I've read the PowerPoint, and one detail you didn't mention, the most daming slide of all: _the one where they discuss whether breaking the coalition before or after the US election, and how many weeks later is better._
Lindner (FDP Chairman, former finance minister) says he wasn't aware of the content and language in that document and condems the language as unprofesional but says he Supports that it was created.
yeah, since they have all their act bass ackwards. Tax concessions to their clientele higher than the ones proposed by Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, financed by more debt while keeping the population in the choke-hold of austerity, only to pay up for the super rich. Get in your private jet already and leave us alone, if you can still afford to do so on your Buergergeld.
Apparently media outlets already had the d day paper for days and had sent the FDP questions about it. The party asked for a little more time to answer these questions before the media would publish their articles. And within that time frame, instead of working on their response, they published it themselves. Of course without ever answering the questions posed by the media. That was probably part of their strategy to „control the narrative“ but it seems they’re not very competent at enacting their own plans. Or gaging the response by the public. And now Lindner, who just recently claimed this paper isn’t even newsworthy and anything goes during a campaign tries to distance himself from it to save his own skin. What a clown.
Well, I still remember when they branded themselves as "die Spaßpartei". (2002, still under Westerwelle I believe). I'd say that most coalition breakups between elections that I remember were done by the FDP. She was also known as "der Schwanz, der mit dem Hund wedelt" (the tail wagging the dog). For a long time, any federal coalition, no matter if SPD or CDU/CSU led, had to include the FDP or be a "great coalition" (including the two big parties). I believe that changed when the Green party (or rather its predecessors) began to rise. All ancient history to most here, I suspect.
@@KaiHenningsen Westerwelle, was that the guy who jumped out of a plane without opening his parachute (and who had previously switched off the automatic safety device for opening the parachute)? That was at least a dignified exit, if you want to call it that.
The German proverb “He who digs a pit for others falls into it himself” („Wer anderen eine Grube gräbt, fällt selbst hinein“) is not always true, but it is here.
The German Version would be: „Wer andern eine Grube gräbt ist wahrscheinlich Bauarbeiter“ „He who digs a pit for others is probably a construction worker.“
My opinion of libertarians always was they are 15 year olds who refuse to mature for the next 30 or 40 years. Makes perfect sense they'd call it D-Day... Dumbass Day.
It's childish and tactless. It's what i would have called it, when i was a teenager, and even then, i would have probably used a different term in every written form and only used "D-Day" as sort of verbal, secret reference, for the very reason that if some outsider got it in his hands, i would have been embarassed for using it. Cause really, whatever the FDP does, it will never reach the historical magnitude of the real D-Day. Sheer f****** hibrys.
Just hours after creating this video, the general secretary of FDP and another member resigned, because they couldn't hold up the narrative anymore that they didn't knew what was going on. Now all eyes turn to the ex finance minister, who now looks like a liar and a traitor. This was like the worst timing of events imaginable. The FDP broke out of the government, hoping to gain popularity for ending an unpopular government. Now they look like the main reason why the government was miserable.
Even before breaking up most saw the FDP as the main-reason for why the stoplight coalition didn't work. All 3 parties lost popularity but the FDP lost 60% of its voters even before this whole fiasco.
@@Marc42 There is no party anywhere close to political responsibility that actually strives for Marxism. It's a choice between different flavours of market capitalism on a spectrum of workers' rights
Errr, what? Political parties are for serving the country and not the neocons who own the country? No. The neocons own the country including the parties, so the parties serve them.
I recall a lot of people who would otherwise have voted Green or SPD at the last election voted FDP because they were worried about a coalition with Die Linke who they thought would play political games. Wonder what they're thinking now?
To be fair, the german left is almost not to vote for. They fight themselves way more than anyone else and Wagenknecht is just sus af. But I kinda find it amusing that all gov parties are openly anti AFD but do their best to get them into a better position. This is what I don't get, all them elites really play this game so bad it's sickening. Also off topic but still kinda funny we had no money for corona help funds without credits for people who were not permitted to work BUT we have a gov that can argue about how many hundred of millions we give away for wars in other countries. German politics at this point are just a joke, nepotism and incompetence seem to be the new name of the game.
They're probably thinking the same thing now that they were thinking when the FDP, Greens, and SPD pulled that stunt to keep Die Linke from getting seats that caused Die Linke, the CSU, and the state of Bavaria to file multiple complaints with the constitutional court.
Speaking as a non-Euro from the states, if ppl voted FDP bc they were that afraid of Die Linke, the ppl voting for FDP who would’ve voted for SPD or Greens could (and do feel free to criticize this view bc it’s pure speculation based on nothing) vote for CDU. After all they voted for a right of center party before, so who’s to say they wouldn’t be willing to do the same again? If avoiding even an inkling of power/influence for a party with connections to the old dead SED and the Stasi is the goal anyway. Though tbf the much more likely case is that those voters will more begrudgingly vote for SPD & the greens, and to secure control the SPD/Greens could include Die Linke as confidence and supply, similar to how the rightist Swedish Democrats up north are with the current center right minority government.
Honestly, would have been complete shit either way considering before the Linke civil war, Wagenknecht was at the core of die Linke so they would have also played political games, just differently. Although maybe the Schuldenbremse would have finally died so at least something could have come from red-red-green.
@@Iskelderon Sure, but i think it was still a stupid idea to name it that way in the first place: they are a german party, not an american, british or canadian one. So any association by someone who knows at least a tiny bit about history would be with them on the german side (in my opinion). Hence my comment.
Last election the FDP had one poster that said "Out of Love for Freedom" (Aus Liebe zur Freiheit). looking at that last point 2:30 "Phase IV: Start of open Warefare" that poster aged like already rotten eggs.
It's also like the worst possible terminology to use as the rich people party in a time when the public is already suspecting the rich people to get cozy with fascist ideas again.
I think it's so scary what the Federal FDP has been doing, considering how capable they used to be. They were always a "Home owners and upper middle class" party, but they failed even those on the national level. Yet the State Parties, which are surprisingly unrelated to the federal one (my town used to have an fdp mayor, and he was probably the best we had in decades), are now sniffing copium so hard, instead of cutting off this tumor of self righteous childish bull crap.
Local politics are always a very different beast from federal ones. Ramelow is one example on state level, but in small towns I really think that "People actually know each other" puts a limit on how much of an ass politicians are willing to make of themselves.
I'm afraid they won't resurrect. Hans-Dietrich Genscher is dead, this outcome would have hit him hard. I feel sorry for Gerhart Baum (92). The party had more serious, responsible politicians in the past.
@@ppd3bw _"I'm afraid they won't resurrect."_ Idunno, the FDP seems to benefit from voter amnesia. Any time they end up with power, people remember why they stopped voting for them and kick them out. Then, after some years, when people are dissatisfied with the economic situation they go "wait, wasn't there this party that was all about The Economy? Those guys should know what to do!" and vote for them again.
The FDP in reunited Germany is a political circada. Revived with a seemingly young and smart leading figure (Westerwelle, Lindner), only to suck so, so hard at governing that they are thrown out of parliament.
@@ppd3bw One of the last old schoon FDP members whom I had deep respect for was Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger. I agree with pretty much all the positions she had while in office. For me, she was a good politician in the wrong party.
Honestly, very important addendum I hope you can publish: the FDP did not just post the paper because they were feeling like it, instead they were given a deadline by the SZ Media who has access and wanted some questions to be answered. The FDP asked for an extension of about 3 hours in the deadline to them publish the paper themselves rather than answer the questions by SZ. Janine that no one would have seen this particular paper if it wasn't for the work and the pressure applied by the SZ Media.
Spinning conspiracy theories here... i can imagine that the leak to the media could have been a parting gift by some chassed federal minister who lost the coup for the party lead behind the curtains and as a result left the party some time back. (Or one of his henchmen.)
That relates to the allocation of seats according to the party list vote. If your party wins just 1 constituency outright, then it gets one seat in the Bundestag: but it only gets extra seats from the party list vote if it manages to get at least 5% of those votes.
@rewboss This was the old method before the reform of the election law in 2023. This is no longer the case for candidates associated with a political party - the only exception is for independent candidates.
@@rewboss If a party wins at least 3 constituencies (direct mandates) than it gets as many seats in the Bundestag as their party votes allow, even if they got less than 5 % of the total party votes. That's how "Die Linke" got in the Bundestag in the last election. They got 4.9 % of the party votes but they won 3 constituencies and got therefore 39 seats in the Bundestag.
@@parapass571 You're right... I think. I'd forgotten about the reform, and one part of the reform was ruled unconstitutional and... it's very confusing. But yes, it's 3 constituencies, not one.
@@parapass571 Does that also still apply to parties representing recognized minorities, like the SSW for the danes? In the 2021 election they only got 0.1% of the votes, but since they're exempt from the 5% threshold, that was enough for 1/735 seats.
Auch damals hat sie eine illegitime Regierung zu Fall gebracht. EIne, die gegen die Wiedervereinigung arbeitete, eine die von der DDR unterwandert war. Sie haben damit Kohl und die Wiedervereinigung ermöglicht
Sadly, the voters have an attention span that would make even a goldfish pity them, hence why the projections for the upcoming snap election show the top spot going to the conservatives who had caused 16 years of stagnation that the current government had barely started to fix some of on top of Russia's invasion and the Covid recovery.
The Problem the FDP had was that they were rightfully seen as the party who played ball the least in the coalition. They always saw themselves as the victims when quite a bit of what they wanted got greenlight by the other parties. They also seemed to forget that every party had to swallow their pride and contrary to what their party stands for (for example Habeck of the Green Party needing to make a deal with Quatar for natural gas imports).
Sure, but overall, I'd argue they had to swallow their positions way to often. It could have been inevitable, but then we shouldn't be surprised that their voters are not keen on voting on them again, if they barely delivered any liberal demands.
@@naruciakk I don´t see the young liberals making a big fuss or leaving in droves, seen it with the young socialists/greens though. The FDP still doesn´t seem to understand that their base of voters is around 3%, they need the average people to vote for them otherwise they won´t reach the Bundestag. However most of the policies they pushed for only benefitet the well-off or rich to begin with which just don´t have the numbers to carry the party. This wasn´t always the case 15 years ago the FDP still had a strong suit in civil rights but they tossed that aside in favor of neo-liberal economy politics and having Lindner as a single figurehead. I overall liked the Ampel, i thought they worked pretty productive for the most part and got a lot of things done. The coalition mostly had a PR problem and the main reason imho was the FDP for constantly saying "no" or bickering with the other 2 parties.
@paha4209 Yet, not a single advancement for actual economic liberty was achieved, it was a subsidies and big daddy state politics - and still it wasn't enough for young lefties, who nowadays are basically Marxists - and young liberals are classic social democracts, apparently. It's surreal, confusing and doesn't seem like it is going to end well. :/
Schadenfreude was never more deserved. OTOH, I'd be very surprised if the SPD and Green party did NOT make any plans for this contingency. In that case Scholz's speech writers would have had to be extremely efficient on "D-Day".
It's one thing to make a contingency plan in case the government collapses, it's another to make a plan to deliberately make the government collapse and try to steer the narrative so the other parties get blamed. The former is just good governing, the latter is dishonest and manipulative.
Read the Zeit article. Apparently they knew about this about one day ahead. And yes, preparing three different speeches here would be professional and efficient. The difference between what Scholz did and what the FDP did is, that the first did prepare for three different outcomes and genuinely left the door open for compromises - arguably the opening was slim, but it was there -, while the other was determined of the outcome and was only open to in which way his party would look like the victim the most. One is called country before party, the other is called (ego before) party before country.
You seem unable to see the difference between preparing for an event that can happen or is likely to happen because there are very visible signals on one hand, and a long-running plan to create and to provoke such an event, and then to brazenly lie about it, on the other hand. Lindner and his gang have been throwing bombs and laying mines with the intention of provoking a break-up of that coalition for at least the whole past year. Everybody could see this, and it was discussed and analyzed in every single news channel, paper, or medium. But now it's more than obvious that they had meticulously prepared this whole thing. The only person of integrity in that whole bunch of lobbyists and narcissists was Volker Wissing, who left this disgusting, self-serving party. The reasons for it have become clearer and clearer. That you try to turn cause and effect around just shows that you are very ignorant, or that you WANT to spread propaganda against your better judgement.
I mean, you'd _hope_ this destroys the party but in 4 1/2 years nobody will remember and they'll go back to 8% by doing what they always do, appealing to young, smart but politically inexperienced people.
Until now I thought the FDP was a legitimate party for real estate agents, dentists and financial jugglers (i.e. for everyone who has too much money). But now I think it is a power-maintenance club for FDP members. Who would vote for them now? In Germany there are significantly less than 5% of voters who are actually real estate agents, dentists and financial jugglers. It's not even three percent, I think. Rest in peace, FDP.
they managed to build up a solid image and fill the void in the middle-conservative side that was left with the Union's demise and had much success in first-time voters aged 18-25. I can't imagine any of those folks voting for them again after failing them so spectacularily.
When the FDP was summoned last time, their godfather Lindner quit coalition negotiations, saying that it was better NOT to govern than to govern badly. He really f-ed up now, so according to him, it's better not to have the FDP in the next government.
Assuming Die Linke is able to get seats by getting 3 or more constituencies, BSW performs similarly to the last three state elections, the SPD and Greens don't hemorrhage as many votes as initially thought, and this causes the FDP to not hit the 5% threshold in the next election; it might end up being impossible to form a coalition with neither Die Linke, BSW, nor AFD. This would reveal how willing the CDU is to actually maintain the firewall.
The FDP has been going down in votes for at least a decade, they only barely managed to be a part of the parliament the last 3 times. Seems like people don't believe in neoliberalism anymore.
@@NinjaananasHate to break it to you but we vote fdp for being neoliberal. The butthurt socialists are irrelevant. I was going to vote AFD since the FDP went into thd bed with socialists but after their D-day I'm back to voting FDP again. This is just a media clownshow.
You need to win *three* constituencies for the party to enter according to their share of the 2nd vote, even if they do not reach 5%. Otherwise, only the one or two directly elected persons will enter, but nobody else from the party.
Calling it D-Day is an absolute joke considering the FDP was the party with the most ex-NSDAP members in the Federal Parlament relative to the total representation of their party there. (In absolute numbers it was CDU).
Hopefully they will rise like a Phoenix in a few years and win a well-deserved absolute majority for representing the best, most balanced and least oppressive-autocratic political ideology. If hopes were horses, eh?
3:30 - To Enter the parliament according to votes, it needs at least THREE constituencies, not one as mentioned. With less than three only those one or two will get their seat, but all proportional seats (and votes) are forfeit.
Well, if the FDP had focused more on the Freiburger Thesen instead of parroting whatever Cristian Linder said they wouldn't be in this mess right now and the Ampel wouldn't have had such bad approval ratings.
I just hope this means that they'll actually be kicked out of parliament. The FDP have an annoying habit of scraping by with precisely 5.0% of the vote even when they've been completely worthless.
@@rittersportfanAnd they csme back anyhow, to form a government. So there is indeed hope for a sane future coalition with actual liberty and deregulation at the core at some point.
Wikipedia: Zweitstimmen werden nur berücksichtigt, wenn eine Partei die Sperrklausel von 5 Prozent überwindet oder mindestens drei Direktmandate erzielt.
Remember the FDP have done similar in the past, refusing to go into coalition with the CDU resulting in the SPD having to go into coalition. They're just unreliable as coalition partners.
What with France in turmoil, not to forget South Korea then there seems to be something of a crisis of confidence in a lot of liberal democracies. Keir Starmer's huge majority came about despite the lowest share of the popular vote of any UK government ever. Then we have Donald Trump to look forwards too and his threat to international trade...
The FDP really screwed up. In the last three state elections, they were completely voted out and have no seats. With only a handful of exceptions, the FDP only gets seats via proportion seats rather than constituencies. So they basically caused a government collapse when they're at the weakest point for the only thing that keeps them in office at all.
Can you fill an entire page with 18 words and 4 numbers? Yes, yes you can. In fact you must - how else are you gonna remember a 4-Phase plan that basically goes like: - find a cause - define our position - spread our position - escalate Which is, as you can see, really sophisticated and subtle and nothing like any ordinary conflict ever plays out anyways. The fact that anyone felt the need to write this down, together with the form chosen (why a pyramid - you are not at university anymore - you dont have to meet a page count) is what p***es me off more than what is actually written. It reminds me of one of my plans as a teenager: - buy beer - ride bike to friend - get drunk - have fun Lest i forget one step!
