Day one of the great Washington, D.C., trucker convoy went great … for everyone but the truckers (some of whom are actually SUV or minivan drivers). For them, it was kind of embarrassing. After a day of confusion on Saturday, the plan for Sunday was to circle the Beltway twice at 40 miles per hour, making a show of strength that would be a “huge pain” for regular traffic. At most, they managed to be a minor irritation, slowing traffic in some places in a region accustomed to traffic jams.

The convoy was unable to stay together basically as soon as it encountered normal Beltway traffic. Normal Sunday Beltway traffic. Some bailed after a single lap. And the whole group got so stretched out and broken up that, “We’re not even sure we can call it a convoy anymore because it’s so dispersed among routine traffic at this point,” Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said.

The convoy plans to return Monday for even more laps—an interesting ambition considering that some of them couldn’t hack it for two laps in light traffic, and Monday they’ll be encountering higher weekday traffic.

That said, nobody really knows what to expect from this unpredictable, nonsensical pack of assholes. They say they’re protesting until their demands are met, but they don't really have coherent demands. They say they’ve come to the nation’s capital, in some cases from across the country, to protest public health restrictions that were dropping well before they set out. Some of them are talking about high gas prices, while spending hundreds of dollars in gas to try to disrupt other people’s lives. Some flew Confederate battle flags, because of course they damn well did. There’s really no point here beyond the far right asserting its media-given right to attention.

Bear in mind if and when you see descriptions of the people involved in this as somehow representing the working class that these are people who can take weeks and spend thousands of dollars on something that doesn’t even have a real set of demands.

So far, convoy organizers are saying they won’t go into Washington, D.C., itself, staying on the Beltway that loops around it while being based in Hagerstown, Maryland. But other groups of truckers and associated vehicles are expected to join the group that’s already there, which could create significant hassle for residents of the region—people the convoy members are all too happy to create problems for, since they’re largely Democrats. A National Guard presence in the District of Columbia has been extended through Wednesday as things develop.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos