Transcript
Annalise
0:02
Welcome to The Strategist, episode 1064. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil, and with you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan.
Carter
0:12
I did gardening today.
Annalise
0:16
night. It's the only thing
Annalise
0:17
We're not here to talk about gardening. Big night.
Annalise
0:22
No, other big things happened. happened yeah
Carter
0:24
yeah heather and i ate dinner in front of the tv which uh brought us back to the you know 1970s with tv dinners you remember tv dinners cory oh those were great with
Corey
0:34
gravy i'm gonna be honest i'm gonna level with you steven i'm much younger he's not that old and annalise is younger than me so yeah we don't know what you're talking about here oh yeah you
Carter
0:43
you guys don't know what life really feels like without the the tin plate the tin plate on the on the tv table that was great that was great yeah
Corey
0:53
so when you were watching political debates in the 1970s uh in front of your radiating television yeah let
Corey
1:00
let me ask you did you ever did you ever sort of get the energy that this debate gave here no
Corey
1:05
like how are you feeling about this this
Carter
1:07
this was different uh first of all in the old old days um we we didn't let women do the debates with us right because oh jesus it was a we were a sexist society in the 1970s corey i don't know if you know that but we've grown out out of it now so uh it was different and also we've
Corey
1:22
we've grown out of it oh yeah
Carter
1:30
sexism's over racism's done i mean all society's ills have basically been solved and that's why i watched today's debate with just nothing but optimism cory today was nothing but optimism so it's
Annalise
1:43
we should fact check what uh what stephen carter is saying there hold Hold on.
Carter
1:47
on. Do you think that somebody might lie when they're in a performance venue? Like, I don't
Carter
1:51
don't think people would lie. Not when truth matters. Not when truth matters, Annalise.
Annalise
1:58
Truth does matter. Feels better. Yeah.
Annalise
2:00
Yeah. And we have much truth to talk about this evening. Guys, we're going to talk about the debate. We've got a lot of things to talk about debate-wise. First question, and we'll start with you, Corey Hogan.
Annalise
2:14
Initial impressions. questions. Where is your head at? It ended not long ago. You look a little confused. What are you thinking?
Corey
2:23
I'm thinking I'm a little confused. It's interesting. There's a lot of ways you can look at a debate and you can try to put on the hat of an undecided voter and how they might be reacting to it. You can put it on the professional hat and how you kind of score the communications points, the policy points. And I don't know, the different hats I can wear, I have different reactions depending on which one I decide to put on at the moment. And I guess I'll just throw a couple of them on the table here. I kind of feel like Danielle Smith was the most polished and her delivery was very strong. And that almost suggests to me that a low information voter is going to give it to Danielle Smith. And I kind of think Rachel Notley did a pretty good job of maybe not necessarily delivering the lines, but presenting the lines, the lines that you think can be repackaged and used in the commentary after and clipped for television and all of that and and ultimately i think so much of what happens in a debate actually happens after the debate and i think there's reason for rachel notley to you know maybe get a higher score than my initial you know neutral smith wins uh comments might offer and then there's the third part of me which i like to think is the me me who is is thinking what
Corey
3:34
what the fuck are we doing here i mean This is not a normal day. This is a day where the premier was charged effectively by the ethics commissioner as having broken ethics laws. And there's a certain surreality that is floating over all of this that makes any kind of scoring of points seem kind of weird, frankly. And I think that's the thing that I am – that's the source of the confusion you see on my face, Annalise. I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to think about today. day. Well,
Annalise
4:05
Well, lots, lots to unpack there, Corey, many questions, including is a low information voter watching the debate? Did your expectations tank your thoughts? But before we get into all that, Stephen Carter, what are your what are your initial impressions after sitting in your living room, eating your dinner watching the debate?
Carter
4:22
I think I think the first thing is that Danielle Smith, someone who's been on television for 20 years, is good on television. She she presents really well on tv um i i think it's a little bit tricky that her script is entirely fiction um instead of non-fiction but you know you call me a stickler um but i you know i i was very frustrated by the lies right and it's interesting to me watching the media already jump onto her especially cory brought up the the the uh ethics commissioner report today where you know she very very much concluded that Smith had broken the law. And the
Carter
5:02
the very first question for the media is, why are you lying about that in the debate? Because Smith did what she did with almost the entire debate, and that is lie about it. And she said that basically she was cleared by the ethics commissioner. And she very clearly was not, right? And the ethics commissioner has reserved sanction for when Smith comes back. That's not a usual practice for those following along at home, home reserving sanction for the end of an election is not a usual practice um but here we are and and danielle smith was so casual with her lies so comfortable with her lies that i i really struggled to watch it like cory had all those different people watching it uh and by the way let's put a note that we should be probably investing in some mental health services for the strategists writ large um cory's obviously got multiple personality disorder and i'm going going to be so depressed by the end of this thing um
Corey
5:53
um so not appropriate but go on we're very
Annalise
5:59
hidden with him carter
Carter
6:02
guys don't understand me uh i'm very sympathetic here's the thing um i didn't like the debate i did not enjoy watching the debate because i don't like what some one person um lying and winning and another other person telling the truth and losing and that just makes me it
Carter
6:20
makes me angry because how do you win a debate with someone who is just committed to the lies and i've got a list of them because i was taking notes and we can go through them uh later in the in the episode yeah
Annalise
6:33
yeah we can go through them later cory it looks like you want to say something important well
Corey
6:37
well look it's funny because again i mean if i can shut off different parts of my brain either intentionally or accidentally here in some ways this was a wonderful debate like a really great debate
Corey
6:48
you had you had people talking quickly thinking sharply and they were responding to each other back and forth in a way that you often lose in the three four or five person debates that we're usually used to in this country here and
Corey
7:01
and steven's not wrong like i i mean there is not a rapid instant pop-up video style fact-checking in a debate like this. And I think the more you're willing to play with the boundaries of truth, the more you can get away with, because
Corey
7:17
because you know that a lot of people will just never bother going to the fact-checking. And so that is problematic, but it gets back to what debates are good at telling you and what debates are not good at telling you. And ultimately, man,
Corey
7:29
man, I don't want to editorialize too much. And I don't think I feel as strongly as Stephen does on some of this, but But debates are not great displays of character. They're just simply not. And, you know, what they are good at is telling you if somebody has a command of files, if they're quick-witted. And in this case, I think both candidates came off as fairly quick-witted in different ways. You know, Danielle Smith, very polished. Rachel Notley is very wonkish. And, you know, sometimes you could tell that her mouth was or her thoughts were ahead of her mouth. Or I don't know what you want to say, but like there seemed to be a disconnect there. But, yeah, I mean, it's tough to say that
Corey
8:07
that it was a good debate when you have kind of foundational challenges with it. And Stephen has a foundational challenge around truth. I have a foundational challenge around why are we pretending this is a normal day, right? Like, this is not a normal day. yeah so
Annalise
8:20
so on on that note though cory what what the
Annalise
8:23
the news came out this morning from the ethic commissioner with strong language by the way like words like threat to democracy um very strong language and we can get into that but that comes out this morning debate is scheduled for tonight thursday before a long weekend yeah
Annalise
8:39
you're saying it's treated as a normal day how do you suggest it should have been treated when the debate was scheduled yeah
Corey
8:46
yeah and i get it like you're on a track And it's the safe play to treat it like a normal thing. But I think ultimately, even if today hadn't happened, even if we didn't have the ethics commissioner, I think in a way, one of Rachel Notley's challenges
Corey
9:00
challenges here, I might even go so far as to say it as a mistake, was treating this as a normal debate. Because that's not how she's treated anything else about this election in terms of her party's response, her responses to the various things that Daniel Smith has done. The comparisons to Nazis, the healthcare comments, the, you know, as recently as today, the candidate of the UCP who, boy, like just in the last couple days, this has happened too, where, you know, compared transgender children to feces and cookie batter. Like, holy shit, I actually can't think of like a grosser thing there. But here's what I got to say.
