The country splits in the ideas... and we loose: The PvdA to the SP and the VVD to Wilders.

The past Sunday I assisted a debate in the Kwakoe podium, in Amsterdam, to discuss the groenlinks program with migrants, mostly from surinamese background. For a while I chatted with Cees Vendrik, before the debate started. Cees told me that one of the most clear results of the “Fortuyn revolution” was the irrelevance hat the content has today in the politics. A similar comment comes from Tom de Graaf today in the Volkskrant. He claims that the politics of today pays attention to performance and not any longer to contents.

So it shows the results of the elections.

If anything is clear is that we live in a divided country. Few years ago the election was carried by the populist right, and today is carried by the populist left. Groenlinks, in the center not being populist but surely leftwing, had loosed votes. Against every poll, the party of Wilders has won even more seats than us. So what we are looking at is a big movement against the neo conservative policy of the CDA, which express itself in his own “garantie op links”, the SP, instead of Groenlinks. And a resilient and relevant movement to the right, which votes Wilders instead of voting VVD.

In this environment, Groenlinks is the looser.

It could be that Cees, or De Graaf, are right. In a political environment in which performance stays on top of everything, Groenlinks has no chance. Our standpoints are nuanced, and surely not populist. We do not want to change that, and we will not. But under this analysis, we are doomed to the slow decrease that D66 faces today.

There is, though, a different analysis. It is hard to believe that Jan performs so much better than Femke. But it is possible -or at least discussable- that Jan is more clear than Femke. It is not about standpoints, and it is not about performance. It is about clarity.

Clarity is what the two big winners of this election share. We can argue against the SP and the PvV with hundred arguments, but there is no doubt in the voter what they stand for. Against muslims and against Balkenende. Well to the right and well to the left.

Irt might be that this country is hankering for performance. But it has rewarded ideological simplicity... at each extreme of the spectrum.