"Het kan wel."
"It can be done."
The slogan that carried Rob Jetten to victory in the 2025 elections holds an unmistakable echo — and almost a literal translation — within it: the optimism of Barack Obama's "yes we can" from his first presidential campaign. And it was not the only thing Jetten borrowed from Obama. He set himself against division, reached out to voters who disagreed with him, and wanted to bring positive energy back into the country and its governance.
It marked a break with D66’s long-standing role as the party of the elite. In the past, too often the party explained mainly why things couldn’t be done, why there was no other choice, why warnings had to be issued about yet another populist, why people were getting it wrong after all. Like nearly every other party of the centre, D66 had become trapped in the ever-narrower goat tracks that Dutch technocracy could still offer for problems that had gone unsolved for years. The party had, like so many liberal and democratic parties, become largely reactionary.
The turnaround came unexpectedly and moved at breakneck speed. D66 — a social-liberal party that had never once won an election — transformed in a matter of months from a know-it-all elite club into a big tent where left and right of the centre found one another. Because for once, hope was being expressed about what the Netherlands can do, rather than about what it cannot.
How fast that shift went can be read off the calendar. It was only in March 2025 that Abundance appeared, the book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. A few months later D66 had woven the philosophy behind it — abundance against scarcity — recognisably into its campaign. I suspect strategists read the book and recognised in it something liberals once were and have long since lost: a revolutionary, shaping ideology, with a belief in progress. The party formulated “breakthroughs”: big plans and far horizons meant to offer a way out of the standstill, such as building ten new cities.
The core of abundance is to view politics along the divide between abundance and scarcity. For far too long, Klein and Thompson argue, politics — progressive politics very much included — has focused on scarcity: dividing up what already exists, blocking big plans, emphasising what is impossible, getting hopelessly tangled in once well-meant but nonsensical rules. It is precisely there that liberals across Europe have got stuck. They defend the old status quo against the shaping forces of the radical right, and have forgotten that the only way to give form to change begins with embracing it — not with clinging desperately to a world that has been disappearing for a decade.
Three things made Jetten’s campaign a break with the past.
The flag. Jetten showed himself with a large Dutch tricolour behind him; D66 members were handed little flags. A striking choice, because the most pro-European party of all had for years shown no interest in the flag, which had meanwhile been claimed by the nationalist right. Jetten put pride in the country front and centre and reclaimed the symbol. He set patriotism against nationalism: the first is pride in your country and in what you can do, the second something suffocating that shuts people out.
Obamabundance. Jetten’s campaign breathed confidence in one’s own ability and a focus on creating progress and abundance. With it he set himself against both the scarcity thinking of the radical right and the technocratic nothing-is-possible thinking of the centre. Ten new cities, so everyone could live somewhere again. Better education. Affordable green energy of our own making. The healthiest generation ever. The charge that such grand goals are unattainable he parried simply: if you don’t set it as a goal, you’ll certainly never reach it. A contagious optimism.
The confrontation and the outstretched hand. When his party office was stormed by a violent mob, Jetten took the confrontation on. But shortly afterwards he spoke, live on one of the country’s biggest talk shows, with Jayden — a boy who had been at the demonstration without using violence. He took the boy’s concerns seriously and showed that disagreeing doesn’t mean you can no longer talk to one another. In doing so he built a bridge between the two poles of Dutch politics.
Together those three things made Jetten into something new: someone who joined the wish to build a new world to the values of the old one. Someone who showed that you can be an opponent of extreme forces and take people’s concerns seriously at the same time.
But his real challenge begins only now. Jetten himself spoke about the importance of vibes: “The choice isn’t so much about right or left, but about which vibe you feel with a party.” And for a large part that was his campaign: finding the right vibe and bringing the country along in it. You can win an election that way — but can you also lead a country and reach breakthroughs that way? He now heads a difficult minority cabinet that can count on the support of just 66 seats, a minority in parliament. The majorities for his breakthroughs he still has to find, and they won’t be granted to him automatically.
I wonder whether that vibe sits deep enough — in Jetten and in his party. Has it truly sunk in what it means to pursue a politics of abundance? To actually want to realise breakthroughs? The step Jetten and his party must now take is the one from vibe to vision. The thinking in terms of abundance has to resonate down to the capillaries of policy, not just in the tone of a party congress. He must let the spirit of his campaign return in the way he and his party govern as leaders of the Netherlands: not afraid to fail, daring to try new things, eyes fixed forward, setting the greatest of goals and not giving up — not getting bogged down in the slow machinations of Dutch compromise politics — before he has, for the most part, achieved them.
If he manages that, Jetten will grow from a successful campaign politician into a true national leader. And into an example for democratic parties across Europe.
