Yair Lapid, chairman of the Yesh Atid party, is scheduled to talk with his Labor party counterpart with Yitzchak “Boujie” Herzog about the idea of merging their two parties to give a united ticket the chance of winning the most seats in the Knesset elections in March.
Herzog talked with Tzipi Livni, head of the HaTnua party, on Sunday with the same objective.
A Globes poll last week showed that Livni, whose party has only six Knesset Members and would probably win only half that much in the elections, would draw more voters if she were to run with Labor.
The Labor party has 15 seats in the current Knesset, and Herzog’s dull personality and the party’s lame platform do not appear to bode well for his attracting more voters.
Yesh Atid won 19 seats in the last election but even Lapid admits that the party is not likely to win much more than 15 next March, while polls so far show it will receive less than 10 seats.
Herzog probably could get along a lot easier with Livni, who should be happy to remain politically alive, rather than with Lapid, who still thinks he is the best thing that has happened to Israel since Theodore Herzl.
Herzog’s meeting with Lapid could make Livni a bit more nervous about making too many demands. She was thrilled to be de facto Minister of the Peace Process Follies in the Netanyahu government, but that portfolio now is worth as much as a letter of support from Mahmoud Abbas.
A three-way merger of Yesh Atid and Livni’s party with Labor would probably give them a commanding plurality after the votes are counted in March.
That would leave Herzog in exactly the same place as two years ago, when the Kadima party won one more seat than the Likud but could not form a coalition.
There is no way that the merged party could form a majority in the next government without inviting the Haredi parties, which Is about as likely as Avigdor Lieberman merging with the Arab parties.