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So I\u2019ve generally been a fan of proportional representation in elections.\u00a0 After all, imagine if our primaries had operated on proportional representation.\u00a0 On the Republican side, Trump might have gotten the plurality of the votes in various states, but he wouldn\u2019t have had an absolute majority, and thus, wouldn\u2019t have gotten entire states\u2019 delegate slates, in winner-take-all states.\u00a0 We might then have had the contested convention after all, and if the anti-Trump side was truly NeverTrump, they\u2019d have compromised on some candidate or another.\u00a0 In fact, purely proportionate delegate-selecting system would mean that it would be more normal for nominations to be contested, and it would be accepted by the public for there to be negotiation among the delegates.\u00a0 On the Democrat\u2019s side, the lack of Superdelegates might have meant that Bernie would have had a better shot (and who knows what the outcome would have been if the DNC hadn\u2019t taken sides), but, presuming that Clinton still won, as she ultimately did even among the elected delegates, the sense of unfairness that the Sanders\u2019 supporters felt that led them to stay home, would have been mitigated.\u00a0 What\u2019s more, I had proposed, back a year ago<\/a>, a way that the Electoral College system could be modified to keep the principle of the thing but shift over to enable the votes cast for smaller parties to count whenever a candidate doesn\u2019t have an absolute majority.<\/p>\n Anyhoo \u2014<\/p>\n The Germans, as readers who follow such affairs will know, had an election two months ago<\/a> in which Angela Merkel\u2019s Christian Democrats took the plurality of the votes, but very weakly so.\u00a0 The second-place Social Democrats, current coalition partners in a Grand Coalition, rejected keeping such a coalition because their participation, in Merkel\u2019s first<\/a> and third<\/a> terms in office, only seemed to weaken their standing.\u00a0 This left as the only feasible option a so-called \u201cJamaica Coalition,\u201d that of the Christian Democrats (the CDU), the Greens, and the Liberals\/Free Democrats (FDP, a traditionally \u201cswing\u201d party with free market emphases), so named because the traditional colors of the parties, black, green, and yellow respectively, or the colors of the Jamaican flag.\u00a0 And these negotiations fell apart earlier this week<\/a> when the FDP abandoned the talks, announcing that it was impossible to find sufficient common ground between the parties \u2014 as is not really as surprise, since the FDP is to the right, and the Greens, to the left, of the CDU, on multiple key issues.<\/p>\n Among the issues<\/a> is that of climate change action; the Greens were demanding a much accelerated pace of closure of coal-fired power plants relative to what the FDP was willing to accept (as well as the CSU Bavarian sister-party to the CDU), citing concerns that Germany couldn\u2019t handle such drastic steps without risk of power outages.\u00a0 In addition, the Greens demanded a phase-out of gasoline-powered automobiles, which the FDP considered as a threat to personal mobility.<\/p>\n Another unbridgable divide was on the issue of immigration.\u00a0 Here\u2019s Deutsche Welle\u2019s description:<\/p>\n After much infighting, the CDU and CSU agreed that a new government should pursue a limit of no more than 200,000 people entering Germany for humanitarian reasons. The FDP has proposed an annual target of between 150,000 and 250,000 people.<\/p>\n The question of family reunification has also been a stumbling block for talks. Some critics warned that allowing unlimited reunifications could result in refugee numbers increasing by up to 70,000, while others foresee an increase in the hundreds of thousands. The outgoing government had put the topic of family reunification on hold for the next two years.<\/p>\n While the CDU\/CSU wants this moratorium extended, the Greens are calling for family reunification for refugees with asylum status as well as so-called \u201csubsidiary protection.\u201d<\/p>\n They argue the move would deter human trafficking. The FDP has said it would consent to such a move only if certain conditions were met. Meanwhile, the CSU appears unwilling to compromise, opting instead to send the signal that future immigration in Germany will be strictly controlled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What next?\u00a0 Unless the Social Democrats relent on forming a Grand Coalition, or Merkel is willing to manage a minority government (that is, with no coalition, but seeking votes for each piece of legislation from whichever party will give their support), there will be new elections.\u00a0 And the conventional wisdom, at least as cited by Der Spiegel\u2019s English site<\/a>, is that the FDP will take the blame for walking away from coalition talks, and suffer in new elections, and the right-wing AfD would benefit<\/a>.<\/p>\n But speaking as someone who knows pretty danged little about German politics, and hasn\u2019t the time to study the\u00a0topic extensively, but tends to have an opinion anyway, it seems to me that just the opposite should be true.<\/p>\n Yes, the AfD had tremendous gains in the September election.\u00a0 It was a massive display of anti-establishment feeling, with particular resentment over the other parties\u2019 response to the mass migration of Arabs\/Muslims.\u00a0 But shortly after the election, the AfD fractured, into the extremists and the maybe-not-so-extremists, and to the best of my knowledge, they never sorted that out.\u00a0 So why shouldn\u2019t the FDP make a pitch to disaffected German voters, saying, \u201cwe\u2019re so opposed to generous refugee\/immigrant policies that we walked away from a coalition because of it\u201d and pursue AfD voters?<\/p>\n After all, the CDU\/CSU won 246 seats and the FDP 80, where they needed 355 seats for a majority.\u00a0 If the\u00a0FDP were able to get 29 of the AfD\u2019s 94 seats, by stealing that proportion of their voters, from among the \u201cwe\u2019re not deranged extremists\u201d set of AfD voters, then they\u2019d be able to go back to a more normal two-party coalition, with the FDP as a junior party but with a fair amount of negotiating strength.<\/p>\n So this is, at any rate, my\u00a0invitation\u00a0to you on Thanksgiving.\u00a0 If your pro-Trump uncle starts talking about how Roy Moore should hold his ground because nothing\u2019s been proven, or your anti-Trump nephew brings a chart along to \u201cprove\u201d that the House tax plan is all about giveaways for the rich, just start talking about German elections with them.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Image:\u00a0from https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Flag_of_Jamaica.svg<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So I\u2019ve generally been a fan of proportional representation in elections.\u00a0 After all, imagine if our primaries had operated on proportional representation.\u00a0 On the Republican side, Trump might have gotten the plurality of the votes in various states, but he wouldn\u2019t have had an absolute majority, and thus, wouldn\u2019t have gotten entire states\u2019 delegate slates, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":4560,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[790,345],"class_list":["post-7747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-german-elections","tag-merkel"],"yoast_head":"\n