Last week, mainstream media columnist-turned-Substacker Paul Wells decided to write about a phenomenon some of us have been poring over for years—America’s new right and the conservative realignment. The inciting incident was Donald Trump’s appointment of leading new right figure, bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy, and Republican U.S. senator J.D. Vance as his running mate. It’s a good reason for Canadians to start paying attention.

Vance attended Yale Law School alongside his close friend, newly-elected Conservative MP Jamil Jivani. But more importantly, as Wells rightly points out, there are glimmers of Vance’s political beliefs in Canada’s own conservative movement. There are also some noteworthy similarities between Vance, Pierre Poilievre, and the team around him.

Wells’ analysis leads with a photo of Ronald Reagan, and it’s a good place to start. Because a lot of people have been throwing around Reagan’s name lately, and sometimes it seems like they want to have it both ways. The confusion around where Regan’s legacy fits into the Right’s realignment is emblematic of how ill-defined it remains. Was Reagan a patriotic hero of the working class, or instead the perpetrator of the worst excesses of a neoliberal economics and hawkish foreign policy, that gutted manufacturing jobs and prioritized petty battles in foreign countries over the national interest?

The new Right

It’s difficult to pin down the populist new right (or national conservatism, or whatever you want to call it) so it can help to distinguish between (1) their critique of the status quo and their vision for a new, legitimately different conservative voting coalition and (2) the development of a new public policy program that responds to the challenges of the status quo and appeals to a new voting coalition. Much of the former comes down to political priorities, themes, and strategy. Much of the latter comes down to economic theory. But, as a whole, none of it is new.

Wells is correct that Poilievre and Vance broadly start from the same core insight (my point #1 above)—that the business and cultural elite have completely lost touch with the wants and needs of regular people. Both men also run that pointed criticism through a similar political analysis—that with the right message and the right messenger, conservatives can build a young, multi-ethnic, working and middle-class voting coalition. However, that doesn’t mean Poilievre and Vance are going to end up in the same place. When it comes to public policy solutions (my point #2), and the theories and principles that underpin them, Poilievre and Vance actually differ quite starkly.

So, if they start from similar critiques and want to build similar coalitions, where do they depart? Follow their lines of argument, from investigation, to diagnosis, to prescription, and the fork in the road becomes clear.

As Wells rightly points out, Poilievre and Vance are quick to blame big business for the failure of today’s economy to work for working people. They blame Wall Street, Bay Street, and the elite corporate interests that drive them for everything from the opioid overdose crisis, to divisive woke culture, to the mismatch between the high cost of living and slow-to-grow wages. But where do they think corporate interests have run astray? How did it all go so wrong?

There’s a great passage in Richard Ben Cramer’s What It Takes—which covers the 1988 presidential race and remains one of the great books on American politics—in which Joe Biden’s advisors desperately attempt to convince him not to buy a million-dollar house (which he can’t actually afford) on the eve of his first run at the White House.

Two things stand out in retrospect. First, one glimpses the same obstreperousness that since led him to hold onto his present office, in spite of his diminished faculties, and to commit to running for re-election against the advice of many around him before unexpectedly dropping out last weekend under what remain obscure circumstances.

Second, it presents a memorable picture of a man who could steamroll real estate agents and talk his staffers into exhaustion—a picture that his administration, in conjunction with a friendly media establishment were at pains to efface, given how strongly it contrasted with the present reality. That reality became inescapably obvious following Biden’s disastrous debate last month against Donald Trump. Up to that point, they emphasized his history of stuttering and downplayed his recent public reticence. Of course, the narrative that he had always been a shy or impaired public speaker was convincing mainly to those with no recollection of the man in his prime (see him here in full fettle).

Answering the call

The truth is that late in life, Biden was pressed into service under highly specific circumstances—namely, the fact that he was seen as the candidate with the widest appeal at a time when the Democratic Party’s had two overriding imperatives: blocking Bernie Sanders’ rise and denying Donald Trump’s re-election.

A similar dynamic is now at work with Biden’s vice president and apparent successor, Kamala Harris. For, the Harris candidacy’s raison d’être has less to do with her own virtues and more with the necessity of defeating Trump, given the short runway remaining. It should not be controversial to note that Kamala is not an inherently inspiring candidate. Her political record is not marked by any great accomplishments, and seemingly no one regards her tenure as V.P. as particularly successful. Outside of a limited and highly online contingent of superfans, she commands something less than widespread public loyalty, and her public speeches are known to rely upon repeated phrases that can sound like verbal tics.