Transcript
Zain
0:02
This is The Strategist, episode 1297. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, and of course, Stephen Carter. Carter, I know you're getting ready for it. You are getting ready to look naked eye into the sun tomorrow, aren't you? All day. You're going to start at 7 a
Carter
0:17
I'm going to trump that, motherfucker. I'm just going to look straight at it.
Zain
0:20
Oh, you just go at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My
Corey
0:23
My older brother tells me it feels better with your naked eyes. Who said that to you?
Corey
0:30
my older brother oh your older brother okay i
Zain
0:33
thought you said your oldest child for a second i'm like wow i'm
Zain
0:36
i'm like that is really a northeast upbringing carter
Zain
0:40
carter are you excited are you you seem like an eclipse guy i'm
Carter
0:44
i'm so excited i am an eclipse guy i have long been uh long had my light snuffed out by the moon of this podcast so
Carter
0:56
this is me being eclipsed by you guys I
Carter
1:00
I don't understand that phrase why is it eclipsed by when it just is a shadow
Zain
1:05
discuss Corey do you want to explain
Zain
1:06
explain this to Carter discuss
Corey
1:08
discuss I have no interest in doing that I tried
Zain
1:14
great start what else will revive this podcast I thought the eclipse was coming in strong guys i'm yeah go ahead i'm
Carter
1:22
buying rocks tomorrow why
Carter
1:24
100 180 dollars worth of rocks yeah
Zain
1:30
tell us why that's
Corey
1:35
want you to remember you you did this to us saying go what do you mean go ahead tell
Zain
1:39
tell us yeah tell us why you're buying so
Carter
1:40
so i parked my tesla outside side and the tesla battery heats up the ground and melts the snow and the ice and it turns it into mud so i need to put gravel on it so that it's not rocks really not even you know low grade gravel so i'm buying high-end rocks pretty excited it's
Zain
2:03
it's the dumbest story i've ever heard jesus christ cory it's
Carter
2:06
it's well i'm trying to help you guys are not doing anything thing do you
Carter
2:09
you have anything now yeah oh yeah i do i record promos this is good
Zain
2:13
good this is a good hook this is good i
Zain
2:14
do this is going to really revive the
Zain
2:16
podcast first of all we were asked to record a promo and you said yes why did you say yes because
Carter
2:21
because they're they've got promos to put on our show what are their promos i
Zain
2:25
i haven't heard them they
Carter
2:26
they they sent them to us i played them they were nice what what did they say give us a gist one is like hi i'm john shannon i'm the host of uh the bob mcallen podcast which sounded weird because it's bob's podcast but i was like whatever and then then
Carter
2:44
then it continued on that it's like sports talk radio and so
Zain
2:49
sounding about them very little about us well
Carter
2:51
well that's because they're promoting their podcast and then i i
Carter
2:56
i promoted our podcast i said hi i'm stephen carter the john shannon of our podcast you
Corey
3:02
you um that was pretty good you promoted our podcast yeah how are you the spokesperson
Corey
3:07
we're really putting our also
Zain
3:08
also i also think we should do a promo swap i think they should have their promo back and we can play our promo on our podcast i feel like you
Carter
3:15
you want to play our promo on our podcast cory i think i can send it to you or something you know you can dump
Carter
3:21
dump it in right now if you want oh
Corey
3:23
oh yeah i'll uh i'll get get right on yeah there yeah
Corey
3:29
once again so nothing's going on in politics it is pretty boring
Zain
3:32
boring i'm i'm i'm just i'm just dragging my heels listeners can't tell because of the exceptional professionalism i bring to the show what
Carter
3:40
about the uh what about uh what
Carter
3:43
what about the how
Carter
3:45
how about the yeah what
Carter
3:47
what about the charlie
Corey
3:48
charlie angus retired that's
Carter
3:49
that's a good one charlie
Zain
3:51
charlie let's move it on to our first segment our first segment all in for gen z guys i'm gonna i'm I'm going to go here. We'll get to the Charlie Angus. We'll get to Pierre Polyev. We'll get to Alex Jones. We'll get to all of the fun stuff. I want to talk about this. Let's start here with a bit of a deep dive. Why not? Trudeau is down with Gen Z and millennials, Carter. It's not looking good. In fact, we are seeing some polling that might be historic. It might not be historic. But Trudeau is not performing well with a group that liberals and progressive parties for a long time have counted to be in their corner. You're
Zain
4:28
You're seeing Pierre Palliev make significant gains with Gen Z and millennials, i.e. those born after 1980. And you see that as part of Trudeau's ongoing pre-budget announcements. He's trying to appeal to this group. We discussed at length the credit score for rent, you know, which was definitely targeting at least certain folks of a certain vintage. But Carter, I think it's going to take more than one policy. I think it's going to take a whole strategy. And that's why this podcast exists, Carter. We are going to spend some time tonight reinventing,
Zain
5:00
reinventing, reinvigorating, creating perhaps, because it may not exist already, the Justin Trudeau Gen Z and millennial strategy. strategy.
