Given the more volatile political battles raging in neighboring Holland and France, many aren’t paying attention to Martin Schulz, former European Union bureaucrat, now the savior of Germany’s Social Democracy Party (SPD).

This local soccer hero from the Dutch-German border served as the SPD’s strongman in the European Parliament for the last twenty years. Now, after an unprecedented 100 percent vote elected him leader and frontrunner for the federal elections at the party conference last month, he has transformed into a social media-savvy messiah and darling of the mainstream press. His ascension also ended Social Democracy’s six-year polling drought — the party has overtaken the Christian Democrats Union (CDU) and broken the 2017 election wide open.

Schulz’s sudden arrival as a major national figure reflects an important change in SPD electoral strategy, as it attempts to replicate the personality-cult politics found in the United States and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom. Clearly looking for the meme magic they’ve watched galvanize the youth vote abroad, Schulz and company have imported North American campaign strategies in what can only be described as a case of combined and uneven development in the field of communications.