Episode 1261: Triple down

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to The Strategist, episode 1261. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil, and with you tonight, Corey Hogan and Stephen Carter.

Corey 0:10

Tonight, for the first time, is that... For

Corey 0:13

first time. It sounded like it was

Corey 0:14

the first time. You changed your sign

Corey 0:14

sign on. Did I?

Corey 0:16

Are you trying it?

SPEAKER_00 0:16

it? On the spot? Or was it an accident?

SPEAKER_00 0:18

I'm under the weather today. Hold

Corey 0:21

Hold on, guys. Hold on.

Corey 0:26

That's where I'm going to edit in the sound of the can. That was really

Corey 0:28

good. can because i did it before we hit record yeah and annalise

Carter 0:31

annalise i think that your voice sounds great i mean don't don't look back that you're not feeling well you know and impede your commitment to the pod zane

Carter 0:39

zane would have not shown up but but you being here shows a real name

SPEAKER_00 0:42

name did not show up and that is why i am here it's like three

Carter 0:46

three in a row

SPEAKER_00 0:47

three in a row he just disappeared i

Corey 0:50

i mean yeah he he runs hot and cold on us that's for sure yeah

Corey 0:54

yeah yeah it's tough the

Corey 0:56

it's tough It's tough knowing Zane Velji, yeah. It

SPEAKER_00 0:59

tough knowing him. Yeah. He's never going to listen to this, so you can say whatever you want about Zane

Corey 1:04

Zane Velji. He claims he listened to the last episode. I think he misses us. He said

Carter 1:07

said something about it being good, which led me to believe he hadn't actually listened to it, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

He's a liar. Zane Velji's a liar. He is

Corey 1:15

is a liar. Hashtag Zane Velji's a liar. Let's get it trending. Get it to trend. Which

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Which Corey Hogan can do, because he has had a very popular tweet this evening, which we're

SPEAKER_00 1:25

we're going to get into. sue he's back on twitter yeah carter he's got a good tweet it's it's making the rounds this evening i'm

Carter 1:33

twitter whore you know like he can't stay off of it he comes up with one good idea and he's like oh i gotta get back on i gotta

Carter 1:39

get back on i you

SPEAKER_00 1:41

said he was off and now look you can tell he's happy i said i was taking a break

Carter 1:44

break and then cut his hair like he's expecting me i got a haircut he's expecting media interviews you know this is what's happening You know

SPEAKER_00 1:51

know this is part of a strategy. Okay, guys, we're going to jump into lots to talk about, including Corey Hogan's tweet that is doing very well. We're going to get into

SPEAKER_00 2:01

into that after our first topic, which Stephen Carter is itching to talk about. A new speaker is

SPEAKER_00 2:08

is our first segment. Long story short, there's

SPEAKER_00 2:11

there's a lot going on in the world right now, a whole lot, and for a couple weeks now,

SPEAKER_00 2:16

American Republicans have been arguing about a new speaker. They

SPEAKER_00 2:20

They still don't have one. they're still arguing they

SPEAKER_00 2:22

will hold a third vote tomorrow morning friday morning i believe uh

SPEAKER_00 2:27

uh jim jordan is still running for speaker you're smiling you've got a big smile steven carter what do you think of this entire situation i

Carter 2:36

i mean what a masochist hey yeah i mean could you imagine like you've lost two votes and now you're gonna do it one more time i mean that seems

SPEAKER_00 2:46

seems like something something you would do that seems like it does actually the double down okay it's

Corey 2:51

it's the jim jordan double down this is a jim jordan triple down this

Carter 2:55

this triple down is fine a double down is is a double down is fine triple down is is one too far uh i mean do we really expect that things are going to change um you know people seem to be more in more committed to voting out johnson uh uh uh jordan jordan johnson i think of him as a big dick uh

Carter 3:16

yeah i i mean jim jordan is is not going to win the speakership but it's more interesting

Corey 3:21

interesting isn't god he is for sure now going to win the speakership you did this i

Corey 3:25

did everybody marked the time i

Carter 3:26

i will not be part of your little story that i create the weather in the united states it's just not something that actually happens i

Carter 3:37

wish i had that kind of impact it's

Corey 3:38

it's but i just absolutely butterfly fly effect yeah anyways

Carter 3:42

anyways my point is simply this this

Carter 3:44

guy is not going to win but more important than him not winning is who's going to win there is no way that the republicans can come together behind a single candidate and they're not going to let the democrats do it and it's not that it's not an important time this was my point annalise it wasn't just they can't elect a speaker isn't that bad the

Carter 4:04

the point that i'm trying to get to is the

Carter 4:06

the and you you mentioned this in your preamble The world's gone to hell. I mean, we've got

SPEAKER_00 4:11

got to warn you. We've

Carter 4:12

We've got two shooting wars, two big shooting wars that impact American foreign policy. Russia invades Ukraine. Gaza and Israel are exploding. Hezbollah may

Carter 4:26

may be sending missiles into Israel as we speak. I mean, this is not the time for the United States Congress to go, no, I want to be the leader. No, I want to be the leader. No, I want to be the leader. This is the time for real leadership. And believe me, I mean, I'm not looking for, you know, what's his name? Mark, whatever his name is. Meadows, is that it? Who can remember? He's three speakers ago. I mean, we're not looking to him to be the actual, you know, the guy who, not Meadows. Meadows is the chief of staff. McCarthy

Carter 5:00

talking about here? McCarthy. You know, I don't know. Carter, Carter, we can leave that. I'm all hopped up on cough medicine. We can leave

SPEAKER_00 5:06

leave that there in bringing Corey because you tried to make like 12 different points. I'm all excited about this. It's like Thanksgiving dinner with him. Itching all day to talk. He called me this morning to say he wanted to talk about it. Corey, let's bring you in. What do you think of this whole situation?

SPEAKER_00 5:22

situation? And could you make like one single concise point? I'm sure Corey could find

Carter 5:28

find one point instead of my having a thousand things to say. Yeah.

Corey 5:32

Yeah. It's called message discipline, Stephen. Never

Carter 5:35

been my strong suit.

Corey 5:39

Well, look, I mean, in that rambling, incoherent response Stephen gave you, he gave a very important point, which is this is probably not the time the United States wants to be without a Speaker of the House. And in fact, the rules were changed after 9-11 to create more kind of contingencies for this, including, as I'm sure many will know, like a secret list that the speaker would have of the people who could be the speaker if the speaker were incapacitated by, you know, presumably an attack. At the time, it was thought Al-Qaeda, not, you know, not Lauren Boebert. But, you know, here we are. And so I think that... The Lauren Boebert

Carter 6:18

Boebert line was good. I like that. Thank

Corey 6:20

Thank you. I don't even know if she voted against him. No, but it's still really

Corey 6:23

nice. It's still a good line, right? Poetic, yeah.

Corey 6:27

yeah. So Patrick McHenry was made this temporary Speaker of the House. He's sort of presiding over activities with kind of an undefined role, which I think is a bit wrong, because the whole contingency thing was, if

Corey 6:42

if there's not a Speaker, there's a Speaker. So there's always a Speaker. But, you know, the Republicans haven't quite wrapped their heads around this. i

Corey 6:49

do think that ultimately what's going to happen is they are not going to be able to resolve their differences and they are going to get to the conclusion that they're just going to let the temporary speaker be the speaker for a while certainly it looked even earlier today like that might be the case but the bigger issue here is the republican party is not one party anymore it's it's so clear and you had a situation where the the right wing of the party took out mccarthy McCarthy, the

Corey 7:15

the mainstream of the party then nominated Scalise, the right wing of the party refused to support Scalise, Scalise withdraws, the right wing of the party nominates Jim Jordan, and now the moderates of the party refuse to support Jim Jordan. And at all this time that this is going on, all the time that this is going on, and all the time during the multiple votes during Kevin McCarthy's speakership, you've got the Democrats being kind of uniformly behind And look, easier to do in opposition, not a perfect comp here. There's not actually the stakes that there are with the speakership. But it's really underlining how broken the modern Republican movement is. And unfortunately, by extension, how broken American politics is.

