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Over a year following the vote that delivered Donald Trump a decisive comeback victory, the Democratic party has yet to issued its postmortem analysis. However, recently, an prominent progressive lobby group released its own. The Harris campaign, its writers contended, did not resonate with core constituencies because it failed to concentrate enough on tackling basic economic anxieties. In focusing on the threat to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives overlooked the kitchen-table concerns that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Warning for Europe

While Europe prepares for a turbulent era 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 optimistic that “nationalist movements in Europe will soon mirror Mr Trump’s success. Within Europe's Franco-German engine room, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) top the polls, backed by large swaths of blue-collar voters. But among establishment politicians and parties, it is hard to discern a response that is adequate to troubling times.

Major Challenges and Expensive Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are costly and historic. 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 bullying by Mr Trump and China. According to a Brussels-based research institute, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could necessitate an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A significant study last year on European economic competitiveness called for massive investment in public goods, to be financed in part by collective EU debt.

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

But, at both the EU-wide and national levels, there continues to be a lack of boldness when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks resist the idea of shared debt, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are deeply timid. In France, the idea of a wealth tax is overwhelmingly popular with voters. Yet the beleaguered centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Price of Political Paralysis

The truth is that without such measures, the less affluent will bear the brunt of fiscal tightening through spending cuts and increased inequality. Bitter recent conflicts over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany highlight a growing battle over the future of the European welfare state – a phenomenon that the RN and the AfD have happily exploited to promote a politics of welfare chauvinism. Ms Le Pen’s party, for example, has resisted moves to raise the retirement age and has stated that it would focus any benefit cuts at non-French nationals.

Avoiding a Political Gift for Nationalists

In the US, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as later Medicaid cuts and fiscal benefits for the wealthy underlined. But without a compelling progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the campaign trail. Without a fundamental change in economic approach, societal agreements across the continent risk being torn apart. Policymakers must avoid handing this electoral boon to the Trumpian forces already on the march in Europe.