German Elections & Politics

[Intell]

Was putting up election posters in Berlin last sunday and it became a surreal experience again.

First, some 50-year-old guy who is completely naked except for his briefs is opening his window in the first floor and starts an incoherent rant in a thick Saxon accent: "You're not doing anything except letting all those refugees in!" First he claims that he's voting AfD, later he's yelling that he's voting "red" (presumably The Left?).

Later that day a seemingly unhinged woman is harrassing us and wants to know if we have a permit for putting up election posters and on what legal basis we're doing this. Our answer that you don't need a permit for this and that the state's electoral law allows us to do it, doesn't convince her at all. Instead, she wants to write down our names so that she can file charges with the police later on. Our refusal to give her our names leads her to write down the license plate of our rental car.

Why, or why, are those people allowed to vote?

Why shouldn't they? No-one can be intelligent as you, oh wise one.

[Intell]

Was putting up election posters in Berlin last sunday and it became a surreal experience again.

First, some 50-year-old guy who is completely naked except for his briefs is opening his window in the first floor and starts an incoherent rant in a thick Saxon accent: "You're not doing anything except letting all those refugees in!" First he claims that he's voting AfD, later he's yelling that he's voting "red" (presumably The Left?).

Later that day a seemingly unhinged woman is harrassing us and wants to know if we have a permit for putting up election posters and on what legal basis we're doing this. Our answer that you don't need a permit for this and that the state's electoral law allows us to do it, doesn't convince her at all. Instead, she wants to write down our names so that she can file charges with the police later on. Our refusal to give her our names leads her to write down the license plate of our rental car.

Why, or why, are those people allowed to vote?

Why shouldn't they? No-one can be intelligent as you, oh wise one.

I'm merely treating the scum in the same manner the scum has treated me for the past one and a half year or so. An eye for an eye. While this won't necessarily lead to justice, at least I'll have my vengeance.

And what did they do wrong, they have a perfect right to do that, and they have a perfect right to oppose refugees, and the woman, also while probably wrong, doesn't deserved to be called scum nor is the man.

The greens are a utter sh**t party as well, serving middle class interests, with no concerns for actual working class people.

[Intell]

Uh, is there anything specific about 1967 that would make it a reference point for quality of life?

 
 
Not in quality but the society changed drastically after the protests of 1968. Racism and Sexism all of a sudden were bad things, some people are angry about that till today.   
 
_____________ 
 
Todays survey by Civey for the newspaper "Tagesspiegel": 
 
CDU: 34,3% 
SPD: 20,7% 
AfD: 14% 
Linke: 10,2% 
Grüne 10,1% 
FDP: 6% 
Others: 4,7% 
 
Funny actually that through the sheer existence of the AfD the AfD voters get either the same again or the same with more feminism and gay rights. 
 
By the way since Die Linke decided to nominate Wagenknecht and the SPD most likely went for Gabriel I will probably vote Green in November.

What's exactly wrong with her? Not supporting an utterly naive policy on asylum seekers, that's bound to get the far right on the rise. Wagenknecht, one of the best politicians in Germany and in the EU as a whole.

:/

[Intell]

What's exactly wrong with her? Not supporting an utterly naive policy on asylum seekers, that's bound to get the far right on the rise.

 
 
When your policies are determined by how to get a lot of votes instead of your convictions then you are a pretty bad socialist. People like Rosa Luxemburg, Otto Wels and Karl Liebknecht died for what they believe in, Wagenknecht on the other hand picks up far right positions for a percentage point in the polls.   
 
You know where she gave her first interview after being crowned candidate of Die Linke? The German state news? A renowned newspaper like Süddeutsche or Zeit? No, Russia Today. Her affiliation towards Moscow is widely known and with it her position towards the US. Putin and Assad can bomb East Aleppo to the ground but for Mrs. Wagenknecht that is obviously only the fault of the US. Of course she also supported the referendum in Crimea despite armed gunman in every polling station. International agreements like the Budapest Memorandum? Who gives a sh**t! 
 
But wait, there is one American politician she showed appreciations for before. It's an old weirdo called Donald Trump. She praised him because he understood that large investments in infrastructure are needed. Well yeah, but his biggest and only tangible infrastructure project is a ing stupid wall at the Mexican border. 
 
Now let's talk about her "realistic asylum policy". A sentence she repeated over and over again is that "Who missuses his guest right shall lose his guest right." But we are not talking about guest right here, asylum is a human right and deporting people into war zones is against our constitution as Karlsruhe already decided. Then she is talking about limits for asylum - limiting a human right? And next we put a limit on free speech and equality? But I mean who sh**ts on Budapest and Schengen probably sh**ts on Geneva as well. Besides that she hasn't named anything specific to fix the situation, just populism, no ideas. 