Carter 8:00

That was a really good single point, Corey.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Carter's not even waiting for a question. He's just going to throw more passionate points. That was a really good single point

Carter 8:11

point that you made

SPEAKER_00 8:11

made there. Tell us what else is

Carter 8:13

is on your mind, Carter.

Carter 8:15

No, I mean, Corey's...

Carter 8:17

I come back to the single point that I was making, and that Corey emphasized. This is just not the time, right?

Carter 8:22

right? There have been rules and procedures put in place to make sure that this doesn't happen. And to be clear, I watched today a number of Republicans trying to pin this on the Democrats, and that's just laughable. It's laughable. The Republicans have the majority in the House. They're supposed to be in the position where they can elect a speaker. speaker imagine this we don't have this capacity you know someone's going to get elected in eventually in canada and the united in great britain only in the united states only this time is someone not serving a speaker this i think we have to really underline how

Carter 8:59

how unique this circumstance is there's never been a speaker removed before um this is ridiculous um not because the

Carter 9:08

the speaker being removed it's not just that he was removed he was removed by his own And he was removed at a time when the budget's due, Ukraine is being invaded, and he was removed, in fairness, before the Gaza-Israel situation. But nonetheless, this is just, the

Carter 9:27

the world's on fire, and the United States is now pissing on it. And the only thing that brings me any solace is that Biden's not shitting the bed.

Carter 9:38

But I think that's more good luck than good management.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

So what are your, because I know you love predictions, Carter, tomorrow, third vote, to that point that this is not the time and people are, you know, aware of that and pointing that out. What do you think happens tomorrow? And I guess what do you think should, you know, if you were advising what should happen? Well,

Carter 10:00

I think that what should happen is the Republicans should go back into their caucus and decide which one of them is going to be the speaker and whichever person gets the majority of those votes, whether it's the pro tem speaker that's sitting there right now, whether it's Jim Jordan, whether it's Steve Scalise, or whether it's not

Carter 10:17

not McCarthy. Yeah, McCarthy. It's that McCarthy guy. That's the one. I don't really care who it is, which of those four people, or maybe there's a dark horse that comes out from somewhere. Lauren Boebert could be a great speaker. Speaker

Carter 10:30

know, she would be great. I mean, how much more entertaining would it be?

Carter 10:34

A lot more entertaining, right?

Carter 10:36

right? A lot more entertaining. But regardless, we have a situation where the normal course of action is the Democratic principles should hold.

Carter 10:47

Whoever wins the most votes in the Republican conference should be the one that the Republicans carry forward, and then every Republican should vote for them. Why? Because it makes you look like you're not a fucking circus. circus right now they are a circus cory

SPEAKER_00 11:01

cory what do you think of the triple down strategy uh double down triple down third time's a charm what what do you think of jim jordan's uh strategy here well

Corey 11:12

well it seems to be one of attempting to fatigue the opposition and also kind of count on the reasonableness of what are generally perceived to be the reasonable republicans here right it It tends to be the right wings of the Republicans who are the arsonists who are sitting there with gasoline in their own house saying, I'll light it all on fire. It doesn't tend to be the moderates of the Republican Party. But the moderates are pissed because you do have to keep in mind, and Stephen talked about the majority supporting somebody and that somebody becoming the Speaker. Well, the majority did. The majority supported Scalise. And unfortunately for Steve Scalise, that wasn't to be

Corey 11:51

be because ultimately the same people who held McCarthy's feet to the fire makes it sound like it's almost reasonable. The people who held the sword over his neck for the last bit, they just said, we're not going to do it. And so they lost the vote in conference, and then they just refused to do it until they got their weight. I mean, the petulance of that is pretty fucking unreal. And so, look, if these Republicans' knees buckle and they end up supporting Jim Jordan, people

Corey 12:23

people talk a lot about Republicans having given up on democracy, but they've given up on internal democracy. They've just sort of agreed that the strong man in the party gets to run the party as well. And that's very problematic. And I think they know it's problematic. So I actually think that they will likely hold over these next votes. But ultimately, you

Corey 12:41

you give them a couple of months, and I could easily see them kind of coming back and saying, Oh, okay, well, it's fine now. And Jim Jordan reached out to me, and he told me he's going to do things differently. He really heard me, you know, and like, and that bullshit will proceed. um but yeah it seems to be a strategy of wearing them down it's totally normal in politics to also use these moments of high stakes to try to drive the decisions that you want seems

Corey 13:06

seems to be that

Carter 13:08

yeah i mean it is petulance right it's just petulance that's carrying this forward it's

Corey 13:12

it's more than petulance a

Carter 13:13

a small group of people has the ability to uh derail an entire conference um this you know we've advocated i think in some regards for this when we look at minority majority majority majority groups i mean we've seen our own little our own little groups of this we had what was called the deep six uh when ralph klein uh first won government the deep six was a group of six mlas which included uh uh stelmac uh who became a the the premier after after klein but the deep six were going to hold klein's feet to the fire right they were going to make sure that he he followed through on these budget cuts we've seen minority action before within caucuses even even here in Calgary, or in Canada. But we've never seen the minority just completely derail the majority like this. The majority of, you know, of Republicans don't want to see it go this way. But you know what, this is also what they set up. When they chose to put themselves in bed with Trump, when they chose to put themselves in bed with, with really democratic anarchists, starting with the Tea Party, you know, you could see that this is the natural end. Because ultimately, if If you don't believe in democracy and democratic processes, this is where you end up. And I don't want to get all kind of hyperbolic on this. But just to say, at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, this is how democracy dies. Why

Corey 14:36

would you think that sounds hyperbolic?

Carter 14:40

Democracy dies when Corey Hogan decides that it dies. And

Carter 14:44

And right now, Corey Hogan is very close to deciding. I'm

Corey 14:47

I'm this close to calling it. Yeah, I mean,

Carter 14:49

very close to calling it. And when he calls it, everybody knows that's when shit gets real.

Corey 14:56

look, I really am quite challenged by this. This is tyranny of the majority. This is strongman tactics. I can't believe the Republicans have put up for this

Corey 15:05

this long with any of it. And now we're just seeing sort of the natural extension of this play out here. The bigger strategic question for me is, what

Corey 15:14

what do you do? How do you stand up for the values that you purport to stand up for? How do you stand up for Scalise, even? God, I mean, that's the low bar that we even have right now. And, you know, ultimately, that is a question that is not just a question about this moment. It's a bigger question. And it's not just because there's a narrow majority in the House. You can point to that and say, yeah, it takes very few members. it's because you have a group of people who have realized that there's a real asymmetry here like it takes very few of them to just fuck everything up and they are happy to fuck everything up it's

Carter 15:51

it's kind of the asymmetry of all terrorism though i

Carter 15:53

i mean i'm not that you know like it

Corey 15:55

be careful with those parallels at this particular moment no but

Carter 15:58

but it is there's a there's a there's a tyranny involved right and

Carter 16:02

and if you don't respect the the common processes or the processes of uh you know know the rules of of whatever game you may be playing uh game is the wrong word but whatever the element is that you're you're working on um if you throw away the rules there are no replacement rules right and there are only one set of rules and this was one of the things i always had troubles with with when people would say they were going to rewrite the rules of politics um politics begins and ends with rules like it it is on

Carter 16:32

on its face it seems very simple one person in one vote but in its practice it's very complicated and we are now at the place where we're watching very complicated execution of of uh these democratic principles okay

SPEAKER_00 16:46

okay carter have you gotten everything off your chest on on this topic i

Carter 16:50

could do another 30 or so minutes on it if you want i

Carter 16:53

mean i want to go back to the to uh to to boehner when boehner was the the speaker but i'm gonna guess that you don't want me to do that well

Carter 17:02

got the boehner changed the rules so he We could smoke in his meetings.

Carter 17:06

Everywhere but in the actual house itself. He changed the rules.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

I did not know that. I

Corey 17:12

I didn't know that either. There

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Fun fact. While we're talking about speakers, guys, House of Commons Speaker Greg Furcus was heckled repeatedly on Wednesday over

SPEAKER_00 17:28

over his decision to delay question period in order to deliver a speech to MPs about the issue. of heckling that is a lead on a story about what happened wednesday uh

SPEAKER_00 17:38

uh kind of a fun headline for people but there's there's some bigger some bigger questions here uh cory hogan what do you what do you think of this heckling story that happened here in canada on wednesday uh

Corey 17:52

uh yeah i mean there's a lot of ways you can look at this and you're right it's a headline writer's dream because it's effectively somebody calling for decorum and being treated with the very activity that That he was trying to condemn here.

