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Over a twelve months following the election that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut comeback victory, the Democratic party has yet to released its postmortem analysis. However, last week, an prominent progressive lobby group released its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its authors contended, did not resonate with key voter blocs because it did not focus enough on addressing everyday financial worries. By prioritising the threat to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives overlooked the kitchen-table concerns that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for European Capitals

As the EU braces for a turbulent era of politics from now until the end of the decade, that is a lesson that must be fully understood in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its newly released national security strategy indicates, is optimistic that “nationalist movements in Europe will soon mirror Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s Franco-German engine room, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) top the polls, supported by large swaths of working-class voters. Yet among establishment politicians and parties, it is hard to discern a response that is adequate to challenging times.

Era-Defining Problems and Costly Solutions

The issues Europe faces are expensive and historic. They encompass the war in Ukraine, maintaining the momentum of the green transition, dealing with demographic change and developing economies that are more resilient to bullying by Mr Trump and China. According to a European research institute, the new age of geopolitical insecurity 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 partly funded by jointly held EU debt.

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

But, at both the pan-European and national levels, there continues to be a lack of boldness 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 deeply unambitious. In France, the idea of a wealth tax is widely supported with voters. Yet the embattled centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Cost of Inaction

The truth is that in the absence of such measures, the less well-off will pay the price of financial adjustment through spending cuts and greater inequality. Acrimonious recent conflicts over retirement reforms in both France and Germany testify to a developing struggle over the future of the European welfare state – a trend that the RN and the AfD have happily exploited 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 stated that it would target any benefit cuts at foreign residents.

Preventing a Political Gift for Nationalists

In the US, Mr Trump’s promises to protect blue‑collar interests were deeply disingenuous, as subsequent Medicaid cuts and fiscal benefits for the wealthy demonstrated. Yet in the absence of a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the election circuit. Without a fundamental change in fiscal policy, social contracts across the continent risk being ripped up. Policymakers must steer clear of giving this electoral boon to the populist movements already on the rise in Europe.