Political Story

This is a page one type story and will be utilized for some public forum chatter in the future.  

One of the more destructive elements of American politics is 'Identity Politics'.  This is the strategy of grouping certain groups of people into categories, for agendas.  You can take a social group, or a sexual orientation group, or a religious group.....building an entire agenda to attract them....rather than going out for the individual vote.

Focus brought up this subject today......with a dispute that has arisen within the SPD Party.

Wolfgang Thierse is a name that most Germans will identify upon (former Bundestag President)....77 years old...and generally a very articulate individual.  Thierse has been a member of the SPD Party for decades.

So Thierse went and did something that you wouldn't expect.  He wrote up a essay to suggest that Identity Politics is dangerous and it lessens a democracy if you use it.  It was published in a major Frankfurt newspaper.

It was a pretty blunt message....it's an agenda program that dictators and ideological fanatics use.  

The SPD Party went into hyper-action....condemning Thierse.  He's now offered up his resignation papers from the party.

I would imagine a number of the older generation Germans, from across the political spectrum....kinda agree with Thierse on this matter.  The problem is....several of the parties (not just the SPD), have picked up Identity Politics over the past decade, and it's a key element of their future agendas.

One odd piece of this trend....if you went and gauged the general public....the SPD Party (left-of-center) is at their lowest public standing of the past hundred years.  As a 'brand'....they've been overcome by the Greens and a fair number of their potential voters now view the Green platform more positively than the SPD platform.

This national election in September?  At best, the SPD folks might be able to get around 20-percent of the vote, and some suggest that they might only score around 16-percent.