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Over a twelve months after the election that handed Donald Trump a decisive return victory, the Democratic party has still not issued its postmortem analysis. However, last week, an prominent progressive lobby group released its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its writers contended, failed to connect with key voter blocs because it failed to concentrate enough on tackling 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 Warning for Europe

As the EU braces for a turbulent era of politics from now until the end of the decade, that is a message that needs to be fully understood in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy makes clear, 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 working-class voters. Yet among mainstream leaders and parties, it is hard to discern a strategy that is sufficient to troubling times.

Era-Defining Problems and Costly 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 more resilient to bullying by Mr Trump and China. As per a European thinktank, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could require an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A major report last year on European economic competitiveness called for substantial investment in public goods, to be partly funded by collective EU debt.

Such a economic transformation would stimulate growth figures that have stagnated for years.

But, at both the EU-wide and national levels, there remains a deficit of courage when it comes to generating funds. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks oppose the idea of collective borrowing, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are profoundly unambitious. In France, the idea of a wealth tax is widely supported with voters. But the embattled centrist government – though 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 pay the price of fiscal tightening through spending cuts and greater inequality. Acrimonious recent conflicts over retirement reforms in both France and Germany testify to a growing battle over the future of the European social model – a phenomenon 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 Populists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s promises to protect blue‑collar interests were deeply disingenuous, as later Medicaid cuts and fiscal benefits for the wealthy demonstrated. Yet without a compelling progressive counteroffer 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. Governments must avoid handing this political gift to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.