Germans on Sunday voted themselves into a tricky political environment that could leave the country torn between the far left and the far right – without a good in-between alternative. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) led the pack in the federal elections to the Bundestag, the German Parliament, with about 33% of the vote. But it lagged behind the mark it set four years ago, as did the results for the party’s coalition partner, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), which had just a little more than 20% of the vote. Merkel’s victory was tempered by the SPD immediately announcing that it would not work with her to form a coalition. That leaves Merkel and the CDU with just one possibility for forming a functional government — the so-called “Jamaican” option (the colors of three parties involved are the same as the Caribbean nation’s flag) – which in this case would mean a three-way coalition with the libertarian Free Democrats (FDP) and the progressive Green party.…