Saturday 31 July 2021
So how was your week?
Dribble with “shit on your feet”
The Union and the Greens agree: football metaphors always work. But who is plagiarizing whom? Not only new write-off allegations throw the election campaign again vigorously. Only Olaf Scholz hovers over everything. If only it weren’t for his party.
“Shit on the foot”
From Nadine to Roxel
Football comparisons are incredibly popular in politics. And for Armin Laschet’s week, the saying of ex-professional Andy Brehme fits: “Haste shit on your feet, you’ve got shit on your feet”. On Wednesday there is the first heavy damper in the RTL / ntv trend barometer. The CDU smears another two percent compared to the previous week, Laschet’s popularity ratings drop by 6 percent and are thus behind Annalena Baerbock and Olaf Scholz.
And now also allegations of plagiarism. It’s about the book “Aufsteiger Republik” from 2009. Laschet admits mistakes and apologizes. At least one author of the material used is not named either in the running text or in the list of sources. The next mistake, the next fat bowl – and that almost two months before the election.
In the party, at least behind the scenes, nervousness is slowly spreading. Ellen Demuth, CDU politician from Rhineland-Palatinate, demands: “Our chancellor candidate Armin Laschet is on the field. It is time that strong, young specialist politicians appear in the line-up to support him.” They should make it clear that after 16 years in government, the Union has the will and the energy to meet the challenges of the next few years.
And the CSU? The taunts. Markus Söder is now calling on Laschet in an interview with “Spiegel” to launch a more powerful election campaign. Laschet starts on Thursday. Then he’s on an election campaign tour: first in Frankfurt, then in the Black Forest and on Lake Constance. We hear from Laschet’s environment that he would like to campaign – but it should also be a tour with a lot of persuasion.
More metaphors? Right this way …
By Markus Lippold
“Election campaigns are not just a piece of cake,” said Green Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock this week when she visited a cement plant in Swabia. And truly: the small and big mishaps, the imprecise curriculum vitae, the plagiarism allegations, and finally the debate about the N-word looked like concrete shoes that brought the Greens back from their cotton candy cloud into the reality of the election campaign.
But, not only the CDU knows that, the Greens also know that: The important thing is on the pitch, and it’s green. Which is why Baerbock talks about education policy and leaves the soccer metaphors to her co-party leader Robert Habeck: “We have decided on a line-up and now it all depends on dribbling through this line-up,” he said – and switched to the weather right away, more precisely: to the “weather frog policy” of the CDU. Their candidate for Chancellor Armin Laschet “climbs up the ladder, sometimes down the ladder,” said Habeck.
The latest polls are believed to be the same for the Greens at the moment: After a high-altitude flight and a crash, things are going up again, over the 20 percent mark. And with that to Habeck’s desired result: “We have every chance of getting the best result we’ve ever had – that is, an election result of around 20 percent,” he said, adding another number: the probability that the He estimates that the Greens will be involved in the next federal government at 80 percent. With which the green 100 percent would be full. Math is a piece of cake sometimes.
Olaf Scholz – a modern understanding of women?
By Heike Boese
Who would have thought that Olaf Scholz was a romantic? In fact, the SPD’s candidate for chancellor goes into raptures when he talks about his wife. During the “Brigitte” talk, he reveals that he “would be a completely different person” if he weren’t married to Britta Ernst. The 60-year-old is the education minister in Brandenburg and many years ago she got her sporty, slightly chubby man to exercise more. Today, sport is part of Scholz’s everyday life. He prefers to jog and row without headphones or a fitness tracker.
He’s not only grateful to her for that. Apparently he admires his wife so much that the question of whether she would continue to work if he were Chancellor “outrags” him. The 63-year-old also presents himself as an understanding of women who, looking back, is amazed at his own naivety, with which, as a young politician, he had assumed that equality between men and women would have long been normal in 2021. A woman as a boss? No problem. For his, he has a compliment up his sleeve: The Chancellor, according to her vice-president, is “a really funny woman” with whom he has always enjoyed working.
Would he say both about Saskia Esken? Although his party chairman gives him – contrary to some prophecies of doom – sufficient legroom, the SPD does not really get out of the quark. While the personal approval ratings for Scholz are rising, the party is bobbing around. Two points up in the polls, then down again. Scholz does not complain about it in public. Maybe he doesn’t want to wake sleeping dogs.
This is the eleventh episode of the campaign column “So how was your week?” Read episode ten here.
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