There are elections won by counting votes and others won by reading the moment. The United States’ midterm elections in November will, of course, be the first. But they could also become the second. The question that will matter for Europe will not be limited to whether the Democrats regain any of the Congress chambers, how much ground Donald Trump loses, or which candidates survive in the swing states. It will be another question: what kind of Democratic Party emerges from the midterms and what that tells us about the future of the western left.
The victory of Abdul El-Sayed in the Democratic primaries for the Senate in Michigan offers a hint. A doctor, young, and an advocate of universal healthcare, El-Sayed defeated Haley Stevens, a representative from the party’s more moderate wing, in a state that Trump carried in 2024. His win is not merely the triumph of a progressive candidate; it is the expression of a deeper dispute over what the Democratic Party should be and who it should represent.
The phenomenon does not begin in Michigan. Zohran Mamdani has turned New York into another laboratory of that new Democratic left. And the latest primaries are showing that this is not an isolated episode: progressive candidates have achieved victories in several states, backed by an independent media and organizational infrastructure that allows them to build a direct relationship with voters and bypass some of the traditional filters of the Democratic establishment.
“Washington is debating how to protect the citizen, while Europe is debating how to protect the continent.”
What is interesting is what has happened on the other side of the Atlantic. While a portion of the U.S. Democratic Party returns to talking about healthcare, housing, the cost of living, and inequality, Europe has embarked on a different path. Defense has become one of the continent’s major political and budgetary priorities. Member states spent 418 billion euros on defense in 2025 and are expected to reach 454 billion in 2026, a 75.3% increase since 2021. The spending would thus reach 2.4% of GDP. The difference is not small: Washington is debating how to protect its citizens, while Europe is debating how to protect the continent.
And they are not necessarily two sides of the same coin. For decades, Western political families shared an assumption: globalization would reduce the relevance of the nation-state, the United States would guarantee much of international security, and Europe could focus on its social and economic model. That world no longer exists, and the rupture is producing different responses. The new American left seems to want to reclaim the State as a provider of economic security. Its question is how much it costs to live, how much it costs to fall ill, and which basic goods should be exempt from market rules.
The European center-right is reclaiming the State as a guarantor of external security. Its question is how much it costs to defend, how much to invest in armies, and how long Europe can continue relying on Washington. Even the radical right has found fertile ground in this new centrality of security: defense, borders, immigration, sovereignty, and order can be woven into a single narrative. The result is a divergence that deserves attention: the American left is rediscovering the social State, while the European right is rediscovering the strategic State.
The Alesina Mirror
There is a way to better understand this divergence by looking twenty years into the past. In 2006, Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi published The Future of Europe: Reform or Decline. The diagnosis was blunt: Europe could keep a high standard of living while progressively losing economic and political weight. Their argument was that European economies were too regulated and protected, and the welfare state as designed could become an obstacle to growth if not reformed. Europe, they warned, needed to learn a few lessons from the American model.
The Alesina-Giavazzi thesis belonged to a specific era. It was Europe of globalization, of enlargement, of a still-young euro, and of American predominance. The European problem was framed mainly in terms of productivity, competitiveness, innovation, and growth. The big question was how to prevent Europe from falling behind the United States. Twenty years later, the problem looks similar and yet is entirely different at the same time. Europe remains concerned about its relative loss of economic weight, about productivity and its capacity for innovation, but it has discovered another form of irrelevance: strategic irrelevance. It can be sufficiently wealthy to fund a strong welfare state, have a 450-million-strong single market, and be a global trading power, and yet discover that it lacks enough military capacity to defend its interests without relying on the United States.
Alesina and Giavazzi feared Europe would become an economically stagnant and politically irrelevant power. The Europe of 2026 fears it could become an economic power with little say over its own security. For years, Europe looked to the United States and heard a fairly clear recommendation: more market, more flexibility, more competition, less regulation.
“Now the movement seems to have inverted itself. A growing portion of the American Democratic Party looks to Europe and claims what, for decades, has been presented from Washington as one of the structural differences of the European model: social protection.” Now the movement seems to have inverted itself. A growing portion of the American Democratic Party looks to Europe and asserts what, for decades, was presented from Washington as a structural difference of the European model: social protection. And with it, universal health care, public services, housing, and transport. At the same time, Europe looks back at the United States and discovers that it needs something it had long assumed: the capacity for defense. It is hard to find a clearer image of how much the Western world has changed since 2006. The progressive American may be demanding a Europe that Alesina regarded as overly protected. The European center-right may be demanding an America that for decades urged Europe to shield itself. And both things are happening at the same time. This also forces a reconsideration of the political meaning of the State.
For Alesina, the European problem was largely that the State protected too much and produced too little growth. The challenge was to reform it so that the economy could generate more wealth. Today the problem is different: can the European State protect more without sacrificing growth? Europe simultaneously needs more defense investment, more technological investment, more industry, more energy, more infrastructure, and probably more fiscal capacity. But it also wants to preserve a social model that remains one of its main sources of political legitimacy.
The question is no longer simply how much State we want. It is what we want the State for. And that is where the European center-left finds itself in this discussion. In Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez could end up in a peculiar position within this debate. Not because he rejects the shift toward defense. Spain is increasing its military spending and has embraced the European framework that allows greater fiscal flexibility to fund that effort. The EU itself estimates that defense investments by member states could reach nearly 163 billion euros in 2026, 158.7% more than in 2021.
