Waitress and cook: Greens boss Annalena Baerbock, SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz.
(Photo: Getty Images)
Annalena Baerbock and Olaf Scholz are suddenly pretty good friends. The competition between the candidate for chancellor and the candidate has long since turned into a red-green loot community. The roles are clearly assigned. The vice-chancellor is a cook, the head of the Greens is content with the role of waitress. What a crash!
Three months ago it looked very different. The 40-year-old wanted to go to the Chancellery, and she didn’t really care about Olaf Scholz’s fate. Now Baerbock suddenly wants to send Union Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet into the opposition. That’s how fast the green flag turns.
Annalena Baerbock has long since given up her ambitions for the Chancellery. Not only opponents within the party are disappointed with their election campaign full of bankruptcies, bad luck and mishaps. Many Greens would have preferred the Greens co-chairman Robert Habeck as a candidate for chancellor in retrospect. Baerbock knows that too. So she is now trying to save what can be saved and clearly plays the red-green card.
Baerbock knows what makes the base tick. She accepts that she is taking on the role of junior partner of the SPD again as collateral damage. It makes the greens small. The consequence is a self-dwarfing of the eco party. Although the Greens are facing their historically best result in a federal election, the blooming dreams of a change of power on the left have for the time being been over.
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Scholz takes the breath away from the Greens
That plays the black and green Realos into the cards. You can point out that the Greens are particularly strong where they have made the SPD small. In Baden-Württemberg they even provide the head of government. The SPD is only a shadow of itself there. Competitor Robert Habeck offers an opposite pole to Baerbock.
The co-chair said this week that the SPD is quite a problem. He himself forged a Jamaica coalition in Schleswig-Holstein. In a talk show, the strong man in the Greens was noticeably looking for closeness to FDP chairman Christian Lindner.
Scholz, on the other hand, drives the hug strategy with the Greens. He takes their breath away. This went so far in the last TV triell that Baerbock addressed the difficult topic of money laundering for Scholz so that the political flirtation of red-green in the show would not be too embarrassing. Baerbock’s red-green strategy is her next mistake. With two negative effects: common voters switch to the Union, and the undecided left-wing voters do their cross at Scholz.
More: The Greens’ prospects for the Chancellery are dwindling