Zain
5:10
The cornerstones, at least thus far from
Corey
5:11
from what we see, are
Zain
5:13
are about affordability and housing.
Zain
5:17
Maybe that's right. Maybe that isn't right. We'll test assumptions. We'll start from the ground up. Carter, like always, when we start a strategy episode, give me a brain dump. I'll take some notes, and then we'll mold this thing together as we go through various things about what Justin Trudeau needs to do to win over Gen Z and millennials again.
Carter
5:37
Well, I think you're going going to be shocked by this zane but uh generally speaking when you're trying to win over a group of voters you give them things that they actually want uh so i think that that's where our strategy is going to start to differ from the justin trudeau strategy um as you guys know i'm i'm the i'm not in gen z uh
Corey
5:56
listen the greatest generation has a lot to offer or
Carter
5:59
or or as i like to call it gen zed um
Carter
6:02
um i'm i'm part of the uh that
Corey
6:05
that kills by the way in ed boomer
Zain
6:09
they need boomer only comedy clubs by the way um
Carter
6:11
um that would actually help
Carter
6:15
but i think that that one change that
Carter
6:18
that one change what do we what
Carter
6:19
what happened to this podcast that one change would actually fundamentally
Zain
6:22
fundamentally remake comedy if you just
Zain
6:25
did not allow boomers into the same comedy club go ahead carter yes here's
Carter
6:28
here's where we are yeah
Carter
6:30
uh i think we have to find out what the what the youngins actually want instead of what the people perceive that they want you know i've got a daughter who's just started working um you know works full time and uh shockingly enough is quite pissed off about the amount of taxes that she pays um you know giving in the past we've traditionally given tax breaks to seniors we've traditionally given uh you know You know, like you could almost model the entire strategy of how you're going to try and win over Gen Z and millennials simply by targeting what we've
Carter
7:04
we've done in the past for seniors and seeing if there's a parallel, you
Carter
7:11
know, but giving dentures to 90 year olds isn't necessarily in my humble estimation, not necessarily the way to the Gen Z hearts.
Zain
7:24
Carter, talk to me, Corey, I'm going to come to you in a second. I want some clarity on what you mean by implementing the senior strategy on Gen
Zain
7:31
Gen Z and millennials. Like, what does that mean to you? Is that an expansion or a deviation from give people what they actually want? Like, what does that mean? Oh,
Carter
7:40
it's the exact same. So in
Carter
7:42
in the past, we have seniors are the most likely people to vote. They are have been one of the larger subsets of the population. And traditionally, we have tried to buy their votes. So we give them indexing on on their pensions,
Carter
8:00
pensions, or we give them, you know, lower drug prices, or we give them income tax relief, we've given all kinds of different things. to seniors in an effort to try and win their votes. And oftentimes, it has worked, because we give them things that they want to have. So what I'm saying is, if you follow the strategy that we've used over the last 30 years, trying to woo seniors, and instead just apply it to Gen Z and millennials, then I think you've got yourself the beginnings of a recipe for success.
Zain
8:35
Corey, do you agree with Carter is give them actually what they want as like our first sort of building block here, and then give me your brain dump. Because there is a school of thought that Gen Z and millennials is not about what they actually want, but what they value, which is not always wanting something for themselves, but a broader sort of like, how you said it, how you did it, like the softer sort of approach. Or are we overthinking that? And, you know, progressives have perhaps for too long thought it's about value systems rather than actually giving people stuff.