Corey
9:35
There has been an inconsistency in the presentation of the stakes that was never more apparent to me than in this debate, right? You can't be talking about like these dire states, this is not normal, we're in such deeply abnormal times, and then have actually almost an archetypical debate with the person. I think at a certain point, it almost demanded the moment, more so than we got, of saying, this
Corey
9:58
this is not normal, right? This is a crazy day. We had a prime minister, a premier, interfere
Corey
10:05
interfere in justice, be found to interfere in justice on behalf of a racist extremist, which, you know, to Rachel Notley's credit, she did make comments along those lines. and and now we're just sitting here saying like you know healthcare obviously it's more than money how would you deal with healthcare in a you know in a general sense that doesn't have to do with what the fuck does that tell me at a moment like this like in a funny way as much as anything i hold the moderators to it like did they just say wow this was a crazy day but i guess we're going to do the same debate it's
Corey
10:36
it's weird to me but
Carter
10:37
but you know and but there's also like the mistake mistake that was made right was that on
Carter
10:43
on rachel notley first you cannot if you're going in if you're one of these political leaders you can't ask the moderators to fix it for you you can't ask the your competitor to fix it for you you have to fix it for yourself why wasn't she doing a quick they had note paper they had pens why wasn't she doing a quick lie count and and then say you know what danielle it's eight minutes in and i've counted i've i've seen i've caught you in seven lies already uh we're going to lie a minute is that what's going to be for the rest of the for the rest of this thing she gets the good line she gets half the fucking line in about do you really want to talk about your candidates is that really what you want to do what the fuck is that talk about her candidates talk about the person who is you know just kind of well if she wins she's not going to be able to sit in our caucus what does that actually mean danielle does that that mean for the entire four-year term or is it just for a little while until such time as you deem that you need her um this is there
Carter
11:40
there there was no bloodlust from from notley to try and actually you know go after redford go after smith on the actual sins that she's committed in the last little while and there's been many today's stuff about chandro today's stuff about the ethics commissioner uh today's little piece of trying to suspend this candidate that's just today that's just today yeah
Annalise
12:05
yeah just one day you know like
Carter
12:07
like yeah it would have required her to be on the ball and to make some changes in her notepad but you know the the core of you know smith's going to lie how are we going to counter smith lying that's a fairly well-known piece uh in debating uh in debating smith and also a well-known piece is saying is smith saying oh i get to walk away from everything that i said in the past you know if you get to walk away from everything you said in the past then i'm walking away from everything that i've done in the past or you know like she wouldn't say it like that but how
Carter
12:39
how come i get to be held to to account says rachel notley for my past performance and you who's
Carter
12:47
who's just recently committed you know said these things i mean she said it once but she should have been saying it every time smith tried to get her on uh on a past performance issue i was just very frustrated sitting at home watching
Carter
13:01
know going back to cory's in my comments last in the last episode the patreon special still available if you want to put your money forward um in that episode we were talking about pacing the floor and and and the nerves of that particular day and i was certainly feeling it today i i was very
Carter
13:19
tight through the shoulders watching this it just was not a happy day yeah
Corey
13:24
yeah well look i i want to of rewind a bit because i i kind of dwelled a bit in how i personally feel the absurdity of this day but if you're if you are that voter
Corey
13:33
voter at home that undecided voter i think your feeling about the thing is is very different right i and i think even if you're a partisan for one of the organizations you've got lots to think your candidate won for i'm sure both the ucp and ndp camps are celebrating their quote-unquote victories tonight right because and to be fair both of them have reasons do smith performed really well there was no knockout punch that's for sure uh on her at least not in the moment often those things don't become clear until after the fact and the way it's packaged and you know maybe it becomes a massive deal that she said she's a non-lawyer right and that becomes like the thing we all remember about this maybe it becomes a massive deal that she had that throat clearing fit at a certain point like it's really tough to say at the moment what the big deal is maybe it becomes a massive deal that rachel notley sort of sputtered through some of of her answers like you've just got to sort of wait and see how this falls out but in the moment i think each of the camps was provided the raw components to allow them to craft a victory because victory again is not just craft in the moment it's as craft as much after the fact and it will be fascinating to see what happens over the next couple of days what
Annalise
14:40
what about that expectation piece though that we talked about a lot in the last um the last episode about the different expectations going in you know this was rachel notley's second debate um this or third third debate sorry this
Annalise
14:51
was this was smith's second and i think that expectation we had discussed about like smith
Annalise
14:57
smith just needs to not say something stupid and that can be a win like now looking the debate has happened how do you think that lines up with the conversation we had about expectations i
Carter
15:06
think that she you know in terms of expectations she exceeded them smith exceeded the expectations she she is great on camera i mean did you see her focus on the camera she she knew which she's really
Carter
15:18
which camera's hot she knew exactly which camera to look at and and i don't know how the ndp team did not prepare rachel notley for there's going to be a hot camera and we want you looking at the hot camera there's going to be a two shot and there's going to be a single shot you need to be able to figure out which of those two cameras is on here's how you tell one of the lights is red the red light is the one that you look at right like It's not a complex idea, and she should know how to do that. And the fact that
Corey
15:46
that she didn't, don't
Carter
15:47
don't I mean me. You know that this matters. Don't not. I will come over there. I know where you live.
Corey
15:56
In Chey. It's sometimes harder than it sounds. It's not. If somebody's struggling with it, you don't necessarily want to over-program them. I don't know if those things are
Corey
16:05
are as damning as sometimes we treat them to be. They
Corey
16:08
are. At least to your question, though,
Corey
16:11
she did not say something that was evidently stupid in the moment, in my opinion. I'm sure people will disagree and they'll argue and say, no, those comments were bad, those other comments were bad. But again, a lot of this has to do with how aggressive the media gets after the fact and says like, hey, you said you were cleared by the ethics commissioner. And sorry, let me just read you the conclusion. In my opinion, Premier Smith contravened Section 3 of the Conflicts of Interest Act. Well, that really doesn't sound like cleared to me. Does that sound like cleared to either of you? And I
Carter
16:42
to impose sanctions. That doesn't sound good. You
Carter
16:46
it does not. That reminds me of getting grounded when I was a kid. You just wait till your father gets home.
Corey
16:54
Well, and the point is, if people really latch on to that, just
Corey
16:57
just really clever to death with something that was clearly a falsehood and hold on to it and don't let go of it, we're going to think about that statement, did she say something stupid, very differently than if everyone says, well, on to the next thing and moves on to the next thing. So, again, I'm just going to go back. I don't want to sound like a broken record, but so much of what we think of a debate is
Corey
17:18
is being formed now. Like, we are even part of that forming of the debate. We are really the leaders of it. There's going to be conversations. we're really Corey
Annalise
17:24
Corey do you think do you think it's a little different this time though when you say like moving on to the next thing because we're what I don't know how many days in we are 17 16 and like there's been a new thing every day like we've we've discussed that on here that we
Annalise
17:38
we don't have time to let things breathe or dissect them or let them happen because then there's another thing then there's another lie then there's another controversy so in this case we're going into a long weekend do you think we'll see people paying
Annalise
17:50
paying attention and caring or are we we going to have another, you
Annalise
17:54
you know, hot topic to discuss in a day or two?