3:30 You're a bit off about the 5%-threshold: If a party below 5% wins 1-2 consituencies directly, those MPs are elected. Only at 3 or more however, the party's share of the party-lists-vote gets accounted. The Linke i.e. benefitted from this last time and specifically aims to do so again with "Projekt Silberlocke"; Maybe an interesting topic for another video.
The FDP was already going to be under 5%, so, there is likely a chance they lose their positions in the Federal Government. By being a part of a coallition with 2 left-wing parties (SPD and Grüne) the FDP has cemented it's image against the right (CDU/CSU and AfD). The Grüne is also falling down in the pollings, so we currently have for top 3: CDU/CSU, AfD and SPD; given the Union now is much more right then it was during Merkel's era (it's not guaranteed we'll get a CDU/CSU+SPD coallition), but there is still a lot of skepticism regarding the AfD (and it's extremism), I'm curious to see what kind of coallition we'll be getting next year. Some people have been joking the CDU/CSU will form a coalltion with BSW, which would be ludicrous, basically what the Union sees as the worst aspects of the AfD and Die Linke combined.
The question is what kind of government would even be possible after the election. The Union has only run governments with the FDP and the SPD (besides the process of pulling right wring parties towards the center back in the 1950s) In recent polls the Union sits at around 32-33%, the SPD at around 14-15%, the greens at around 11-12%, the FDP at around 4-5%, the left at around 3-4%, the AFD at around 18-19% and the BSW at around 4-7% With those numbers, and assuming all of the parties get their best result (which would account for roughly 94% of votes), the only possible majorities would be Union/SPD/FDP, Union/AFD, and Union/SPD/greens Considering none of the other parties want to work with the AFD, and neither an grand coalition, nor a red-red-green coalition would get the majority, things will for sure be interesting.
@@HappyBeezerStudios Very good analysis, I think you have a good point, it will be an interesting election and coallition forming process like never before seen. Honestly, I think a Union-SPD Coallition is the most likely outcome, but even that isn't 100% since the Union and SPD have not been seeing eye to eye recently.
They were not the only ones playing their selfish game. The CDU, which led the government for years, should be held responsible for major structural flaws. These include the introduction of the debt brake, insufficient investments in infrastructure, hospitals, and education, economy leading to our stagnating GDP growth, as well as the semi-privatization of Deutsche Bahn, which resulted in one of the worst services Europe. They missed critical opportunities to invest in fiber-optic networks and failed to modernize Germany’s pension fund. Furthermore, they mismanaged Germany’s globally leading solar industry, allowing production and know-how to shift to China, which subsidized its solar sector.... unlike Germany. Despite this legacy, the CDU deliberately sabotaged the government’s budgeting efforts from the opposition. They sued the Ampel-koalition at the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) that deemed the use of debt-based funds from existing reserves (which would otherwise remain unused) to be unconstitutional under the stupid debt brake. This triggered the budget crisis within the Ampel-Koalition, leading to the FDP snitching.
When yesterdays conspiracies are todays facts... Well, FDP fell in panic mode after this summer's elections in east Germany where they already tanked heavily.
it might be helpful for non-German viewers to call the parties by more familiar names. abbreviations like SPD or FDP might be known for German audiences but anyone not familiar with party acronyms will be clueless. why not call them 'the Labour party' and 'the Liberals' instead? the next chancellor probably comes from the 'Christian Democrats' or 'Conservatives'.
Americans, for example, might not know what "the Labour" party is, and have a very different idea about what "liberal" means. Also, of course, the FDP is nothing like the Liberal Democrat Party of the UK. Fortunately, for this video it's not necessary to know what all the parties stand for, otherwise I would have explained it.
Hopefully this will send the FDP into political obscurity for a bit. In a way they're more dangerous even than the AFD; at least the AFD is known to be a populist party and on the fringes of politics, the FDP has managed to look sensible and respectable.
Before the last parliament election there was a piece on ZDF about the dichotomy of the CSU. While watching it I was reminded of the FDP and how years prior I had taken a Wahl-o-mat survey and realised, that the FDP was on opposite ends with their manifesto. On the one hand they were not against more renewable energy, but they were against using money and against giving money to fund more public transport. Obviously there's different wings of the party. So go back to last election and I was thinking to myself, if this government fails, it's gonna be on the FDP, because I doubt they'll want to shell out the money for the necessary changes to make the country fit for the coming decades. To say the least I'm not surprised, but I had hoped for better.
I actually think they should go full-on "libertad, carajo" in this polarized world of ours. What's truly dangerous is government overreach from every other side of the political spectrum.
@@rewboss But that isn't a big problem in Germany, they have had great success to with working between the two big parties. And this way is much better than a grand coalition. In Scandinavia it is usually only extremist parties that refuse to engage in budget negotiations.
@@Carewolf But it is causing a big problem right now. Neither the CDU/CSU nor the FDP is interested in actually supporting what remains of the coalition, which is now a minority in the Bundestag.
@@rewboss Because they want an election. They can force that, but if the situation reappears after the election they would be reluctant to force it again due to voter backlash
@rewboss Argentina has the interesting rule that there are primaries before general elections, yes, including in the proportionally elected legislature, and if a party cannot win at least 1.5% of the vote they are disqualified from the general election (counting all the votes for each of the candidate who runs in their primary), and also all the primaries for all parties are held on the same date and all the voters have to show up or else they get a fine unless they can prove they had an excuse (same for the general elections). The threshold in Argentina is 3% in the general election, so this would be like if Germany had a primary and the threshold to advance to the general election was 2.5% I suppose. I would prefer making the blocking threshold the same as the primary threshold and end up not having a blocking threshold in the general election so that it would basically be impossible for a vote to be wasted and elect nobody while being able to ensure that each parliamentary group is a decent size. Also, given that you are now a German citizen, you are free to discuss Argentina without being sent by the ghost of Margaret Thatcher to the Falkland Islands.
Being a junior member of an unpopular governing coalition is an unenviable position to be in. You take just as much of the blame for everything going wrong as the largest party does, while only having a fraction of the power, and while the largest party could weather a ten point drop in the next election and eventually recover in a cycle or two, when you're already a small party you don't have that kind of vote share to lose. This leaves two options: stay the course, or leave government, and while leaving may seem like the obvious option, since the government is unpopular, even the most unpopular governments will still have their supporters. Tearing up a coalition agreement and forcing early elections will alienate all of the pro government voters, while likely not gaining any anti gov voters, since you were a part of that government for so long. The NDP in Canada are learning this lesson in real time, as are the FDP, I imagine.
The individual states have a rule allowing for a snap election by resolution, usually a majority of the legislators or two thirds of them, so the weird limbo of the opposition can be made less of a problem. Also, as there is no president of a state, there is no way for the president of a Bundesland to decide between a plurality but not majority vote for the head of government when they have just held a general election or the head of government resigned or died, and not a way to decide by the president if the head of government asks for confidence but does not receive it. Thus, they have to handle them on their own, and some states avoid the uncertainty of that outcome by holding a runoff if there is only a plurality and not a majority. That seems wise to me.
Correction regarding the minimum of constituencies. It's _three_ constituencies a party must win in the Bundestag elections to bypass the five percent threshold.
$#%& Lindner. We moved to Germany because my wife got a job funded by the government and after less than 2 years, Lindner not only withdrew funding, he *asked for the rest of the budget back*. So now we're stuck in Germany without money/a job because we're both too old and experienced/expensive to find a new job.
I hope the FDP voters move to the CDU, which will both make it move more towards FDP fiscal policy, and hopefully make it large enough to avoid a coalition with the AfD
for the party as a recongized faction party or group no...but a fdp politican could then still be "in parlamanent" fullfilling the technicly still in paralemt rule :P
@@Horrrrrrrrst It is in effect. Just with the exception that the "Grundmandatsklausel" is still in effect as well. If you win 3 constituencies you will get into parliament according to your representational result.