Corey
9:05
Well, I don't know that they're mutually exclusive. You can give people things that support their values but i i mean i'll fundamentally what steven has said which can't be underlined enough is that you need to give the audience what the audience actually wants not what you imagine them to want as well and so it requires you to actually have conversations with groups understand what that coalition looks like understand what your flavor of that coalition looks like there's never been a time in history that you get unanimously a group a demographic like 18 to 30 right and um there are shifts going on one of the things that i realized as steven was talking is we are way overdue for a family ties remake right like the parents is woke millennials uh alex p keaton is a woman alex is a you know and you know a name that a woman could have too and and it's the rejection of kind of the
Corey
9:58
the so zane you're very
Corey
10:02
good to steven yeah compared to steven you and i you
Corey
10:06
listen fam yeah we're
Corey
10:07
we're yeah we're spring chicken you
Zain
10:08
you were family times i was more like family matters that was kind of my generation well
Corey
10:12
well family ties so that's that's kind of my first indicator that i was actually correct and what i was about to say next which is you will not remember the show family i
Zain
10:19
i remember show family matters big
Corey
10:24
ties was all about uh these parents that were former hippies growing up and you know a lot of it had to do with the counterculture movement being rejected and there is there is kind of maybe some growing evidence that's happening right now right where it's like yeah
Corey
10:41
yeah okay you you moon cadets with your values right we're actually now sitting here unable to get a house unable to get a job our
Corey
10:50
life is looking pretty fucking grim right now and some of it is environment environmentalism in the sense of like you're also destroying the planet while this is going on. It's just a broader sense of like the future not looking
Corey
11:01
real shit hot for an awful lot of people in younger demographics. Imagine you live in Toronto and you're looking around and be like, well, listen, if I work the rest of my life, still can't afford a house. Oh, you know what? I could go to school for four years. Maybe I still won't get a job. And so there are real challenges, concrete bread and butter economic challenges challenges facing the younger demographics, that I don't think you can hand wave away. And I don't think you can necessarily get
Corey
11:31
get enough of that group just by speaking to values. Like at the end of the day, you need a roof over your head, you need food in your belly.
Corey
11:39
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a thing for a reason. And people will be a lot less worried about values if some of these fundamentals are not being addressed. Carter,
Zain
11:47
Carter, talk to me about, let's just focus in on housing Let's just assume that the liberals are right, that
Zain
11:53
that housing is what this cohort, at least in part, wants.
Zain
11:58
If you're following your principle of give them what they actually want, let's just say the liberals have checked that box. Great. They're going to talk about housing.
Corey
12:05
What if you can't give— Well, that's not the same as giving them what they want. That's exactly what I'm getting
Zain
12:08
getting to. I just want to say. What if you can't actually give them what you want? Like, as a political strategist, the first part is easy.
Zain
12:16
Identify, give. If you can't, what is your best option here? Is it to tell them to wait and be patient? Is it to show activity and effort? Is it to try to change the channel? Like, what should the liberal strategy be? Let's use housing as that example. should millennials want housing and housing takes a shit ton of time to build well
Carter
12:39
well i think that there's all kinds of levers that government can play play pull right like there is no the government can't do that kind of feel to things um but what this government has traditionally done is not grab things that were actually tools
Carter
12:56
tools that made sense i mean you start start off this housing crisis by Justin Trudeau saying that this isn't his problem. This is a provincial problem. Not wrong, but not really the best thing to say.
Carter
13:10
Then the next thing we start to see is investment in housing, which is good, significant investment in housing, but that doesn't impact the individual. And I think that where Trudeau has really failed and where Pierre polyev has been successful is that pierre polyev seems to talk about the individual where justin trudeau is talking about the society or the system the systemic issues right
Carter
13:35
right by putting solutions into the hands of the system for example i
Carter
13:41
don't think that there were a lot of people running around saying you know what i really wish that my credit score reflected what i was paying in rent i just don't think that that was something uh that was being talked about what they were talking is i literally can't afford my rent um my daughter just moved into a new place that was
Carter
13:59
was very expensive uh it took her months and months and months to find a place that she could actually afford um without
Carter
14:08
without eating up too much of her of her income like she's full she's got full-time job full-time uh you know she has the wage that should be able to support support a decent place to live, but she can't find one because they're just too damned expensive. What are we doing to help her? Right? Like you really have to think in the micro when you're going to implement and design one of these programs. And sometimes, and Corey will get mad at me, but sometimes it means that you're going to do something that actually causes the problem to get worse because you act, but you're doing it because you're being seen to make the problem better explain
Zain
14:48
explain that last part to me sorry just just so i'm clear and just so cory's clear you're
Carter
