#Netherlands#Left#FarRight: "The Dutch left, in particular the center-left, has responded to this diminishing share of the vote by developing an anxious style of electoral politics — equally shaken by and in awe of the successes of (far) right juggernauts. It has failed to hear the wake-up call to rebuild and recalibrate its own ideology. In spite of two decades of diminishing electoral returns, the (center-) left has not pursued a consistent effort to shift the terms of the political debate or regrow its share of the vote.
Last week’s election did nothing to reverse this trend — nor does it seem like anything will change soon. While the victory by Geert Wilders’s right-wing extremist Party for Freedom (PVV) suggests a major reshuffling of the Dutch political landscape, its gains mostly came from people who already voted for the (center-) right. Gains and losses for other parties, too, predominantly came from voters within their own political families or closely adjacent groups in the leaky center.
Over the past two decades, left-wing parties pursued fruitless strategies of parroting more “palatable” versions of far-right, anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim rhetoric in an effort to win back (mostly mythical) blue-collar voters supposed to have been “lost” to the populist right. In other moods, the PvdA presented itself as a responsible and capable party willing to do the dirty work of governing, courting nominally progressive voters in the center.
GL-PvdA leader Timmermans gave one of the clearest expressions of that anxious style in the lead-up to last week’s election when he argued, as a guest on a popular podcast, that while he would like to be like Bernie Sanders, in order to win, he must act like Joe Biden."
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