If it was bad before, it is worse afterwards. The major political parties in Germany had more or less given up the game of politics heading towards the elections, now they refuse to even consider doing the possible, thinking the realistic, enlarging the field of options instead of limiting it in an act of self-mutilation. Yes, it would be a putsch of some sort if the CDU and the Green party entered into a coalition of two historically opposed parties who might have more of a common future than they both want to see. Yes, it would be even more of a putsch if the SPD and the Green party and Die Linke entered into a coalition of two (plus one) historically opposed parties who might have more of common past than they dare to acknowledge. I am for either option – as long as the automatism that is about to swallow up all alternatives, all politics, all discourse, all future, can be avoided: No Grand Coalition, please. The next four years would be in a way a Bleierne Zeit, this time made of lead that German politics is entering every fifteen or twenty years or so, the late years of Helmut Schmidt, the late years of Helmut Kohl, the late years of Angela Merkel. It would be so much nicer if somebody surprised itself – and by doing so everybody else. Enough of tactics, enough of tinkering. Make the move, make the Grand Move. If Angela Merkel would form a coalition with the Green party she would be a true revolutionary (she might not be interested in this title). If the Left would form a coalition they would maybe ignore what the voters actually wanted, at least 42 percent of them, but they would do what maybe the 43 percent of their voters hoped for: Change that they can believe in. Who is to tell what is good for democracy? The refusal to even consider obvious options? The problem here is not only Merkel, it is also the SPD. Merkel is content with being the moderator, anything #neuland is foreign to her. The SPD on the other hand still seems to be debating the frictions in the Kaiserreich more than the problems of the past of Die Linke within the GDR: Why are they so afraid to even mention them? What is wrong with a left party that does not even speak the members of another left party? There is an apparent lack of ambition in the SPD – and the way the media is covering these post-election trials just shows that most of them are very much embeded with the powers that be. There is a lack of freedom in the choices that the political show actors right now. There is no reason for this. Just dare. The rest will follow.