Angela Merkel, Squeezed by Far Right, Now Faces a Rising Left
The shocks of 2016 — Britain’s vote to leave the European Union
and the election of Donald J. Trump as president of the United States — have profoundly shaken Germany, which depends more than any other European nation on Pax Americana and global institutions set up after World War II.
His election coincided with a Social Democratic surge in polls since the center-left chose Martin Schulz, a
former president of the European Parliament, to lead them into battle against Ms. Merkel in the elections.
The center-left Social Democrat Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who has served in Ms. Merkel’s coalition government as foreign minister
for seven years, won the presidency with 931 votes in the 1,260-member assembly that elects the president to a five-year term.
Seven months before national elections in Germany, the prevailing wisdom has held
that Ms. Merkel, now seeking a fourth four-year term as chancellor, is most vulnerable to the rising popularity of the country’s far right, just as other populist, far-right parties are gaining in coming elections in the Netherlands and France.
That goes, he added, for individual European states "but also for our great partner country across the Atlantic." Once, it would have been rare for German politicians to lecture other democracies on values, especially the United States,
but Germany is now regarded as a critical pillar in upholding the liberal Western order, which is one reason the Sept. 24 national elections are being watched so closely.
He outpolled Ms. Merkel in personal popularity, 50 percent to 34 percent, in the Infratest dimap survey this month, albeit with a
slightly smaller degree of support than Ms. Merkel’s last Social Democratic challenger had at a similar stage of the 2013 race.
Sigmar Gabriel, the Social Democrat who has replaced Mr. Steinmeier as foreign minister, swiftly retaliated: "The radical
and ill-intentioned mockery" in American politics "should not be swept in to Germany," he said.
