The meaning of the truckers

What Canada’s truckers reveal about America’s realignment
Every now and then, you can see the political realignment happening before your eyes: impossible-to-ignore examples of shifting voter coalitions and ideological sympathies that render old rules and assumptions redundant. And so it is seems with the Canadian trucker protests — and our reaction to them south of the border.

The truckers’ proximate grievance is a Canadian mandate that would mean unvaccinated truckers would have to quarantine for two weeks every time they returned from the United States. But it’s about more than that too, of course: broader frustration at…

What Canada’s truckers reveal about America’s realignment

Every now and then, you can see the political realignment happening before your eyes: impossible-to-ignore examples of shifting voter coalitions and ideological sympathies that render old rules and assumptions redundant. And so it is seems with the Canadian trucker protests — and our reaction to them south of the border.

The truckers’ proximate grievance is a Canadian mandate that would mean unvaccinated truckers would have to quarantine for two weeks every time they returned from the United States. But it’s about more than that too, of course: broader frustration at a whole regime of Covid rules. And that frustration has a class dimension to it: the divide in this case being between the laptop class, for whom working from home has been a manageable, indeed welcome, change and who have borne little of the costs of social distancing, and those on the front lines for whom getting back to normal is an economic necessity. (An irony only adding to the protesters’ frustration is that there are few more Covid-compliant livelihoods than the solitary work of the long-haul trucker.)

The response of Canada’s liberal government has been to dismiss the truckers as a fringe movement, attempt smear-by-association because of some of the kookier protest attendees and, more recently, engage in a hardline crackdown that includes the use of anti-terror legislation, and contemplating sending in the troops.

For those on the American right enthused about the possibility of the Republican Party becoming a genuinely working-class movement, the trucker protest is an exciting moment: a sign, albeit in a neighboring country, of things to come.

But I think the truckers, and the reaction to them, say more about the left than they do the right. After all, it’s hard to imagine the conservative movement at any point in the last half-century being anything other than enthusiastic about a self-proclaimed freedom convoy of hardworking truckers heading to the Canadian capital to protest against intrusive and costly red tape. Perhaps there would have been a little more squeamishness about the law-breaking involved in the blockade. Beyond that, though, a time-traveling conservative from, say, 1985, would surely be Team Trucker.

What really does feel new, though, is the contempt, suspicion and hostility shown by liberals and progressives to this act of working-class direct action. The left views this group of proletariat activists not as workers waiting to be led, but domestic terrorists, white supremacists or death-cult conspiracy theorists (pick your smear). They have either cheered or remained silent as the Canadian government has used hardline emergency measures to counter the trucker movement. They have doxxed and hounded those who have donated to the cause. And there’s an almost complete absence of left-wing voices wondering whether the truckers may indeed have a point. (The contrast to support for violent direct action during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 is so obvious as to hardly be worth pointing out.)

But I’m still not sure all of this amounts to the broader reversal of class politics that some seem to think it represents. Conservatism is certainly rhetorically anti-elite, outlining as it does the enemy as an out-of-touch, undemocratic elite of technocratic globalists. But then, so too is the contemporary left, which sees politics as a rainbow coalition’s attempt to dismantle the privilege of the rich, white men who have set the running in American public life for long enough. Even if you find one more believable than the other, you can surely recognize the similarities in these mirror-image political fictions.

And while it may sound pedantic, there are important differences between various definitions of the Republicans as a “working-class party.” On one level, it is a demographic observation. The Republican voting coalition is changing. It is becoming more working-class, less college-educated and more racially and ethnically diverse. In that sense, there really is working-class future for the GOP. But a more substantive, old-fashioned idea of a workers’ party, would understand the concept as one of an explicitly class-conscious movement: one that basically sees politics in Marxist terms, as a clash between labor and capital. In other words, there’s a difference between the party of the people, and the capital-P People.

If there is mileage for a working-class GOP, it is surely as the former: a large, increasingly working-class coalition of voters, not part of a conscious collective but sharing a commitment to patriotism, the American dream and a kind of rough-and-ready libertarianism.

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Portman endorses in Ohio. Is Trump next?

The Republican primary to take the place of retiring Ohio senator Rob Portman has been one of the most closely followed races in the country. The crowded field includes the clownish Josh Mandel and the high-profile, Peter Thiel-backed J.D. Vance — and the prize is a chance to represent a reddening state in the Washington. Now the outgoing Portman has endorsed Jane Timken, the former Ohio Republican Party Chair. A recent Trafalgar poll put Timken in fourth place, on 9.8 percent of the vote. Ahead of her is Mandel, on 21 percent, former investment banker Mike Gibbons, on 16.4 percent, Vance, on 14.3 percent, and Matt Dolan, a state senator, on 10.2 percent.

Crucially, the most coveted endorsement — from Donald Trump — is yet to be earned. Given the scrutiny on the question of whether Trump’s endorsement carries the weight it once did, and with the former president reportedly already regretting some of his primary picks, he will be especially eager to get this one right.

Wordle, the New York Times and why we can’t have nice things

The New York Times is ruining Wordle. In case you’ve been on a month-long silent retreat allow me to explain. Wordle is a harmless bit of online fun: a daily word game in which you have six guesses at a five-letter word. It was designed by a guy called Josh Wardle (get it?) for his girlfriend. As Wordlemania swept the globe, Josh sold his little game to media behemoth the New York Times. Josh earned himself a million-dollar pay day. (Nice one, Josh!) But the Times has wasted no time in ruining the fun. There are now multiple versions of the game meaning that not everyone is guessing the same word every day. And the list of accepted words is being altered to make the game more accessible (read: easier) and to ensure no offense is caused with possible guesses and answers. Remember, readers, decline is a choice.