Corey
17:58
It's tough to say. Certainly, the track record of this campaign has been something else is just around the corner. Something else is always around the corner. Sometimes it's planned. Sometimes it's a wildfire. You know, we just don't know. And we are at a weird particular moment with the long weekend coming up. But I think on balance, if
Corey
18:19
if I were the NDP, What would make me very excited tonight are those opportunities, because certainly there were a couple of things that we could look back on in a week and say, well, that was a real trapsmith set for herself there, you know, on some of the comments that she made that you can poke at. And we already have talked specifically about the one where, you know, she said she was cleared by the ethics commission. I mean, she was most certainly not cleared by the ethics commissioner.
Corey
18:45
I've rarely seen spin of that. I mean, that's not, I don't even know how to call that spin. It's just not what happened. It's just a straight
Corey
18:52
lie. It's not what happened.
Carter
18:53
And the media said, why are you lying?
Carter
18:56
Right? Why are you lying? And Smith's answer was, I divided that into three sections and I was just referring to one of them. Well, you know, God, that's going to be tricky. The media is going to hold her to account. I think that that's the good news for the NDP. Because the NDP didn't win a clear knockout, that does leave the field open for the media to come in and tilt
Carter
19:21
tilt the field a little bit. And they do these things not because they're supporters of the UCP or supporters of the NDP,
Carter
19:28
NDP, but because they want fairness. at the end of the day the media is interested in fairness and being uh being
Carter
19:37
being up there on stage and just lying your ass off isn't fair and the media will correct yeah
Annalise
19:42
yeah but but on on that media front and we've talked about it again and again on this podcast like the shrinking the shrinking media but in this case carter could you not could
Annalise
19:51
could you not pull up rick bell oh what what what do his headlines say today ethics probe daniel smith good news and bad news like how do you frame that ethics Ethics probe is good news. Oh, two columns today. Next one. Bell, after the debate, Daniel Smith is still standing and winning. Like, if you have a premier standing on stage saying, oh, this wasn't that bad, lying about it, and then you have a columnist who's also saying, ethics probe, good news, and that's where you're getting your information from. Like, how do you, that kind of truth and that lying, how
Annalise
20:22
how do you deal with it when you can't just depend on, quote unquote, the media to
Carter
20:26
to correct it? Rick Bell's horrible. horrible
Carter
20:29
mean what are you going to do david staples me next i mean david staples rick bell these aren't columnists these aren't people who i mean sure they write columns but they're not people who have who are approaching things with an honest approach to the information that they're they're writing about they're writing with an agenda that agenda is supported by their their employers and uh and it is also supported by the readers who buy their newspapers so you know what what are you going to do? I mean, it's, it's no different than going to, to Ezra Levant's rebel. I mean, Ezra Levant noted legal expert, um, is, is in the story on this. What do you think he's going to say? Well, you know, I'm in the story where I should probably rely on my journalistic integrity and pull myself out of covering this. He's absolutely not. That's just not in his wheelhouse. And it's not in Rick Bell's wheelhouse to not, you know, take the spin that he's given by his his his masters and uh you know i'm just impressed that it's kind of like a fairly decent size sentence structure you know well done ricky yeah
Corey
21:30
yeah calm down like you're you're such an ass sometimes no i'm not an ass
Carter
21:35
ass first of all rick's not a real journalist i think we can agree on that just the fact that he's
Corey
21:39
he's a columnist not a journalist
Carter
21:41
journalist yeah that's what i just said no you
Carter
21:44
keep repeating what i say oh
Corey
21:46
oh you know okay yeah yeah like okay great wonderful the truthiness of your statement was yes spot on here's the thing it
Corey
21:55
it is no doubt there are people who are going to be blind to certain parts of the argument and very receptive to other parts that's the nature of partisanship it's a hell of a fucking drug right i mean we're all subject to it to a certain extent when the things we want we can decide to foreground or background them depending depending on the worldview that we want to have supported here.
Corey
22:13
But there are some fundamental base facts at play here. And I do tend to be one of these people who thinks that the universe does bend towards justice long-term. And the fact is, if you handed that opinion by the ethics commissioner to a thousand people who had never heard of Alberta, never
Corey
22:28
never heard of Alberta, never heard of conservatives, never heard of new Democrats, you know, they just, they're like, what? I don't care about the politics in your stupid country. Right.
Corey
22:38
A thousand of those thousand would come to the conclusion that the premier you're contravening the ethics commission act like nobody would
Carter
22:43
would be like oh
Corey
22:44
oh my big takeaway here is that yeah she didn't call the prosecutors directly so she's in the clear that's that's bonkers stuff and so it just becomes really hard to defend that position over the long term but
Annalise
22:56
but cory do you really like do you really believe that because we're we're living in a time when there is bonker stuff like there's people whose houses are burning down in the wildfires who think Or think that Justin Trudeau started the fires or think that they're a global conspiracy? Like, do you do you really think 1000 people looking at that would come to that conclusion?
Corey
23:16
yeah i i mean i do if they didn't have a dog in the fight again like this is an important part of it but ultimately it's not it's not that confusing in black and white the ethics commissioner said premier smith contravened the act like that is literally the words in the conclusion there and so to suggest the literal opposite is not a defensible position it simply is not and they're going to have to find a different ground to walk on and their supporters are going to have to find different arguments to carry out to the community because all it's going to take is like they
Carter
23:47
don't need to because they braze you know you and i would need to because you and i would feel shame lying like that they don't feel shame they just lie and they justify it by saying the other guys lie too and
Corey
24:01
i just hate that you know what i hate this they business like this these are not subhumans these are people complex individuals who actually are capable of shame steven and
Corey
24:10
and it's a little harder describe
Carter
24:12
who you're talking about
Corey
24:13
about which which of them i am talking about the supporters of political parties that would otherwise jump on board and say that this is an argument that i'm i'm talking
Carter
24:21
talking about the politicians themselves i'm talking about if if rachel not or if uh danielle smith does not feel shame she will continue to do what she's doing which is lie and i don't feel like i think that she's said i'm going to do the same thing that trump has done and i am not going to feel shame when i lie i'm going to to take these things that i wish were true and i'm going to will them into life by pretending that they are true well
Corey
24:46
well i you know i just don't think that's going to work because there's just not enough people to carry it forward the difference between this and your wildfire example is your
Corey
24:55
your wildfire example is bonkers there are people who think that trudeau you know caused the fires and all of these things but the simple reality i just i want to be so clear on this point trudeau did not cause the fires nobody misquote me on this but none of us were there when the fires were started so it at least gives them something to start rooting their conspiracy in this is black and white this is the ethics commissioner said versus what somebody is saying the ethics commissioner said it's not very hard to put the source material in front you
Carter
25:23
you have to read the report and
Carter
25:24
and and david staples and rick bell and the propagandists and we have have so many propagandists now will not read you know will not copy that piece of the report they will do what what smith has told them to do which is divide the report into thirds and when you look at this one third with your eye half closed she was cleared right
Corey
25:46
she was i mean and the worst part is it's like it's not even a clearing it's like i didn't find evidence of this that's not the same thing yeah
Carter
25:52
yeah i know you
Carter
25:53
you and i are on the same page you and i though we
Carter
25:55
