After Thuringia and Saxony voted, Germany has just had another important regional election, this time in the land of Brandenburg. As in the two preceding cases, the Brandenburg election is far more than a local event. Its results reflect and affect German politics as a whole. But Brandenburg is also special, because it was the last of the three. We can now assess their results as a whole.

The first thing to note is that, to a small extent, Brandenburg has bucked the trend. The trend, that is, of Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) relentlessly deteriorating. Formerly one of the country’s establishment parties, the chancellorship of the party’s incompetent, opportunistic, and highly unpopular Olaf Scholz has catalyzed its decline, from gradual to rapid and most probably terminal. After this was reflected in the regional elections in Saxony and Thuringia, there was a real possibility of a third drubbing in Brandenburg, a land the SPD has controlled since unification in 1990.

In that case, so the talk of Berlin, Scholz might have been shoved out today. He is a clear liability for the federal elections next year and the SPD has a replacement ready: Unfortunately, the –even by current German standards– fanatic Russophobe, bellicist and NATO true believer Boris Pistorius, now Minister of Defense, enjoys top-notch popularity and may well still push aside the hapless Scholz.

The SPD managed to win in Brandenburg. If win is the word: It leads the right/far-right newcomer party Alternative for Germany (AfD) by less than two percent – 30.9% against 29.2%. If this had happened as little as two years ago, all of Germany would have recognized it for what it really is: another humiliating setback for the Social Democrats.

But the baselines have shifted and, so, Scholz, the chancellor of discontent, stagnation, and malaise, has been spared, for now. Nonetheless, one reason why the regional Brandenburg SPD leadership managed to snatch sort-of-kind-of........

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