You'll continue to get managed decline, only perhaps a little slower.
Pretty much, yes. And that was just about the best we could hope for, as sad as it is. A critical mass of Germans still haven't suffered enough to make the jump and genuinely ditch the old, failed status quo.

Merz u-turn on immigration
Kek
What are you referring to, specifically? Nobody with an IQ above 70 ever believed his grandiose campaign rhetoric about "closing the border on day one", particularly not when he de facto limited his coalition options to one of the two pro-migration lefty parties before the election had even taken place. Also, it's painfully obvious that Merz, in his heart of hearts, is a neoliberal corporate shill and only cared about migration to the extent that it bothers a lot of his own base voters and fuels the opposition to his right.
He nonetheless played up this issue because talking about migration was a wash for him, and thus still better than talking about his deeply neoliberal economic and welfare policies. Him, and the CDU in general, are still traumatized by the 2005 election, when Merkel wholeheartedly embraced neoliberal economic reforms and almost lost a race she was supposed to win in a landslide.
At the end of the day, Merz was a shitty candidate who ran a subpar campaign, underperformed his polls significantly and got a very disappointing result. In fact, it was the second-worst result in CDU history, barely improving over an abysmal showing in 2021 - and that's in spite of the outgoing government having a disastrous track record and approval ratings. The parties of the "traffic light coalition" combined for less than 33% of the vote this time around, they stood at over 50% in 2021 - yet Merz and his CDU only gained 4.4%; the bulk of the unsatisfied voters went with the populist right AfD or the populist left
Die Linke ("The Left").
Likewise, I am sure that Merz will make for a shitty chancellor - and still be a meaningful
upgrade over his predecessor. God, sometimes I hate my country...
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 25 2025 09:03am