Before the Hesse state election of January 2008, the SPD leader Andrea Ypsilanti ruled out working with the Left Party. Es gibt keine irgendwie geartete Zusammenarbeit mit den Linken. There will be no cooperation of any kind with the Left. After the election, she planned to become premier with the Left Party’s support. In March 2008, she dropped the plan after three days, because one of her own members, Dagmar Metzger, refused to go along.
In the autumn she tried again. On 3 November 2008, the day before the vote, four SPD members announced that they would not elect her. The vote was called off. The word used against Ypsilanti was Wortbruch, breach of one’s word. After her party lost heavily in the new election of January 2009, she stepped down as party leader and as leader of the parliamentary group.