Yes, the FDP looks bad in this - but they are not quite dead yet. Let me explain. Despite its meanderings around less than serious politicians like Jürgen Möllemann in the past and the current rather flexible Christian Lindner, the party does have some pretty constant core values: fiscal restraint (not everybody would call the "debt brake" infamous, after all), low taxes, reduction of bureaucracy and liberalism in civil rights. FDP has managed to participate in government for quite a part of the Federal Republic's history. Certainly not selflessly (who would decline ministerial posts if one can have them?) but usually trying to promote its core values while compromising on others. Nobody is forced to like the FDP - but usually they find enough votes to make it past the 5% threshhold required for parliament. There is historic precedent: In late 1982, FDP quit the "social liberal coalition" with SPD that had lasted for 13 years by then. It was a similar picture back then: mutual reproaches of provocations and infidelity... and some FDP left wingers jumping ship and crossing the aisle towards SPD. There were even the same jokes (spelling FDP as "Fette Drei Prozent" or "Fast Drei Prozent"...fat or almost three per cent) as today. But on election day on March 6th 1983, they were back in force and got 7% of the popular vote, enough to stay in parliament and remain the conservatives' junior partner for 15 years to come. So while their tactics and communications on this exit have been pretty atrocious - so have been those of other parties, too, and FDP might just be able to swing it just in time for the elections again.
You are right that they might reclaim that narrative just in time. They still have a few months to do that. But they are losing so much credibility right now that I wonder if they can recover in time.
@mariusg8824 It was bad form and annoying that they denied using the D-Day word at all and then came up with that awful presentation - then playing the usual damage control game, sacrificing a pawn and admitting only the undeniable. But that may blow over - after all, every party needs to take stock and reconsider its options rather than being dragged down by compromise. Right now, they still have the advantage that Scholz is hugely unpopular, Merz a highly divisive figure and many centrist voters want to hold the fort against extremism. Enough centrist voters might by so put off by the main candidates (which includes several FDP candidates like Buschmann whom I find pretty nasty...) that they tune out the personnel entirely and look at the parties' programmes instead. That might just be enough to save them across the line. Who knows...
The FDP *had* two fundamental movements with neoliberal free market advocates on the one hand and liberal civil rights advocates on the other. But the former wing is increasingly standing in the way of modern developments in the area of civil rights (digital freedoms, open systems, the right to repair, minority rights in the area of LGBTQ and women's rights). The influence of the latter has become correspondingly small, and many of the party's other positions correspondingly neoconservative. Look at the FDP of the 1970s: During that time, it was more progressive than the Greens are today. And the party campaigned in the 2021 elections with such a progressive image, only to be perceived within months as more conservative than the CDU in some areas today. Today, the FDP is only electable for one reason: for the special interests of the richest two to three percent of the population. They will be able to maintain their support there in the long term. But for long-term success, the party must now prove once again that it is capable of learning and understanding that being future-oriented is more than being open to technology and that, just as financial restraint was right in the 1980s and 1990s, this country must also invest in its infrastructure again. A lack of investment is just as poisonous for future generations as too much national debt. A sense of proportion is needed here, not an extreme position.
@@patrickhanft Well, the CDU has moved left quite a bit over the last 20 years, so to switch places with FDP, I'd say the CDU made the bigger move of the two. In my home state of Berlin, we have now had a CDU prime minister for three years - with very little to show for in terms of conservative policies actually carried out. Merz might move the scale on the federal level - but so far, his party has been rather absent in conservative politics lately.
FDP means "fast drei Prozent" (almost three percent).
FDP means S.O.B.
Love it. Lieb es
you can never lose what you never had
It could mean "fumbled departing pathetically" too ...
😅😊😂. Grüße aus Australien. Tschüss. 🇦🇺
I've read the PowerPoint, and one detail you didn't mention, the most daming slide of all: _the one where they discuss whether breaking the coalition before or after the US election, and how many weeks later is better._
Wow! That won't go down well at all!
FDP Secretary General: I knew nothing. Therefore I will retire from office!
FDP Chairman: Yeah, I knew about everything. Now what, suckers?
And suckers they are, truly.
Lindner (FDP Chairman, former finance minister) says he wasn't aware of the content and language in that document and condems the language as unprofesional but says he Supports that it was created.
Shouldn't the FDP have released the statement as PDF....
...Ok, I'll get my coat.
😆😆😆
Please stay.
yeah, since they have all their act bass ackwards. Tax concessions to their clientele higher than the ones proposed by Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, financed by more debt while keeping the population in the choke-hold of austerity, only to pay up for the super rich. Get in your private jet already and leave us alone, if you can still afford to do so on your Buergergeld.
I mean, they did.
@@kjwenger Wow, I didn't know that Germany had Republicans too!
Apparently media outlets already had the d day paper for days and had sent the FDP questions about it. The party asked for a little more time to answer these questions before the media would publish their articles. And within that time frame, instead of working on their response, they published it themselves. Of course without ever answering the questions posed by the media. That was probably part of their strategy to „control the narrative“ but it seems they’re not very competent at enacting their own plans. Or gaging the response by the public.
And now Lindner, who just recently claimed this paper isn’t even newsworthy and anything goes during a campaign tries to distance himself from it to save his own skin. What a clown.
... begging the question if the virtual wrenches he's performing rethorically are yoga or origami.
Well, I still remember when they branded themselves as "die Spaßpartei". (2002, still under Westerwelle I believe). I'd say that most coalition breakups between elections that I remember were done by the FDP. She was also known as "der Schwanz, der mit dem Hund wedelt" (the tail wagging the dog). For a long time, any federal coalition, no matter if SPD or CDU/CSU led, had to include the FDP or be a "great coalition" (including the two big parties). I believe that changed when the Green party (or rather its predecessors) began to rise. All ancient history to most here, I suspect.
Just another €X€LL€NT PR strategy 🙄
@@KaiHenningsen
Westerwelle, was that the guy who jumped out of a plane without opening his parachute (and who had previously switched off the automatic safety device for opening the parachute)?
That was at least a dignified exit, if you want to call it that.
@@galdavonalgerri2101 No, that was Möllemann, who was kind of Westerwelle's mentor.
The German proverb “He who digs a pit for others falls into it himself” („Wer anderen eine Grube gräbt, fällt selbst hinein“) is not always true, but it is here.
Actually, this saying is from the Hebrew Bible, Kohelet 10,8
The German Version would be: „Wer andern eine Grube gräbt ist wahrscheinlich Bauarbeiter“ „He who digs a pit for others is probably a construction worker.“
@@Zualio
That may be true but it doesn't invalidate the point. Proverbs don't just magically appear, they can have a prominent origin.
Wer andern eine Grube gräbt, der hat ein Grubengrabgerät.
Wie een put graaft voor een ander,......
Calling it D Day is crazy
..., loudmouthed and preposterous. But then, it's the FDP, ... wouldn't expect anything else.
My opinion of libertarians always was they are 15 year olds who refuse to mature for the next 30 or 40 years.
Makes perfect sense they'd call it D-Day... Dumbass Day.
D-day stands for demise-day ... their own. Never missed Westerwelle much, surely won't weap for Mr. Hairplugs.
@@kjwengerAd hominem much?
It's childish and tactless. It's what i would have called it, when i was a teenager, and even then, i would have probably used a different term in every written form and only used "D-Day" as sort of verbal, secret reference, for the very reason that if some outsider got it in his hands, i would have been embarassed for using it. Cause really, whatever the FDP does, it will never reach the historical magnitude of the real D-Day. Sheer f****** hibrys.
Just hours after creating this video, the general secretary of FDP and another member resigned, because they couldn't hold up the narrative anymore that they didn't knew what was going on. Now all eyes turn to the ex finance minister, who now looks like a liar and a traitor.
This was like the worst timing of events imaginable. The FDP broke out of the government, hoping to gain popularity for ending an unpopular government. Now they look like the main reason why the government was miserable.
Either way they at least avoided the worst Marxist nightmares, I'll give them that.
Even before breaking up most saw the FDP as the main-reason for why the stoplight coalition didn't work. All 3 parties lost popularity but the FDP lost 60% of its voters even before this whole fiasco.
They are the main reason why that government failed.
@@Marc42 There is no party anywhere close to political responsibility that actually strives for Marxism. It's a choice between different flavours of market capitalism on a spectrum of workers' rights
@@Marc42 These parties aren't Marxist in the first place
It would help if they tried to serve the country, not their own benefit.
That has always been the FDP's song. "Only our clientele counts, and screw good faith and commitment."
Expecting a bit much there, I reckon.
Errr, what? Political parties are for serving the country and not the neocons who own the country?
No. The neocons own the country including the parties, so the parties serve them.
@@oliphant2848 Hab gerade ernsthaft überlegt ob es so ein "Lied" gibt, aber hab dann verstanden, was du meinst. 😅
@@tinomuller3076 Dann wären sie genauso schlechte Textdichter wie Politiker. 😄
I recall a lot of people who would otherwise have voted Green or SPD at the last election voted FDP because they were worried about a coalition with Die Linke who they thought would play political games.