14:54
you're going to give everybody under 30 years old a subsidy of 500 uh you're going to allow them to write off their rents from their income tax you're going to um put
Carter
15:07
put in place rent controls um you know any number of the any one of those three ideas isn't a good idea for the the long-term success of the housing industry uh
Carter
15:17
for a short-term success of an election strategy all three of those work cory
Zain
15:23
cory your response to that and then this broader question of what if you can't give them what they want what
Zain
15:29
what do you do then well as a strategist so
Corey
15:31
so you can't give them what they want in the short so
Corey
15:33
so the question for me becomes on this matter like i think this is bigger than housing i do want to say but let's focus in on housing for a second how do you make them feel something that's going to happen in a couple of years now right
Corey
15:46
right that that in some ways becomes a bit of the challenge and there are ways to do that i mean if you've done if you've purchased a condo from a new building or done a new build you tend to get those things before you get those things right like you pay the money you put a deposit down and you know you're going to have this house in the future and maybe
Corey
16:06
maybe there's versions of that in some limited cases maybe there's a big government program that won't create housing for i
Corey
16:13
don't know four years because it's just going to take that time but all of a sudden yeah you're you put your you're going to get a house like you don't have it today but you are going to get this thing in three years maybe or four years or whatever maybe there are ways you can make people feel home ownership or at least the confidence that they just need to get through the next little bit um and maybe that will start to dull some of the pain of of not having these things because then you can start Well, I got to live with mom and dad, but only for another year. Oh, you know, I've got to have a roommate, but only for another two years. Then we can start our family, me and my wife, right? Whatever it might be, you know, there are ways that you can bring forward the feeling of like getting this thing concluded before the thing is actually concluded. And I think in particular with housing, we have lots of models of these, you know, home sellers have been doing this forever, right? To make you feel really excited about the thing. you put a little bit of money down the big hit comes later the complexity comes later the pain comes later but the feeling like you've really figured it out can be made pretty quick much quicker than the house carter thoughts on that yeah
Carter
17:15
yeah i think that's great i think that if you were to for example um you
Carter
17:20
you know you've you're you're putting in all these billions of dollars into housing six billion dollars i think has been announced in the last in the last week into to housing. Wouldn't it be, it would be phenomenal if you could link that to the individual,
Carter
17:33
right? So $6 billion into housing, we anticipate having housing in the next two years. We're going to run a program where young people can sign up and they're given an opportunity to buy into these houses and they will be guaranteed an apartment or whatever they're building.
Carter
17:56
If they put down, You know, all they have to do is sign up for this government program, and it guarantees what the cost of the mortgage is going to be, how long the mortgage is going to be, and what they're required to save for the down payment. And the government of Canada will match their funding that
Carter
18:13
that they save for their down payment, right?
Carter
18:15
right? Something like that.
Corey
18:18
Yeah, that's really smart. I like the idea of you lock it. One of the anxieties that exists is that it's just getting worse, right? right? And the price continues to run away from you in a lot of
Corey
18:28
And so this idea of, okay, I'm now there, I've got it, I'm on that list or whatever.
Corey
18:34
I think that makes a lot of sense. And, you know, locking in the price, I think is a huge component of that. But to Carter's other point, which he made both in this last round, but earlier, and it's really worth saying again, it's, they've got to tie it to the individual, not society. Like they can't just be like, yeah, we're building more houses in a vague sense. It's got to be no, okay, we're figuring out your specific pain point here right and maybe at the end of the day your circumstances change you don't want that house anymore the market shifts whatever it may be but the real block that the liberals have right now if you're a voter who literally cannot get shelter right
Corey
19:12
they just can't get past that you know we're talking about maslow's hierarchy it's literally at the bottom of it right if people don't feel that these things are being taken care of if If shelter is not taken care of, if their kind of general safety is not being taken care of, they are not going to feel like they can move on to many of the more high-minded ideals that the liberals have been putting in the windows lately. Carter,
Zain
19:32
Carter, do you sense like – let me just leave this bracket open and then let me just jump into the housing with like a bit of an offshoot and I'll come back to it. Do you sense on housing in particular, the liberals are like demonstrating a particular type of governmentitis where like the rhetoric is not ambitious at all? it's
Zain
19:49
it's it's not it and maybe that's because they know the realities of how long supply takes of what a wartime effort would actually fundamentally produce what the need is versus what the supply is but do you fault the liberals for their lack of ambitious or even like soaring rhetoric on on demonstrating what housing could look like in a couple years for thousands if not millions of people? Or do you feel like it is strategically solid for them to be limited and act like government on this particular file, this expensive, very expensive, very long runway of a file?
