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Over a year after the vote that handed Donald Trump a decisive return victory, the Democratic party has yet to issued its postmortem analysis. But, last week, an prominent progressive lobby group published its own. The Harris campaign, its authors argued, failed to connect with key voter blocs because it failed to concentrate enough on tackling everyday financial worries. By prioritising the menace to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, liberals neglected the kitchen-table concerns that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson 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 absorbed in European capitals. The White House, as its newly released national security strategy makes clear, is hopeful that “patriotic” parties in Europe will quickly 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. Yet among establishment politicians and parties, it is hard to discern a response that is adequate to troubling times.

Major Challenges and Expensive Solutions

The issues Europe faces are costly and era-defining. They include the war in Ukraine, maintaining the momentum of the green transition, dealing with demographic change and developing economies that are less vulnerable to bullying by Mr Trump and China. As per a Brussels-based research institute, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could require an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A major report last year on European economic competitiveness called for massive investment in shared infrastructure, to be partly funded by collective EU debt.

Such a economic transformation would boost growth figures that have flatlined for years.

But, at both the EU-wide and national levels, there continues to be a deficit of courage when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “frugal” nations resist the idea of shared debt, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are profoundly unambitious. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is overwhelmingly popular with voters. But the embattled centrist government – while 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 well-off will pay the price of financial adjustment through austerity budgets and greater inequality. Bitter recent disputes over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany testify to a growing battle over the future of the European social model – 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 non-French nationals.

Preventing a Political Gift for Nationalists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were largely insincere, as subsequent Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy underlined. But without a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the election circuit. Without a fundamental change in fiscal policy, societal agreements across the continent are in danger of being torn apart. Policymakers must avoid giving this political gift to the populist movements already on the march in Europe.