Nahles Not Becoming SPD Party Chief?

It's a bit of a shock in the German news today as things unfold from Friday's announcement that Martin Schulz would not become the Foreign Minister, and the strong hint that Andrea Nahles would step up to become the new Party Chief. 

Numerous SPD Party members are suggesting a total rebuild of the party, and not supporting Andrea Nahles for the chief position.

If Nahles doesn't get the job?  I would have my doubts that the coalition agreement to be voted upon by the 460,000 SPD members on 3 March...will FAIL. The party is heading toward a situation where it's divided and things are in a fluid state.

How did it get this bad?  I lay the blame at three key factors:

1.  There are essentially three groups of the SPD voters.  The first are the guys over fifty years old, and chiefly concerned about taxes and pensions. The second group are tied to special agenda items that have nothing to do with taxes and pensions, but social behavior and trendy subjects.  Then you have the third group who are mostly between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five....who are hyped up on pro-asylum, pro-environment, and pro-social causes.  These three groups are not mixing well within the SPD Party anymore.

2.  The chief supporter of the old SPD (going back to the 70s to 90s)....was the working-class German.  If you asked most of these people today....what the party has done for them in the past five years....they just start laughing because they haven't seen much.  Oh, there's lots to talk about on environmentalism and pro-asylum, but that's not what common working-class Germans want to discuss.

3.  Finally, you come to smaller parties who seem to offer more than what the SPD can offer.  The Greens, the FDP, and the Linke Party all have more to offer.

The odds that Nahles will not become the party chief?  On Friday, I would have suggested less than a ten-percent chance that she'd fail in this political maneuver.  Right now?  I would suggest it's getting closer to a one-in-three chance that she will fail to get the job.

Pretty odd change of events.