we are the heartless
Annalise
26:03
it's bold for thursday night
Annalise
26:05
we could talk about the fact check stuff for for hours let's move on to a few other things we talked last time about kind of like the body language outfits that sort of thing uh outfits they were both wearing blue good thing bad thing um
Carter
26:19
um blue's a great color on camera uh both of them popped uh it's unfortunate both of of them showed up in blue but you know i mean i i don't think we'd be noticing uh two men in blue suits in the same way but it's a different color blue but nonetheless it's still uh it
Carter
26:35
was unfortunate they were both in the same thing but they look they both looked really good
Annalise
26:40
cory your fashion advice yeah
Corey
26:42
yeah it's a blue blazer it's a classic look you can take from the office meetings to dinner out with friends and family who's gonna complain about a blue blazer yeah
Carter
26:50
blue blazer is fun to say blue blazer
Annalise
26:54
what about the body language carter you had talked last time about the hands on the head with redford practice how how would you rate both of their body language and i mean you've both you both mentioned and i think everyone watching like daniel smith is very comfortable in that tv environment she did it for years yeah
Carter
27:12
yeah i mean she was very comfortable uh notley
Carter
27:15
notley kept talking to people in the room she would talk to smith she would talk to the the hosts and then she would sometimes talk to the to the camera i mentioned this earlier this is a problem with this right you need to pick your audience and you need to focus on them you know and they they weren't successful in doing that that automatically made because
Carter
27:35
because because she didn't move her head a lot she moved her eyes a lot and when you move your eyes you look shifty that is just that's good that is how you look and it's
Carter
27:45
it's very difficult to say well you know that's not what she was intending to be i mean she was just trying to look at it doesn't matter what she intends body language is subconscious people are going to look at her and think she looks shifty that's just that's the way it was the rest of the body language one thing that i'm throwing into body language i'm not sure if it fits here but i'm going to throw it in anyways it was uh notley's hair it was constantly moving to her face and um that's tricky because you don't want something covering your face now i'm not saying pull it back in a ponytail but it's tricky when
Carter
28:16
when you have long hair what are
Annalise
28:17
are you saying what's your hair
Carter
28:20
when you have long hair you need to make sure you would know so
Corey
28:24
i was just yeah i have long
Carter
28:27
but i get a lot of shows in university and if you have long hair you are not able to be as expressive with your face and people again if the if the hair is covering your face people think you are hiding something that is a subconscious reaction to hair in the face period her
Carter
28:43
her hair came into her face i'm not a hairstylist i'm not telling you what to do i am a person who studies body language who understands what body language means and hair in the face isn't great when you're trying to communicate with a large large group of people okay
Annalise
28:56
okay what what are your other body language tips there carter oh
Carter
28:59
oh that's it i
Carter
29:00
i thought the rest of the body language was actually fairly strong both Both of them look like leaders to me.
Corey
29:07
Yeah, to expand on Stephen's point, one of the challenges with looking at other people in the room is it is fundamentally, it's mistargeting who your audience is. Your audience is not the moderator. Your audience is not Danielle Smith, and you should be speaking to your audience. And Danielle Smith did a great job of this. Stephen's exactly right. She seemed to know exactly what camera was on. Again, not that hard because there is a red light on it, and she focused on the camera accordingly. Stephen Harper did this all of the time, too. Everybody else in those five-person debates would be looking at each other, talking to each other, and he would just straight at the camera, I am talking to Canadians. Very powerful when done right. Can look a little weird when done wrong, but Danielle Smith did it right. She figured it out, and she managed it very, very well. Well, the other thing about body language, though, is, and again, I don't know if I would put this in body language, but I'm going to throw it on the table here, is they both started with, and I get it, it's a debate, I would be the same, but like with such a nervous energy, and
Corey
30:07
and there needed to be, they both needed to find their calm a little bit faster than they did. But I think it was particularly, you know, I
Corey
30:15
I think present in Rachel Notley's speech, because I, as I already said, sort of saw racing,
Corey
30:22
racing, you know, this idea of your
Corey
30:24
your thoughts are a little bit ahead of your mouth and nothing is quite lining up the way that you necessarily want it. And just as she got on in the debate, as she got slower, she got better. And it's something that she could have found a little bit sooner, I think. And unfortunately, she stepped on a couple of her good lines just by not getting them out perfectly because she had those nerves and she
Corey
30:49
she got a little ahead of herself. But there's
Carter
30:51
there's ways to diminish those, right? Like a pitcher doesn't just walk onto the mound and start pitching baseballs, right? Like they do a warm up in the bullpen. And my fear is that in the green room, you know, they did not get the appropriate, the appropriate warm up. I'm sure they were doing things like, like, what are the top lines? Let's focus on the lines. They weren't doing breath work. They weren't doing timing speech, right? right? They weren't, you know, you can do things to actually control how many words come out per minute. You can do things to make sure that you are, your diaphragm is working so that your language comes out better. You can do things to make sure that you were, you know, you don't sweat about the words. The words don't matter on your speech. What matters is your confidence. But she got lost on a single word. And when you lose a single word, the whole thing goes off track.
Corey
31:42
yeah so i i i'm i'm a music i play music i'm not a musician and you know one of the things one
Corey
31:53
the things you learn pretty quickly is that it is much better to plow through an error than to stop and repeat yourself and correct the error because the sense of rhythm is so important to to the appreciation of the audience right and and to the person who's listening to the music and that's true of speech as well the minute you have to kind of go back and correct yourself it feels more ungainly than if you just plow through the mistake you say the wrong word you don't draw attention to it you just move on with your fucking life and unfortunately because in a debate you're
Corey
32:23
you're often trying to get those packaged moments you're trying to get your line out you want the line to be correct your desire to correct the record is very strong and i think we saw both candidates they'd suffer from that at certain points in the debate and it's just not the right play right you just move through it and you say the line again if you need to at a later point if your goal is to get the clip just repeat yourself who cares how
Annalise
32:47
how how did you think having just the two of them changed it we talked about last time this is the first um time where it's been just two leaders on stage how how did that and we can kind of get into like the format and if it was rushed and the questions but just the two of them on stage how
Annalise
33:02
how do you think that changed things well
Carter
33:04
well number one it gave them exactly who they needed to focus on right like they knew exactly who they had to focus on i really liked that and the second piece is they'd made the decision through the negotiations that they weren't going to speak over each other and it actually made it an enjoyable debate i
Carter
33:19
i actually heard the words that were being uttered i heard you know i heard from one candidate i heard from the other candidate it was actually uh an informative debate i mean i didn't necessarily like each of the answers um but if you were coming into this debate as a relatively you know unprepared
Carter
33:35
unprepared watcher um you would have learned quite a bit about each of the party's pollen you know platforms and such because they enabled communication and having just two people made it so much easier for that i i actually quite enjoyed that format of of debate and uh you know, it made it so much better. And the no talking over was fantastic. And just for the record, that can also be done in multi person debates. And I hope that people watching tonight in other parts of the country recognize that this is just better, better TV, better, better for democracy than the shit show that we've gotten used to recently.
