by Georg Ebner on Aug 26, 2024 18:21:11 GMT
This is one of the reasons why the terms "left" and "right" are so devalued as to be meaningless in modern political discourse though obviously they are still used as perjoratives by some. Over here, I see the Reform voters and membership as much more aligned to Wagenknecht than the current Conservative Party. The Reform leadership (Farage, Tice) are basically Thatcherites but Anderson (to me) is a kind of Wagenknecht type figure - anti immigration, socially conservative, patriotic but wanting state intervention (money) to be spent in areas like his and similar WWC places (I'll throw out Great Yarmouth and Basildon as two other examples). I get annoyed when people call Reform "right wing" and align it with the Conservatives - it's not and they don't. I'd argue further the 25% of 2019 Conservative voters who voted Reform in July were more likely supporters of Boris Johnson's levelling up aganda. Indeed, the distance between Johnson and Wagenknecht isn't great either. This kind of social conservative nationalist anti-immigrant agenda sits across with the more internationalist globalist and liberal aspect of what could be described as the more traditional social democratic parties (Owenite social democracy, I'd also argue, was the antecedant of Reform and BSW in Germany). Lee Anderson says he is now a fan of Margaret Thatcher and famously made those comments on people being able to survive on a 30p meal, so I wouldn’t consider him anything but right wing now. Reform more generally are clearly right wing imo, but a bit more populist at it than the Conservatives (as were UKIP). Supporting a bit of money being spent on things like infrastructure is perfectly compatible with being right wing overall unless you want a truly radical reduction in government spending. Wagenknecht herself is fundamentally a left wing conservative. She believes that things were better in the past than they are now. This applies to immigration, crime, energy, foreign relations (Russia), welfare, jobs etc etc. She doesn’t talk about it now, but this includes believing the East was better off in the Soviet Union than united Germany. I mean, Wagenknecht was the only member of Die Linke’s leadership to vote against condemning the murder of people who crossed the Berlin Wall, this is not close to the position of anyone in Reform (I hope!). We have become too used to defining left (including far left) and right wing based on social issues like immigration or diversity when someone like Wagenknecht is still clearly on the left as it would traditionally be understood, and if anything her ‘populist’ views are closer to Soviet communism than many of the people who would now be labelled far left. I cannot get over Your oxymoron "left wing conservative": In the best days of Reagan&Thatcher one of the intellectual leaders of german conservatives - G.K.KALTENBRUNNER - told puzzled audiences, that the bourgeoisie had allWays been the revolutionary class par excellence (with GOMEZ DAVILA i would go further: there has never been a non-bourgeois revolutionary/lefty), what included indeed the petty-bourgoisie created by the Bolsheviks with their boring barracksDrill - but even more the left"liberal" Westerners. Another leader at that time - E.v.KÜHNELT-LEDDIHN, who was per se a (right)liberal - also predicted correctly, that the collapse of the East would just strengthen the left. For me reading historical books/journals of the GDR has - apart from some SED-trash - often been like going back into the golden Late Summer of academic historioGraphy under J.HUIZINGA, P.HAZARD, G.TREVELYAN, F.MEINECKE. |
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Aug 26, 2024 19:50:45 GMT
These elections should be a good test of how much BSW is based on nostalgia. We might be completely wrong. Voters abandoning SPD, Green or FDP are hardly terrible nostalgics. Voters abandoning Die Linke probably are. There surely aren't many likely to abandon the CDU or AfD for BSW right now . At any rate, stodge has a good point. The argument for a long time was that there was no popular support for left-wing economic stances with right-wing social stances, outside the fashier groupings. Wagenknecht is not just showing that this isn't true any more, she's doing it in an unexpected manner with a business-like image and an uncompromisingly intellectual manner. She's not like the average populist we've seen. And therefore she's a slippery bugger for the big parties to tackle. |
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Georg Ebner
Non-Aligned
Roman romantic reactionary Catholic
Posts: 9,815
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Post by Georg Ebner on Aug 26, 2024 20:03:54 GMT
p.scr.:
"The triumph or defeat of communism robs only those the sleep, who are worried by the - red or other - colour of the shroud." "After several centuries of demagogic frenzy, the communism restores at least the good conscience of the commanding power." "Capitalism writes the defense-speech of communism, while communism writes the eu-logy of capitalism." (GOMEZ DAVILA)
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Aug 27, 2024 7:28:41 GMT
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carlton43
Reform Party
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Post by carlton43 on Aug 27, 2024 8:37:40 GMT
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Aug 27, 2024 9:21:13 GMT
It would be good if they had realised that not liking people doesn't make them "far right". Wagenknecht is the kind of authoritarian leftist that they have made excuses for, for years. Now she's displeased them, she magically becomes part of the bogeyman. The BSW programme is for the most part classic Marxoid stuff. |
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carlton43
Reform Party
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Post by carlton43 on Aug 27, 2024 9:27:18 GMT
It would be good if they had realised that not liking people doesn't make them "far right". Wagenknecht is the kind of authoritarian leftist that they have made excuses for, for years. Now she's displeased them, she magically becomes part of the bogeyman. The BSW programme is for the most part classic Marxoid stuff. I meant good that it has caused such damage to so many parties who look to be in danger of being excluded under their own rules that had been calculated to damage not them but the very opponents now in the ascendancy. It is all moving in our direction and quite quickly. |
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Aug 27, 2024 10:04:59 GMT
It would be good if they had realised that not liking people doesn't make them "far right". Wagenknecht is the kind of authoritarian leftist that they have made excuses for, for years. Now she's displeased them, she magically becomes part of the bogeyman. The BSW programme is for the most part classic Marxoid stuff. I meant good that it has caused such damage to so many parties who look to be in danger of being excluded under their own rules that had been calculated to damage not them but the very opponents now in the ascendancy. It is all moving in our direction and quite quickly. Ah. Well certainly that is quite amusing. In the short term. But the country needs to be governed. And it needs a clear and unambiguous centre-right. Which is why the moaning in some quarters about the CDU actually reverting to its standard conservative line is not just ridiculous, it shows a failure to understand how the likes of the AfD and BSW have emerged from the ether. |
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