Crisis of the Liberals: The FDP forgets its voters

Dhe FDP is not to be envied. No matter what strategic conclusions she draws from her poor poll numbers and the disastrous performance in the state elections in Lower Saxony: she can hardly do it right. If she now tries to make her liberal “brand core” much clearer and to turn on her “position lights”, as Christian Lindner called it, that should please her classic voters, who have always considered traffic lights to be an aberration of history. In return, she provoked even more trouble in the coalition and possibly the collapse of the government – in the middle of the worst crisis since the Second World War.

If, on the other hand, she continues as before and relies on reasons of state, she risks that even more disappointed regular voters will abandon her flag and that the five percent hurdle in the federal government will also come closer and closer. This is a dilemma for the liberals. But one that they also have themselves to blame for. Above all Lindner, who made the FDP a one-man party.

No more optimism

For a long time he was doing her a favor. After the Westerwelle years, in which the Liberals were notorious as a client party for higher and best earners with a preference for hoteliers, he pulled the FDP out of the ashes and brought it back to life. Lindner’s promise of modernization stood for a new, more programmatic FDP. An education offensive, a market-oriented climate policy, and rapid digitization made this clear. Many young voters in particular were attracted to it.

But the spirit of optimism is no longer noticeable, because many FDP voters are now wondering what their party and its chairman still stand for. Really still for the “new” FDP, which confidently spoke of “departure” when signing the coalition agreement and wanted to thoroughly cut the country’s old ways? Or rather for the despondent old woman who would rather not govern than wrongly?

The traffic light is the problem, says Lindner; many FDP supporters were strangers to her because they now perceived the party as left-wing. That may be true. Still, it’s not the only problem. For one thing, the Liberal electorate has long been much more heterogeneous than such statements would lead you to believe. Many young FDP supporters, unlike the older ones, are relatively close to the Greens, and not only on the subject of climate. They have always been less afraid of traffic lights and continue to see opportunities in them. The FDP didn’t lose the Hanover election either because they would have fought for longer nuclear lifetimes. It’s because many voters aren’t sure what they still need the Liberals for.

In the traffic light, Lindner has dwarfed the FDP into an instrument of liberal symbolic politics and lost sight of her core clientele: the middle class and the self-employed. Instead of being the pragmatic advocate of all those who had hoped for a boost in bureaucracy reduction and digitization after the Merkel years, the FDP under Lindner is often content with defiant principle riding. It was no different with the mask and vaccination requirements than with the dispute over a successor to the 9-euro ticket, when Lindner spoke of a “free mentality”. Such terms may seem to close the ranks and please old warhorses like Wolfgang Kubicki. But many younger liberal voters repel them because they believed the old FDP, for which they stand, was behind them long ago.

Now, during the war, Lindner has narrowed the FDP to a monothematic party of financial restraint in a state of emergency. It’s not a nice job because he can only lose at it. A medium-sized craftsman who understands that the black zero cannot be maintained at the moment should still have other worries. After all, liberal beliefs alone are just as little help in his everyday life as state aid for large companies. He longs for quick help in an existential situation, struggles with bad internet through dozens of forms every day and turns away disappointed – also to the AfD.

But the FDP’s crisis is also a communicative one: Where others make the dilemmas of politics in the war transparent, Lindner often communicates apodictically, from above. First he raises the pure liberal doctrine to the yardstick as in the case of new borrowing, only to then give in to real political constraints. At the same time, many liberals want more honest communication about what is still a liberal position light and what is already an unavoidable compromise. Lindner is right: the FDP must now distinguish itself. Through clever, approachable pragmatism. And not by becoming the opposition in the coalition.