"The national mood and the whole party spectrum has shifted to the left," says Josef Joffe, one of Germany's leading political commentators, who teaches international studies at Stanford University and publishes German weekly newspaper Die Zeit.

"Neither the FDP nor the CDU will attack the kind of issues that Germany needs to attack, to get off its sclerotic average economic growth of 1.5% in the last decade," Mr. Joffe says.

And yes, I can´t stand him! He´s a neo-con and an id*ot.
But I sure hope he is right here. :)