Tonight, at 8:15 PM....Germany will have the first of two debates between Chancellor Merkel (CDU) and Martin Schulz (SPD). It will run off four networks (two public TV channels and two commercial channels). So, some observations:
1. Public hyped up? Not to the extent you might think. Even with four networks carrying this.....I'll take a guess that roughly forty percent of the nation will be watching something else. Soccer tonight? No.....no games scheduled on this Sunday.
2. There's been an intentional split by the news media....instead of having all six groups on the stage at one time....it's been neatly arranged for the four lesser parties to have their own session, and then to have Merkel versus Schulz at a different venue. It would be some advantage for Schulz to display his debate skills (superior slightly) over Merkel.
3. The particular skill between Merkel and Schulz? Debate-wise, Schulz is slightly better and he sticks with the message. Merkel is the college-professor type and she'll calmly deliver her argument or position.
4. A win by Schulz in this debate? It might shift two percent of the votes over to him....although I doubt that he takes more than one vote from the CDU....it's the Greens or Linke Party that will lose the other point.
5. Distance between Merkel and Schulz at present? Polling suggests Merkel at 37-to-39 points, and Schulz at 22-to-25 points. It's a minimum of twelve points between the two.
6. Trump being brought up? There are four moderators, and you have to figure at least one of them will bring up Trump, and Schulz will do a five-step tango over the evil-Trump. Merkel? She'll match this but with just two-steps instead.....also noting the evil-Trump.
7. From the debate over the past week with the four lesser parties....it did come up that a political activist was sneaked up into stage area and pretended to be a regular citizen....linked to the Linke Party....causing a lot of huff a day later where the moderator had to apologize for screwing up and allowing this to happen. With the four moderators in this episode....no chance of sneaking in a activist.
8. Finally, the two topics that neither really want to hear much about are the diesel crisis and the immigration business. Both have packaged answers to throw out there but these are topics that the public would like to hear more of a discussion on, and neither candidate wants to jump much into the subjects.
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