Corey 18:08

I think there's a lot of people who are pretty skeptical that Greg Fergus is going to be able to change the tone in the short term of the House of Commons. It's just a supercharged environment. When the opposition is really feeling itself, when the government is on the back foot, this is what legislative bodies kind of feel like and act like. You know, I'll be honest. And while we may be in a more extreme manifestation of it, you sure see that in parliaments.

Corey 18:32

parliaments. And it's tough for the Speaker to kind of maintain the level of order that they want in that kind of setting, because you've got a situation where there's a group in charge and a group who feel like that, you know, the time of the people in charge is short, and they're going to manifest in that way. now i do think though that um pierre

Corey 18:53

pierre poliev suggesting what an outrage that qp was delayed by a little bit question period is sacred was the word he used here

SPEAKER_00 19:01

here super safe i mean yeah cool

Corey 19:04

cool cool it a little like this is oral questions it's not even the entire question period it's something we've been doing on tv for a generation or two it's not something that has lasted forever ever and it's sure something that you can reschedule or move forward and yeah maybe qp gets a little bit shorter but don't worry man you're still gonna get your leaders questions nobody gives a flying fuck by the 10th question anyways so like it doesn't materially matter and like for you to act like this was a crazy thing that the speaker would use a very early moment in his speakership to lay down his expectations is is

Corey 19:41

is dumb like it's just it's not necessary and And I do think watch this space is the point I want to make.

Corey 19:49

Pierre Polyev is going to be the next prime minister of Canada.

Corey 19:54

if he can kind of keep it even moderately together. And there are these little canaries in the coal mine. And I know it seems funny to call this moment one of them, but

Corey 20:03

but it's like, you don't need to be a dick all of the time. You have to pick your moments. And if, if you kind of exhaust Canadians with this behavior, this far out from an election, we're in 2023 this next election could not be until 2025 you know i know people are calling you a champion online because you ate an apple and dissed some left-wing reporter right i know that your supporters will always championing you standing up to a liberal speaker but

Corey 20:28

but you've got to think about the people you actually need to vote for you and what you're saying to them and how you're communicating to them and if you come off as just a jerk and

Corey 20:36

and it's it's not uh you know know something that you know if it's going on for so long that people no longer lose the like oh he's standing up for me it's power it becomes like oh he's kind of just a jerk it's

Corey 20:48

it's the only way you're going to throw this thing away at this point pierre but you could throw it away doing

Corey 20:53

doing this kind of stuff but

SPEAKER_00 20:54

but cory some good some good points there carter can you speak to the the last one cory made there about like him being a dick and him like if this and i think we've talked before about kind of, um, that performance or that acting and that persona, like if, if you are a dick and you're trying not to be one, but it keeps bubbling up and you've got months, years, um, for it to keep bubbling up, like what, what sort of impact does that have?

Carter 21:21

Well, I mean, likability is still one of the most important factors in whether or not a person's ever going to get elected. Um, do other people like you, you know, is this someone I would like to get a beer with we still use that kind of shorthand in determining whether or not a politician is going to be successful and this is this is a guy who just invested a small fortune in an image makeover i mean and i think that this is the this is what we were talking about when he did that image makeover will he be able to sustain that in the actual house of commons in battle if you will and so far he's not because he's coming he's now just a dick that doesn't wear glasses instead of a dick that was wearing glasses right so you know if you don't if you can't imagine yourself sitting down with this guy for a beer then

Carter 22:08

then it's very difficult to imagine get you know wanting him to be the prime minister or wanting to vote for him and and it was a little bit different with with trudeau i mean maybe we weren't sitting down for you know a mug of beer But, you

Carter 22:22

know, that was what Pierre

Carter 22:24

Pierre was aiming for. Polyev is aiming for, I'm like you, I'm like you. And really, there's very little like Canadians that Pierre is, right? Like, he's just not the average everyday guy, because the average everyday person doesn't

Carter 22:41

sweat politics. I mean, this guy exudes politics all the time, and he's always looking for an angle to win. in and always looking for an angle to win kind of puts you in a position where you sometimes look like an asshole. I mean, I've had that conversation with Corey a number of times where I've said, you know, man, I mean, you, you always want to look like you're the smartest guy on the podcast, but sometimes, you know, maybe

Carter 23:02

maybe take a page out of my book and be the dumbest guy in the podcast because people like that. People like that.

Corey 23:08

is illustrating something here, right? Carter is, you know, I've known Stephen for many, many years. Stephen Carter is a nice person who pretends to be a jerk. The problem that Pierre Polyev has is he's a jerk who's pretending to be a nice person. And ultimately, like, that's not a super sustaining space. And so he does need to find his inner chill here. You know, he's way ahead. I'm not saying otherwise. I'm not saying he lost the prime ministership because of this. i'm saying the kind of behavior he exhibited two years of it and dialed up to 11 during an election campaign could lose him the prime ministership do

SPEAKER_00 23:47

do you think though to that that um like the fact that there is a lot of time let's say he's a dick for the next year but then he's on like his best behavior in that month before the election like does how long are people's memories

Corey 24:02

but they're long enough

Carter 24:04

enough first impressions are very difficult to undo i mean it's not like So if he appeared and

Carter 24:10

and he was only six months with us and he looked like a pretty decent guy, then that will be the impression that's formed. But what we see is that a person's first impression is almost always their last impression, right? So they hold on to, I've never liked that guy, I never felt it. And that's what he's trying to undo with the big makeover change, with the how am I being perceived by the video change, by the tonal change. But then he can't help himself because at the end of the day, hey, who you are will shine through to people. And you know, the group of people that is absolute best at picking this up are women.

Carter 24:46

Women can see asshole men

Carter 24:49

from like a gajillion miles away. They're trained for it. They can see that guy's an asshole. And if they

Carter 24:56

they see he's an asshole, this was one of the things we were worried about with Nenshi because he pulls super well when you just know him a little bit. But as you get to know him And as his arrogance came through, it was a real worry. Right. And it didn't really impact him until the end because he was, you

Carter 25:17

you know, he was able to manage it. He was able to keep forward that first impression. Pierre Polyev has given us his first impression. He's a dick. And now he's trying to change it. But then he keeps slipping back into dick mode. And I agree with Corey. Corey, he's most likely to be the next prime minister, but not because people are voting for Pierre Polyev, but because people are voting against Justin Trudeau. And there's a very real scenario where we wind up in what I lovingly refer to as Ed Stelmack territory, where

Carter 25:46

where people didn't want Ed Stelmack or Kevin Taft to win the Alberta provincial election in 2007, was it, Corey? Eight,

Corey 25:54

I think. Eight. um

Carter 25:54

um but the someone had to win and uh you know no one voted uh so it turned out to be Ed Stelmack

SPEAKER_00 26:05

you speak to either of you how I don't know frustrating is the right word but what it is like to be a staffer in

SPEAKER_00 26:11

in that situation and Carter you brought up one example there but I'm just like imagining Polyev like the people around him as you said a very expensive makeover this whole whole branding image he's got a lot of people around him advising how frustrating is it when when you're trying to coach someone and you're trying to fit them into a box and they just keep going out there and they're not fitting in that box i

Corey 26:35

think that's a good story yeah i'll

Carter 26:36

i'll say i think that's like 400 stories um

Corey 26:38

um i got i got 401 man it's a good reason not to try to fit them in a box that's really off who they are and we've talked about this before like whenever you're trying to kind of create the political character that is the person on the ballot. And let's be super clear. These are all characters. These are constructs. This is taking the best parts of them. It's amplifying them up. It's ignoring the, you know, the warts on it here. And you're creating this individual who is almost mythic in proportions, who says the uplifting speech because they've got a speechwriter, who always wears the right thing because they've got somebody helping them dress, you know, who's always in the right place and always remembers the name because they're surrounded by staff this is what we do with political people and politicians run into trouble when they start to believe that kind of hype and they start to believe they're as good as they are but if the system's working as it is it's a series of people playing roles supporting an actor on a stage a stage production is probably the best comp and

