we ve been knowing it for the for the past decade it seems is being turned upside down right now all the social democrats just read out the numbers at fifteen percent on the social democrats used to be one of the strongest parties in germany that lets former governments. we re used to these numbers for like fifteen percent from smaller parties but not from the social democrats the greens used to be their junior partner in the last as is pedia led coalition and they re even stronger than the social democrats right now the a if tea party the far right party who is by the way new in parliament stronger than the s.p.d. party so that s really unheard of and we re witnessing an increasingly fragmented party landscape that we ve been showing from other countries such as the netherlands for instance but not in germany so the fragmentation is now here at home in germany you know aspecific li about the current government voters issued a damning combination more than three quarters seventy six pe
read out the numbers at fifteen percent on the social democrats used to be one of the strongest parties in germany that led former governments. we re used to these numbers for like fifteen percent from smaller parties but not from the social democrats the greens used to be their junior partner in the last as is p.v. led coalition they re even stronger than the social democrats right now the a if tea party the far right party who is by the way new in parliament stronger than the s.p.d. party so that s really unheard of and we re witnessing an increasingly fragmented party landscape that we ve been knowing from other countries such as the netherlands for instance but not in germany so the fragmentation is now here at home in germany you know aspecific li about the current government voters issued a damning combination more than three quarters seventy six percent are quote dissatisfied were very dissatisfied with the conservative social democrat grand
kansas city and st. louis, as you point out. claire mccaskill a democrat, jay nixon, the governor, a democrat. but it has to be a specific kind of democrat. it has to be what we used to call a law and order democrat, a conservative social democrat. claire is like that, jay is like that. that s how you succeed as a democrat statewide in missouri. and you can t have any association with st. louis. is that still a sort of a mark on you as a democrat? the more st. louis you re associated with, the less shot you have statewide, that it s better to be kansas city, if anything else, like claire? but even kansas city is not really a guarantor of anything, because like a lot of states, chuck, missouri is split between urban and rural more than it is republican and democrat. and so if you re going to succeed like claire mccaskill, you have to make an appeal to rural and largely suburban voters as well. that s what she was successful at. that s what democrats have to do to win in this state
he flies back to d.c. later this afternoon. all right, it s tdr 50 time and this week we re going to the gateway to the west. some folks call it missouri. a few call it missouri, either way it s the state in our tdr 50 spotlight. for 100 years missouri was america s most reliable swing state but that hasn t been the case over a decade. from 1904 to 2004 the state correctly backed the electoral college winner 25 out of 26 times. by the late 90s, its swing state status started to fade. for a state that was always caught between the midwest and the south, it started to trend more towards being a southern state, at least as far as its conservative ideology. 2000 was the first year that we saw that. missouri split from the popular vote, that was the first, and stuck with the republican candidate in the three subsequent presidential elections. 2008 barack obama became the first democrat in history to win the presidency without carrying missouri. so what happened?
missouri will be firmly in the grip of the southern republican party for many, many years to come. and basically you outlined in one way how claire mccaskill and jay nixon have succeeded, but isn t it realistically they only won because their republican candidates were unpopular? yes, largely. as you know in all politics, you ve got to have somebody who teat somebody and that was clearly the case in 2012, for example, when claire mccaskill ran against todd akin. i told people before todd akin is just like mike huckabee without the sense of humor. that s how powerful charisma. right, the christian right is in the gop. but you can t win statewide just with that. you have to make a broader appeal. todd akin, of course, famously failed at that. but again, it s an uphill battle for every democrat statewide. republicans have an advantage. we should point out to your viewers, of course, that like a lot of southern states, the legislature is controlled by republicans.