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Like it or not, what matter in elections nowadays are quotidian narratives and moods. A lot is encapsulated in those narratives: the factors involved include persons, their trustworthiness, and their presumed ability to get things done; responses to the politics of the recent past; considerations of electoral tactics (especially those that involve the proportional representation electoral system) and potential governing coalitions. But more than anything else, those narratives highlight the ways in which people experience their personal problems. All these tendencies are strongly influenced by the hermetically sealed worlds of communication that operate on the internet, which have drifted far away from rational political discourse.

A lack of clear brand-recognition

It no accident that, except on the political fringes, parties seldom resort to notions of left and right when trying to burnish the public image of their respective brands. Although those terms remain important as points of reference in the parties‹ internal debates, day-to-day discussions are always quite concrete if not downright tedious. Within the complex framework of German federalism this means that the baby steps of Realpolitik are contested in the political center. At the same time, it is becoming more and more difficult for centrist parties to create sharply-defined, credible images for themselves, since their decisions are always subject to compromises with potential or actual coalition partners. That is especially the case given that their leadership cadres are frequently perceived as weak (i.e., weak as the word is understood within the communicative world of a particular public). 

In times like ours, few people may even take notice when parties revert to first principles to articulate their programs; however, that doesn’t mean that it is unnecessary for them to clarify those programs. As elements in the parties‹ internal proceedings, such clarifications are in fact even crucial to maintain a minimal level of political unity, a value that can no longer be taken for granted. In fact, the old right-left scheme may often serve as a means to represent such programmatic clarifications, for instance when the pros and cons of a policy in pursuit of greater equality are at issue. But when it comes to putting into practice such grand ordering principles and influencing citizens‹ political perceptions, Realpolitik wins out, and, unfortunately, principles start to lose their meaning. A glance at the volatile voting behavior of young voters in the past few years underscores that conclusion.

»The AfD has had success among some elements of the working class despite its neoliberal positions.«

On the other hand, those on the political fringes are especially likely deliberately to play around with political narratives that confuse old boundary lines derived from the right-left scheme, although those lines already diverge strongly from their own party programs. The classical example of this is the AfD’s success among segments of the working class, especially those in precarious jobs, even though that party’s program advocates strictly neoliberal positions. The unjustified expectation that previously-ignored parts of the population finally might find in the AfD a champion to represent them, stymies substantive debates, especially in the eastern states.

Cultural vs. economic criteria

That is not to deny that the AfD is an antidemocratic party which scorns the image of humanity embodied in the Basic Law, the Federal Republic’s Constitution. But as international comparisons, especially those from the USA, reveal, supporters of parties in the AfD mold perceive themselves quite differently. And in the diffuse, emotionally-charged reservoir of the supposedly abandoned and ignored, yet another competitor has come into play: the Sahra Wagenknecht Party (BSW), one that definitely regards itself as belonging to the leftist camp, at least in respect to redistributive policies. Examples like these show how difficult it has become to sort out political overtures on the conceptual level. Cultural criteria sometimes yield different outcomes than economic ones when applied to the right-left axis. 

Turning to the international dimension, it turns out that, in many countries, political alliances or incompatibilities have emerged recently that would have been unthinkable in the past. In light of those considerations, one could argue that the situation positively cries out for a return to clear evaluative criteria; in particular it seems to call for a debate about how to move from defense to offense--i.e. how to transform the anti-right-wing mobilization into a pro-left mobilization. But unfortunately, many people can quickly lose their way when they travel down this road, as has been demonstrated both by the American elections in 

This experience of »it’s not enough« yields a new question concerning the political system: given that parliaments likely will become ever more fragmented in the future, how can parties demonstrate their ability to carry on Realpolitik while also embodying attractive goals? How can they strengthen society’s center and dispel the toxic feeling that the state is failing while combatting the perception that they lack a clear brand identity? This is a huge and urgent task. It requires not merely representing the eroding societal totality, but rendering it visible and palpable again and endowing it with renewed efficacy.
The overarching debate of our time is between the cosmopolitan, liberal model of democracy and the authoritarian-fascist restoration that has appeared in a variety of guises. In this context, »social« issues are addressed by both sides, but usually far too timidly and inconsistently by the side that favors democracy and an open society. Meanwhile, in a purely mathematical sense at least, classically leftist, egalitarian policy approaches characteristic of the cosmopolitan-liberal camp frequently have frittered away chances to form their own parliamentary majorities. That failure shows up especially in respect to potentially egalitarian tax policy; in the meantime, distributive inequality, which favors big money, proceeds apace. Here indeed we encounter the historical necessity of a renaissance of leftist political principles. Yet those principles appear impossible to implement at this juncture in history due to the impotence of parties that might advocate them.

As far as the original question is concerned—whether the right-left dichotomy will still be decisive in the future—the argument here implies that we have outlived the age of schemes in which everything could be neatly ordered and classified. Right and left do continue to be meaningful reference points for centrist parties, but they often skew our perceptions.
»Social issues are frequently addressed far too timidly and inconsistently by the side that favors democracy and an open society.«    
When half the population in many rural areas, especially in Germany’s eastern states, votes for a party with a fundamentally right-wing, authoritarian outlook, it is making a dramatic statement. However, that doesn’t prove that half of this same population is now committed automatically and irretrievably to the far right. Not yet. The decisive question for the future of democracy will be this: How to offer to as many such voters as possible a superior model of a future society--one that would be worth living in.