German voters - with a mixture of bewilderment and dismay - are witnessing a continuing public policy battle that has gripped the Social Democrats over their dealings with a new force in German politics: the Left Party which, despite its East German Communist background, has notched up election successes in western Germany recently. It played on popular demand for greater social justice, whipped up by,of all people, a former SPD chairman. The Social Democrat leadership has been agonizing over when and how - if at all - to form coalitions with the Left party to contain this new "threat from the left" in the west. Some say coalitions would erode Social Democrat support even further, already at a very low ebb, others maintain that in politics you just have to be pragmatic: