President Donald Trump has ordered every Senate candidate in the six northern border states to personally carry each tariffed Canadian good across the frontier, transforming the midterm campaign into a mandatory logistics marathon that begins at dawn and ends only when the last maple barrel is dragged onto American soil.
Under the directive, candidates must report to the Peace Bridge in Buffalo wearing the official campaign harness, a leather rig rated for 90 kilograms that the Republican National Committee has been fitting since Tuesday. Each candidate is required to complete eleven crossings per day, alternating between potash sacks, aluminum ingots and dairy crates, while a live feed of their progress plays in the waiting rooms of every county clerk's office in their district.
«The voters need to see their senator sweat for every tariffed tonne,» said Trade Representative Jamison Cole, who supervised the first training run on Wednesday. «A candidate who cannot carry a hundredweight of softwood lumber has no business negotiating the price of it.»
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has responded by chartering a fleet of flatbed trucks and enrolling its candidates in a three-week heavy-lifting course at a Pittsburgh warehouse, where they practice with sandbags painted to resemble Canadian bacon. Both parties have agreed that no candidate may use a forklift, a winch or a hand truck, and that any candidate who drops a load must restart the crossing from the Canadian side.
Border patrol agents have been reassigned from passport checks to cargo inspection, where they now stamp each candidate's forehead with the date and the weight of the goods delivered. The first primary debate in New Hampshire has been rescheduled to take place mid-crossing, with candidates answering questions while wading the shallows of the Connecticut River, each towing a raft of tariffed gypsum board behind them.