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More than a year after the vote that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut return victory, the Democratic Party has still not released its election autopsy. However, recently, an influential progressive lobby group released its own. The Harris campaign, its writers argued, did not resonate with key voter blocs because it failed to concentrate enough on addressing everyday financial worries. In focusing on the threat to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, liberals neglected the bread-and-butter issues that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Warning for European Capitals

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 understood in European capitals. 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) lead the polls, supported by significant segments of blue-collar voters. But among mainstream leaders and parties, it is hard to discern a strategy that is sufficient to challenging times.

Era-Defining Problems and Expensive Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are expensive and era-defining. They include the war in Ukraine, sustaining the momentum of the green transition, dealing with demographic change and building economies that are more resilient to bullying by Mr Trump and China. As per a European thinktank, the new age of global instability could necessitate an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A significant report last year on European economic competitiveness demanded massive investment in shared infrastructure, to be financed in part by collective EU debt.

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

But, at both the pan-European and national levels, there remains a lack of boldness when it comes to generating funds. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks resist 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 widely supported with voters. But the beleaguered centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – will not consider such a move.

The Price of Political Paralysis

The reality is that without such measures, the less affluent will bear the brunt of fiscal tightening through spending cuts and greater inequality. Acrimonious recent conflicts over retirement reforms in both France and Germany testify to a developing struggle 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.

Avoiding a Strategic Advantage for Nationalists

In the US, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were largely insincere, as later Medicaid cuts and fiscal benefits for the wealthy underlined. Yet in the absence of a compelling progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the campaign trail. Without a fundamental change in economic approach, social contracts across the continent are in danger of being ripped up. Governments must steer clear of handing this electoral boon to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.