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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 issued its postmortem analysis. But, last week, an influential liberal advocacy organization published its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its writers contended, failed to connect with core constituencies because it did not focus enough on tackling basic economic anxieties. By prioritising the threat to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives overlooked the bread-and-butter issues that were foremost in many people’s minds.

A Warning for European Capitals

As the EU braces for a tumultuous period of politics from now until the end of the decade, that is a message that must be fully absorbed in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy makes clear, is hopeful that “patriotic” parties in Europe will quickly replicate Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s Franco-German engine room, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) lead the polls, backed by large swaths of working-class voters. Yet among establishment politicians and parties, it is difficult to see a response that is sufficient to troubling times.

Major Challenges and Costly Solutions

The issues Europe faces are expensive and era-defining. They encompass the war in Ukraine, sustaining the momentum of the green transition, dealing with 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 geopolitical insecurity could require an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A significant report last year on European economic competitiveness called for massive investment in public goods, to be partly funded by collective EU debt.

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

But, at both the EU-wide and national levels, there continues to be a deficit of courage when it comes to generating funds. The EU’s so-called “frugal” nations oppose the idea of shared debt, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are profoundly unambitious. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is widely supported with voters. Yet the embattled centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – will not consider such a move.

The Price of Inaction

The reality is that without such measures, the less well-off will bear the brunt of financial adjustment through austerity budgets and increased inequality. Bitter recent disputes over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany highlight a developing struggle over the future of the European welfare state – a phenomenon 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 focus any benefit cuts at non-French nationals.

Preventing a Political Gift for Nationalists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect blue‑collar interests were deeply disingenuous, as later Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy demonstrated. But without a compelling progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the election circuit. Absent a radical shift in economic approach, social contracts across the continent are in danger of being torn apart. Policymakers must steer clear of handing this electoral boon to the populist movements already on the march in Europe.