Duel of nicknames

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Armin Laschet stands behind the lectern in the Düsseldorf state parliament and talks about people in need.

On Tuesday morning, for once, it is not about the victims of the flood disaster. The Prime Minister means people like the hairdresser, who describes in a video that she has not yet received a cent from the Corona aid. That does not change the conclusions for the fight against the pandemic, says the Christian Democrat. But you have to keep a feeling for the extent of the stress.

The speech is, so to speak, the prelude to the stage on which Laschet wants to succeed from afar on this day. After a long break, the Corona summit is once again meeting with the Chancellor in Berlin. The NRW boss will be added virtually later.

It’s about the corona strategy in autumn. A fourth wave is emerging, but its extent and consequences are more difficult to assess.

This is due to the vaccination, even if the campaign is lame, and to the Delta variant, which so far we know above all to be more contagious than its predecessors.

Hope for the turnaround in the election campaign

For Laschet, of course, there is more to it than that. The day is supposed to usher in a turning point in his election campaign for chancellor.

It is well known that it has not gone well since his laughing fit in the flood area grew more and more into a character study with each passing day, if only because he himself offered little cause for other, better impressions. The doubts about his ability to become chancellor are slowly reaching threatening proportions in the polls.

The impression can no longer be erased.

But a prime minister who can present a 30 billion euro package of development aid for the disaster areas is a more pleasant sight. The summit will later wave the enormous sum through without any debate. All countries participate, regardless of whether they are affected or not.

And then there is Laschet’s five-point plan. The chancellor candidate presented it to the CDU presidium the day before. In advance, it is largely approved by the group. The impression they hope for in the Laschet camp is easy to see: a candidate that everyone follows cannot be so completely wrong after all. Laschet presented the plan again at the special Corona session in the state parliament.

“Laschet throws himself behind the train”

Grumbling can, of course, be heard from another candidate for chancellor. Olaf Scholz friends complain that it is “embarrassing”. Laschet proclaimed as his own idea what in truth the Union and the SPD had previously agreed internally. “It’s the same as always,” etched a social democrat. “Laschet throws himself behind the train.”

Now you have to know that Scholz would like to limit the election campaign entirely to the question of whether he himself or Laschet has what it takes to be Chancellor.

The Green Annalena Baerbock has not been included in this calculation for a long time. It is considered irreparably damaged in the SPD election campaign team.

But the doubts about the Christian Democrats must not subside if Scholz’s plan is to work to maneuver the SPD in front of the Greens and, in the end, the FDP leader Christian Lindner into a traffic light coalition.

So a conspiracy theory is spread by his troops: Chancellor Helge Braun specially withheld the finished draft resolution so that his party friends could announce it as a plan of their own!

Apart from such cabal behind the scenes, the candidates Laschet and Scholz are pretty much in agreement on the content.

Both plead for a common vaccination appeal from the Corona summit. Both want to do corona tests for a fee for everyone who does not want to be vaccinated.

Both are also against the idea of ​​making life even more difficult for these unvaccinated people by excluding them from pubs and cinemas. The Bavarian Markus Söder champions that again in the round.

But only Saxony’s Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) had previously made a similar statement. And Hamburg’s governing mayor Peter Tschentscher (SPD), who has always been a doctor in the camp of the cautious around Merkel and Söder, had at least only recognized the not so error-prone, but more expensive PCR tests as a replacement for the vaccination certificate.

But the majority of the country bosses wanted to leave it with the simple 3G – vaccinated, convalescent and tested people, regardless of whether PCR or rapid test, are to be treated equally.

So it sounds like a short round when the summit participants meet shortly after noon – Merkel and Berlin’s Governing Mayor Michael Müller (SPD) as acting country coordinator again in person in the Chancellery, Söder as the current spokesman for the Union in the next room, the rest on the screen.

But you get tangled up again.

Scholz and Merkel and Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) encounter resistance with the request to introduce a general compulsory test for unvaccinated people, for example when visiting hospitals, pubs or church services, from 23 August. Several prime ministers insist that the tightening only applies if the incidence is higher.

Obligatory testing for interiors from what incidence?

“We are getting a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” interjects Söder. Laschet reports on the various proposals: Obligation to test from incidence zero or 35 or only from 50? Merkel objects that zero is not possible because of the courts. The round finally follows a text proposal from the head of the Chancellery Braun: Compulsory testing for unvaccinated people indoors, but the counties are allowed to do without it up to an incidence of 35.

The fundamental question that remains is whether this incidence of new infections per week and 100,000 inhabitants should remain the guide value for decisions at all. Somehow everyone is in favor of completing it. But Söder will rightly say afterwards that no one has yet found a catchy “formula for happiness”.

The resolution recommends “taking into account” all relevant indicators. That leaves everyone room to maneuver.

Incidentally, Söder also warns against subordinating the fight against the pandemic to the election campaign: “We have decided a few things today, but there will be a resubmission.” After September 26th at the latest.

He does not say who this is specifically aimed at. But Laschet would probably insist that he subordinate nothing. He just takes the opportunity.