Her policies, are socialist, and even more so than the greens, you get into alliances into CDU-CSU, and implement austerity on the backs of the poor, which is why she criticized the left-wing government of Berlin, which while claiming to be leftist, offered no real solutions apart fro the status quo of austerity and neoliberalism.

Her position on the US, and Russia, I could care less. It was the US, who started this whole situation in syria, in a war that it has no business getting involved in.

On the Ukrainian solution, I could also care less, as it is a battle between NATO expansion and Russian expansion, two bad sides, as the US broke also broke on the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe. Both sides are awful and the least thing we should be doing is supporting an Ukrainian government with significant racist, and fascist elements in it.

"Who misuses his guest right shall lose his guest right." Whoever misuses their privilege, granted by the german government for refuge should lose their right to live in Germany, and they should be deported, or face lengthy jail sentence. Those who break the laws of their host country, and commit a crime have lost their right to asylum in such a country, that is simple, there is nothing in Geneva that says otherwise. Refugees in need of help, should be accepted into Germany, in a controlled with thorough checks, once accepted if committed crimes, they have lost their status as a genuine refugee, and can be deported, as there are lots more genuine people in Syria, that could be granted refuge that criminals.d

[Intell]

AfD logic at work: 70% support my policies, but are voting for evil left-wing anti-Germans. Makes sense.

Take it this way: 70% may hold a wide range of more or less critical opinions regarding 2015's immigration politics (I am one of them). But that doesn't mean that they support the AfD (I mean most of them don't even vote AfD...). And that's a good thing and the German progressives should be glad instead of telling people: "Then f**ing vote AfD already. We don't even want to be voted by people like you. You're enabling the far-right. You're as bad as them."

There's a very easy answer: They support AfD, they simply don't know yet. The wide majority of Germans is heavily manipulated by the left-wing media (we don't even have a center-right media like Fox News here) and for lots of people it's only possible to inform themself through the lying press and the governments TV channels they have to pay for. Germany is a left-wind opinion dictatorship These days with a 60% non-left electorate which believes the CDU/CSU would be "non-left" because they always talk anti-Left in Talk Shows and election campaign. They are like John McCain: campaign like a Conservative, govern like a Liberal.

The facts are absoluetly clear, you simply either don't like them or you haven't figured out what is going on ;-)

Your stupidity astounds me.

[Intell]

AfD logic at work: 70% support my policies, but are voting for evil left-wing anti-Germans. Makes sense.

Take it this way: 70% may hold a wide range of more or less critical opinions regarding 2015's immigration politics (I am one of them). But that doesn't mean that they support the AfD (I mean most of them don't even vote AfD...). And that's a good thing and the German progressives should be glad instead of telling people: "Then f**ing vote AfD already. We don't even want to be voted by people like you. You're enabling the far-right. You're as bad as them."

There's a very easy answer: They support AfD, they simply don't know yet. The wide majority of Germans is heavily manipulated by the left-wing media (we don't even have a center-right media like Fox News here) and for lots of people it's only possible to inform themself through the lying press and the governments TV channels they have to pay for. Germany is a left-wind opinion dictatorship These days with a 60% non-left electorate which believes the CDU/CSU would be "non-left" because they always talk anti-Left in Talk Shows and election campaign. They are like John McCain: campaign like a Conservative, govern like a Liberal.

The facts are absoluetly clear, you simply either don't like them or you haven't figured out what is going on ;-)

Your stupidity astounds me.

For Socialists, reality always sounds like stupidity. No real surprise ;-)
But nice to see that the truth hurts you so much :-D

Just saw your "arguments" in the Kasich/Clinton-Thread, well, I guess I walked into a real powerhouse of debating... (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=256742.msg5485180#new)

Stupidity deserves no response.

[Intell]

I wrote a long text and then I was logged out and the text was blown away... What a year 2000 Website...

I'll go to lunch now to cool my anger now and write it again later...

*piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiep* *piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiep*

The internet censors fascists, there's hope for us all.

(I'm joking of course.)

[Intell]

The only people in Germany who would be Republicans in the US would be supporters of the NPD and maybe some AfD people. Everyone else would be a Democrat.

I would assume the NPD is way too leftist economically and fiscally to be a good match for the Republican Party.

However, I'd say that members of the AfD are the spot-on equivalent to the mainstream GOP we know today. Especially, since some of the economic and fiscal ideas they've discussed make look the FDP like Marxists.

The average voter of the AfD is a different matter entirely, since they've often defected from the Left Party (or SPD) and either don't know or don't care about the AfD's economic policies. They care only about the AfD being anti-establishment and anti-immigrant.

Isn't it most Afd voters defected from the CDU, then with a drop off SPD. The ammount of Linkie voters which switch to Afd, is quite little, compared to those two parties.

