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Over a year after the election that delivered Donald Trump a decisive comeback victory, the Democratic Party has yet to issued its postmortem analysis. However, last week, an influential progressive lobby group published 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, liberals overlooked the bread-and-butter issues that were foremost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for European Capitals

As the EU braces for a tumultuous period 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 newly released national security strategy indicates, is optimistic that “nationalist movements in Europe will soon replicate Mr Trump’s success. Within Europe's Franco-German engine room, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) lead the polls, supported by significant segments of blue-collar voters. Yet among mainstream leaders and parties, it is hard to discern a strategy that is adequate 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 developing economies that are less vulnerable to bullying by Mr Trump and China. According to a European 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 demanded substantial investment in public goods, to be financed in part by jointly held EU debt.

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

However, 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 “budget hawks resist the idea of shared debt, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are deeply unambitious. 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 – will not consider such a move.

The Cost of Political Paralysis

The reality is that without such measures, the less affluent will bear the brunt of fiscal tightening through austerity budgets and greater inequality. Bitter recent conflicts over retirement reforms in both France and Germany highlight a developing struggle over the future of the European welfare state – 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 opposed moves to raise the retirement age and has said that it would focus any benefit cuts at non-French nationals.

Preventing a Strategic Advantage for Nationalists

In the US, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as later healthcare reductions and fiscal benefits for the wealthy underlined. But in the absence of a compelling progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they worked on the election circuit. Absent a fundamental change in economic approach, societal agreements across the continent are in danger of being ripped up. Policymakers must avoid handing this electoral boon to the populist movements already on the march in Europe.