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More than a year following the election that handed Donald Trump a clear-cut comeback victory, the Democratic party has yet to issued its election autopsy. However, last week, an influential progressive lobby group released its own. The Harris campaign, its writers contended, failed to connect with core constituencies because it failed to concentrate enough on addressing everyday financial worries. By prioritising the threat to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, liberals 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 needs to be fully absorbed 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 quickly mirror 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, backed by large swaths of working-class voters. But among establishment politicians and parties, it is hard to discern a response that is sufficient to challenging times.

Era-Defining Problems and Costly Solutions

The issues Europe faces are costly and historic. They encompass the war in Ukraine, sustaining the momentum of the green transition, addressing demographic change and building economies that are less vulnerable to bullying by Mr Trump and China. As per a Brussels-based thinktank, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could necessitate an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A major report last year on European economic competitiveness called for substantial investment in shared infrastructure, to be financed in part by jointly held EU debt.

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

However, 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 “budget hawks oppose the idea of shared debt, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are profoundly timid. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is overwhelmingly popular with voters. Yet the beleaguered centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Price of Inaction

The truth is that without such measures, the less well-off will bear the brunt of financial adjustment through austerity budgets and increased inequality. Bitter recent conflicts over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany testify to 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 welfare chauvinism. Ms Le Pen’s party, for example, has opposed 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

In the US, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as subsequent Medicaid cuts and fiscal benefits for the wealthy underlined. But without a convincing progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Absent a fundamental change in economic approach, societal agreements 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.