Wonder what they're thinking now?
To be fair, the german left is almost not to vote for. They fight themselves way more than anyone else and Wagenknecht is just sus af. But I kinda find it amusing that all gov parties are openly anti AFD but do their best to get them into a better position. This is what I don't get, all them elites really play this game so bad it's sickening. Also off topic but still kinda funny we had no money for corona help funds without credits for people who were not permitted to work BUT we have a gov that can argue about how many hundred of millions we give away for wars in other countries. German politics at this point are just a joke, nepotism and incompetence seem to be the new name of the game.
They're probably thinking the same thing now that they were thinking when the FDP, Greens, and SPD pulled that stunt to keep Die Linke from getting seats that caused Die Linke, the CSU, and the state of Bavaria to file multiple complaints with the constitutional court.
Speaking as a non-Euro from the states, if ppl voted FDP bc they were that afraid of Die Linke, the ppl voting for FDP who would’ve voted for SPD or Greens could (and do feel free to criticize this view bc it’s pure speculation based on nothing) vote for CDU. After all they voted for a right of center party before, so who’s to say they wouldn’t be willing to do the same again? If avoiding even an inkling of power/influence for a party with connections to the old dead SED and the Stasi is the goal anyway.
Though tbf the much more likely case is that those voters will more begrudgingly vote for SPD & the greens, and to secure control the SPD/Greens could include Die Linke as confidence and supply, similar to how the rightist Swedish Democrats up north are with the current center right minority government.
Honestly, would have been complete shit either way considering before the Linke civil war, Wagenknecht was at the core of die Linke so they would have also played political games, just differently.
Although maybe the Schuldenbremse would have finally died so at least something could have come from red-red-green.
hate socialism all you want, i'm not really into it too, but objectively, linke is A LOT better than FDP.
"D-Day" turned out to be the FDP's Stalingrad instead.
It's not like germany won d-day either.
@@nirfz That's what summed up the FDP in this, they had the hubris to think they're the ones freeing the country with their actions, hence the name...
@@Iskelderon Sure, but i think it was still a stupid idea to name it that way in the first place: they are a german party, not an american, british or canadian one. So any association by someone who knows at least a tiny bit about history would be with them on the german side (in my opinion). Hence my comment.
@@nirfz Delusion is the foundation of their party, has been for decades.
@@nirfz Hubris and a complete lack of understanding are pillars of their party.
Last election the FDP had one poster that said "Out of Love for Freedom" (Aus Liebe zur Freiheit). looking at that last point 2:30 "Phase IV: Start of open Warefare" that poster aged like already rotten eggs.
It's also like the worst possible terminology to use as the rich people party in a time when the public is already suspecting the rich people to get cozy with fascist ideas again.
@@JoniWan77And lefties with Marxism... so we do need viable options, really.
@@Marc42 What can Marxists do in the capitalist society we live on?
@@JoniWan77fdp were always cosy with fascists.
@@Marc42 Which large political party embraces leftism? What the hell are you talking about in these comments?
Ich hole mir meine Infos über deutsche Politik jetzt von deinem Kanal, das ist effizienter als Zeitung zu lesen :)
Aber nicht so valide. Konsumier beides, dann riskierst du nicht in ne Blase zu geraten.
I saw memes about this pyramid all day and had no idea what was going on. But after seeing the slide in the video, I burst out laughing.
I think it's so scary what the Federal FDP has been doing, considering how capable they used to be. They were always a "Home owners and upper middle class" party, but they failed even those on the national level.
Yet the State Parties, which are surprisingly unrelated to the federal one (my town used to have an fdp mayor, and he was probably the best we had in decades), are now sniffing copium so hard, instead of cutting off this tumor of self righteous childish bull crap.
Local politics are always a very different beast from federal ones. Ramelow is one example on state level, but in small towns I really think that "People actually know each other" puts a limit on how much of an ass politicians are willing to make of themselves.
@@blackbot7113 If make an ass out of yourself you will be shamed, badmouthed and cut. Not entirely polite, but just.
Offtopic but do I See a Misaka Mikoto Profile Picture?
@@Oorillon No that is very clearly a frog, I don't know what you are talking about.
@@tsume_akuma8321 my brain trying to decides If you telling the truth or Just making a reference. XD
Danke!
Thank you! That's very generous.
Bye bye FDP. See you again in 4 to 8 years, when there will be a new egomaniac to lead the FDP
I'm afraid they won't resurrect. Hans-Dietrich Genscher is dead, this outcome would have hit him hard. I feel sorry for Gerhart Baum (92). The party had more serious, responsible politicians in the past.
@@ppd3bw _"I'm afraid they won't resurrect."_
Idunno, the FDP seems to benefit from voter amnesia. Any time they end up with power, people remember why they stopped voting for them and kick them out. Then, after some years, when people are dissatisfied with the economic situation they go "wait, wasn't there this party that was all about The Economy? Those guys should know what to do!" and vote for them again.
The FDP always comes back. In my lifetime, they have been declared dead in the water twice, yet they were in the gouvernment again.
The FDP in reunited Germany is a political circada. Revived with a seemingly young and smart leading figure (Westerwelle, Lindner), only to suck so, so hard at governing that they are thrown out of parliament.
@@ppd3bw One of the last old schoon FDP members whom I had deep respect for was Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger. I agree with pretty much all the positions she had while in office. For me, she was a good politician in the wrong party.
Honestly, very important addendum I hope you can publish: the FDP did not just post the paper because they were feeling like it, instead they were given a deadline by the SZ Media who has access and wanted some questions to be answered. The FDP asked for an extension of about 3 hours in the deadline to them publish the paper themselves rather than answer the questions by SZ. Janine that no one would have seen this particular paper if it wasn't for the work and the pressure applied by the SZ Media.
Spinning conspiracy theories here... i can imagine that the leak to the media could have been a parting gift by some chassed federal minister who lost the coup for the party lead behind the curtains and as a result left the party some time back. (Or one of his henchmen.)
SZ as in Süddeutsche Zeitung?
@SianaGearz yup
3:34 This is not quite right. Is either 5 % of votes or 3 (not just 1) won constituencies.
That relates to the allocation of seats according to the party list vote. If your party wins just 1 constituency outright, then it gets one seat in the Bundestag: but it only gets extra seats from the party list vote if it manages to get at least 5% of those votes.
@rewboss This was the old method before the reform of the election law in 2023. This is no longer the case for candidates associated with a political party - the only exception is for independent candidates.
@@rewboss If a party wins at least 3 constituencies (direct mandates) than it gets as many seats in the Bundestag as their party votes allow, even if they got less than 5 % of the total party votes. That's how "Die Linke" got in the Bundestag in the last election. They got 4.9 % of the party votes but they won 3 constituencies and got therefore 39 seats in the Bundestag.
@@parapass571 You're right... I think. I'd forgotten about the reform, and one part of the reform was ruled unconstitutional and... it's very confusing. But yes, it's 3 constituencies, not one.
@@parapass571 Does that also still apply to parties representing recognized minorities, like the SSW for the danes?
In the 2021 election they only got 0.1% of the votes, but since they're exempt from the 5% threshold, that was enough for 1/735 seats.
The FDP did pull another 1982 ... again? Really? If they ever get voted back into parliament in a hundred years it's still too early.
Auch damals hat sie eine illegitime Regierung zu Fall gebracht. EIne, die gegen die Wiedervereinigung arbeitete, eine die von der DDR unterwandert war. Sie haben damit Kohl und die Wiedervereinigung ermöglicht
Sadly, the voters have an attention span that would make even a goldfish pity them, hence why the projections for the upcoming snap election show the top spot going to the conservatives who had caused 16 years of stagnation that the current government had barely started to fix some of on top of Russia's invasion and the Covid recovery.
No, in 1982 they had a feasible plan. This time it's just pure chaos.
The Problem the FDP had was that they were rightfully seen as the party who played ball the least in the coalition. They always saw themselves as the victims when quite a bit of what they wanted got greenlight by the other parties. They also seemed to forget that every party had to swallow their pride and contrary to what their party stands for (for example Habeck of the Green Party needing to make a deal with Quatar for natural gas imports).
They probably never wanted this government to succeed. They wanted to blame the others and gain favor in the next election.