Carter
20:29
Well, I think that the problem is that when you're in government, you start to see all the problems of being in government, right? You're not able to achieve the things that you want to achieve because you are actually hamstrung by the reality. When you're in opposition, you're not hamstrung by any reality you can just say well we're going to do this and people will say well how when you come up with a number and you say it's only going to cost us you know eight billion dollars to do this and we can do you know the gut the liberals are spending countless billions so we can we know we can spend this much money and and
Carter
21:02
and everything will be you
Carter
21:04
you know perfect um except
Carter
21:06
in real life in government that's super duper hard to do those those those programs they have
Carter
21:13
have to be paid for in some fashion you know it's it sounds to me like the finance minister has put tight controls over top of the uh the
Carter
21:24
the government so that they don't overspend and they don't over commit and then you know so that's why you're seeing some of these like this credit
Zain
21:35
zero dollar policy right remember that we talked about last it's
Carter
21:37
it's a zero dollar policy it doesn't cost you anything. So, you
Carter
21:40
you know, you can see why that happens. Because you're
Carter
21:45
you're constrained by the reality of government. And the reality of government is not something that constrains your opponents.
Zain
21:52
Coy, how do you be ambitious on such a file like this? How do you like when it's just 100 units at a time, 50 units at a time, when the need is in the thousands of millions? And it kind of goes back to a core question, if I can ask it another way, that we've discussed previously on this show, which is if you're the liberals right now, do you get better mileage selling an ambitious plan or showing iterative engagement and impact? Showing that, you know, you can get a few things done or is it the big sort of plan, we've got it in place?
Corey
22:24
This is fundamentally the problem with all of these plans floating around, right? You know, this idea that you can go around the country and announce 80 new buildings at a time and solve this is ridiculous. And the day that you made that 80 person announcement or 80 unit announcement, the
Corey
22:39
the demand absorbed it all, right? Like if you do that in a place like Barrie, well, guess what? More than 80 people have started looking for houses in Barrie that particular day, right? Or that week, maybe I shouldn't exaggerate. But this is the challenge that the liberals have here. The scale is just really not aligned with the problem, at least in terms of their direct investment. so that really means there's basically two options for them right one of them is to go really
Corey
23:04
really hard into housing like we're not talking billions or even tens of billions we're talking hundreds of billions right if you want to address this problem in kind of the the
Corey
23:14
the big sense across the country
Corey
23:17
like that huge my eye-watering money like just an insane amount almost incomprehensible
Zain
23:21
incomprehensible money in some ways where we're
Corey
23:23
we're like well an amount that's so beyond people people
Corey
23:26
people actually having a sense of what it is for sure so i i agree with you right and that's tough like how are you going to pay for that what's your plan you know what's
Corey
23:34
what's the bond you're going to float for that going to look like all of these questions like start to really address how the government can address it the other is you start saying all right we're gonna we're gonna make the moves that allow the market or the system to to right itself here we talked a bit about this last time i don't want to rehash it all but what can you do with the financial system in terms of well the liberals have done a lot in terms of allowing you to do more down payment but what are you doing in terms of avoiding the financialization of the industry what are you doing in terms of reducing demand perhaps by addressing you know the immigration rate it looked like the prime minister made comments last week along those lines suggesting that perhaps immigration needs to come down he didn't say that but there was some some implications there right so but that that's
Corey
24:21
that's a challenge too because you don't actually know how long those things are going to take and there's so many other orders of government it's
Corey
24:27
it's a long walk to get to your solution might be the right walk but it's a long walk and for a government that's looking to solve this problem before the next election pretty challenging you you for sure for example couldn't do the thing that steven and i were just talking about which is okay the individual's problem is now resolved right
Corey
24:44
although as i say that maybe you find a way that you can marry using
Corey
24:47
using the government's heft and you you know market power to say okay we've married john smith with builder abc yeah yeah right and they're going to build this thing and it's locked in and this is and now the builder knows they can build this thing it's not really on spec the government's basically backstopped it and the buyer knows okay this is not going to escalate it's not going to get around maybe there's a program there actually as i say this but the point that i really wanted to make is
Corey
25:14
it's it's not like like all of the things we're talking about in terms of like the various solutions out require scale. And there's no evidence of the kind of scale that's needed to solve this problem at this point. Carter,
Zain
25:25
Carter, let me close this bracket, zoom back up to our overall conversation. Right now, Gen Z millennials, if
Zain
25:31
if you were a strategist who had 30 seconds to make a decision, as you do right now, Carter, would you be selling big, and I'm not talking about housing anymore, right? I'm talking about their needs in the most generic sense. Would you be selling plan and effort, or would you be selling track record of doing something in that domain? Let's say we found out what they need is X, Y, and Z. Would you say we are the right folks with the plan or would you be selling the track record for the couple of things you've done in that particular domain? Oh, utilities, well, we did X, Y, and Z on utilities versus going forward, here's what we can do on utilities. It's a more comprehensive plan. How would you, and is there any difference how you'd communicate with this group versus any other group? I guess this is what I'm trying to get at. So number one, pick a lane between effort and track record and number two, any nuance or difference between this particular group and how you as a strategist would think about it?
