Monday

The weekend elections have thrown several parties into disarray and taught them a clear lesson. The FDP has been hit in the heart by its departure from the traditional state of Baden-Württemberg. She needs to go into survival mode immediately.

The SPD felt the hint of death for the first time. In Stuttgart it barely remained in the state parliament with 5.5 percent. After the most catastrophic of their defeats, the party leaders in Berlin have to decide from which direction they want to win back voters: the workers who defected to the AfD or the expropriation fanatics who are making the left strong everywhere.

The Union must hold a casting among its leading figures with the aim of pushing popular candidates forward, because this is the realization from Stuttgart and Munich: people and personalities are more important than parties.

Whoever committees favor does not necessarily mean that voters will like them

It is not thanks to the Greens that Cem Özdemir became Prime Minister. On the contrary. His success is based on distancing himself from his party as much as possible. He denied and slandered them and promised a completely different course.

With this strategy, he not only overtook the nice but weak favorite Manuel Hagel from the CDU.

With his success, he has also become the dominant Green party in Germany.

If he implements the sayings he made into policy, the party will have to follow the unelected leader. The CSU experienced the failure of one person in Munich. Their mayoral candidate received almost five percent fewer votes than his party.

The lesson: Whoever committees favor does not necessarily mean that voters will like them.

Tuesday

Anja Kohl, business journalist for ARD, is often invited to talk shows. There she shows a different face than before the “Tagesschau”. Above all, she stands out because she rudely interrupts other participants. Sandra Maischberger was also surprised by her aggressive stance towards Israel. The country is a cyberpower that “strives for hegemony, for supremacy” in the Middle East. That is “what Israel is actually about.”

Wednesday

Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul was one of the casualties in the Iran war. With a first mistake he spread false information on ZDF and in a second round of faux pas he negligently talked about German vacationers who were stranded in Gulf states.

The CDU has better foreign minister candidates than Wadephul

A formal travel warning from the government has consequences for cancellation and return flight insurance. A false report restricts the rights of vacationers. They later had to be told by Wadephul that the tour operators were responsible for their evacuation.

Chancellor Merz should listen to the protests of his partner Markus Söder. With Norbert Röttgen and Armin Laschet he has better foreign ministers in his party.

FOCUS founding editor-in-chief Helmut Markwort was an FDP member of the Bavarian state parliament from 2018 to 2023.