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Over a year following the vote that handed Donald Trump a clear-cut comeback victory, the Democratic party has yet to released its postmortem analysis. However, last week, an influential progressive lobby group published its own. The Harris campaign, its authors contended, failed to connect with core constituencies because it did not focus enough on addressing everyday financial worries. In focusing on the threat to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, progressives neglected the kitchen-table concerns that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Warning for Europe

While Europe prepares 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 European capitals. The White House, as its newly released national security strategy indicates, is hopeful that “patriotic” parties in Europe will soon mirror Mr Trump’s success. Within Europe's core nations, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) lead the polls, backed by large swaths of working-class voters. Yet among mainstream leaders and parties, it is difficult to see a strategy that is sufficient to troubling times.

Era-Defining Challenges and Expensive Solutions

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

Such a fiscal paradigm shift would stimulate growth figures that have stagnated for years.

But, at both the EU-wide and national levels, there remains a lack of boldness when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “frugal” nations oppose the idea of shared debt, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are profoundly unambitious. 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 – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Price of Inaction

The reality is that in the absence of such measures, the less affluent will pay the price of financial adjustment through austerity budgets and increased inequality. Acrimonious recent conflicts over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany highlight a growing battle over the future of the European social model – 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 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 Populists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s promises to protect working-class interests were largely insincere, as subsequent Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy demonstrated. But without a compelling progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Without a fundamental change in fiscal policy, societal agreements across the continent are in danger of being ripped up. Governments must avoid giving this electoral boon to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.