Corey 27:34

and where you run into trouble is when you cast an actor into a role that they are very ill-suited for right you know they're supposed supposed to be the person with gravita but they don't have the right voice for it they're supposed to um you know come off as somebody who's caring and compassionate but they're a dick and there are ways that jerks can win elections it happens all the bloody time but

Corey 27:57

but rarely does it happen when it's a jerk pretending to be a nice guy and i you know and i'm not going to say tom mulcair is a jerk but he's a bit of a sharp-edged individual himself and can you think of a more dissonant moment in federal canadian politics than what we lovingly on the podcast and in kind of our you know run way back in 2015 referred to as quaaludes tommy when he was wearing the sweater and trying to smile and be nice you know he's not fucking nice he's he's kind of a sharp edged guy you know he's the prosecutor question period

Corey 28:31

and then he tried to get rid of it and it just doesn't work like you can see in his eyes he's trying to escape and i see See that with Pierre Poilievre right now. In his eyes, you can tell he's trying to escape the person he's being made to be. And sometimes you've just got to build a different character. You've got to build one that plays to their strengths, not tries to paper over their weaknesses.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

So you can't just put a sweater on someone and they're a whole new

Corey 28:52

new person. You can try. People try all the time. It

Carter 28:55

works for a short period. I mean, Alison Redford, I mean, how many times have I spoken about Alison Redford's brand? You know, mother of a young daughter, daughter of aging parents. And that wasn't the brand she wanted to occupy. buy she wanted to be the international premier and there was no market for the international premier but there was a tremendous market for mother of a young daughter daughter of aging parents um so you

Carter 29:18

you know the brand that you construct you know and and allison to her credit was unbelievable candidate when she was living that brand when we you know especially when she was afraid she was going to lose i mean there was a hundred percent commitment but once she won she's

Carter 29:33

she's like well i can throw away that brand right i don't i can revert to being myself and someone who's watching that you know so you're on the staff and you're like we we literally just invested like literally invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in making you this brand and now you're walking away from it because

Carter 29:51

because you don't want to be that brand anymore that's not good enough right are

SPEAKER_00 29:56

are you actually having those conversations carter are you are you actually oh yeah oh yeah yeah Yeah.

Corey 30:03

equity is such a funny, funny thing. You spend so much money creating

Corey 30:10

recall of association, essentially. I think of Alison Redford, I think daughter, I think mother, right? And

Corey 30:17

And if you just throw that all away, if you rebrand, just like in the corporate world, the comp is the same, you lose all of that equity, all of that investment that you've put in. And in fact, it can actually run aggressively against you as people say, I thought you were supposed to be X, now you're Y. And that's particularly dangerous in politics. Yeah,

Carter 30:36

Yeah, there's nothing worse than being something, you know, than selling the people one version and then, you know, bait

Carter 30:42

bait and switching them over. In

Carter 30:44

my background, I studied theater.

Carter 30:46

We talk so much about character and story and the music or the plot. All we're really doing is taking those ideas that Aristotle put forward thousands of years ago, but what are the basis of a story? and we're then applying them into into uh

Carter 31:08

politics and people somehow seem to think that well that's policy i mean i'm doing i'm working on a project right now and you

Carter 31:16

got an argument because we were talking about policy and i'm like actually you're not talking about policy we're we're establishing a core conflict right what is the core conflict that you want to be the story of of this election or this story of this engagement, right? How are we going to develop the conflict that is at the center of our overarching story and then we build you as the protagonist? Well, what protagonist elements do we want to put in place? And to

Carter 31:47

Polyev's credit, his team have said, this is, you know, you being a fighter is a good part of it, but we need to make sure that we're fighting for them, not for you. A hundred

Corey 31:55

hundred percent. Him at the convention was the model of what Pierre Polyev can and should be if he wants to be successful here. So

SPEAKER_00 32:02

So to bring it back to Polyev in QP on Wednesday,

SPEAKER_00 32:07

like, what do you think? So he does what he does, and then he's hanging out with the staffers. And are they like, hey, don't

SPEAKER_00 32:15

don't do that again. Stop it. Like, just talk to me about those behind the scenes conversations, what you think having been in them before. What are they like? And do you keep having that conversation again and again in the coming months?

Corey 32:25

Well, I'd say like staff are not monolithic here and you will have staff that are like, no, I thought that was fine. You will have staff who thought, good, I'm glad you did that. And you will have staff who are in the corner saying, oh God, why did you do that? We're trying to do something different here and trying to pull you back to like the, you know, kind of the core message here.

Carter 32:43

The most important conversations I would have wasn't

Carter 32:45

wasn't actually with the principal. I mean, I would say to the, to the candidate, that was fucking stupid, right? Like we are, we are working on this and you just threw it away. But the conversation I'll have is with the staffer that's going up and whispering in the principal's ear and saying, you know, I

Carter 33:02

I think that they were really strong and I think that people are really going to respond to that.

Carter 33:08

right? I mean, we had a character we used to just simply call Rasputin because

Carter 33:12

everything that he whispered to the candidate just happened, right? It was fucking, you know, you can't work with Rasputin. You have to be in a situation where you're able to communicate to these folks. folks and the

Carter 33:24

the the truth is that we all have to be the same person when dealing with the candidate and the reality is it very rarely happens very

Carter 33:32

very much more often is that when someone gets to spend time in the car or when someone's got them alone in the office for three minutes before a totally different message will be put inside their head and they often respond to the message that they want to hear because they're human everybody

Carter 33:47

everybody responds to the message that they want to hear yeah

Corey 33:50

yeah oh my god i remember a moment during the 2012 election uh i was running the liberal campaign steven was the top strategist over at pcs you you won that one i'll give you that one yeah i won

Carter 34:01

won i remember yeah

Corey 34:02

there was i don't know if you do remember the uh the calgary herald ran a um uh

Corey 34:09

uh debate would be a funny thing it was almost like a they put a question and then like all of the leaders would respond in an online chat does anybody remember this yeah

Corey 34:17

was very Of a moment. It was a very 2012 innovation, right? You didn't

Carter 34:21

Thank God those went away.

Corey 34:23

And so there are strategy documents and there are tactics and there are ways we want to position ourselves and our opponents. And the short version I will say for the liberals in 2012 is it was very important for us that it was like Wildrose, Tories, same thing. Because Stephen and your campaign strategy was almost the opposite. It's like Wildrose scary, PCs not, vote for us, right? right? And we weren't under illusions we were going to win, but we were trying to make sure we could carve our space. And so that's where we had things like website, Tory or Wildrose, guess the quotes. We've talked about that one day. Great website. We made sure in all of our communications, we were sort of suggesting just like, it's parallel. It's like an internal party squabble, right? You've got to pick somebody else for an opposition or whatever. And at the time, you got to keep in mind, it looked like the Wildrose was going to win for good chunks of it there oh

Carter 35:13

oh yeah uh so

Corey 35:14

so our strategy very important two separate parties right there

Corey 35:19

there is a uh this particular online chat is occurring down in calgary and the liberal leader raj sherman is down there with the communications director who i won't put on blast here and they're put him

Carter 35:31

him on blast let's

Corey 35:32

let's do it name them name them name what we called the sherman tank so his big red truck rock that had raj sherman raj sherman's picture on the side and they've been on the highway three hours together going down they're doing the events the you know the ea's there too and all that but these these two in particular when they got together the comms director often told raj what he wanted to hear and raj raj was kind of pure instinct anyhow and so it was very tough to keep him on message so

Corey 36:00

so there's been a lot of preamble to say raj sherman goes

Corey 36:03

goes into that uh and is asked at one point pretty early in it, like, hey, if it was a minority government situation and you held the balance of power,

Corey 36:13

you know, who would you like kind of team up with and what would your price be? Good

Corey 36:17

question. So what's the right answer, Stephen? Let's start there. What's the right answer?

