Sander Chan 陈文山 (he/him) 🇺🇦💚🍉

The far right tightened its grip in the Dutch elections. But for liberals, D66 offered a glimmer of hope. Here are five lessons from their campaign that liberals everywhere could take to heart. 1. Optimism. D66 understood that a civilisation obsessed with averting every possible ill renders itself incapable of doing any measurable good. For years, the Dutch left has often sounded like a nagging parent – “can’t do”, “won’t do”, “impossible”. Jetten flipped the script. His message wasn’t: “The world is doomed, so we must stop everything from flying to eating meatballs or even having children.” Instead he told people: “This country can do so much better, so why not get going?” It echoed the Yimby philosophy popularised by US writers @ezraklein and @DKThomp. 2. Progressive patriotism. For years, nationalism was considered the preserve of the right. Expressions of pride were ceded to the far-right Freedom party (PVV) and to farmers’ protests. D66 broke with that misplaced self-flagellation. It showed that one can take pride in a country ranked among the happiest in the world without excluding minorities or vilifying outsiders. At the D66 party congress, Jetten stood beaming beneath a billowing Dutch flag. 3. Take off the gloves when you need to. Many leaders have a fear of heated exchanges poisoning the political atmosphere. “When they go low, we go high” remains a mantra for many liberals. But elections are meant to expose policy differences – all the more so in a parliament with 15 parties. Jetten avoided needless squabbles with ideologically adjacent parties and focused instead on his polar opposite. 4. An unapologetically left wing economic story. D66 campaigned for a more progressive inheritance and gift tax, the abolition of a regressive mortgage interest deduction and, above all, higher rewards for work. The party even proposed a millionaires’ tax. And it worked. Voters are not afraid of such policies – polling shows that they want them. No anti-capitalist posturing, no talk of degrowth – just straightforward, good-old social democratic ideas. Liberals misread the public if they think voters fear such policies. 5. Build a big tent. Progressives who agree among themselves on 80% of issues often fixate on the 20% where they differ. Jetten broke that habit, opting instead to triangulate on major issues, including immigration, by building a broad, if imperfect, voter coalition. According to Ipsos I&O figures, 20% of those who voted D66 in this election came from the centre-left GreenLeft/Labour alliance (GL/PvdA), 13% from the centre-right NSC, 11% from the rightwing VVD, 9% were previous non-voters and even 7% had backed the far-right PVV. Since 2012, the overall progressive bloc has steadily shrunk. Jetten managed to reach into the rightwing electorate and build a big tent.