Carter
26:20
In general, I think the track record is almost meaningless in almost every political endeavor. Just because you've done something in the past does not mean that someone has felt that,
Carter
26:29
right? I'm a big believer that the individual must feel it, otherwise it does not exist. And if you've done something in the past, well, we've done this in the past. This is what we've did to make things better. That's great. And those people who were impacted may remember. They probably don't. But if you want to actually succeed, you have to tell them that you're going to do something new. One of the big complaints I have with government is we don't kill enough programs. I think that we should kill way more programs so we can announce new programs. Because new programs are the only way that you're going to win people over. And old programs,
Carter
27:06
you know, generally speaking, don't get any headlines. So kill
Carter
27:11
kill a program, two programs, and come up with a brand new one that actually appeals to people and fits into the
Carter
27:18
the kind of paradigm that we're describing to win over the millennials and Gen Z. Corey,
Corey
27:26
Well, it's funny because I was right there with Stephen. As he said, we don't kill enough programs because I think that there's just government tries to do too many things poorly. And then I realized he was actually not talking about changing what was done but repackaging it into new
Carter
27:41
of the programs. No, no, we'd change it. We'd change it. we'd change oh okay yeah no no it wouldn't be the same one i mean
Corey
27:45
no i i mean i just i i think governments do need to kind of focus in and listen i totally agree with this idea that you don't get a lot of credit for what you did in the past because i think i mean think about it right well you did it in the past i still have this problem man you suck yeah you know like your solution didn't even solve it for me like telling somebody like if you walked in around like like imagine you're the let's bring this into a like a kind of a local context where people can kind imagine it and and you were the mayor of a city and somebody came up to me and said you know what like i was just walking downtown and i was mugged like somebody took my shoes they they were really nice shoes they were those donald trump shoes and someone just took them off my feet they called me a loser and they slapped me and then you as mayor said well you know i invested more in policing two years ago like
Corey
28:35
like they're gonna say not enough not fucking enough right i still got mugged because again like the challenge with the the problems that the liberals have right now and this might sound a little cynical a
Corey
28:46
lot of politics is like a fear it's a thing that i worry is gonna go wrong it's something where i say i have anxiety the system will not be there for me i have anxiety my children will not actually be educated you know particularly well you know everything could fall apart for me i need somebody to make sure it doesn't fall apart for me this
Corey
29:04
this is different this is i
Corey
29:06
i am living something i cannot find an apartment i cannot buy a house and so you are not just trying to comfort me in that moment you are trying to solve my fucking problem and and that's a very different thing for a politician to deal with you can't just give me bromides and value warm blankets when i myself have that problem right you can't tell me the things you did if i myself have that problem you
Corey
29:31
you can tell me the things you did if i have an anxiety and you can and say, you don't need to worry about that because I've done these things. But if it's something that I am directly feeling, the
Corey
29:40
the approach that you've sort of suggested is actually counterproductive because it just says to them, and I still have this problem. You did something and it's not enough. Yeah.
Zain
29:48
Yeah. Or even, you know, your rhetoric is not going to be enough, so to speak, going forward. Carter, talk to me about this. And this is a 101 sort of thing, but I'm really really curious let's just say that for the liberals they do the polling they investigate they they find the best they understand uh what the the the gen z and the millennials want there's a list of issues they boil it down to the top two uh it's housing and affordability carter we're exactly where we were now yeah
Zain
30:17
shocking let's just say let's just say they've done that work let's give them the credit for doing that work okay yeah you know like these
Zain
30:24
these These are not their issues.
Zain
30:26
Is it the right play for them to keep on this lane? Like, to Corey's point of, like, people as individuals are feeling the crunch on these two things. As the liberals, you do not own those two issues. For past strategic failures and an opposition that has outmaneuvered you on that.
Zain
30:43
It's a simplistic reason why.
Zain
30:46
But you don't own those issues.
Zain
30:48
Do you have to try, as the liberals are right now? Or would your advice actually say, you know what? what?
Zain
30:54
Yes, give them what they actually want. But if it's something that's not within your message box, not something that's a strength of yours, maybe don't give them what they want. I'm
Zain
31:03
I'm throwing it out there, Carter. Like, give me your thought here. Like, if you don't own the issues of what they want, what do you do, is the heart of my question.
