Get ready for Friedrich Merz or Armin Laschet, the former if you think Germany needs its own David Cameron, the latter if you think Merkel was overly charismatic.
If Jens Spahn somehow gets the nod, the SPD will be forced to find a leader named Sain. Pity the Greens, though, their leader in the red-green-black coalition (a six-party Bundestag is going to make a mess of things regardless) that will govern after the '21 election will have to be named Pray for Rain.
I laud Heebie for the timeliness of her posting of this post.
If the Guest Poster writes about Germany's current government, is it MoCho GroKo?
And if I agree with Mossy about mamallian denizens of the Royal Air Force's former base in West Berlin, is that DoMo 'AiryGatow?
1: OP link and others say the major beneficiaries of this look to be the Greens, maybe up to getting the next Chancellor. Which sounds like movement in a not-bad direction, despicable anti-nuclearism notwithstanding.
How is Germany irrelevant? I feel like I've been hearing "southern Europeans disaffected by Germany-centered European monetary policy" takes for the better part of a decade.
4: the Greens are fine with coal stations staying open if it means they get into government. It's just nuclear they can't stand. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/07/greens-scale-back-policy-demands-german-coalition-talks
Not so good news considering it was prompted by the CDU aligning with the AfD. I mean, good that the backlash had that effect, but not that it had to happen to begin with.
5: Precisely. German policy rots the EU economy as a whole; German policy alienates for life whole generations of EU voters.
6: 7 is why I'm reading it as not-bad movement; responding to the AfD by consolidation further left. I'm taking for granted German energy policy will continue to be a joke. Nuclear bad! Coal good! Gazprom better! (This is why I talk about irrelevance.)
6&7 to 9. I was going to write a rant about countries that shut down perfectly good nuclear plants in favor of coal, but I don't have the energy.