Carter 36:22

The right answer is I wouldn't team up with either of them. They're both the same party. I'd be making sure that we had the, you know, if we held the balance of power, whoever does what we tell them to do is who we will actually support. That'll be in the best interest of Albertans. look at

Corey 36:35

at you staying on

Corey 36:36

yeah look at you staying on wish you'd been the leader then no

Corey 36:40

no instead we got like oh i'd support the pcs but my price would be i want to be health minister have a spot on treasury board uh and i can't remember what the third piece was but like actually starts listing like how he would prop up a pc government oh so good man i was mad man i was mad so i call him i'm i'm

Corey 36:58

i'm i'm i'm yelling at him i'm the campaign manager for this campaign like Like, what are you doing? That is not the message we are trying to get out there. That's ridiculous. He actually hangs up on me at some point. Love

Corey 37:09

Love it. I call him back, shout at him even more, then proceed to do the classic campaign manager thing of being like, I quit. I quit. I am out of here. Didn't actually quit, as you can probably. Yeah. But like, back

Corey 37:21

back in boxes, like, I'm out, you know? If

Corey 37:24

If they don't want my

Carter 37:25

my help, they don't deserve me.

Corey 37:29

uh so um he

Corey 37:32

he comes back and uh you know i'm very mad about this we go through why i'm mad about this why it's important here i'm basically yelling at him about message discipline and i remember at the end i'm like and you're not doing twitter anymore we hadn't even been talking about twitter it just became like almost a couple's fight like here's the other thing i'm mad at you about took

Corey 37:52

took twitter off his fucking phone um he found a way anyways because that's what he did but uh you know this is

Corey 38:01

we started talking about how people react to this sometimes

Corey 38:04

sometimes there's a rasputin whispering in the ear sometimes other people are trying to rein them in i

Corey 38:09

i think it's not monolithic i

Carter 38:11

think if gen pop saw how campaign managers and campaign strategists treat candidates they'd be shocked yeah

Carter 38:18

they'd be shocked i

SPEAKER_00 38:20

i like you guys give these stories and give the insights because i think a lot of people haven't been in those rooms and don't know what those conversations are are actually like are

SPEAKER_00 38:29

are you a fucking idiot are you a fucking idiot am i working for a fucking idiot is that what's happened

Corey 38:35

did i choose to throw

Carter 38:36

my fucking weight behind an idiot in

SPEAKER_00 38:39

in that voice card

Carter 38:40

card anyways i get fired sometimes i don't know why

Corey 38:44

i i don't know how i didn't get fired on that one but yeah that was a because

Carter 38:48

because you'd already quit yeah yeah that's

Corey 38:50

do you fire you know

Carter 38:51

know which campaign i quit the most

Carter 38:53

i quit nenshi's campaign i bet you three times

Carter 39:00

that was a tough one listen

Corey 39:01

listen it happens like people think that that's just like broadly drawn comedy like emotions are super high and there's a weird power dynamic between campaign managers and candidates because the candidate's supposed to listen to us but the candidate's the boss and so it ends up manifesting you know marriage is not a bad comp like where people like really wear their emotions on their sleeves on yeah

Carter 39:23

yeah because there's also no sex so it really does crash let's

SPEAKER_00 39:29

let's leave that one there steven

SPEAKER_00 39:32

steven carter what a great guys let's move into our next segment alberta pension plan and cory's breaking news um okay

SPEAKER_00 39:42

okay so there's there's like a lot of news here so a few pieces of context i just want to lay on the table and then we can kind of dive into them first

SPEAKER_00 39:51

first one being justin trudeau has finally weighed in on the alberta pension plan stuff with an open letter that was released wednesday that's one point um the alberta premier daniel smith quickly fired back to that letter we

SPEAKER_00 40:05

we can talk about her response um the board of the canada pension plan came out this week saying alberta's consultation with its citizens is biased um what else today the alberta federation of labor said it will be launching a remain campaign and

SPEAKER_00 40:21

and that um justin

SPEAKER_00 40:23

justin trudeau shouldn't be the one doing that that albertans can organize that campaign and last point i want to put on the table and we can actually start here cory

SPEAKER_00 40:31

cory hogan filed a foip in september got

SPEAKER_00 40:33

got the results back already um

SPEAKER_00 40:36

um cory tell us about what what you foibed and why and what you found out.

Corey 40:43

Well, maybe it is good table setting for everything else you want to talk about here.

Corey 40:48

For those not in Alberta in particular, but I think even those in Alberta, a

Corey 40:53

a good recap. The Alberta pension plan is not a popular idea. We had polling in

Corey 40:58

in the spring about this. It was, you know, what, 30% support, 25% support, depending on how questions were framed. Not a lot of enthusiasm for it. But during the election, Danielle Smith saying, oh, we're not talking about that. That's not what this campaign's about. It's not part of the campaign. Of course, it took very little time before we ended up talking about that. And so I believe it was September 21st, these panel results come out. Danielle Smith comes out immediately being like, want to hear from Albertans, but I like it and I think it's a really good idea, you know. And I think it's really important we get the word out there on all of these things. So this happens. And of course, I immediately

Corey 41:36

immediately wanted to know, in this salvo of almost unbelievably, and I would actually say unbelievably good news, like, oh, it's going to mean higher benefits, lower payments. It's such an amazing thing, this particular pension. We'll be able to solve all of our problems forever because we get to take all of the money out of the pension and we get to do this, right? right? I wanted to know, the

Corey 42:02

the thing I wanted to know on the, you know, the Friday where this is all going down is, how

Corey 42:07

how did Albertans react to that? Like, was the instant reaction one of like, well, maybe, you know, maybe this is going to move the thing, or was it one of go

Corey 42:15

go fuck yourself, right? And I didn't really know how we could do that in any kind of way

Corey 42:23

way to capture the moment besides the one stream that I used to oversee when I ran government communication. I oversaw a lot of streams but within the insights group there's the premier's correspondence unit which measures all of the all of the emails all of the physical mail the things that are coming into the premier's office and that tends to be an early warning system for government that's certainly how we used it in my time there you're getting a lot of letters instantly and there's not necessarily a clear coordinating body that's usually a bit of a canary in the coal mine because you know people don't often go to the trouble of writing these things otherwise here so So I put a FOIP request in to my old department saying,

Corey 43:02

saying, hey, can you give me the statistics on the number of emails, correspondence that came into the Premier's Correspondence Unit on the topic of the Alberta pension plan? And

Corey 43:14

And I want sent tone, right? Because one of the things, you know, all of this correspondence is actually coded like positive, negative, you know, neutral. And I, you know, originally kind of wanted and assumed I might be able to get the statistical data under it uh but what they ended up sending me and we should talk about the fact that they actually sent it unredacted within the 30 days which is in itself increasingly rare they

Corey 43:38

they gave me in

SPEAKER_00 43:40

in less than 30 days journal less than

Corey 43:42

than in fewer than 30 days yeah like yeah they

Corey 43:47

less than 30 days time fewer than 30 days you're okay it's not so bad it wasn't an egregious less viewer challenge that's

SPEAKER_00 43:54

that's a go there cory you have he can't help himself carter he just can't

Carter 43:59

can't help i can't the smartest and most liked over here most

Carter 44:04

that's where we are uh

Corey 44:06

uh yeah so we

Corey 44:08

we get these results i get these results and um the

Corey 44:12

the premier's office got 2850

Corey 44:15

2850 letters on the topic in the first couple of days after 20

Corey 44:20

20 were supportive, the remainder opposed. So that broke down further into 432 individual letters, 412 not supportive, and 2,418 form letters, all not supportive. Do

SPEAKER_00 44:36

Do we know on the form letters whose form letter that was or what the definition of form letter is? I

Corey 44:41

I don't because it used a bit of a shorthand, right? It just said like no alberta pension plan was the name of the like the the form letter they got in and i googled the exact phrase i couldn't find anything immediately i don't know where it came from the reality is that could be a change.org petition that could be an organization that really got moving very quickly that could have been an existing petition from the earlier conversations that were occurring on this matter again maybe on a change.org or something that people refound and reshared saying i don't want to do this because keep in mind it was a thing that was floating around there elsewhere.

