Mama Merkel wins & loses parliment elections

dilbert firestorm's Avatar
Merkel's party, CDU won an unprecedented 4th term in governing Germany. It is also her weakest showing in her 12 years of power.

she was in panic mode over the weekend urging german citizens to come out and vote.

https://www.afp.com/en/news/826/merk...rman-vote-push

the coalition math makes it very difficult due to the rise of a right wing party afd to the german govt. Merkel needs 355 seat to form a governing coalition in the Bundestag.

afd is now the 3rd largest german party after CDU & SPD.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/merkel-he...020926172.html

CDU/CSU 246 34.7%

SPD 153 21.6%

AfD 94 13.3%

FDP 80 11.3%

Die 69 9.7%

Grüne 67 9.4%
dilbert firestorm's Avatar
even thou Merkel won, she actually lost. she had the same problem as Hillary Clinton.

a refusal to listen to her constituents which lead to a trust issue.

that 13% of afd voters came from East Germany, they have a much more different viewpoint than those of West Germany.
dilbert firestorm's Avatar
a WSJ write up on the afd party before the weekend election.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/anti-im...ars-1505986206

Anti-Immigrant AfD Party Draws In More Germans as Vote Nears

By Anton Troianovski
Updated Sept. 21, 2017 5:36 a.m. ET

WISMAR, Germany—Candidate Georg Pazderski of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany spent nearly half his speech in this harbor town earlier this week highlighting the danger of Islamist terrorism. Chancellor Angela Merkel dispatched the topic in roughly 80 seconds in an address here the next day.

As this country’s election campaign reaches its crescendo ahead of Sunday’s vote, its participants appear to be fighting different battles. Ms. Merkel, looking assured of victory, is engaging her opponents in mainstream parties on pensions, infrastructure, education, and economic policy. The Alternative for Germany is creeping up in the polls while positioning itself as the only party sounding the alarm about what it says is the existential threat posed by Muslim immigration.

The AfD, as the party is known, is now polling above 10%, less than its peak early this year and well below what other far-right parties elsewhere in Europe have garnered in recent elections. But for Germany, if the polls hold, its impending entry into parliament would mark a turning point in a country where right-wing populism has long been banished from mainstream discussion. And it would show that despite Germany’s thriving economy, an undercurrent of popular distrust and discontent threatens to unsettle a largely stable political system.

The unease is especially apparent here in the former East Germany, where unemployment is higher and the mainstream political parties less deeply anchored than in the more prosperous former West. But AfD is drawing rising support from across the country, polls show.
Interviews with AfD supporters conducted in recent weeks, from the German southwest to here on the Baltic seacoast, yielded one common complaint: Mainstream politicians, the voters said, don’t take their concerns about immigration seriously enough.

The party “clearly discusses problems that all the other parties have been concealing until now,” said civil servant Uwe-Schulz Kopanski, referring to immigration as the biggest one. “These lies, these lies, these lies—people have had enough.”

In the center of Wismar, a Baltic seaport town of about 45,000 people, an outdoor-goods store advertises $7 cans of self-defense spray next to the thermoses and water bottles in its window.
“The demand is very, very high in Wismar because there are many foreigners,” an employee said.

Around the corner in City Hall, Mayor Thomas Beyer said the share of foreigners in town had increased to about 6% from 4% since 2015, in part because of the influx of asylum seekers. The data didn’t show any increase in violent crime as a result, he said. But, he noted, many voters were unsettled by change—and a significant number were supporting the party that has become Germany’s most prominent symbol of protest against the establishment.

“The parties, in part, no longer speak the language of the people,” Mr. Beyer said, counting his own center-left Social Democrats among those guilty of losing touch.

Ms. Merkel came to Wismar on Tuesday and spent the first 20 minutes of her speech on economic issues—the car industry, pensions, agriculture, taxes, and debt. She briefly promised better surveillance of terror suspects and tougher laws allowing the detention of rejected asylum applicants who are considered security risks. She said Germany was now better prepared to respond to the global refugee crisis, meaning that the chaos of 2015, when hundreds of thousands of refugees streamed into the country, would never be repeated.

She closed, however, by warning that isolationism could carry big risks for a country that makes much of its wealth from exports.
“We must understand that we cannot only take care of ourselves,” Ms. Merkel said.

The previous day, leading AfD politicians took a different tack at their own rally here. The mainstream parties have yet to “see reason and finally take care of the security of German citizens,” Mr. Pazderski said. He and deputy party chairwoman Beatrix von Storch both said deportations of rejected asylum seekers were happening too slowly.

“In addition to a heart, we have a brain,” Ms. von Storch said of her party.

The AfD, founded in 2013 with an initial focus on opposing the bailout of cash-starved member states of the eurozone currency union, surged in the polls to around 15% in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis. Earlier this year it sagged amid infighting at the top, but it has ticked back over 10% in recent weeks, drawing crowds across the country.

In the village of Burghaun-Steinbach in central Germany, local AfD candidate Martin Hohmann brought a worn copy of the Qur’an with him and read aloud passages he said showed Islam to be a religion incompatible with the West. In the southwestern city of Pforzheim, the party filled a hall of more than 1,000 people earlier this month and promised to form a parliamentary opposition so intense “you’ve never seen it before.”

The party’s ratings have risen despite widespread criticism in the German news media of openly xenophobic statements from some of its leaders. Alexander Gauland, who coleads the party ticket, said he wanted to “dispose of” a German-born politician of Turkish heritage by sending her to Turkey and stood by the statement even after Ms. Merkel accused him of racism.