Corey
34:22
mean, you say that, but you You also said earlier, like the lies were driving you crazy. And I'm not trying to like call you out or blow up your spot here, but I think this is one of the things that I'm challenged with in this debate is that I, like I said at the start, I think the format in many ways was great, really great format, but,
Corey
34:39
but, um, but when there is no breath, when there's no, like you're on the next person's on, you're on the next person's on. It's like when we do this podcast and there's just the two of us, you
Corey
34:50
you know, how not as good, You know, sometimes you need that moment to kind of process and think. But
Carter
34:55
But there was hosts. And I don't know how you process this podcast, but I listen to what you say. I think about how wrong you are. And then I correct you on how wrong you are. And Rachel Notley could have done with
Carter
35:08
with a little of that, right? She could have done with, if Rachel Notley had just simply said, you know what, I should probably listen to Danielle Smith. And when she says something that's loony, I should say, wow, that was loony. And then move into my own answer. But instead, she didn't do that. she doesn't listen to the podcast enough you know all these times we've been referring to rachel and lou she's not actually listening it's very upsetting because if she'd listened uh she could listen to me destroy you essentially in a in a debate over and over and over again three
Annalise
35:38
three times a week cory
Annalise
35:39
cory carter's brought it up a couple times um his idea of like counting the lies like that sort of shtick does does something like that you're the comms guy does it a shtick like that work to get the point across you
Corey
35:52
know it can and actually it allows you if it's done right to create a bit of a shorthand so just imagine at like question at the eight minute mark i'm going to use steven's exact answer of like wow seven
Corey
36:03
seven lies in eight minutes here and you can even say like i think everyone at home make sure you're googling or something along those lines here but by calling it out that first time you know you can almost the minute she's talking and yeah it's breaking the rules of the debate but steven just start talking i'll give an example i'm going to
Carter
36:20
to talk about how what she could have done is she could have referred to the ndp war room and said the war room will be putting out
Carter
36:25
out a fact check that's
Carter
36:28
well anyways i mean the war room will be putting out a fact check now it's
Carter
36:33
hey can i can i speak oh
Carter
36:36
oh sure yeah i want to sound intelligent oh
Carter
36:39
oh you're not going to hit with that's 12 i'm
Carter
36:42
i'm a little disappointed i
Carter
36:44
kind of know No, you want to. I could have expected.
Carter
36:47
you to count me with the low-hanging fruit there. I gave it to you.
Carter
36:52
You don't like those easy ones. Okay, anyways, Annalise, I'm handing it back to you.
Corey
36:57
Yeah, but just kind of break her sound bites, and you've created a shorthand for the audience. It's fucking annoying, and people will be mad at you, but you'll break her flow. And you get the point across.
Annalise
37:07
In terms of questions, the two moderators, and then questions from journalists, format, time, what are your thoughts there? I guess. Do you think it was too short?
Corey
37:17
Yeah. Well, when we last talked about it, I thought it was two hours because one of the newscasts was running two hours, but apparently only one hour of debate. That really actually almost made me anxious how much people felt like they were both talking fast. They were both trying to get their words in. And it probably would have benefited just to have a little bit more time for a little bit more back and forth along those lines there. And I get why it was an hour because there was only two of them but in a funny way it's like we've been complaining about how little time everybody gets at the hour and a half debate two hour debates when there's five and when there's not we just divide the time in two like why wouldn't we have resolved the challenge we used to have yeah
Carter
37:56
yeah but this isn't necessarily just because you know of the performers it's not just because of the the method all you know like uh this is actually a deeper question and that is is the news consortium didn't want to lose an hour of primetime. They didn't want to lose Wheel of Fortune or whatever comes on at 7 o'clock that advertisers pay for, and that's how they make their money. They're not making their money on airing a debate. There's no money in a debate, and two hours of a debate means they lose two hours of revenue. One hour of a debate means they only lose one hour of revenue, and
Carter
38:35
and that's why it's an hour. that's why it starts at six o'clock instead of at eight right it starts at six o'clock because and you made this point cory i'm quoting you it's at six o'clock because then it's over the news hour and that's their local news requirement and um you know these guys are all trying to make money i don't begrudge them that but let's not let's not forget as this thing goes along that that's a factor in terms of why we don't get the debate that we want
Annalise
39:03
you guys see any ads when you were when
Annalise
39:06
you were watching yeah me
Corey
39:08
me too watch cbc so i saw rob brown and janet
Corey
39:12
janet brown and yeah
Corey
39:13
they they gave their analysis just
Carter
39:15
just the you know they don't look like brother and sister they're
Carter
39:18
they're not brother and sister they're
Corey
39:20
they're not yeah they're not common common last name stephen carter really uh what
Annalise
39:27
what about the uh the openings and the closings How did you think they, how would you rate both of their performances there?
Carter
39:34
We've already covered Rachel's kind of little mini flub on the line. I don't think that was that big a deal. It was frustrating for her and frustrating for me. But, you know, it's kind of, it was mostly forgotten. I think that the problem with the opening and the closing is that those are the opportunities to set what your actual agenda is going to be as you talk about it. I thought both of them were well written. But what I actually my problem is that there weren't enough stories and the story could have been so easily set up in the in the opening and closing. And instead of doing stories, they spoke of policy and policies, boring and stories are interesting. The one story that that Notley
Carter
40:19
was really good. You know, the young girl in the classroom with
Corey
40:23
with a hand up really saw the story.
Carter
40:25
story. and it's like man you you
Carter
40:26
have that gear why are you using it exactly one time in the most important debate of your life right like this is it
Carter
40:36
was ridiculous but and and that i mean i thought her closing was stronger than her opening but you know both of them are those things are so easy they're written it's it's done they've rehearsed them it's almost like dispose of those and focus on the actual debate because i think that that's how the voter views it okay
Annalise
40:53
okay well yeah we're talking talking about it for one minute not 40 minutes yeah exactly cory what did you think of the opening and closing i
Corey
41:00
i thought they were i agree with steve and i think both were very well written i actually think rachel's were better written i think
Corey
41:06
think in general i think she had more packaged lines that i could see becoming quotes which i think i said at the start here and a lot of danielle smith's was just steamroll talking going through these things are they factual sort of sometimes sometimes times not even at all as we've already talked about other times yes very factual and showed a command of the facts right and um and in general rachel notley seemed a little bit more aware that these things might have to live on their own in isolation at some point although to go back to style points here she did need to just take a breath after them and let them be cut and let them breathe and use silence as a note to say the last thing i said is super fucking important so So stop and let that sink in for a minute. And in a way, it's a bit of a metaphor for one of the challenges the NDP campaign has, which is there are so many things to say, you never stop talking and you don't let the things land. And I get it. And I feel that pain. But the other thing I would say is that Rachel
Corey
42:03
Rachel Notley, more than Danielle Smith, fell into a too technical voice, right? And it's a curse of being a premier. You've got two premiers that are on that stage right there. but even when rachel is talking about puff funding yeah
Corey
42:20
never explained what puff funding is and if you take the time to say this is funding for children who need help the most tell that story right you tell that that story becomes so much more powerful and um and instead it was a it was a lot of like public service acronym style stuff from both candidates they both fell into it at different points there and that in the point that carter are made though has got to be underlined became
Corey
42:43
became technical became a debate about facts that story sticks with me that story struck me as a parent i could feel that story both
Corey
42:52
both candidates needed more of that four
Carter
42:54
four or five stories wins that debate the
Carter
42:56
the hell who why didn't we tell a health care story you
Carter
42:59
you know danielle smith told the health care story it wasn't particularly the good one with the uh paramedics being able to you know dump and drive uh the you know the but at least you know she made it so yeah
Corey
43:12
yeah i mean like yes but um
Carter
43:14
um that's a story wasn't great but where's where's um you know the story that allison redford used to tell about the family care clinics is the the mom that would wake up at four you know four in the morning with a toddler that has a fever and you know that you don't need to go to the emergency room or you don't want to go to the emergency room but there's not a lot of resources but that family care clinic that's going to open at 7 30 the next morning and welcome you in and answer your questions and be there for you that's the difference between a healthcare system that cares and the healthcare system we have now
Carter
43:44
right she didn't what where the fuck is that story or some you know any variant thereof right my friend who is waiting for the for their hip replacement my friend you know all of us have friends that uh are going through cancer and you know are going through four
Annalise
43:58
four years of healthcare stories yeah
Carter
44:00
yeah i mean where the fuck were they they weren't there and why instead
Carter
44:04
instead we're talking fucking bureaucratic ease like that's not how you win debates what
Annalise
44:10
what what about the positioning and i mean we've talked about unique it was two people and and one of them was in power for four years four years ago and then another has been premier for what six seven months but do you how do you think they were positioning each other how do you think it came off to the audience in terms of i saw someone um commenting they felt like smith was positioning herself as kind of like like the challenger so that she could more just call Rachel out on her record. Like, do you want to just speak to your thoughts on positioning?