Corey 45:15

I was surprised that they actually gave me kind of like the sentiment rundown of like, and here are the highlights and considerations. I thought they would just give me a table of like, here are the numbers.

Corey 45:23

And what surprised me about that is I think that often would fall under kind of like an advice to official exemption, but no, they gave it to me. And so it went through and it listed like the majority, you

Corey 45:36

were concerned with the LifeWorks estimates. They, you know, they say the CPP has got strong performance. They object to the government spending taxpayer dollars on the report uh they asked the government to redirect that money to health care you know they want to remain part of uh the cpp they called the survey bias and so it sort of lists all of the things that are kind of coming out there and you know kind of fascinating very normal for cpe to put a report like that forward to decision makers in government we do it every where we when i was there it happened every week yeah

Corey 46:08

right but an an interesting insight into the instant reaction of Albertans, which was not super enthusiastic.

Corey 46:15

Not super enthusiastic. Not the craziest volume I've ever seen from the Premier's Correspondence Unit. I want to stress like 2,400 letters in a couple of days is a lot. It would certainly be on our radar big time.

Corey 46:29

I've seen more, but that was pretty instant, pretty negative response to the Alberta pension plan. Carter,

SPEAKER_00 46:34

Carter, I want your take on what you found kind of most interesting in that FOIP. I'll just say mine is the fact that you got, you filed a FOIP and got a response with like nothing unredacted in

SPEAKER_00 46:48

in less than 30 days. Like as a journalist who has filed a lot of FOIPs and then you get answers years later, like I was quite impressed at the speed in which you got some answers here, Corey.

Corey 47:00

Yeah. And frankly, me too. Like I used to be the head of that body.

Corey 47:04

We, you know, we have statistics. We tried to do things within 30 days, but realistically Realistically, that's really tough to do, especially when you have to consult with all of the various parties that might need to be consulted with about whether it is, in their opinion, advice to officials, whether it is somewhat exempt. So, yeah, I mean, total

Corey 47:22

total credit to the public service for providing it. They should do that more. They should do it fast and unredacted.

Corey 47:29

That was great. But, yeah, I was quite shocked, too. When it showed up in my email today, I'm not kidding you. I assumed it was going to be a, upon review, we believe like nothing is here. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Yeah, exactly. Or we're going to need another two months

Corey 47:41

or something like that. I had no expectation for it actually being the response. Here

SPEAKER_00 47:46

Here we are, Corey bringing the news. Carter, what jumps out to you the most out of this little report?

Carter 47:55

Well, you know, in politics, there are times to lead and there are times to follow. And what's really interesting about this for me is that this strikes me as obviously a place that this government and Danielle Smith wants to invest in. She wants to invest her political capital to create this outcome. And, you

Carter 48:18

you know, I think it's wild. I mean, I'm not sure exactly what we get from it. I guess we get capital to invest. I guess we get capital to invest in an industry that no one else

Corey 48:28

else is investing in. dangerous like that by the way that's a conversation that's flip-flopped back and forth this week even but

Carter 48:35

that's the only thing that you can get from this right like it's not like there is any other you know they're not saying well you know the the return on investment's not high enough well the return on investment's fine they're they're not saying that you know they're what they're saying is we give so much more money because we're rich and we shouldn't have to give that we're rich and young so because we're it's basically the equalization argument just kind of turned on its head and put into the cpp framework but

Carter 49:01

i just think you know if you really want to do this properly um like this

Carter 49:07

this if you need this money to be invested then just tell us that that's why you're doing it but personally i mean and i've talked to a whole bunch of people that are right wing and they come in the last few days and those those right wingers are like this is really stupid because if i'd wanted to invest all of my retirement into the oil and gas community I would do that, but I'm already invested here in real estate, right? Because our real estate is propped up by the oil and gas community. Our, you know, the, the, if

Carter 49:36

if you're, if you're here, you're already invested in the oil and gas community. So doubling down and putting more money into the oil and gas community. Another

Corey 49:45

Another classic triple down. It's

Carter 49:47

It's just, it's not going to, it's

Carter 49:50

it's not going to help you in the long run. And I think that Albertans instinctively and intuitively know this, and they're also afraid of what the next step is. So, you

Carter 50:00

you know, I've been listening to a lot of podcasts recently. The only podcast in Canada,

Carter 50:06

Canada, I think, or at least in Alberta, that doesn't have CPP advertising on it or APP advertising, Alberta Pension Plan advertising, is The Strategists. And frankly, I'm a little bit pissed.

Corey 50:18

I'm not even sure that's true. Like, I don't listen to the ads on our own podcast. So like, for all I know, we've got ads.

Carter 50:26

If we wind up with that, supporting the CPP, the APP, we're

Carter 50:32

we're gonna have to do some soul searching because we don't have the inclination to take the money. Oh,

SPEAKER_00 50:37

he makes a good point. Do you want to? Can

SPEAKER_00 50:40

Can you can either of you speak to how much you think and it kind of ties two of the things Carter brought up together, how

SPEAKER_00 50:48

how much that public sentiment changes as

SPEAKER_00 50:52

as this like propaganda campaign continues for the coming months? Well,

Corey 50:57

Well, that's a really open question. And here's

Corey 51:00

here's the thing about advertising. I firmly believe in the place of advertising in communications, especially political communications. If you're the government, it is a very important tool.

Corey 51:11

But it's part of a bigger mix. context i'm not sure the last time we've had this conversation i'm not sure we've ever had it in this particular phrasing but when you think about the overall way issues are shaped in people's views there is the there are conversations whether that be one

Corey 51:30

one-on-one or as reported by the media like you know the pr components of it there's the advertising i think the importance of the advertising is heightened the less people are talking about it because it's your way to sort of sustain the conversation or if the conversation is very one sided sustain the other side of the conversation so if if all of the pr is negative and you've got advertising you can kind of balance those things out but you

Corey 51:53

you have to be really realistic about these things and you have to be realistic about the limits of advertising in these particular contexts because there

Corey 52:02

there is a bigger conversation going on and if you want to think about it in terms of all of the media coverage on the alberta pension plan all of the experts that are panning it all of the discourse that is occurring on it even on a podcast like this right what

Corey 52:16

what do you think the dollar value is like the comparable advertising cost that is occurring in this conversation well i'm gonna guess it's in in the many millions the many millions right and so we talk about a seven million dollar campaign and yeah that's a big fucking campaign and steven is hearing those ads all of the time i have no doubt about that in the context of a province a province that is a secondary media market by and large and a province that uh you know doesn't actually require kind of an even distribution of that message but that message can be applied in areas where it seems like the government thinks it's more likely they're going to convince people

Corey 52:53

seven millions of bonkers amount of money yeah

Corey 52:55

yeah but there's a limit to what that money can do So

Corey 52:58

So in 2016, the government of Alberta spent a

Corey 53:02

a huge fortune on

Corey 53:05

advertisements talking about the upcoming climate leadership

Corey 53:08

leadership plan and how the price on carbon was coming in on January 1st. And look, the size of those bins was determined before I got there. I kind of had to live with them. I always thought they were a little large, but we are the public service and we kind of work on the orders that we were given and we built the ads. And the ads did talk about like, hey, there's a price on carbon coming in. Here's some of the other things that are coming in on the plan. This is all going down on this date. My God, we saturated the bloody province and it costs millions and millions of dollars in the process.

Corey 53:47

Didn't fundamentally change people's minds. minds

Corey 53:49

didn't fundamentally change people's minds advertising doesn't

Corey 53:53

doesn't always change people's minds sometimes the creative fails sometimes it's just too small it's like a drop in the ocean compared to that value of the overall conversation and the effect of the various conversations that are happening there and you know and sometimes people have just they're not movable sometimes they're just not movable they've made up their mind this is important to them you can't tell them anything thing about it i don't

Corey 54:17

don't know if that's going to be the case here in alberta on this particular issue but the early signs we have is that albertans are not super movable on this particular issue

Carter 54:29

how my problem is that it's going to cost

Carter 54:31

cost so much money to find that out right like to leave this in the field unopposed i mean there's a lot of people when cory's right lots of i don't hear a lot of of people except for Jim Denning, who apparently sold his fucking soul. You know, you know, oh, I don't want to be remembered as the premier, the best premier that Alberta never had. I think what I'll be is that prick that sold himself to to Danielle Smith at the height of her personal popularity.

