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Over a year after the election that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut return victory, the Democratic party has yet to released its postmortem analysis. But, recently, an prominent progressive lobby group released its own. The Harris campaign, its authors argued, failed to connect with key voter blocs because it failed to concentrate enough on addressing everyday financial worries. By prioritising the menace to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives overlooked the kitchen-table concerns that were foremost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for Europe

As the EU braces for a turbulent era of politics from now until the end of the decade, that is a lesson that needs to be fully understood in European capitals. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy indicates, is optimistic that “patriotic” parties in Europe will soon replicate Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s core nations, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) lead the polls, supported by significant segments of blue-collar voters. But among establishment politicians and parties, it is hard to discern a response that is adequate to challenging times.

Era-Defining Challenges and Costly Solutions

The issues Europe faces are costly and era-defining. They encompass the war in Ukraine, maintaining the momentum of the green transition, addressing demographic change and building economies that are less vulnerable to pressure by Mr Trump and China. As per a European thinktank, the new age of global instability could require an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A major study last year on European economic competitiveness called for massive investment in public goods, to be financed in part by jointly held EU debt.

Such a fiscal paradigm shift would stimulate growth figures that have flatlined for years.

However, at both the pan-European and national levels, there remains a deficit of courage when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “frugal” nations resist the idea of shared debt, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are profoundly timid. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is overwhelmingly popular with voters. Yet the embattled centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Price of Political Paralysis

The reality is that without such measures, the less well-off will bear the brunt of financial adjustment through spending cuts and increased inequality. Bitter recent conflicts over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany highlight a developing struggle over the future of the European welfare state – a trend that the RN and the AfD have eagerly leveraged to promote a politics of nativist social policy. Ms Le Pen’s party, for example, has resisted moves to raise the retirement age and has said that it would target any benefit cuts at non-French nationals.

Preventing a Strategic Advantage for Nationalists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s promises to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as subsequent Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy underlined. Yet without a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Absent a fundamental change in fiscal policy, social contracts across the continent risk being ripped up. Policymakers must avoid giving this political gift to the populist movements already on the march in Europe.