Carter
44:40
Well, for me, the positioning was Smith saying, I don't have an actual record because I haven't been here long enough. But you do, and your record sucks. That was the subtext of so much of what Smith was talking about today. You know, like your record was really horrible. when i'm when i've been premier for as long as you have my record will be so much better and she was kind of allowed to get away with that um so that positioning of this upstart that that um doesn't have the history that that that is is dogging um notley that that was good because it actually worked now again is it truthful not really but on the other hand she's only been been there for a few months um but a few months still a premier makes so we're you're she should have been more responsible also for kenny's fuck-ups um and you know she was allowed to slide on a lot of that yeah
Corey
45:41
yeah you know it's a really interesting thing for me because in a way both of the people on the stage were acting
Corey
45:46
acting as though they were opposition leader yeah fighting against the record of the other person you didn't have a lot of standing up and saying and i did this right by either side. And both did at different points. Both said they were proud of it. But the main thrust for both of them was, you know, to summarize very simply, it's look at the four years of NDP government. You don't want that. Ignore my term that's been more recent. Look at the four years of the NDP government. And then look at Danielle Smith's comments here. And that's a strange one for me. So there's kind of this cliche in Canadian politics, Paul Wells rules rules for canadian politics you familiar with these yeah you tweeted
Carter
46:24
so i read them i
Corey
46:25
i did tweet them out today so i read your tweets based thank
Corey
46:28
thank you just get alerts every time cory yeah
Corey
46:31
at cory hogan yeah you know the best in the business cory hogan
Carter
46:35
hogan tweeted that's really interesting so
Corey
46:37
so one of the you can go look at the four if you want on my feed but one of the four
Corey
46:42
the fourth is the guy who additions for the role of opposition leader will get the job and
Corey
46:47
and they're both auditioning for the role of opposition leader right now so what happens there not really clear and um we we have a very interesting debate in that uh i think both of them are actually proud of their records don't misunderstand me here but both feel that the most fruitful ground is taking the ground from out of the other person and where does this end where does this go it's going to end up with who we think actually did a worse job or could potentially do a worse job based on their record that's fascinating to me yeah
Carter
47:17
yeah this was not not necessarily setting the stage for I will do better. This was setting the stage for you can't elect her. And that's a bold choice. It's a tricky choice to get through. And I am not sure that that in the long run serves both of these candidates as well as it could.
Corey
47:37
Well, I don't know if it serves either of them for different reasons, right? I think in the case of Rachel Notley and the ndp the challenge becomes tell me the story about what the future looks like tell me about the future of alberta right this is this is kind of a long-term thing we've said they have a story but they've got you know there's a lot of other things going on for
Corey
47:57
for danielle smith her
Corey
47:59
her just attacking rachel notley and saying rachel notley's terrible you got to stop her actually does nothing to share or to shore up danielle smith yeah the
Corey
48:07
the day after the election and if she's looking to keep the caucus knives from coming for her she's not making any kind of case that she should stick around right now she's making a case for why rachel notley should not be premier not why daniel smith should be premier and in fact the ndp are making a pretty strong case why daniel smith should not be premier that's
Annalise
48:26
that's a good point there cory carter you mentioned you have a list of lies did you did you want to talk about it or you're good no
Carter
48:33
i mean i think everybody has I get really tired with the the Jagmeet Singh is your boss stuff I get I'm exhausted by um I you know the emissions cap is a production cap um you know I thought uh you know grainy
Carter
48:51
grainy videos um you know we all the NDP almost bankrupted the province uh these things just kind drive me a bit crazy because I don't recall the province being almost bankrupted. That didn't happen. I pay attention fairly closely. I would have noted. I think I would have gone, wow, this isn't a great day. The closest financial disaster
Carter
49:19
we had was when we had the largest deficit in our history and the ucp had that so you know and again that
Carter
49:29
that was right there for rachel to punch back on she was there too i was gonna
Annalise
49:32
gonna say when you put it like that that's you know the
Carter
49:35
the largest deficit ever in in alberta history was was produced by your government danielle and she's then has to run away from kenny which she'll do but put
Carter
49:45
put her in the place where she's running away from kenny that's great but where you were like you didn't push back on that at all she you
Carter
49:54
didn't push back on jugmeet singh being your boss i mean sure she grinned and smiled and stuff but that was bullshit no one knows what that grin and smile meant i mean i
Corey
50:03
i didn't know she should have just said a number 30 13 14 lies yeah no
Corey
50:07
no i you know i think it's
Corey
50:10
it's an interesting one and i'll i want to loop back to where i started which is both of the parties have reasons to declare victory tonight and it really does come down to how they manage it over the next couple of days now so as much as we've deconstructed body language and answers we thought that were lacking at the end of the day this really was a debate where you could say there were two strong performers which sometimes you get the opposite you get two very weak performers and that was not this debate there is a lot of stuff around it that makes me say what in the world are we doing here but either
Corey
50:44
of the parties either of the parties could still spin this into a victory Both of them have the wrong components to do so. And now we're going to learn a little bit about their organization. Can
Carter
50:52
Can I talk just a smidge about the actual spin?