But Sánchez has tried to resist letting the new geopolitical era automatically translate into an unlimited rearmament policy. His stance has been that Spain should strengthen its military capabilities without necessarily adopting the same priorities and magnitudes as other allies. That difference has placed him in an awkward but potentially unique position within the European debate. His argument is not that Europe does not need defense. It is that European security cannot be built against the European social State. And that could become a far more significant stance after the midterms. If the Democrats secure a solid result in November and the more progressive candidates can show that a health, cost of living, and redistribution agenda can mobilize voters beyond the big cities, the European debate will have to pay attention. Not because Europe will copy Mamdani or El-Sayed, but because an uncomfortable question will arise: can the left leave security in the hands of the right?
“Una sociedad puede ser vulnerable porque carece de armas, pero también porque depende de una cadena de suministro extranjera, de energía importada, de tecnología de terceros países, de una infraestructura digital frágil o de un sistema sanitario incapaz de responder a una crisis.”
For decades, the right has enjoyed a conceptual edge on defense, the armed forces, borders, and order. The left has tended to hold a comparable advantage on health care, education, employment, and social protection. But the world after the Ukraine war, the pandemic, the energy crisis, and Trump’s return is mixing the categories. Security is no longer only military. A society can be vulnerable not only for lacking weapons but also because it depends on foreign supply chains, imported energy, foreign technology, fragile digital infrastructure, or an incapable health system in times of crisis.
And here Sánchez could attempt to craft a singular stance: a progressive protection policy. Protect the citizen against disease, protect against inflation, protect against the cost of housing, protect employment through industrial policy. And protect the country and Europe from military and strategic threats. It is not a simple synthesis. It has an obvious problem: money. Protection policy can only be credible if it explains who pays the bill. But therein lies the next European ideological battle. The question will no longer be simply more State or less State. It will be what the State should protect and from what it should protect us.
The European right can respond: from Russia, from irregular immigration, from external threats, from the loss of sovereignty. The new American left seems to reply: from disease, from the cost of living, from unaffordable housing, from inequality. Sánchez may propose answering both. That is the space the midterms could leave open.
A Third Way for Social Democracy?
If the Democrats perform well in November, the conclusion will not necessarily be that the United States has moved left. What will be more interesting is whether the response to Trumpism does not require a return to the center. It could involve offering more material protection. Early signals already point in that direction. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released this week found that 60% of independents support the government providing healthcare coverage for all Americans and that 64% back higher taxes on large corporations and billionaires. Among Democrats, the move toward liberal positions is even more pronounced. Yet the decisive test will be electoral.
El-Sayed will need to turn the energy from a progressive primary into a coalition capable of winning in a competitive state. That difference—between winning a primary and building a majority—is fundamental. His Michigan victory came with particularly strong support among white, college-educated voters, while Stevens performed better among Black voters and working-class groups. That is the Democratic Party’s historic dilemma. Since Clinton, the party has been building a more urban, diverse, and educated coalition. Obama seemed to confirm the possibility of a new demographic majority. Trump, however, showed that this transformation came at a price: a portion of the old working-class base could feel displaced.
Sanders offered a first answer: reclaim the economy for the working class. Mamdani has added to that formula a policy of public services and living costs. El-Sayed is trying to take it to a state where the choice is not decided in Manhattan but in a far more complex mix of suburbs, industrial cities, Black voters, Arab-American populations, workers, and college graduates. If it works, the impact on the Democratic Party could be far greater than a mere electoral victory. It would demonstrate that the left can reclaim a material agenda without abandoning the new social coalition that has transformed the party.
“While Washington debates whether the left’s future lies in universal health care, Brussels is attempting to persuade citizens that Europe’s future lies in much greater defense spending.”
For Europe, that distinction will be crucial. Because while Washington debates whether the left’s future lies in universal health care, Brussels is trying to persuade citizens that Europe’s future lies in spending much more on defense. Sánchez could find himself in a strange but potentially powerful place. Not between America and Europe, but between two definitions of security: those who believe the State must protect us mainly from a dangerous world, and those who believe it must protect us from an increasingly insecure life. The European politics of the coming years will have to decide whether these two things are compatible. And Sánchez will have to decide whether to merely manage that contradiction or to turn it into a new definition of social democracy.
There, once again, the Alesina question appears. In 2006, Alesina asked how Europe could avoid becoming an economically irrelevant power. In 2026, Europe asks how to avoid becoming an economically but strategically irrelevant power. The answer cannot be exactly the same. Europe needs growth, competitiveness, and productivity. But it also needs the capacity to defend itself, to produce technology, to secure energy, to protect infrastructures, and to sustain its social model. That requires something the European political debate has yet to fully embrace: state capacity. Not necessarily a bigger State, but a more capable one. Capable of manufacturing weapons and building housing, of financing innovation and guaranteeing healthcare, of protecting borders and sustaining pensions. Capable of competing economically and acting strategically.
That may be the great debate to emerge after the midterms, because they could reveal whether the new left has found an electorally viable way to respond to economic insecurity. Europe, at the same time, will be testing its own response to geopolitical insecurity.
Sánchez could be positioned between both experiments. Or, if he reads the moment well, he could try to persuade Europeans that the two are part of the same political idea: that a State is not strong only because it can defend its borders, nor is it progressive only because it can redistribute. It is strong when it can protect its citizens against the threats they actually perceive. The question is whether that synthesis can become a political majority. The midterms will start to provide the answer.
