FOCUS Briefing: Take care of your voters, not the AfD!

Sunday is something special —not only Christian in its foundation, but also a moment of identity-forming in the West. People go for a walk, reflect on the times, and happily leave their children to smelly indoor playgrounds. A day of rest. This Sunday, the CDU leadership will meet in Berlin for a presidium retreat.

The CDU's indoor playground also desperately needs some contemplative self-reflection . They've been in power for less than half a year, and they're already dangling deranged from the climbing nets. Their poll numbers are eroding almost faster than those of their coalition partner, the SPD. The AfD is overtaking the right and is now ahead of the Christian Democrats even at the federal level.

Next year, there are five state elections. The AfD is likely to gain further ground in all of them. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Saxony-Anhalt, it's not unlikely that it will attempt to take over the government as the strongest party. However, the CDU itself is to blame for its poor state , not the AfD.

She has ceded entire swathes of eastern Germany to Weidel's party. For decades. Without any idea or even strategy. Her chancellor has broken numerous election promises . And at the same time, the impression is repeatedly created that he is being made a fool of by his coalition partner, the SPD, which receives 16.4 percent of the vote.

The resulting disputes over constitutional judges, citizen's allowance, and a military service law are already reminiscent of the undignified squabbling of the "traffic light" coalition in its final stages . In this respect, the petulant comrades are not innocent of the malaise. Moreover, quite a few German citizens have the impression that the desperate construction and defense of firewalls is only intended to preserve old privileges and distract from their own incompetence.

On Sunday, the debate will again center on whether this firewall is vitally important or increasingly stupid, as the remaining coalitions against the AfD are only becoming more and more absurd. The creative dynamics of a government consisting of the CDU, SPD, Left Party, and Greens would probably lie somewhere between a coma and Remembrance Sunday .

The CDU leadership bravely maintains its demarcation. On the other side, Andreas Rödder, former head of the CDU's Basic Values ​​Commission, tells Stern magazine: "The higher the firewall was built, the stronger the AfD became." Peter Tauber, once frivolously Angela Merkel's general secretary, also considers a "new approach" to the AfD "politically necessary."

Perhaps both paths are misleading : What kind of parties are these that exhaust themselves just distancing themselves from an attacker? Defense isn't a program. Anyone who defines themselves merely as an alternative to something else clearly has nothing of their own left to offer. This CDU hasn't just lost sight of its voters, but also of itself.

When will it finally reflect on its values ​​and foundations, take away the AfD's trigger issues , and pursue its own policies again? Ideally, this should be for the people, not for executive committee meetings. And not for Sunday speeches either.