[Negotiator]

So Merkel steps down from the leadership of her party. She also said she will no longer be available for reelection as chancellor in 2022.

Now the search for a succesor begins. There are twelve candidates, three are especially popular to discuss.

AKK (Annegret Kramp Karrenbauer, a jawbreaker even for german tongues, thats why we call her "AKK") is the successor Merkel has appointed. She leads in polls at about 50%. She's very nonaggressive in tone and manners, doesnt even want to call the race a competition and doesnt attack the other candidates.

Then theres Jens Spahn, who declares he wants to be chancellor since years. Some people claim he's too young, though he's 38, which I think should be perfectly sufficient. He's of course not likeable either, but really none of the current conservative politicians is. With 10% he's at spot three in the polls.

An of course we have the obligatory industry whore and income millionaire. He's very old already, not younger than Merkel, so that already makes no sense. Unlike Trump he has been politician before, and he was of course awful at it, just as any other industry whore really. He also was an opponent of Merkel back then and fled the scene, so this is obviously payback time to him. And yes, sure, of course all regular newspapers are only discussing him all the time and none of the other eleven candiates, even if there is nothing of interest to say about this guy. But did anyone expect anything else ?

And yes, of course none of these people has ever worked for real (for the record, Merkel actually did). Now thats all fine and good and perfectly as everybody is used to. Mainstream politicians are usually immensively corrupt, in most countries, not just in the USA.

But what really annoys the heck out of me right now: even left-wing newspapers do NOT primarily discuss AKK or Spahn or any of the other less well known nine candiates. Even they want to talk about that industry whore ! What the frak ? Is there ANY newspaper out there that still wants to discuss important things and not just do the bidding of the industry ?

Oh, and just in case you dont get why newspapers love industry whores: about 50% of a regular newspaper is financed through advertisement. Thats the core reason why newspapers are so utterly useless.

[Drlee]

We have an orange man who will be available in 2020 but might be persuaded to leave sooner. Germany has a neat feature in its immigration laws:

An individual who is ordinarily resident outside may be naturalised as a German citizen if he/she can demonstrate sufficient ties with Germany which justify his/her naturalisation

No doubt he has a few hundred millions of dollars in FRG and that might count. Besides. Think of the good relations with Russia he could bring to you.

[Varilion]

SO it is AKK... but what's the point? Is she going to bring 1 more vote than Merkel?

[Kaiserschmarrn]

So it's more of a continuation of Merkel politics than the other candidates would have been.

Upside for Merkel is that it's easier for her to stay chancellor. Downside for the SPD is that it's harder for them to take votes from the CDU.