Carter 55:00

Anyways, I think that, you know, that this is going to be really tough to really gauge and smart albertans uh albertans that are committed to not finding ourselves in a in a negative outcome on this um are going to need to stand up and invest in a way that we don't want to invest in you

Carter 55:22

you know whether or not this is uh you know in a campaign to match this because otherwise this just could you know cory's not wrong campaigns

Carter 55:31

campaigns fail all the time campaigns also to succeed all the time. I don't want to be the guy who's saying this is going to fail for sure. And then, you know, we get a referendum and all of a sudden it goes through. That would be tragic for the future of the province.

Corey 55:48

Yeah. And let's be clear. I, you know, I said the advertising is likely from early signs not to do the things that you want advertising to do. First of all, early signs, we don't know that. Second of all, advertising is just part of the equation and potentially because of the big pr conversations going on around it public relations conversations i mean in this context potentially

Corey 56:08

potentially a very small drop in the bucket but if everybody is talking about this if there becomes this sense of like equivalency if you know one of the risks of a conversation that is all media driven i'll

Corey 56:20

i'll just say this and i'll you know media people will disagree but i will stand by it they

Corey 56:25

they do tend to both sides these things to the point where the the issues become evened up, right? Yep. And so in the interest of balance, you will have somebody who is very credentialed saying, this is a crazy idea. And they'll say, but let's go hear from Bob. Bob loves this idea. Bob thinks that it could be a great way for him to get a few extra dollars to spend on scratchers in his retirement. Oh

Carter 56:47

Oh my God. And

Carter 56:48

Such a good Jack Mintz.

Carter 56:51

That was really, really

Corey 56:59

but so that's the challenge like you all of a sudden this issue could very easily tighten up because it becomes all about pr so you know if that is the case actually in a funny way it sort of demands advertising on the other side and kind of contemplating how the other side and this gets into your conversation about the prime minister weighing in annalise what

Corey 57:18

what are people going to do who don't want to do this because that's the majority of alberta right now yeah but are we just going to sit here and let that slowly be eroded over the next two years well

SPEAKER_00 57:26

well talk to me about that i want to talk about that and i think there's we'll obviously talk about this in future episodes um but what does that like let's stay in the cpp like who runs that campaign i i mentioned the um alberta federation of labor what they said today but like who how

SPEAKER_00 57:44

how is that going to go and who run like who is that voice that has a united with lots of money behind it that says let's

Carter 57:53

it's it's not gil number one number two it's not justin okay so those are those are the two people that can't be um

Carter 58:03

can i give a bit

Corey 58:04

bit of a technical breakdown

Corey 58:05

of that i mean i actually think that that should be somewhat self-evident but when we're talking about any kind of campaign and steven and i did a lot of this work at hill and nolte right we

Corey 58:15

we often tested combinations of things So often we would work on issues campaigns, and often issues campaigns have coalitions of people who support them. You could have an example of being, well, actually, I'm going to give an example of vaccines, because it was like early vaccine work, right? Could be Alberta Health Services, it could be the doctors, it could be the nurses, it could be the local government. You had all of these voices potentially available for you that could communicate these various things, right? right?

Corey 58:42

And then you've got the message. That's another piece of it. And then you've got the creative more broadly, like which images are you using? How are you evoking things emotionally? And it's the combination of these elements that actually dictates the success of the campaign. The voice is super fucking important. Let me draw like an absurd example so you can understand. If you have an example where somebody says, you really should exercise more and it's your doctor, you're going to go, oh, well, my doctor, doctors think I should exercise more. I'm going to take that seriously.

Corey 59:11

If you see, hey, in Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler said you should exercise more. Well, guess what? It's not going to have the same fucking draw on you because Adolf Hitler was Adolf Hitler. He was literally Hitler. And so people do consider who the voice is, who's communicating, and they consider the biases that that voice might bring. They consider their own biases about this voice. And when you have the Prime Minister of Canada, who might be interested in making sure that you know let's like it sort of plays into danielle smith's argument like hey alberta's getting screwed because then it's like yeah see that's why they don't want us to leave because they they want all of our money right just plays right into that and if you're like a union

Corey 59:52

that is playing into it in a different way as well and you're thinking

Carter 59:55

thinking about pensions and we all

Corey 59:57

all pay for it

Corey 59:57

it yeah like you all have pensions of course you don't care if we're getting the most of our out of our alberta pension plan oh it's just another way we're being screwed here you know oh you know they're all associated with the ndp all this is just politics through the backside like it's it's not it's not a voice that's not going to carry some significant baggage i'm not saying it's not a voice that should be in the conversation but the idea of the afl leading kind of a yes cpp campaign oh

Corey 1:00:27

really dangerous because if it turns into a referendum on do you you like unions, this

Corey 1:00:32

this is Alberta, and it will lose. And so I think that's very, very dangerous.

Carter 1:00:38

It's very unusual that Corey would actually understate the research that he's done. But he's understating the research that he did when we were at H&K and the work that was done on voice. You know, specifically the voice work on, you know, who are you going to listen to on vaccines? I mean, it really predated. it

Corey 1:00:59

it was a very different time but yeah but

Carter 1:01:01

but it really predated and it really showed us when you kind of look back that peer-to-peer communication on vaccination was far more important than medical professional to uh patient

Corey 1:01:12

patient do you and do you remember steven yeah even in the medical professional sphere so peer-to-peer was kind of number one right like people knowing people who are like god all worked out fine but

Corey 1:01:22

but number two like i'm not even sure it was number two we tested an awful lot of things here but doctors bad ahs bad alberta health bad government bad nurses that's pretty good you

Corey 1:01:35

know and so um and

Corey 1:01:37

and that and that's great nurses are wonderful health practitioners but actually like public

Corey 1:01:42

public health and physicians who like x have expertise in this specifically you

Corey 1:01:48

you might argue are actually probably on the surface more reasonable voices but But people

Corey 1:01:54

people want relatable people on these particular nights. And

Carter 1:01:57

And then when the nurses decide that they're anti-vax, those voices are then disproportionately amplified.

Carter 1:02:03

So we'd seen a bunch of this research before. And obviously, we're not doing the research right now. But it's very easy to assume and to imagine a scenario where the voice

Carter 1:02:16

voice on this Alberta pension plan issue

Carter 1:02:19

issue is going to be super important. And if it falls down to Justin Trudeau and Gil McGowan, then it's going to be a real problem. Now, the good news is I understand on our Discord, Corey, there is a mounting movement to take our Discord fees and put it into this. Personally, I'm opposed, but

Corey 1:02:36

but I'm not opposed

Carter 1:02:37

opposed to imposing some sort of tax on the strategist listeners to really boost this thing up and get it kickstarted. so uh watch this space cory might be uh reaching out to you and asking for more of your money

Corey 1:02:52

the you know it maybe um is

Carter 1:02:54

is this a patreon by the way or is it is

Corey 1:02:56

is a patreon so like what are we even like we're talking give us more thanks for the money

Corey 1:03:00

way to go thanks for your cash

Carter 1:03:01

cash guys love you it

Corey 1:03:06

it is a challenge to think that if this is going to be steered like let's put it this way like imagine the government arranges like a debate between a yes committee and a no no committee and the yes committee is jim dinning and the no is gil mcgowan right or like you know like i don't i i have trouble not imagining it yeah i can't imagine me up at night good so and so

Corey 1:03:29

quite often it's a good question like when these things come up sometimes it's just kind of organic and people just rise to it and become groups sometimes the government says we got a yes side we got a no side we're identifying these people for it we're going to give them equal funding and

Corey 1:03:43

sometimes it's some sort of model in between and we just don't really that model's

Carter 1:03:46

model's never existed in alberta though oh

Carter 1:03:49

that's a bc model where they give them the money but

SPEAKER_00 1:03:51

in in this in this case given kind of that context what you're talking about voice and tone if you if you could like play god on this and pick your ideal um yes side voice who we're saying who it doesn't look look like but who who does it look like so

