Thoughts on German election 2021

Globally its fair to say populism has not had a good pandemic.

Well, when you come into power on the basis of emotive vacuous statements about how the establishment/elite are shafting you (particularly ironic from a billionaire who used his time in office to push through tax cuts for the elite) yet having little substance beyond that, it should come as no surprise that they fail at actual governance. In a democracy, such weak men quickly get booted out of office.

the establishment

Meanwhile...

But in any case thank you for your cringe take Trilobite as always. If you are against politicians coming "into power on the basis of emotive vacuous statements" then you don't understand democracy very well. The ancients understood this. Put down the Guardian or whatever trash you read and pick up Plato's The Republic and educate yourself

You can't exactly pretend to be anti establishment of your key 'achievement' was to massively lower the tax rate for huge conglomerates.

Why not? How is that any more establishment than giving more money and power to central government? Eg Bernie?

To some degree Trump was part of the establishment but he turned against them which is partly why elites hate him so much.

The Establishment doesn't say or do the things Trump does - whether that's talking about forever wars, the corruption of former Presidents (of both parties) , banning Muslim Immigration or a variety of other things Including "conspiracy theories". The establishment doesn't get banned from twitter. The establishment doesn't have generals disobeying him and collude with China against him, etc as nauseum

He didn't really turn against them.

"we're gonna stick it to the establishment by.... giving them huge tax breaks and more freedom to do what they want"

Fox News is very much part of the establishment,

and said all those things long before Trump came into power.

Generally speaking the trends seen since the 2013 high (2017 and 2021 being the general elections since) are to weaken the right as a whole in consectutive elections but also the center/establishment in general. The FDP (basically 07-15 Lib Dem Orange Bookers) work quite openly with the AfD (basically Ukip) and the Greens while not as nutty as ours are to the left of the SDP, those 3 have been broadly stable/strengthened in that timeframe.

Both establishment parties got historically poor vote shares albeit the SDP has come out on top.

What?

In one or two of the federal states.

Generally speaking the trends seen since the 2013 high (2017 and 2021 being the general elections since) are to weaken the right as a whole in consectutive elections but also the center/establishment in general. The FDP (basically 07-15 Lib Dem Orange Bookers) work quite openly with the AfD (basically Ukip) and the Greens while not as nutty as ours are to the left of the SDP, those 3 have been broadly stable/strengthened in that timeframe.

Both establishment parties got historically poor vote shares albeit the SDP has come out on top.

There are signs of modest centre left/social democrat revivals in some places. Far from uniform though.

The economic inequality exposed by the pandemic, combined with the ever increasing prominence of climate change and its importance to voters does provide an opportunity for social democrats.

Perhaps but at their second lowest vote share level i'm not sure we can draw too many conclusions.