Sure, but overall, I'd argue they had to swallow their positions way to often. It could have been inevitable, but then we shouldn't be surprised that their voters are not keen on voting on them again, if they barely delivered any liberal demands.
@@naruciakk I don´t see the young liberals making a big fuss or leaving in droves, seen it with the young socialists/greens though. The FDP still doesn´t seem to understand that their base of voters is around 3%, they need the average people to vote for them otherwise they won´t reach the Bundestag. However most of the policies they pushed for only benefitet the well-off or rich to begin with which just don´t have the numbers to carry the party. This wasn´t always the case 15 years ago the FDP still had a strong suit in civil rights but they tossed that aside in favor of neo-liberal economy politics and having Lindner as a single figurehead.
I overall liked the Ampel, i thought they worked pretty productive for the most part and got a lot of things done. The coalition mostly had a PR problem and the main reason imho was the FDP for constantly saying "no" or bickering with the other 2 parties.
@paha4209 Yet, not a single advancement for actual economic liberty was achieved, it was a subsidies and big daddy state politics - and still it wasn't enough for young lefties, who nowadays are basically Marxists - and young liberals are classic social democracts, apparently. It's surreal, confusing and doesn't seem like it is going to end well. :/
?????@@naruciakk
Schadenfreude was never more deserved. OTOH, I'd be very surprised if the SPD and Green party did NOT make any plans for this contingency. In that case Scholz's speech writers would have had to be extremely efficient on "D-Day".
It's one thing to make a contingency plan in case the government collapses, it's another to make a plan to deliberately make the government collapse and try to steer the narrative so the other parties get blamed. The former is just good governing, the latter is dishonest and manipulative.
Read the Zeit article. Apparently they knew about this about one day ahead. And yes, preparing three different speeches here would be professional and efficient. The difference between what Scholz did and what the FDP did is, that the first did prepare for three different outcomes and genuinely left the door open for compromises - arguably the opening was slim, but it was there -, while the other was determined of the outcome and was only open to in which way his party would look like the victim the most. One is called country before party, the other is called (ego before) party before country.
Also Lindner accoused Scholz, that he planed the breakeup because his speech was written ahead of the meeting. Which, in retrospect is quiet funny.
You seem unable to see the difference between preparing for an event that can happen or is likely to happen because there are very visible signals on one hand, and a long-running plan to create and to provoke such an event, and then to brazenly lie about it, on the other hand.
Lindner and his gang have been throwing bombs and laying mines with the intention of provoking a break-up of that coalition for at least the whole past year. Everybody could see this, and it was discussed and analyzed in every single news channel, paper, or medium. But now it's more than obvious that they had meticulously prepared this whole thing. The only person of integrity in that whole bunch of lobbyists and narcissists was Volker Wissing, who left this disgusting, self-serving party. The reasons for it have become clearer and clearer.
That you try to turn cause and effect around just shows that you are very ignorant, or that you WANT to spread propaganda against your better judgement.
@@patrickhanft
They have left this extremely sorry excuse for anything democratic FAR too much time!!!
I mean, you'd _hope_ this destroys the party but in 4 1/2 years nobody will remember and they'll go back to 8% by doing what they always do, appealing to young, smart but politically inexperienced people.
Sounds a bit like the Lib Dems we have here in the UK lol
Wow, that is an impressively _thorough_ dedication to Doing It Very Wrong!
Dutch golden rule in politics: whoever breaks must pay. Applies to Germany as well, apparently.
Until now I thought the FDP was a legitimate party for real estate agents, dentists and financial jugglers (i.e. for everyone who has too much money). But now I think it is a power-maintenance club for FDP members.
Who would vote for them now?
In Germany there are significantly less than 5% of voters who are actually real estate agents, dentists and financial jugglers. It's not even three percent, I think.
Rest in peace, FDP.
You forgot the pharmacists.
@@lollorosso4675 And the radiologists
I think I might this might be too much schadenfreude for me to handle...
they managed to build up a solid image and fill the void in the middle-conservative side that was left with the Union's demise and had much success in first-time voters aged 18-25. I can't imagine any of those folks voting for them again after failing them so spectacularily.
@@jayhill2193Half of 18-25 will probably vote AfD next
When the FDP was summoned last time, their godfather Lindner quit coalition negotiations, saying that it was better NOT to govern than to govern badly. He really f-ed up now, so according to him, it's better not to have the FDP in the next government.
In Portuguese, "FDP" is the equivalent to English "SOB".
In french too
The wirst PR since the Zimmermann Telegramm
I love being able to watch youtube politics videos that are funny and don't make me scared. Thanks for brighting the day :)
I just voted we are having a election in Ireland today
I had a chiropodist appointment today with someone who used to live in County Donegal.
@@UnbelievableEricthegiraffe Very nice
Wait, that pyramid is from their document? I saw it as a meme format over the past couple of days, this is hysterical
Thanks for the update!
Speaking of "open warfare" does not exactly help, either.
When rewboss makes a video about your party falling apart within hours, you know you really f***** up. 😁
They'll be back - which true liberal will ever only vote left or right?
Assuming Die Linke is able to get seats by getting 3 or more constituencies, BSW performs similarly to the last three state elections, the SPD and Greens don't hemorrhage as many votes as initially thought, and this causes the FDP to not hit the 5% threshold in the next election; it might end up being impossible to form a coalition with neither Die Linke, BSW, nor AFD. This would reveal how willing the CDU is to actually maintain the firewall.
A lose for the FDP means a win for democracy andfor all of humanity
My only fear is that people forget about this way too fast and the FDP will recover before the election.
Most certainly not.
The FDP has been going down in votes for at least a decade, they only barely managed to be a part of the parliament the last 3 times.
Seems like people don't believe in neoliberalism anymore.
@@jasperzanovich2504
Finally. Now they just need to realize that the AfD is also neoliberal.
@@NinjaananasHate to break it to you but we vote fdp for being neoliberal. The butthurt socialists are irrelevant. I was going to vote AFD since the FDP went into thd bed with socialists but after their D-day I'm back to voting FDP again. This is just a media clownshow.
@@Arathreas
You are not a German. A German would know to not call SPD and Greens socialists.
You need to win *three* constituencies for the party to enter according to their share of the 2nd vote, even if they do not reach 5%. Otherwise, only the one or two directly elected persons will enter, but nobody else from the party.
FDP had more chancellors in your slip-ups than they'll ever have in their lives 😂
Calling it D-Day is an absolute joke considering the FDP was the party with the most ex-NSDAP members in the Federal Parlament relative to the total representation of their party there.
(In absolute numbers it was CDU).
This was important 60-80 years ago now that most nsdap are obv in the afd
I think the problem has already (dis)solved itself.
Hopefully FDP will never ever recover from this, they have done enough damage.
Hopefully they will rise like a Phoenix in a few years and win a well-deserved absolute majority for representing the best, most balanced and least oppressive-autocratic political ideology. If hopes were horses, eh?
One thinks, noone wants to have a nest of rats, but there are always people who like to have rats.
Who needs the FDP?
The next government will be the CDU and SPD.
The Chancellor will probably not come from the SPD and will not be called Olaf.
At that point might as well pull Merkel back from retirement
To quote one of my coworkers in one of his more enlightened moments: "Nobody needs the FDP."
Now it would be hilarious to have Merz dip out last second for some reason and their replacement being named Olaf by sheer coincidence.
Fr@@HappyBeezerStudios
@@HappyBeezerStudios Certainly better than Merz.
3:30 - To Enter the parliament according to votes, it needs at least THREE constituencies, not one as mentioned. With less than three only those one or two will get their seat, but all proportional seats (and votes) are forfeit.
I cannot believe that I used to be a member of the FDP.......................
There's not enough people who benefit from FDP's policies for them to be a leading party.
Yeah, they are a fair-weather party that gets votes when people are doing well. Not very good in the current climate.
Well, if the FDP had focused more on the Freiburger Thesen instead of parroting whatever Cristian Linder said they wouldn't be in this mess right now and the Ampel wouldn't have had such bad approval ratings.
Fun fact: the "D" in D-Day is for "disembarkation". So yeah, the FDP did indeed jump ship.
Roll on Merz. He seems inevitable now. Or even more inevitable.
I just hope this means that they'll actually be kicked out of parliament. The FDP have an annoying habit of scraping by with precisely 5.0% of the vote even when they've been completely worthless.
