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More than a year after the vote that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut return victory, the Democratic party has yet to issued its postmortem analysis. However, last week, an prominent progressive lobby group published its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its authors argued, did not resonate with key voter blocs because it did not focus enough on tackling everyday financial worries. By prioritising the menace to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, progressives overlooked the kitchen-table concerns that were foremost in many people’s minds.

A Warning for European Capitals

As the EU braces for a tumultuous period of politics between now and 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 “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) top the polls, supported by large swaths of working-class voters. But among mainstream leaders and parties, it is difficult to see a strategy that is adequate to challenging times.

Era-Defining Problems and Expensive Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are costly and historic. They encompass 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. According to a Brussels-based 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 massive investment in shared infrastructure, to be financed in part by jointly held EU debt.

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

However, at both the pan-European and national levels, there remains a deficit of courage when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks oppose the idea of collective borrowing, and EU spending plans 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 – will not consider such a move.

The Price of Political Paralysis

The reality is that in the absence of such measures, the less well-off will bear the brunt of fiscal tightening through austerity budgets and increased inequality. Bitter recent disputes over retirement reforms in both France and Germany testify to a developing struggle over the future of the European welfare state – a trend 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 opposed moves to raise the retirement age and has said that it would target any benefit cuts at non-French nationals.

Preventing a Strategic Advantage for Populists

In the US, Mr Trump’s promises to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as later Medicaid cuts and fiscal benefits for the wealthy underlined. Yet in the absence of a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the election circuit. Without a radical shift in fiscal policy, social contracts across the continent risk being ripped up. Policymakers must steer clear of giving this political gift to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.