Carter
31:12
Corey's been talking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs tonight. And so I'll just kind of throw it into that i
Carter
31:19
think millennials and gen z are very worried about the climate i think that they moved to the liberals because of the climate in 2021 but i
Carter
31:29
i don't think that they'll move to the liberals in 2025 because this new worry has replaced that other one you
Carter
31:37
you don't get to choose what people are concerned about you don't get to choose because it's not in your message box you do try to you
Zain
31:44
you And you do have a chance to manipulate, though, as political parties do. That is
Carter
31:47
is at the heart
Zain
31:48
heart of my question.
Carter
31:49
You can't manipulate yourself out of some situations. Some situations are very
Carter
31:55
very challenging because the person who is who you're trying to manipulate has already been manipulated or already believe certain things. Like, let's say that crime and safety was someone's number one issue. You're not going to win any arguments by saying, well, I'm sorry, that's not in my message box. And it turns out that crime and safety is
Carter
32:15
is a perception problem, not an actual reality problem.
Carter
32:19
Like you have to recognize where the person is, and you can only manipulate around where they are. You can't manipulate around where you wish they would be. That
Zain
32:28
That would be a strategic mistake in that sense, trying to take them too far down a different track. Corey, you have some thoughts here?
Corey
32:35
yeah well it's it's kind of the extension of what i was just saying you you you're talking about types of issues that sort of pop to the top where again it's those anxiety-based issues right but you can't manipulate yourself out of things that
Corey
32:47
that are real and and so again if people are worried about something you can change their worry but if somebody is actually feeling it directly affected by it you know i'm not afraid of crime i've been the victim of crime i'm not worried about buying buying a house. I'm worried about a future where I might need to buy a house. I need to buy a house and I can't buy one. And now I'm thinking I might have to leave my home city, my home province. You know, I might have to be 5,000 kilometers, well, 5,000, 6,000, 3,000 kilometers away from my parents. Right. I
Corey
33:16
I can't afford to live here anymore. Like those are not things that you can convince people are not real issues. Like you're not going to drive them down, um, the kind of the the issue register just by saying we're not talking about them so again like you need to understand what type of challenge you have what kind of issue is sitting there and governments deal with this all the time by the way there is a bit of a lag for a lot of these things the the economy is the most famous one and you see this in the united states right now americans are very worried about the economy but when you ask them about their individual economic experience it's actually pretty good you know and the economic indicators are pretty good and
Corey
33:55
and so that's a bit bit different like joe biden can change the story on the economy because the fundamentals underneath it support his story the
Corey
34:02
liberals cannot change the story about housing affordability for gen z because the reality underneath that is it is very very hard to get housing uh for anywhere near the amount of money it used to cost even 10 years ago carter
Zain
34:17
carter i'm going to try to summarize some of the things we've heard here right like when it's
Zain
34:20
about when it's about something real you can't can't manipulate that reality and that anxiety sort of thing. This is not about just providing a warm blanket of feelings. It's about dealing with what someone is directly dealing with. You got to show them the plan. You got to think of the individual. You got to, you know, understand what people actually want and give it to them. What else are you adding here to the liberal strategy for Gen Z and millennials? Like, give me a few other bullet points. Corey, you got your hand up, so I'm going to go to you, because that overrides me and any plan I have for this fucking show
Corey
34:54
can't there are times when you can do distraction politics right when you can say this is an issue you're worried about i'm going to give you a different issue but i'm going to go back to maslow's hierarchy of needs it doesn't work at the base of the pyramid you can't convince somebody you don't need to worry about shelter instead we're going to talk about something you just can't do it it cannot be done so you also need to understand like
Corey
35:17
like the true importance of some of these issues at their core. And if you don't have a home, it doesn't get more important than that. It
Zain
35:24
Carter, what else do you want to add to this list as we outline the liberal strategic sort of principles or framework for how they think about this?
Carter
35:32
Well, I think you have to frame the other guy. I
Carter
35:34
I think you have to remind people why they didn't like him from the beginning.
Corey
35:40
want to add an asterisk. You also have to blame the other guy, like the premiers, the mayors. You've got to move who's responsible as well. Why
Zain
35:48
Why haven't the liberals done that? Why haven't the liberals said, your cost of living, your affordability, your issues, you know, yeah, sure, me, but fuck you, them. Like, you know?
Zain
36:00
Like, why haven't they clapped back in that way?
Carter
36:03
It's a mystery. You know, maybe in part because it hasn't worked, but I think that they haven't really gone after it. I mean, today, I read that— Sorry, sorry, just to be clear,
Zain
36:13
clear, when you say it hasn't worked, you mean historically, or have the Liberals tried it and
Carter
36:16
and it hasn't worked? No, it always works.