The last time the FDP was in the gouvernment, they got 4.8 % in the following election (2013). So there is hope. 😊
@@rittersportfanAnd they csme back anyhow, to form a government. So there is indeed hope for a sane future coalition with actual liberty and deregulation at the core at some point.
@@Marc42 You mean the government they continually sabotaged and then blew up?
Projekt 1,8%
Go for it!
Wikipedia: Zweitstimmen werden nur berücksichtigt, wenn eine Partei die Sperrklausel von 5 Prozent überwindet oder mindestens drei Direktmandate erzielt.
What are the odds of FDP not receiving 3 direct mandates?
Exceptionally high! they haven't had any since the 60s.
It is three constituencies, not only one.
And it's getting worse! They are completely unable to take responsibility for anything.
Remember the FDP have done similar in the past, refusing to go into coalition with the CDU resulting in the SPD having to go into coalition. They're just unreliable as coalition partners.
What with France in turmoil, not to forget South Korea then there seems to be something of a crisis of confidence in a lot of liberal democracies. Keir Starmer's huge majority came about despite the lowest share of the popular vote of any UK government ever. Then we have Donald Trump to look forwards too and his threat to international trade...
The FDP really screwed up. In the last three state elections, they were completely voted out and have no seats. With only a handful of exceptions, the FDP only gets seats via proportion seats rather than constituencies. So they basically caused a government collapse when they're at the weakest point for the only thing that keeps them in office at all.
Very interesting - junior parties in a coalition often get pounded at the following election but it looks like this was all their own downfall!
Can you fill an entire page with 18 words and 4 numbers? Yes, yes you can. In fact you must - how else are you gonna remember a 4-Phase plan that basically goes like:
- find a cause
- define our position
- spread our position
- escalate
Which is, as you can see, really sophisticated and subtle and nothing like any ordinary conflict ever plays out anyways.
The fact that anyone felt the need to write this down, together with the form chosen (why a pyramid - you are not at university anymore - you dont have to meet a page count) is what p***es me off more than what is actually written. It reminds me of one of my plans as a teenager:
- buy beer
- ride bike to friend
- get drunk
- have fun
Lest i forget one step!
The next page went into more detail about each phase. Like, how do you create a narrative?
3:30
You're a bit off about the 5%-threshold:
If a party below 5% wins 1-2 consituencies directly, those MPs are elected. Only at 3 or more however, the party's share of the party-lists-vote gets accounted. The Linke i.e. benefitted from this last time and specifically aims to do so again with "Projekt Silberlocke"; Maybe an interesting topic for another video.
you can never lose what you never had
The FDP was already going to be under 5%, so, there is likely a chance they lose their positions in the Federal Government.
By being a part of a coallition with 2 left-wing parties (SPD and Grüne) the FDP has cemented it's image against the right (CDU/CSU and AfD).
The Grüne is also falling down in the pollings, so we currently have for top 3: CDU/CSU, AfD and SPD; given the Union now is much more right then it was during Merkel's era (it's not guaranteed we'll get a CDU/CSU+SPD coallition), but there is still a lot of skepticism regarding the AfD (and it's extremism), I'm curious to see what kind of coallition we'll be getting next year.
Some people have been joking the CDU/CSU will form a coalltion with BSW, which would be ludicrous, basically what the Union sees as the worst aspects of the AfD and Die Linke combined.
The question is what kind of government would even be possible after the election.
The Union has only run governments with the FDP and the SPD (besides the process of pulling right wring parties towards the center back in the 1950s)
In recent polls the Union sits at around 32-33%,
the SPD at around 14-15%,
the greens at around 11-12%,
the FDP at around 4-5%,
the left at around 3-4%,
the AFD at around 18-19%
and the BSW at around 4-7%
With those numbers, and assuming all of the parties get their best result (which would account for roughly 94% of votes), the only possible majorities would be Union/SPD/FDP, Union/AFD, and Union/SPD/greens
Considering none of the other parties want to work with the AFD, and neither an grand coalition, nor a red-red-green coalition would get the majority, things will for sure be interesting.
@@HappyBeezerStudios Very good analysis, I think you have a good point, it will be an interesting election and coallition forming process like never before seen.
Honestly, I think a Union-SPD Coallition is the most likely outcome, but even that isn't 100% since the Union and SPD have not been seeing eye to eye recently.
@@HappyBeezerStudiosthere are CDU-Greens-Coalitions in several Bundesländer.
"Hessische Verhältnisse"?
@@KaiHenningsen was Sie meinen tun?
They were not the only ones playing their selfish game. The CDU, which led the government for years, should be held responsible for major structural flaws. These include the introduction of the debt brake, insufficient investments in infrastructure, hospitals, and education, economy leading to our stagnating GDP growth, as well as the semi-privatization of Deutsche Bahn, which resulted in one of the worst services Europe. They missed critical opportunities to invest in fiber-optic networks and failed to modernize Germany’s pension fund. Furthermore, they mismanaged Germany’s globally leading solar industry, allowing production and know-how to shift to China, which subsidized its solar sector.... unlike Germany.
Despite this legacy, the CDU deliberately sabotaged the government’s budgeting efforts from the opposition. They sued the Ampel-koalition at the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) that deemed the use of debt-based funds from existing reserves (which would otherwise remain unused) to be unconstitutional under the stupid debt brake. This triggered the budget crisis within the Ampel-Koalition, leading to the FDP snitching.
Imo the FDP is still better than the SPD and the Eco fascists
F* the eco fascists, vote in real fascists instead 💙💙💙
@@mr.netflix9149 CSU?
When yesterdays conspiracies are todays facts...
Well, FDP fell in panic mode after this summer's elections in east Germany where they already tanked heavily.
Calling it D-day is hilarious, that's like americans calling a plan the Tet Offensive or the brits calling a plan Yorktown.
it might be helpful for non-German viewers to call the parties by more familiar names. abbreviations like SPD or FDP might be known for German audiences but anyone not familiar with party acronyms will be clueless. why not call them 'the Labour party' and 'the Liberals' instead? the next chancellor probably comes from the 'Christian Democrats' or 'Conservatives'.
Americans, for example, might not know what "the Labour" party is, and have a very different idea about what "liberal" means. Also, of course, the FDP is nothing like the Liberal Democrat Party of the UK.
Fortunately, for this video it's not necessary to know what all the parties stand for, otherwise I would have explained it.
Name just one company that Lindner has successfully managed
Good.
3:33 If I'm not entirely mistaken you need to win three constituencies outright to get your share of the second vote represented in seats.
Endlich muss ich Lindner nicht mehr sehen
ein wahrer Segen
Hey, hat's off to the person who quit the FDP shipwreck rather than their post
This was a literal conspiracy.
Hopefully this will send the FDP into political obscurity for a bit. In a way they're more dangerous even than the AFD; at least the AFD is known to be a populist party and on the fringes of politics, the FDP has managed to look sensible and respectable.
Afd is basically a nazi party who celebrate Hitler's birthday and do remembrance for the Nazi soldiers who died.... Afd is majority funded by Putin
Before the last parliament election there was a piece on ZDF about the dichotomy of the CSU. While watching it I was reminded of the FDP and how years prior I had taken a Wahl-o-mat survey and realised, that the FDP was on opposite ends with their manifesto. On the one hand they were not against more renewable energy, but they were against using money and against giving money to fund more public transport. Obviously there's different wings of the party.
So go back to last election and I was thinking to myself, if this government fails, it's gonna be on the FDP, because I doubt they'll want to shell out the money for the necessary changes to make the country fit for the coming decades. To say the least I'm not surprised, but I had hoped for better.
@@CarinaCoffee The CSU at least has no competition in the places they operate.
@@HappyBeezerStudios they do ?! they are coalition goverment rigth now in the state...and hopefully they will lose more......
I actually think they should go full-on "libertad, carajo" in this polarized world of ours. What's truly dangerous is government overreach from every other side of the political spectrum.
Der Markt kann meine Schmerzen auch nicht mehr Lindnern
Even IF i believe Dijr-Sarai, which I do, I wouldn't FOR THE LIVE OF ME *Ever* vote for that party!!!
A minority government isn't that big a problem. I think Germany should try it..
It is if none of the opposition parties will help the government get their budget approved.
@@rewboss But that isn't a big problem in Germany, they have had great success to with working between the two big parties. And this way is much better than a grand coalition. In Scandinavia it is usually only extremist parties that refuse to engage in budget negotiations.