[Intell]

The fact that some of Left's voters, are persuaded to vote for AfD, based upon their social conservatism/populist rhetoric, does not mean a vast majority of Linkie Voters (In the East, and especially in the west), are actually leftist.

[Intell]

There is another obvious reason for Left being more common as a source for AfD votes in the East: there are not too many Left voters in the West to begin with. Except in the Saarland and the city-states they are nearly invisible in the West.

It is (the few Western exceptions notwithstanding) a socially conservative populist illiberal Eastern party.

It's voters are socially conservative illiberal populists. It's members and leaders not so much.

That's true for progressives like Katja Kipping. Not so much for the populist matrimony of Oskar Lafontaine and Sarah Wagenknecht.

I still have yet to see how Lafontaine is socially conservative and illiberal (he criticises some immigrants, and the immigration rate, at the most).

I still have yet to see how Wagenknecht is socially conservative (she criticise  the extremes of the refugee policy, and doesn't want refugees that are criminals, that's all).

 I know the blarite/centrist/social liberal and not anything left, likes to use populist as an insult, but it really isn't.

[Intell]

Meanwhile the younger you are the more likely you are to vote Green. The exact opposite is true for the CDU. The AfD is -strongest among people between 40 and 65.

This has always been the case though.

The archetypal Green voter is an urban woman between the ages of 18 and 30 with either an university degree or on the road to obtaining one. The archetypal AfD voter is an unemployed male without high school degree from East Germany who's between 40 and 60. The archetypal CDU voter is a male Catholic pensioner.

Actually the average social position of a party is almost never that low, also because at least in Germany turnout correlates with class.

And surprisingly the CDU has had more female than male support in all federal elections except 1980 and 2002. Female Catholic pensioners are the archetypal CDU voters. It's true.

It's true that the AfD is even stronger with emyployed lower class workers than with unemployed. But the unemployed come a close second and the AfD has been the strongest/largest party in that group in some recent state elections.

You're right about old, conservative women going for the CDU strongly, even though the edge they have over men isn't usually that big (1% to 2% in last years' state elections). It may be stronger in federal elections, probably due to a Merkel effect.

I expected the unemployed to vote for Linkie + the poor unskilled working class, with the employed, skilled medium-paid working class, or unskilled medium-paid working class voting for AfD. In the East, at least.

[Intell]

From that graph, we can see there s no noticeable difference with the overall votes of the left and right, between the unemployed, workers and the general public. With the rise of the AfD, accounting for the drop of CDU, and FDP, aside for more votes for more small parties.

Do poorer Germans, vote more left wing than richer Germans, or has the left failed in this regard as well?

[Intell]

So on the whole does the overall left, get a higher % among the poor and working class, than among the middle/upper classes.

[Intell]

Today, 3 traditional "ash-wednesday" beer tent meetings took place, one for the SPD, one for the CSU and one for the AfD.

At the SPD event, Austrian Chancellor Kern was present and giving a speech.



At the CSU event ("Bavaria First"), Austrian Interior Minister Sobotka was present.

And at the AfD event, FPÖ-leader Strache was giving a speech ... which was better liked by the audience than the speech of AfD-leader Frauke Petry:



http://www.mittelbayerische.de/bayern/niederbayern-nachrichten/strache-stiehlt-petry-die-schau-21764-art1492609.html

Why not the other parties?

[Intell]

Martin Schulz was officially nominated as candidate for chancellor and as the new party leader of the SPD. He won 605 of 605 votes cast, and thus a result of 100%. That has never happened before in the SPD. He attacked Trump by saying: "Whoever labels free reporting as fake news, whoever deals with deals with the media selectively, applies the axe on the roots of democracy."

In his farewell speech, Gabriel indirectly endorsed Emanuel Macron for president in France by saying: "Imagine how we can change Europe if Martin Schulz becomes chancellor of Germany and Emanuel Macron becomes president of France!" Even though Hamon does not really have a chance in this race, Gabriel endorsed an independent candidate over the nominee of the SPD's sister party, which is notable IMO.

Well the Socialist Minister-President of Wallonia and de facto leader was at Hamon's rally, but apart from him and Corbyn (lol) I expect the leaders of the socialist parties in Europe to model themselves off the Macron-Schulz axis of social liberalism.

Our transformation to the false dichotomous form of American democracy is almost complete.

Isn't Schulz running on a fairly left-wing platform? He promised to roll back some of Agenda 2010's reforms, while Macron is running on a French version of Agenda 2010.

Yep, the comparison is stupid.

[Intell]

#fk democracy amrite.

[Intell]

It just shows that you can't "feed the tiger" of far-right politics by making concessions like Maassen. Concessions don't reduce their support. There is no way to reduce far-right support except ideological combat.

reduce immigration and crime maybe ?

Immigration has been at a constant rate as before and crime has been reducing.