Carter
50:55
Because I think that the NDP have the opportunity to spin for victory. The UCP is spinning for defeat, right? The UCP is saying, because the UCP is going to be caught in all of the lies and the media
Carter
51:12
is going to be asking them different questions. So they don't actually get to spin themselves into the victory. the NDP the UCP is going to be stuck uh trying to defend what Danielle Smith said rather than actually getting to spin for their own victory and so I I kind of if if the long weekend didn't start tomorrow I would probably give this uh the opportunity to spin a better outcome um to the to our good friends in the NDP but
Annalise
51:39
the long weekend does start tomorrow so does it oh
Annalise
51:42
oh my does that change your answer
Carter
51:44
well i just don't think people i mean we've covered this off on friday
Annalise
51:47
friday does anyone work friday before a long weekend not
Carter
51:51
but uh i know i know one of my colleagues who is going to work tomorrow but then has booked a lunch uh with a friend of his and a friend from toronto and then is planning to spend some other time uh kind of talking about you know the future and and kind of all these goals and stuff later that afternoon instead of going back to work so i have a friend like that i don't know if anybody else does cory do you have anybody that you can think of that does stuff like that or no
Corey
52:17
no all of my friends are hard workers i just associate with a better cast i guess
Corey
52:21
you do i guess
Carter
52:21
you do yeah yeah i guess you do yeah yeah
Annalise
52:24
but that that spin like there there is a long weekend what's what's the reality in terms of and i guess maybe tbd you guys have talked for 50 minutes on thoughts here but who who
Annalise
52:36
who who would would you say won it right now and I think if we revisit this question on Tuesday who do you think has the momentum to to spin it into a victory over the next few days well
Corey
52:48
well I think this does go back to the expectation game and I know an awful lot of people were watching it on both sides waiting and wanting a knockout blow and I think in particular there were NDP supporters who thought this is the moment this is where it's all going to unravel for Danielle Smith she's just going to be this wreck of a human being just falling apart under the hot lights. That was never going to happen. Danielle Smith is a stage performer. She knows how to hold herself together. That's just a reality of it here. But there's almost this letdown that you don't have the big dramatic moment. And in part, one of the reasons why people were conditioned to hope for and almost get to a point of expectation for the dramatic moment is that is so much part of the story of Rachel Notley's rise in the first place. And we talked about this last episode. But in 2015, you know, the math is hard line, which is actually math is difficult, I will say as a pedant. And
Corey
53:42
And that was such that debate, that debate was an elevating moment for Rachel Notley. And it was a really consequential moment in politics. But think for a minute, how many hundreds or thousands of debates you have have you've seen or seen pass by you in the decades that you've been alive how many actually have moments like this we talked about five yeah
Corey
54:07
last episode right like the reality is the vast majority of debates don't have the knockout the vast you're much more likely to have a debate that ends with people critiquing the format of the debate than saying wow that debate really changed things here can debates change things you bet we've seen it for
Corey
54:24
for sure did this one change things i'm not so sure at this particular moment i think if everything froze right now i would give it to danielle smith because i think any day that danielle smith doesn't uh or any moment where danielle smith is not like absolutely on the defensive especially after the morning she had moment
Annalise
54:42
moment or day to moment because it what as you back to full circle we talked about the beginning it was a wild day well
Corey
54:53
given how wild this day started and all of the things that happened today and look we talked obviously about the big one the ethics commissioner we grazed past the one about the ucp candidate that had to be dropped for her hateful comments but there was also like the canadian ukrainian society yeah
Corey
55:08
took exception to some of the comments that were made like there were a bunch of things that happened today of varying degrees of importance and and
Corey
55:16
and at the end end of the day if if you look at all of that and then you see this debate and you think well seemed fine for danielle smith i
Corey
55:23
mean that's a contextual victory if the refer was one i suppose
Carter
55:28
mean truth of the matter is uh smith smith won the debate today will smith still be winning the debate on monday tuesday i don't think so i think that the spin on this and then And the challenges of what happened today are still yet to be reported. So all of the things that happened today are going to get tied up into the reporting of the debate. And there is no way that all those things don't color the outcome of the debate. So I think that by Tuesday, Wednesday, it looks like Notley won the debate. But realistically, and when we start to rewrite this history, I hope that we're not saying, saying, Ooh, you know, not least the best debate performer in the history of mankind. She wasn't in 2015. She wasn't in 2019. And she isn't in 2023.
Annalise
56:22
Carter strategy wise, how do you spin it over the coming over the coming days? If let's say you were advising the NDP on, okay, this is what happened is done. Now we've got kind of three, four days, long weekend people with family, like what, what, what, what is that messaging? What so that by Tuesday, everyone thinks Rachel Notley has won it.
Carter
56:44
I would probably do a little bit of self-deprecating spin. And so self-deprecating spin, in my mind, is when you say,
Carter
56:54
Rachel really did struggle under the weight of some of the, of just the sheer volume of lies that Danielle put forward. I mean, I guess she expected Danielle to at least resort to some truth. So we struggled a bit with that. But as the fact checks come out over this weekend and as the you know, especially on that ethics commissioner report, I mean, we're really going to be seeing a whole bunch of change because people know that Danielle Smith, every word that came out of her mouth was a lie. And I think that that's ultimately the story that's going to be told. Isn't that the story you're going to tell? I mean, that's that seems to be the story that people want to hear is, you know, how how how come Danielle Smith could be so brazen? in the lies that she told.
Annalise
57:41
And then you pivot that back so it can't be trusted sort of messaging.
Carter
57:44
Absolutely. I mean, it's been your setup from the whole time.
Corey
57:48
Yeah, I really want to underline that. The first thing to winning a debate after is to pick an angle and stick with it. Like, don't take this spaghetti approach of, well, maybe we'll say Rachel was the best. Maybe we'll say the problem was Danielle Smith was just able to lie. Well, because that doesn't really jive. So was she the best? Or did she lose because the person? You just got to sort of pick a lane. And so I think the angle of can't be trusted, that was a lie a minute, that was a wild time on a wild day is probably the NDP's best particular line. God, you could have a list of all of the lies as you see them. Like, I want to take a bit of a jaundiced look at this and say, there are some things that were outright lies. There were some things that are more natural kind of conventional truth stretches. stretches and by the way it's not as though rachel notley didn't stretch the truth with things like about her platform costing right but the preponderance for sure was on the the misstatements and the mistruths being on the on the ucp side so start with a list create a pop-up video of the whole debate of boop here's another lie that she said and here's the actual fact maybe that you release at some point on the weekend to share nobody's actually
Corey
58:52
yeah nobody's actually going to spend a ton of time on it but you could clip a few bits of it and put it out out on social media here make the whole story about how uh you know it was like you
Corey
59:03
you know it was two cameras one was focused on reality and the other was focused on fantasy you know and you know it's just almost rose tinted whenever it goes over to daniel smith there's a way that you can build that out and just package that out and keep daniel smith on the defensive and um and for sure i say rachel notley presented a hopeful honest vision about what the future of the the province looks like and danielle smith lied to you for an hour and do you want to be lied to for four years i mean i mean that's that's a very legitimate attack you could make i
Carter
59:34
i i love the pop up video thing i mean you could do it like in real time to start right and then you start just jumping to each lie and as you go through and then at the end the counter just breaks and it goes to static that'd
Carter
59:47
that'd be really fun there you know what would be really good if we knew someone listen to if
Carter
59:51
we knew someone in the ndp was producing commercials that would be really fun we should call them if
Annalise
59:56
if if only if if only you knew that well
Corey
1:00:00
well hold on because i do also want to say there's a ucp way to win the spin too yeah
Annalise
1:00:04
yeah let's not just
Corey
1:00:05
just sit here and talk about what the end
Annalise
1:00:07
end let's do strategy for everyone what should the ucp do of course
Corey
1:00:09
course well the ucp just have to clip the things where danielle smith looks absolutely in command and contrast them with the with the various flubs of of uh of rachel notley like it's it's actually not too hard it's a more conventional way to do that and you just flood the zone with as much of that as possible and have everybody say yeah they won now don't get me wrong you're not going to get your ko there you're not going to get a knockout punch but if you combine that and you sustain that with people already sort of saying in the moment daniel smith was the smooth deliverer and whatnot the secret for both of these is to latch on to something that is organically floating to the top anyhow and my personal favorite way to look at this is to see like the disappointed supporters what are they saying on on your side on their side use that like use that as your attack and i think disappointed supporters on the ndp are saying oh you know daniel smith was just smoother than rachel notley so use that if you're daniel smith and the disappointed supporters maybe
Corey
1:01:09
maybe the disappointed supporters on the ucp aren't feeling the same thing but there's opportunities there you know
Carter
1:01:14
know what i would do i would just take her her 30 second answers and just do them all as clips and then i my spin would be the person who has to attack the other person lost when you've won you just put up your own your own bits oh
Corey
1:01:29
oh you know what there's a gimmicks you could do there too like i if i were the ucp war room i would put out a video saying we've we've clipped the best
Corey
1:01:37
best parts of the debate for danielle smith and i would literally post the whole debate oh yeah you know that'd
Carter
1:01:42
that'd be fun that's
Carter
1:01:43
that's good jesus you're
Annalise
1:01:44
you guys got you got lots lots of ideas smokes
Annalise
1:01:48
lots of ideas for both sides uh cory you look a little less confused than when we started talking about this an hour ago are you or are you still you're gonna wait and see what uh what's to come in the coming days no
Corey
1:01:59
no i mean i'm still confused i i started texting people right after the debate who are only politics adjacent jason being like what are you hearing what are people in your circle saying a lot of people were just like they're not watching it that was kind of the fundamental kind of feedback i got but i i really you know i think we all need to know our own limits we need to know about the biases that we carry into this what we were expecting how we read things the knowledge we have the knowledge we don't have as we're observing it all with a certain amount of humility and a full appreciation that if you are listening to this podcast you were not the audience right like you said a word just not a word
Carter
1:02:36
word that i was confused by
Corey
1:02:40
yeah don't worry i don't i don't have the time to explain to you the concept of humility
Annalise
1:02:50
talked about stakes in the last episode and kind of like who uh who watches debates and who who they matter for and i guess in this case
Annalise
1:03:00
do you want to just expand on that in the calgary sense right like again battleground calgary we've seen all the national uh
Annalise
1:03:07
uh people here this week focusing on calgary undecideds in calgary like suburbs in calgary how does this debate impact those folks well
Corey
1:03:17
well okay first of all let's talk about what matters in terms of the election it remains as it has been since the start part, persuadable
Corey
1:03:28
in suburban Calgary. Full
Corey
1:03:29
Full stop. That is what this election hinges on here. The audience of this debate will include some people who are persuadable voters from suburban Calgary. That's a reality. Debates actually do still have pretty good viewership when you compare it to a lot of other things here. But by and large, most of that group will not have watched the debate in any kind of meaningful way, right? If they're persuadable, they're probably not that partisan. That means they're not deeply invested in politics in either either kind of either flavor that we offer here in the province of alberta sorry
Corey
1:03:58
sorry alberta party you are not a flavor of politics they're
Carter
1:04:02
they're not even vanilla you don't even give them vanilla we're talking
Annalise
1:04:04
talking about the alberta
Annalise
1:04:06
again we're doing it yeah
Corey
1:04:07
yeah i'm not even giving them vanilla but
Corey
1:04:10
this is why the post debate matters so much too because it's about how that group who maybe didn't even watch the debate or maybe just watched it for 15 minutes and said i gotta i gotta feed my kids. I got stuff to do. It's six o'clock. This is supper hour, right?
