Late satisfaction for Armin Laschet

WORLD Kristian Frigelj 2 hrs ago | A comparison with Alemannia Aachen is tricky. As a football expert and FC Bayern fan, Armin Laschet should actually know that. Alemannia no longer play in the Bundesliga, but much further down, in the Regionalliga West, and are currently in 16th place. Nevertheless, Laschet says loudly into the microphone on Saturday lunchtime: "We always want to win, it's clear, just like Alemannia Aachen." Chancellor Angela Merkel and CDU/CSU candidate for chancellor Armin Laschet are making their last campaign appearance one day before the Bundestag elections in Aachen. The Union candidate for chancellor is standing on Burtscheider Platz in the Aachen-Burtscheid district, south of the main railway station. His terraced house is close by. Laschet grew up here, kindergarten, school, church, community centre, pubs, fast-food restaurant, the former fixed points of his life are only a few hundred metres away from this square. A few dozen CDU members sit under trees, protected by fences, behind which several hundred onlookers, including critics, crowd. Laschet has come home the day before the election and brought Angela Merkel with him. She is supposed to give Laschet's rumbling election campaign the final decisive push for her party. "Armin, Armin!" The CDU/CSU has been trailing in the polls for weeks, and recently the gap to the SPD has narrowed again, but Laschet's popularity ratings are abysmal. In the Union there is hope that the pollsters are wrong, at least by a few percentage points. "Armin, Armin", shout the Christian Democrats in the square. It almost sounds like enthusiasm. A large gingerbread heart has "Chancellor from Aachen" written on it in sugar icing script. The heart is pressed into the hands of small children who show it to press photographers. A girl hands Armin Laschet a meaningful gingerbread heart. Laschet has often experienced bad starting positions in his political life. He has often been underestimated. But never has it been so dramatic. In the event of a clear election defeat, he would be unstoppable as CDU party leader. It is not only about his political survival in the federal government, but also about the governing power of the CDU/CSU. That is why Merkel has come back after all. Actually, she had wanted to keep a low profile. She did not interfere in the succession after the resignation of CDU party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, neither in the chairmanship nor in the selection of the candidate for chancellor. Laschet had to fight his way through with other supporters. Merkel always argued with her duty of neutrality as chancellor, but there are also well-founded suspicions in the Union that she is deeply disappointed with the party. Laschet, on the other hand, came to terms in the meantime with the fact that Merkel would hardly help and repeatedly stressed that the chancellorship would have to be "fought for" alone. SPD candidate for chancellor Olaf Scholz exploited the conspicuous distance between Merkel and Laschet. He started a red reconquista, a recapture of social democratic issues, after the SPD had often complained in recent years that important decisions always went home with the chancellor and only gave a boost to the Union. Scholz imitated Merkel's low-key, pragmatic carry-on style. He even put himself in front of the Chancellor when there was criticism from within the CDU/CSU about decisions taken during her time in government. In doing so, he took the CDU completely by surprise. The head of government, too. The crash in the polls changed everything for the Union. It has turned out to be a strategic fallacy that the chancellor and the candidate of the same party could act completely isolated next to each other. Angela Merkel made Laschet appear in the best light at the end of the election campaign in Aachen Source: dpa© dpa Angela Merkel made Laschet appear in the best light at the end of the election campaign in Aachen Source: dpa Since the beginning of September, Merkel has now suddenly become very intensively involved. It is also a matter of preserving the legacy, indeed the interpretative sovereignty, of her 16 years in government. Merkel surprisingly campaigned in the Bundestag, where she warned against a red-red-green government. On Burtscheider Platz in Aachen, she stressed that it was a matter of "Germany remaining stable". The Chancellor gives a great speech in praise of Laschet. She said that as Minister President of NRW he led a "very successful federal state", that he had always been committed to European unification, and that his political life was determined by efforts to achieve cohesion. "Armin Laschet is characterised by building bridges," says Merkel. She agrees with him that a "modernisation decade" is necessary.