Quote Originally Posted by Franconicus
Saturnus
You may be right. But the reaction of the traditional parties was rediculous. Just saying he is bad, he is corrupt, he is post-communist is not enough. (You forgot: he is vain!) People do not care about that. No party really argued against the program.
His program is mainly that Hartz IV is evil. His program is propaganda. Heck, he even wants to attract the extreme right. He speaks for the frustrated, attacking his program won´t help either.

Another problem is that you still have millions of former SED members. No other party wants them. Integration into our political system failed. So they vote for the LINKE.
And why is that? Because they don´t fit into the other parties. No one wants to burden themselves with "ewig Gestrigen".

And even though everything you said is right I believe that Lafontaine is still an old school Sozialdemokrat. He knows how to talk to the people Schröder could take with him.
He´s a greedy extreme left populist. As far as I know Schröder didn´t admit he exists since Lafontaine deserted him and I can understand that.