@@Carewolf But it is causing a big problem right now. Neither the CDU/CSU nor the FDP is interested in actually supporting what remains of the coalition, which is now a minority in the Bundestag.
@@rewboss Because they want an election. They can force that, but if the situation reappears after the election they would be reluctant to force it again due to voter backlash
Omg finally a worthy tutorial!
Where would you recommend for news from Germany ?
Angola.
FDP - if you want to know the real meaning, ask the French.
I mean, as a French, the thumbnail definitely caught my attention
I heard it's the same in Portuguese too lol
😅😂
In Germany we joke it stands for "Fick den Planeten" because they don't care about climate change at all.
@rewboss Argentina has the interesting rule that there are primaries before general elections, yes, including in the proportionally elected legislature, and if a party cannot win at least 1.5% of the vote they are disqualified from the general election (counting all the votes for each of the candidate who runs in their primary), and also all the primaries for all parties are held on the same date and all the voters have to show up or else they get a fine unless they can prove they had an excuse (same for the general elections). The threshold in Argentina is 3% in the general election, so this would be like if Germany had a primary and the threshold to advance to the general election was 2.5% I suppose. I would prefer making the blocking threshold the same as the primary threshold and end up not having a blocking threshold in the general election so that it would basically be impossible for a vote to be wasted and elect nobody while being able to ensure that each parliamentary group is a decent size.
Also, given that you are now a German citizen, you are free to discuss Argentina without being sent by the ghost of Margaret Thatcher to the Falkland Islands.
like the FDP said: It is better not to govern ...
It is a short form but i like it this way better.
3:30 Did they change that? 3 years ago, that was still 3 constituencies, wasn't it?
Edit: No need to bother answering, found your answer elsewhere :)
3 constituencies are necessary to outrule the 5-percent-hurdle.
Being a junior member of an unpopular governing coalition is an unenviable position to be in. You take just as much of the blame for everything going wrong as the largest party does, while only having a fraction of the power, and while the largest party could weather a ten point drop in the next election and eventually recover in a cycle or two, when you're already a small party you don't have that kind of vote share to lose. This leaves two options: stay the course, or leave government, and while leaving may seem like the obvious option, since the government is unpopular, even the most unpopular governments will still have their supporters. Tearing up a coalition agreement and forcing early elections will alienate all of the pro government voters, while likely not gaining any anti gov voters, since you were a part of that government for so long. The NDP in Canada are learning this lesson in real time, as are the FDP, I imagine.
The individual states have a rule allowing for a snap election by resolution, usually a majority of the legislators or two thirds of them, so the weird limbo of the opposition can be made less of a problem. Also, as there is no president of a state, there is no way for the president of a Bundesland to decide between a plurality but not majority vote for the head of government when they have just held a general election or the head of government resigned or died, and not a way to decide by the president if the head of government asks for confidence but does not receive it. Thus, they have to handle them on their own, and some states avoid the uncertainty of that outcome by holding a runoff if there is only a plurality and not a majority. That seems wise to me.
I miss Genscher
the other guy who broke the 1980 coalition with Schmidt in favour of Kohl? THAT guy?
Frei
Drehende
Proleten
It's not the plan itself, it's the choice of words.
I think it was probably a bit of both, really.
It was mostly the backstabbing. The choice of words only added to it.
@@SomePotato It's some out of touch larping, as if the FDP, the party of advocates, pharmacists and dentists, being there fighting the good fight.
Finally Wolfgang Kubicki can retire - a moment overdue ever since he entered the political stage.
Correction regarding the minimum of constituencies. It's _three_ constituencies a party must win in the Bundestag elections to bypass the five percent threshold.
"So kommt's wenn man sich besonders schlau vorkommt"... It's called Karma - right? 😏
$#%& Lindner. We moved to Germany because my wife got a job funded by the government and after less than 2 years, Lindner not only withdrew funding, he *asked for the rest of the budget back*. So now we're stuck in Germany without money/a job because we're both too old and experienced/expensive to find a new job.
Ich kann Lindners Gesicht nicht mehr sehen. Hoffentlich wars das mit der FDP für die nächste Legislaturperiode.
I hope the FDP voters move to the CDU, which will both make it move more towards FDP fiscal policy, and hopefully make it large enough to avoid a coalition with the AfD
Not to be repeated - hopefully - by democratic parties...
No-Day Nichts immer Passiert!!!
With the new Wahlgesetz, is it still enough to win one constituency if you don't get to 5%?
for the party as a recongized faction party or group no...but a fdp politican could then still be "in parlamanent" fullfilling the technicly still in paralemt rule :P
Nevermind, I forgot that the law isnt in effect because the constitutional court said that in combination with the 5% hurdle it's unconstitutional.
@@Horrrrrrrrst It is in effect. Just with the exception that the "Grundmandatsklausel" is still in effect as well. If you win 3 constituencies you will get into parliament according to your representational result.
3:34 three consticuencies
Yes, the FDP looks bad in this - but they are not quite dead yet. Let me explain.
Despite its meanderings around less than serious politicians like Jürgen Möllemann in the past and the current rather flexible Christian Lindner, the party does have some pretty constant core values: fiscal restraint (not everybody would call the "debt brake" infamous, after all), low taxes, reduction of bureaucracy and liberalism in civil rights.
FDP has managed to participate in government for quite a part of the Federal Republic's history. Certainly not selflessly (who would decline ministerial posts if one can have them?) but usually trying to promote its core values while compromising on others.
Nobody is forced to like the FDP - but usually they find enough votes to make it past the 5% threshhold required for parliament.
There is historic precedent:
In late 1982, FDP quit the "social liberal coalition" with SPD that had lasted for 13 years by then.
It was a similar picture back then: mutual reproaches of provocations and infidelity... and some FDP left wingers jumping ship and crossing the aisle towards SPD.
There were even the same jokes (spelling FDP as "Fette Drei Prozent" or "Fast Drei Prozent"...fat or almost three per cent) as today.
But on election day on March 6th 1983, they were back in force and got 7% of the popular vote, enough to stay in parliament and remain the conservatives' junior partner for 15 years to come.
So while their tactics and communications on this exit have been pretty atrocious - so have been those of other parties, too, and FDP might just be able to swing it just in time for the elections again.
You are right that they might reclaim that narrative just in time. They still have a few months to do that. But they are losing so much credibility right now that I wonder if they can recover in time.
@mariusg8824
It was bad form and annoying that they denied using the D-Day word at all and then came up with that awful presentation - then playing the usual damage control game, sacrificing a pawn and admitting only the undeniable.
But that may blow over - after all, every party needs to take stock and reconsider its options rather than being dragged down by compromise.
Right now, they still have the advantage that Scholz is hugely unpopular, Merz a highly divisive figure and many centrist voters want to hold the fort against extremism.
Enough centrist voters might by so put off by the main candidates (which includes several FDP candidates like Buschmann whom I find pretty nasty...) that they tune out the personnel entirely and look at the parties' programmes instead.
That might just be enough to save them across the line. Who knows...
The FDP *had* two fundamental movements with neoliberal free market advocates on the one hand and liberal civil rights advocates on the other. But the former wing is increasingly standing in the way of modern developments in the area of civil rights (digital freedoms, open systems, the right to repair, minority rights in the area of LGBTQ and women's rights). The influence of the latter has become correspondingly small, and many of the party's other positions correspondingly neoconservative. Look at the FDP of the 1970s: During that time, it was more progressive than the Greens are today. And the party campaigned in the 2021 elections with such a progressive image, only to be perceived within months as more conservative than the CDU in some areas today.
Today, the FDP is only electable for one reason: for the special interests of the richest two to three percent of the population. They will be able to maintain their support there in the long term. But for long-term success, the party must now prove once again that it is capable of learning and understanding that being future-oriented is more than being open to technology and that, just as financial restraint was right in the 1980s and 1990s, this country must also invest in its infrastructure again. A lack of investment is just as poisonous for future generations as too much national debt. A sense of proportion is needed here, not an extreme position.
@@patrickhanft
Well, the CDU has moved left quite a bit over the last 20 years, so to switch places with FDP, I'd say the CDU made the bigger move of the two.
In my home state of Berlin, we have now had a CDU prime minister for three years - with very little to show for in terms of conservative policies actually carried out.
Merz might move the scale on the federal level - but so far, his party has been rather absent in conservative politics lately.