Alexander Gauland of the anti-immigration AfD party at a press conference in Berlin on Monday. Photo: Jens Jeske/Ropi/Zuma Press

“This is a party that’s finally showing protest,” said Martin Schmaltz, a 28-year-old bus driver at the event in Wismar who was considering voting for the AfD. The party, he said, says what “the German citizen has on the tip of his tongue but can’t say out loud.”

If the AfD performs as well as some polls predict and Ms. Merkel forms another so-called grand coalition with the center-left Social Democrats, the party would emerge as the biggest opposition force in German parliament. All other parties have pledged not to work with the AfD in parliament, meaning it will have no direct influence on government policy. But analysts say the party’s success could embolden conservatives in Ms. Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union, which has moved to the left during her 12-year tenure. And the AfD’s performance, some of them say, could highlight the pitfalls of avoiding divisive topics like immigration in election campaigns.

Mainstream parties “are trying to bracket out these issues, especially refugees and migration, but people care about them,” said Nikolaus Werz, a political scientist at the University of Rostock. “This was perhaps not smart, because the issue was practically ceded to the AfD as a result.”

Write to Anton Troianovski at anton.troianovski@wsj.com

Appeared in the September 22, 2017, print edition as 'German Populists Redirect Race.'
dilbert firestorm's Avatar
good analysis of the german pre-election. there are some topics you can't avoid discussing.

Mainstream parties “are trying to bracket out these issues, especially refugees and migration, but people care about them,” said Nikolaus Werz, a political scientist at the University of Rostock. “This was perhaps not smart, because the issue was practically ceded to the AfD as a result.”
[QUOTE=dilbert firestorm;1060011201
a refusal to listen to her constituents which lead to a trust issue.
.[/QUOTE]

Then why the hell did those voters PUT HER BACK IN charge??

IMO if they get any more terror attack there, we should all laugh the fuck at them for their idiocy in putting her back in office... AND EXPECT NOT one lick of sympathy.
dilbert firestorm's Avatar
Then why the hell did those voters PUT HER BACK IN charge??

IMO if they get any more terror attack there, we should all laugh the fuck at them for their idiocy in putting her back in office... AND EXPECT NOT one lick of sympathy. Originally Posted by garhkal
apparently enough Germans trust Merkel to keep the deustchland safe & steady. only 35% of the german population voted for Merkels party...

there aren't a lot of good choices for germans to pick in this particular election.

the only good thing about this; is that there is a lot of people very upset that the populist wave is making inroads in Europe, particularly Germany!!! The wave is not over!!!

She's not quite back in charge. their form of government is a parliament democracy and requires coalition building which can take weeks or months depending on what deals are offered.

she has extremely limited options to form a union government.

I think she may have no choice to call another election if she can't form a government. She apparently has ruled out running a minority government.
Yssup Rider's Avatar
apparently enough Germans trust Merkel to keep the deustchland safe & steady. only 35% of the german population voted for Merkels party... Originally Posted by dilbert firestorm
Less than 35% of America's population voted for Twitler, BUTTPLUG.

No wonder the Nazis are trying to make a comeback here.

Good luck, Heinz. You're ass is sucking buttermilk!!!
dilbert firestorm's Avatar
Less than 35% of America's population voted for Twitler, BUTTPLUG.

No wonder the Nazis are trying to make a comeback here.

Good luck, Heinz. You're ass is sucking buttermilk!!! Originally Posted by Yssup Rider

you fucking moron of a swine. you're fucking wrong!!!

its not 35% Trump got, its 46%.

damn for your inbred stupidy, you deserve a kick in the balls.

piece of swiney shit!
Yssup Rider's Avatar
you fucking moron of a swine. you're fucking wrong!!!

its not 35% Trump got, its 46%.

damn for your inbred stupidy, you deserve a kick in the balls.

piece of swiney shit! Originally Posted by dilbert firestorm
That's a LIE. You said Merkel's party got 35% of the POPULATION, you incredibly stupid peckerwood.

apparently enough Germans trust Merkel to keep the deustchland safe & steady. only 35% of the german population voted for Merkels party... Originally Posted by dilbert firestorm
But at least you bumped your own thread multiple times before anyone responded. And you still didn't realize how dumb your comment was.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAJAJAJAJAJAJA!! !!!

Stupid. You got your ass handed to you and didn't even realize it.
dilbert firestorm's Avatar
apparently enough Germans trust Merkel to keep the deustchland safe & steady. only 35% of the german population voted for Merkels party.. Originally Posted by dilbert firestorm
Less than 35% of America's population voted for Twitler, BUTTPLUG. Originally Posted by Yssup Rider
you fucking moron of a swine. you're fucking wrong!!!

its not 35% Trump got, its 46%.

damn for your inbred stupidity, you deserve a kick in the balls.

piece of swiney shit! Originally Posted by dilbert firestorm
That's a LIE. You said Merkel's party got 35% of the POPULATION, you incredibly stupid peckerwood.

[snip]

Stupid. You got your ass handed to you and didn't even realize it. Originally Posted by Yssup Rider
re-read the above quotes.

what I said was correct u fucking moronic swine.

1. Merkel got 35% of the vote from the german population.

2. Twitler aka Trump got 46% of the vote from the american population.

your inbred ass got spanked up and handed to you!!!!

this is what you really need peckerswine!!!
re-read the above quotes.

what I said was correct u fucking moronic swine.

1. Merkel got 35% of the vote from the german population.

2. Twitler aka Trump got 46% of the vote from the american population.

your inbred ass got spanked up and handed to you!!!!

this is what you really need peckerswine!!!
Originally Posted by dilbert firestorm

That's exactly what Shit Worshipper wants except a "I'va biggen" in it's mouth at the same time...