When the SPD Called the Power Rangers

One detail from early 2000s German politics has stayed with me: the moment the SPD basically gave up and called in the Power Rangers.

Things were collapsing for them by then. Schröder was out, Merkel was rising from the CDU, and the current was all going one direction. Even the small cultural fights were going against them—animal rights activists losing it over some red-stocking cow in an ad. The momentum had shifted, and everyone knew it.

So someone at the party decided the answer was superheroes. The Guardians of Space, the Conquerors of Lord Z, the whole Saturday morning cartoon infrastructure—that was their move. I don’t know if it was sincere or a desperate joke or some attempt at irony, but the choice itself says everything about where they were. Not quite surrender, but the point where you’ve exhausted your actual plans and decided to lean into the absurdity instead.

What gets me is how perfectly it captures what happens when reality has already jumped the shark. Politics had become ridiculous enough that calling in fictional teenagers in spandex seemed like a reasonable strategic move. If the normal playbook won’t work, why not try the cartoon version? It won’t help, obviously. But there’s something almost honest about hitting a wall and just saying yeah, we’re out of ideas.

You forget about moments like this. A few years later, it’s all Merkel and financial crisis and the long reshaping of European politics. But this one—a major party officially out of options, reaching for the only thing left that made sense—that stays weird.