Corey
1:04:25
It's the small bits that they captured. It's the way it's packaged. It's the way their peer groups are talking about the debate. It's the things they're seeing in the Calgary Herald. It's the things they're seeing on CTV. It's the things they're seeing on social media that will all kind of create a flavor of the debate. And there's a really fascinating phenomenon that you will note. Stephen has seen this too. Anybody who's worked in a party which has polling as to who won the debate will see this. You'll do a poll. Did you watch the debate? What did you think of the debate? You will always have like five times as many people claim they watched the debate as
Corey
1:04:57
as you know watched the debate and they all have opinions about it. And so the four times of the people who actually watched the debate, who are undecided, who are persuadable in suburban Calgary, that's what matters. And you want to craft a view of the debate for them, even if they didn't watch a minute of it.
Carter
1:05:14
Yeah. And the other thing is if you're doing three days of polling, if you're doing rolling polls which a lot of them will be doing at this stage um you will see one response on the first night another response on the second and the third night will be different again so this it it really does evolve over time um yeah
Carter
1:05:32
it's it's pretty exciting yeah and
Corey
1:05:35
well part of why it evolves so much in in our context in alberta and canada is we don't have have by and large public dial groups like they do in the United States. Like in a sense, like when there's a presidential debate down there, the decision, like I think it kind of ossifies a little faster because it just goes through the cycle so much quicker, right? Before you go to bed that night, you've seen how the dial groups react. So you know how, you know, the undecideds that were pulled together saw it. You see, you know, CNN
Corey
1:06:05
CNN will have their group of undecided voters who do you think won the debate they'll put their hand up who do you think yeah like you get all of that immediately in the united states and it flips through it quicker and knowing
Corey
1:06:16
knowing that somebody won a debate will make you think
Corey
1:06:19
think they won the debate right even if you didn't and they're
Carter
1:06:21
they're not even going to pay attention to it in the same way like some people might be just trying to figure out should i take port adelaide or should i take melbourne and you know that will be the piece that really dominates the way that they're thinking and that's for me for example i've been been really struggling with that and by the way i did choose you got that
Carter
1:06:39
i chose the power about
Annalise
1:06:39
about that you're wondering carter you're
Annalise
1:06:41
wondering knowing no one is wondering guys instead i'm not instead of lightning round let's uh let's end with some closing remarks stephen carter what are your closing remarks on the debate um
Carter
1:06:54
i still struggle with debate processes that do not rely on some sort of agreed to facts agreed to truths uh when someone has decided that they're not going to speak to truth and instead are going to insert their own lies or their own alternative facts, it fundamentally changes the playing field for both of the debating partners. So in this particular case, the debating partnership wasn't even. It was not set up for both partners to come at the same task at the same time. And that requires that you think on your feet and you do a counterpunch much faster than Rachel Notley did. Danielle Smith should have have been taken down a lot further and a lot faster by by only one person in this debate and as the that is rachel notley some people will look and say well we should have you know the moderator should have stepped in and all of that that's just not true uh rachel notley if if this debate does turn against notley it will be her issue it will be her people her people the people who prepared her uh and uh that's going to be tough for them to stomach if it goes back to smith um then it's just the baggage that she's carrying with her if if smith loses today it's not about today it's about the shit that happened before okay
Annalise
1:08:10
okay cory hogan closing remarks you're up
Corey
1:08:13
yeah um you can have good quick or cheap choose two there's similar logic in a debate right and one of the things steven talked about was rachel notley maybe responding more directly to the charges that were there and she didn't by and large she just went to the lines that were clearly prepared. These were the messages she wanted to get out.
Corey
1:08:32
That doesn't mean that was the wrong strategy. Stephen didn't get the responses he wanted, but I would argue they might have gotten the packaged clips that they wanted with the attacks on Danielle Smith. And the standout line in many ways for me was when the comments that were made about Danielle Smith arguing with herself. Frankly, it's exhausting, right? These were good lines, and she did manage to get them out here. So you have to make those trade-offs in your debate prep. Do you want to be loose and nimble and just react to what the other person says? Well, there's a school of thought that says, no, then you lose the ability to control the agenda. And again, you're not playing for the audience in the room. You're playing for the audience at home. What does your research tell you they need to hear? I have no doubt, just because of the way it was presented and the words I heard and how it was delivered, that the NDP had a very honed, very data-driven approach to making sure that the messages were put out that they wanted to put out. And probably they were assuming people would see this as much or more in packaging, at least the voters that they care about, those persuadable and suburban Calgary, as anything else here. so like don't be don't be i guess i would say whether you support the ucp or you support the ndp and you're critiquing this performance just remember that you don't have all of the data that they have and they're making decisions about the approaches that they want to take and part of why the different campaigns start to feel good and they can both feel they want is they have different goals with the campaign and we're going to see where everything lands it's one of the interesting things about the debate like we uh we get to see parts of it we get to participate in the aftermath aftermath, but you know, there's, there's a bigger game going on and the players know an awful lot about what's happening out there. The final thing I want to say is that, uh, you know, the power, when their club was founded in 1870, they had an awful lot of spirit. They had that South Australian spirit and that's why you should have picked them. And it should never have been a question. You know, they have carried that to their core, the pies, they know where they're going. They know what's happening.
Corey
1:10:29
Pies are crushing this year.
Carter
1:10:31
Thank you, Corey. Really helpful.
Annalise
1:10:35
we're going to leave it there that's a wrap on episode 1064 of the strategist my name is annalise cleanfield with you as always stephen carter and cory hogan