GERMANY - The German establishment is desperately clinging to power in defiance of democracy. Like in France, there is an open and crude effort to deny voters their democratic choice. Over in Saxony, the CDU barely squeaked out a win against the AfD, with results currently showing them both at 31%. There, again, the governing establishment Social Democrats were clobbered, coming in at just 7.5% support. The anti-establishment left split the vote between Bundestag parliamentarian Sahra Wagenknecht’s brand new BSW coalition (15.6% in Thuringia and 11.5% in Saxony) and Die Linkie, whose collective success suggests that the vote was more about a rejection of the establishment on all sides and only secondarily a right/left ideological one – just like in France. The idea of electoral losers adamantly working to deny voters their democratic choice seems to be a new trend in Europe as the populist right- and left-wing parties start racking up electoral wins.
Nothing quite screams “respect for democracy” like loading your post up with emojis and telling voters that although you’re pleased that they reduced your establishment left opponents (and Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s national governing socialist/green “stoplight coalition”) to a rump of 6.5%, you’ll nonetheless still have to do something about the fact that voters relegated you to second place (at 24%) behind the populist, anti-establishment right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) with 33%. And that “something” involves finding a way to keep the election’s actual winners away from the steering wheel. How? By making shady back-room deals with some of the other losers.