Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands or the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) is Germany’s oldest political party dating from 1863. At times, it has been Germany’s largest party and it has elected German Chancellors such as Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt and more recently Gerhard Schröder. And it remains a junior coalition partner in Angela Merkel’s government.
The current SPD leader is Kurt Beck and under his watch the SPD has seen its polling numbers drop and drop hitting a new low last week of just 20% support and its membership base erode by 8% in just two years. Der Spiegel provides the coverage:
A political party of historic importance is imploding in Germany. Even worse, though, is that the Social Democrats (SPD) themselves don’t seem to care. Indeed, it is precisely this indifference, this indolence and this lethargy among prominent party members that explains in part why the SPD has sunk to such low depths.
The SPD of 2008, at any rate, has bid farewell to itself, turning its back on much of what made it great. First, the SPD has disconnected itself from the working class. Since the 1998 general elections, much of the SPD’s slide has resulted from blue-collar voters turning their backs on the party. Support among workers having dropped 15 percent in the last decade. In a number of state elections during the second term of SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (from 2002 to 2005), the SPD lost as much as one-fifth of its blue-collar support.
Sound familiar? Perhaps the US Democratic Party is taking lessons from Kurt Beck and the SPD? Here is the takeaway again from Der Spiegel:
For the SPD, this shift is a profound disaster. The industrial working class has long formed the ideological center around which the SPD orbited. It was the party’s raison d’etre, the source of party stability and the guiding light of all its efforts. The cool, unsentimental exodus of the working class has robbed the SPD of its core image, an image built up over more than a century. The SPD without support from the workers is a party stripped of its goal — namely that of emancipating the lower classes.
For the US Democratic Party, their raison d’être should be the working class because since at least 1928 the Democratic party has been the party of labor rights and labor protections, of the working class and of the American middle class. And it has been their votes that have propelled the party to victory. Now some argue that a new coalition is set to transform American politics, the creative class plus the young plus African-Americans. If the Democratic party no longer stands for the working class, and it has struggled mightily in trying to win their support since the 1980s, the working class will find a new political home and it will the Democratic party left standing in the cold halls of Congress, not in the warm chambers of political power. Has the political left forgotten its reason for being? Is it a temporary forgetfulness or a permanent delusion of grandeur?
I wonder if in a few year’s hence, we too will be writing the political obituary of a working class party that has competed in elections since 1828, that of the US Democratic Party. I wonder if the German SPD can wither away, is this a lesson or a blueprint for the US Democratic Party?
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Profile of Oskar Lafontaine, co-leader of the German Left Party and a former member of the SPD, who has been described as Germany’s secret chancellor because of his growing political influence in Der Spiegel.
From Bloomberg News on local elections in Bremen where the SPD had its poorest showing in 60 years:
To add to Beck’s troubles, the Social Democrats’ membership shrank by 45,000 in two years to 553,000 in April from 598,000 in March 2005, spokesman Johannes Schwarz said. The SPD’s membership flight, triggered by protests against welfare cuts implemented during Schroeder’s term, has been compounded by the challenge of the new Left Party, a challenge highlighted by the results of yesterday’s Bremen election.
The alliance of former communists and union activists has lured one million voters away from the SPD, said Viola Neu, a political scientist at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
“The SPD has no idea where to go,” said Neu. “The party is giving old answers to new questions. It lacks a concept of the future and takes refuge in bickering.”