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More than a year following the election that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut comeback victory, the Democratic Party has still not issued its election autopsy. However, last week, an influential progressive lobby group published its own. The Harris campaign, its authors contended, did not resonate with core constituencies because it did not focus enough on addressing basic economic anxieties. By prioritising the menace to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives overlooked the bread-and-butter issues that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for European Capitals

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 newly released national security strategy makes clear, is optimistic that “nationalist movements 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) top the polls, supported by significant segments of working-class voters. But among mainstream leaders and parties, it is difficult to see a strategy that is adequate to troubling times.

Era-Defining Problems and Costly Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are expensive 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 pressure by Mr Trump and China. According to a European research institute, the new age of global instability could necessitate an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A significant report last year on European economic competitiveness called for substantial investment in shared infrastructure, to be financed in part by collective EU debt.

Such a economic transformation would boost 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 revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “frugal” nations resist the idea of collective borrowing, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are deeply timid. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is overwhelmingly popular with voters. But the beleaguered centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Cost of Political Paralysis

The reality is that in the absence of such measures, the less well-off will pay the price of financial adjustment through spending cuts and increased inequality. Acrimonious recent disputes over retirement reforms 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 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 foreign residents.

Preventing a Political Gift for Populists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s promises to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as subsequent Medicaid cuts and fiscal benefits for the wealthy demonstrated. But in the absence of a compelling progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they worked on the election circuit. Without a radical shift in fiscal policy, societal agreements across the continent are in danger of being torn apart. Policymakers must avoid giving this electoral boon to the populist movements already on the rise in Europe.