Will The Center Hold?

I still follow German politics a bit, if for no other reason than talking to my parents and friends who live there.  But right now there are interesting things happening there that are relevant to US politics.  Germany has federal elections coming up on September 27 and had state elections in three states last week.  The state elections showed a fascinating split with two smaller parties, “The Left” (“Die Linke” and the “Free Democratic Party” (“FDP”), scoring major gains.  The Left is a combination of a reconstituted party from the former East Germany with a splinter group from the SPD (which is Germany’s center-left party and closest to the Democrats in the US).  The FDP is a party that favors free market economics but tends to be liberal on social issues as well (there is no obvious equivalent in the US – the libertarians probably come closest).

What makes this interesting is that these two parties line up fairly well with two groups in society that are impacted very differently by the economic changes that we are facing.  The Left represents primarily workers in traditional industries who are facing layoffs and folks who are already unemployed.  The FDP, by contrast, represents primarily entrepeneurs, managers and employees at high growth businesses.  With five separate parties in Germany (at the national level) this economic rift in society is more easily detected in the electoral results than here in the US. The net outcome appears to be a situation where there are not enough votes in the center to achieve reform and where the extremes will block each other.

In a two party system, such as the US, the economic condition and its impact on voting is obscured by other issues (in the US these are primarily social/cultural issues).  Still the influence of the economic forces at work appears to be part of what is driving the difficulties over healthcare reform.  My fear is that as time goes on, the gap between those benefitting from the fundamental economic changes we are epxeriencing and those suffering from the same changes will grow so large as to make it very difficult to have a center that can accomplish meaningful changes.