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Over a year after the election that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut comeback victory, the Democratic party has yet to issued its postmortem analysis. But, last week, an prominent liberal advocacy organization released its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its writers contended, failed to connect with key voter blocs because it did not focus enough on tackling basic economic anxieties. In focusing on the threat to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, progressives neglected the bread-and-butter issues that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for Europe

As the EU braces for a turbulent era of politics between now and 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 hopeful 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 large swaths of blue-collar voters. Yet among mainstream leaders and parties, it is difficult to see a response that is sufficient to challenging times.

Era-Defining Challenges and Costly Solutions

The issues Europe faces are costly and era-defining. They encompass the war in Ukraine, maintaining the momentum of the green transition, dealing with demographic change and building economies that are more resilient 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 annual EU defence spending. A major study last year on European economic competitiveness demanded substantial investment in shared infrastructure, to be financed in part by collective EU debt.

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

However, at both the pan-European and national levels, there continues to be a lack of boldness when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “frugal” nations oppose the idea of collective borrowing, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are deeply unambitious. In France, the idea of a wealth tax is overwhelmingly popular with voters. But the beleaguered centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – will not consider 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 austerity budgets and increased inequality. Acrimonious recent disputes 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 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 foreign residents.

Avoiding a Political Gift for Nationalists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as later healthcare reductions and tax breaks for the wealthy underlined. Yet without a compelling progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the election circuit. Absent a radical shift in economic approach, social contracts across the continent risk being torn apart. Governments must steer clear of handing this political gift to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.