Corey 1:04:09

so yes cpp i guess i mean there's a couple of ways you can go with it one is you go with somebody who is a conservative right

Corey 1:04:17

right and who is a moderate conservative who is not going to alienate other people as well but can be kind of a voice of sort of what we would traditionally think of that establishment calgary maybe and say like hey look like you know i'm i'm as pro albertan as the next guy and my record on this stands but this is just a really bad idea. Pensions benefit from heft. Pensions benefit from, you know, having like big sizes to them in terms of like diversity of demographics underneath them. And that's what we get from the Canada pension plan. We certainly don't need to be dabbling with people's retirements in this way. It's super dangerous. Quebec is a cautionary tale, not a model. You know, they've tinkered with it. They pay more to get the same as the rest of us here. We don't want to be like that. We're Albertans. We're reasonable people. Like you could easily see somebody doing a voice like that another

Corey 1:05:04

another version is like you you find somebody who's non-partisan right i don't know if it's like a a

Corey 1:05:11

a reporter a former judge or somebody who would be really hard to kind of pin with one of these things or the other and you you help make them a spokesperson for this and you build an organization around them maybe an organization that has prominent liberal voice you know federal liberal voices ndp voices conservative voices but like very intentionally rather than being non-partisan is multi-partisan and saying like whatever bullshit we argue about on the side we agree on this issue you know so there's models out there but i think that the model either has to be non-partisan or multi-partisan has to be card

Carter 1:05:43

card i think it should be a podcast

Carter 1:05:45

i think it should be a podcast and the podcast just says you know what we're gonna do you know maybe we partner with uh the curse of paul no that that would just bring us down they're

Corey 1:05:54

they're too busy But

Carter 1:05:56

But we could easily just do it as a podcast. Podcasts

Carter 1:05:59

Podcasts are very popular right now. I've been listening to a bunch.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:05

We should advertise on

SPEAKER_00 1:06:11

Corey, both of you have kind of got into it a little bit. But the Trudeau's response and just like the strategy behind releasing an open letter, sort of weeks after this was first unveiled, like did he did he walk into a trap that was set by set by Smith?

Corey 1:06:29

I think the answer is yes, and he doesn't care. And he was trying to set another trap, right? Like, I mean, ultimately, he can read the polls, too. He probably understands that Albertans are very opposed to this. And he says, Oh, there is a parade, I will get in front of this. He knows that will maybe make it less popular in Alberta, but he's made the calculation that either it doesn't matter to him, or it won't have a significant impact. Or, you know, he will trade a few points of popularity for the CPP or for the APP. If he

Corey 1:06:58

he can get a couple in his own right, because he's now tying himself to an issue in Alberta where he knows that Albertans are opposed to the Alberta pension plan.

Corey 1:07:07

But I also think a huge part of this obviously has to be he takes this stance. So he forces Pierre Poliev to take a stance. And that's going to create a lot more discomfort within the Conservative Party than it's going to create within the Liberal Party.

Carter 1:07:20

wow i mean cory after years of saying how inept uh the prime minister is at this type of thing suddenly thinks that he's uh pretty good at it so that's that's interesting i did not expect that um carter

SPEAKER_00 1:07:33

carter what's it what do you think what do you think and what do you think polyev like what's the what's the best move for polyev here well

Carter 1:07:42

well the best move for polyev is to duck run on uh light himself on fire so as to not have to comment on it i mean it's it's a loser if he takes that position that that alberta should pull out and especially given the uh unbelievable numbers that have been tossed around by the alberta government i mean it's just it just it's

Carter 1:08:01

it's the wrong story at the wrong time that pierre paliev is a supporter of of alberta not a supporter of canada um so he he just can't find himself in that situation um so you know it's a real loser for pierre it's not a big loser for the prime minister and i guess if if cory thinks that the prime minister is suddenly capable of three-dimensional chess then i guess that's what he's playing but

SPEAKER_00 1:08:26

but but at some point pauliev is gonna like he's gonna be asked the question he's gonna have he's gonna have to win will he not he's not gonna answer it no

Corey 1:08:33

no he's not gonna answer he's

Carter 1:08:34

he's gonna run away

Corey 1:08:35

he'll give like a real non-answer he'll be like well he'll say look i i don't think people of alberta i don't think that the alberta pension plan is a good idea for albertans or for canadians but the reason we're here is because justin trudeau has eroded confidence in confederation to such a degree just such a terrible degree and and let me tell you something let me tell you something that degree has been so terrible under justin trudeau's watch uh that we We are actually seeing the GDP decline. Am I surprised that people are upset with federal institutions under Pierre or under Justin Trudeau? No, of course not. But that's why we need a strong conservative majority government, which I will happily provide in 2025. Did you see my video about lumber storing?

Carter 1:09:20

Plus, you can't even get a passport.

Corey 1:09:24

My impersonation was better. You

Carter 1:09:26

You did a really good job. It was much better. Your Jack Mintz was really unreal. real it was fucking

SPEAKER_00 1:09:33

okay guys let's uh let's leave that there and move into a quick lightning round um lightning round when will a speaker be chosen what are what's your prediction cory how long till that happens i

Corey 1:09:46

i think it will be two days and it will be mchenry carter

Carter 1:09:51

think it's going to be uh 2024

Corey 1:09:56

and who will it be or maybe it'll be like you know how how in north korea when

Corey 1:10:00

when uh the first of the kims died oh

Corey 1:10:05

he became like the eternal leader and

Corey 1:10:07

and so he's still technically the president of north korea totally

Corey 1:10:10

maybe it's like that maybe like there will just never be a speaker again yeah

SPEAKER_00 1:10:15

prediction uh well we're talking which is actually your

Carter 1:10:17

your proposal for the podcast it was uh very

Corey 1:10:21

absolutely well then then we went with zane instead of that yeah instead

Carter 1:10:23

instead yeah which is a mistake well

SPEAKER_00 1:10:25

well we're talking Talking predictions. Let's say there's a referendum on the Alberta pension plan in, I don't know what the timing on that is. Like, are we tying it with municipal in

SPEAKER_00 1:10:37

a couple of years? I think that that's

Corey 1:10:38

that's the smart move for them. I

Carter 1:10:40

I mean, I think that that's actually the play for them. They're doing this to strengthen the right wing for municipal elections. Yeah,

Corey 1:10:47

Yeah, there's a lot of TVD here, right? So the idea is that like Jim Denning, I think next spring is supposed to tell us whether in his, you know, consultations across the province, he believes there's a enough of a groundswell to go to referendum. So Okay,

Carter 1:11:02

Okay, so let's Steve Allen was the most debased person in Alberta, but it turns out to be Jim Denning.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:09

Let's say, hypothetically, a referendum tied to the municipal election in, like, exactly two years, Carter. I think, like, to the day, as we were saying. Well,

Carter 1:11:17

two years tomorrow. It's the 20th

Carter 1:11:19

20th of October, so two years tomorrow. You got that

SPEAKER_00 1:11:20

that circled, do you?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:21

Well, do I ever.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:23

We'll say, hypothetically, who

SPEAKER_00 1:11:25

who wins the referendum? Do we get an Alberta pension plan? What's your prediction?

Corey 1:11:31

Oh, my Lord. Please don't

Corey 1:11:33

Stephen. Stephen, don't predict. I want the Canada pension plan. I don't predict. I'm vetoing this. Dodge the question. I have a voice. I have a voice. Hey. I have a voice. I am president of the Strategist Media Corporation, and I forbid you to answer this question. In

Carter 1:11:49

In which the vote was under suspicious circumstances, my friend.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:55

Corey, what's your prediction?

Corey 1:11:57

I'm not making, I refuse. Okay. It's not happening. It's not happening. Go out

SPEAKER_00 1:12:01

out there and fight for

Corey 1:12:02

for the outcome you want, folks, because the last thing we're going to do is let stephen carter just make it happen by predicting the opposite

SPEAKER_00 1:12:10

we're gonna leave it there i

Carter 1:12:11

i need my i need my own fucking podcast that

SPEAKER_00 1:12:14

that is no you don't that's a wrap on episode 12 61 of the strategist my name is annalise kingfield with you as always stephen carter and cory hogan

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