Imagine the Democratic progessives were to quit the party, merge with the communists, and leave the Blue Dogs and centrists to fend for themselves. At the same time, the moderate Republicans took their party back, and the wingnuts faded into oblivion. Meanwhile, the Green Party has become so strong that it is likely to win a few Electoral votes. Can't happen, you say? You're right.
Something like this scenario, though, is happening in Germany as we speak. The orignial three-party system, which became a four-party system in the 1980s and a five-party system in the 1990s, has evolved into we-know-not-yet-what. This is certainly good news for Angela Merkel. Or is it?
The year 2009 is the "Super Election Year" in Germany, beginning with the European Parliament elections, followed by several state elections, and culminating in the federal Bundestag elections, which Angela's CDU is expected to win in a landslide. For that reason, so far, there has been little excitement about the elections.
Since the last federal elections, which resulted in a CDU/SPD grand coalition and Chancellor Angela Merkel, the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) has lost dramatically in the polls and at the European Parliament elections. The main reason is the defection of the left wing of the party, which merged with the PDS and took many voters with it. As a result, the SPD went from a party that got between thirty-something to forty-something percent of the votes and had realistic chances of winning elections to a party of twenty-something percent. "So what?" you may ask. Who needs the equivalent of Blue Dogs anyway?
Well, the problem is that the new party, simply called "The Left," gets enough votes to damage the SPD but not enough to win an election. Due to the former PDS contingency (the PDS was a kinder, gentler version of the old East German SED), the other parties want nothing to do with them, so they have a hard time getting invited to coalition negotiations.
So that leaves the CDU (which has made a shift to the center since Angie ditched her fundie mentor Edmund Stoiber) with a permanent majority, right? Well, maybe, but that doesn't necessarily mean they all ways win.
Case in point: last weekend's state elections in the Saarland (Saar Country). The CDU, the incumbent Prime Minister's party, got 34.5%, losing big in comparison to the last elections but still remaining the strongest party. Alas, in order to jump that 50% hurdle, they need not one but two coalition partners. The FDP, their partner of choice, got only 9.2%, which isn't enough. Meanwhile, the SPD has 24.5% and the Left 21.3%. Even if they iron out their differences, they don't have enough votes either.
Enter the Green Party, which, with 5.9% of the votes, barely made it into the parliament but gets to determine who will govern. The negotiations with the Green Party will decide whether there's a Left-SPD-Green or a so-called "Jamaica" coalition (the party colors black-green-yellow resemble the Jamaican flag). So why aren't the Greens happy? Because they dislike both the CDU and the Left. As their leading candidate put it, "We get to chose between the Black Plague and cholera."
So what does that mean for the federal elections? The CDU wants out of the grand coalition and partner with the FDP, with whom they have more in common. However, as SPD candidate Steinmeier points out, the voters don't want the black-yellow combination. I don't blame them; they had 16 years of it under Helmut Kohl. However, unless the SPD and the Left let bygones be bygones, neither of them will come up with a majority to win the chancellorship.
The icky part of it all: just because the established wingnut politicians go way doesn't mean wingnut voters go away, too. That explains why the NPD (basically Nazi lite) made it into the state parliament in Saxony and almost made it in Thuringia. I doubt they will ever gain a national majority again nor will any other party touch them with a ten-foot pole, but still -- shudder.
What can we learn from all this? First, splitting a party in two can lead to a big mess. Sometimes you need a big tent. Second, any election or government system, even if it works well most of the time, can have some serious drawbacks.
This could be entertaining, though.