I really don't understand why he wants new elections. His party is getting stomped nationally. They haven't won anywhere since he got re-elected and they've lost places like Nord-Rhein-Westphalen which have been SPD strongholds since WWII. He played the anti-American card, with all the skill that Johnnie Cochran played the race card, last time but with the Iraq campaign winding down, that has no real traction. Even with recent Jewish immigration, there still aren't enough for a decent bonfire so he can't try that traditionally successful German vote-winner. He can't do a U-Turn on the EU because he is so tightly connected in the public mind to Chirac. And if he loses he's ticked off so many SPD officials and apparatchiks that he has no reservoir of goodwill to make a comeback.

I agree with Bart that there is something odd going on here. Usually, unpopular governments run out the string. What's particularly odd is that this will turn out best for Germany and possibly for the SPD.

Schröder does realize that the German welfare state is unsustainable and has tried to do something about it. His party won't let him and the reforms are very unpopular. Maybe he figures that the CDers will win enough seats to push through reform, to which they say they're committed, and that reform will make them so unpopular that the SPD will come right back into power, the dirty work having been done in the meantime.

But I can't make myself believe that Schröder is that smart, that much of a gambler, or that self-sacrificing.

Rather, he knows that they'll fail too. It doesn't matter who commands the Titanic once it's hit the berg.

Schroeder can only want elections now cuz he knows he'll do worse a year from now. That prob means the economy.

Schroeder knows it's tanking, bad. Real bad.