So, Merkel will now govern with the Free Democrats, and not in a grand coalition with the SDP.The reason that this is happening is very simple: The SDP is not running against the CDU, it's running against the Left Party.
So you have proclamations that there will not be a coalition with the LP under any, because....because...I'm really not sure why, except, perhaps because the SDP sees the LP as drawing in disaffected SDP members, and they see the loss of power within the party as more troubling than the lose of power in the whole country.
Fundamentally, the success of the LP is because the 3rd Way endorsed by Clinton, Blair, and to a somewhat lesser extent, Gerhard Schröder, which supported "Anglo-Saxon" hyper-capitalism, and has failed in its goals to create increased living standards.
The people with the idea that the perhaps a party with founded with the idea that government should take a role in improving a society, like Oskar Lafontaine, now co chair of the LP have been disaffected and dis-empowered, so it's no wonder that they are looking for somewhere else to go.
There is also the whole, "world wide financial meltdown," thing which has tarnished the 3rd way's concept of unfettered competition, which means that the LP is, you know, do the degree that that actually have a philosophy, as, "The Left hasn't yet adopted its own party program".
The decline of the SDP, in a bizarre way, mirrors the decline of the Labor Party in Israel, which stopped representing "Labor", and became the party of, "We're not as batsh%$ insane as Likud," and so dropped to a pathetic 4th place in Israeli elections as a result of the "Thatcherite but not as batsh%$ insane as Likud," Kadima party.
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