Angie's army

摘要

PERHAPS it was the impeccably proletarian setting: a vast former coal mine in the industrial Ruhr. Or perhaps it was the 1,500-strong crowd chanting "Martin! Martin! Martin!" Or perhaps it was the sound system blaring the upbeat 1990 hit "I've got the power". But for some reason Martin Schulz, the Social Democratic (SPD) candidate for Germany's chancellorship, got carried away and said something rash at his early-April rally in Essen. If the SPD won the state election here in North-Rhine Westphalia on May 14th, he proclaimed, it would go on to become "the strongest force in Germany" and eject Angela Mer-kel at the general election in September.