Carter
36:17
I mean, I think the Liberals have tried, but I don't think they've tried nearly hard enough. Gotcha,
Carter
36:21
sorry. I mean, today the Ontario,
Carter
36:24
Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Alberta bound together for this recovery system that's been coming out of Alberta, which basically ends safe supply and moves people into recovery as
Carter
36:34
as the primary solution.
Carter
36:37
Okay, well, that trio happens to have some of the worst housing problems across the country. I mean, why wouldn't we be banging on the fact that the reason that these problems exist is we keep electing conservative premiers and these conservative premiers keep doing stupid things that really negatively impact the housing market. We can try and clean it up, but God damn it, we could use some help from the voters. Unelect these people because these are the people that are causing us all the problems.
Zain
37:04
Corey, what else would you add to the point of frame and blame the other guy? eye
Corey
37:10
the liberals right now are in a very dangerous spot this is as we've talked about a top issue and what we've talked about you can't just say because of the nature of the issue that you can't just tell them it's not an issue that's not going to work but i do think that they are
Corey
37:26
not raising the salience raising the expectations the federal government can do something on an issue that they can't and or won't solve right it's short of that hundred billion dollar investment the fact that they're doing an announcement today on housing could
Corey
37:40
could actually come to really bite them in the ass because they're out there they're doing things as a federal government it becomes really hard to say the thing you said earlier which is this is not my thing which was never a wise way to put it but it is kind of true and it's just not enough of a direct investment for them actually to resolve this problem so i don't know if you both remember this but in september of last year 2023 we
Corey
38:04
we we talked about this housing issue and what should the liberals do this is a looming storm cloud and
Corey
38:09
and i don't know if my you know it might be too late but my advice at the time i think was sound which is everything that pierre poliev says you should be doing just do it say great idea we're doing a mania strategy yeah take it off the table like just and when he comes up with something next week and says you should do this too say yeah absolutely we're gonna do it and i'll tell you why because they have ended up in exactly this situation where now they have a difference between them and the other guy the problem's not being solved so people are going to say i guess we'll try the other guy's solution and they have sort of raised expectations that the federal government can do something about so this is just not a great situation for them whatsoever you would have neutralized them fundamentally right
Zain
38:47
right like on the issue and kind of said well like fuck it if we can't do it they can't do it our plans are the same move on to the next issue uh
Corey
38:52
uh yes exactly well so like we you
Corey
38:54
you were kind of digging at this and i think it's worth saying this is not a what we call a sword issue for the liberals right right? They're not going to fucking win on housing. They just need to not lose on housing. And it might be a little too late for that at this point, frankly. But if you are not worried about winning on it, and if you don't have a self-destructive political ego, the easiest solution would have been to say, yes, we are going to do exactly what Pierre Polyev says. And then Pierre Polyev for two months says, look at me, I'm so smart, I had to show them the way on housing, right?
Corey
39:24
Okay, because it's not actually going to be fucking solved. So he doesn't actually to get that win you've taken it off the table that's what you should have done in september and now i think we're seeing almost the whipsaw back the other way where it's housing a minute from the federal liberals but not enough to solve the problem still different from the conservatives and now the premiers are getting in on the game too like
Corey
39:43
like i think they've actually created a terrible situation i'll
Zain
39:46
i'll get to the thing that the premiers are doing in a second here carter anything else you want to add carter because i've got a few follow-up questions for you if you don't let's
Carter
39:53
let's do the follow-up question zane i always love your follow-ups here's
Zain
39:56
here's my thing here's my of thing okay so thus far we've we've put together i think a pretty decent strategy we haven't gotten into taxes because that's not this show but we've put together a pretty decent strategy no we
Corey
40:05
unless unless i unless i need to buy it we don't sit there in the dirt fuck that
Zain
40:09
unless i need to buy some time uh for the my bare minimum to get paid uh which is the era that i am in as a host on this show uh
Zain
40:18
carter a question for you um
Zain
40:19
um earnestly a question for you is
Zain
40:24
helpful or a a hindrance for the liberals that the what gen z and millennials want might be what the gen pop wants in
Zain
40:33
in the sense that it's not an acute specific problem to them it might be with a age and stage of life but it's also kind of what the rest of the fucking country wants as maybe issues one and two like as a strategic exercise and a thought is that is that helpful like fucking one plan for all or you know oh shit is it a hindrance because we can't micro target on this issue for one group, because if we do, we actually fuck ourselves with the rest of the gen pop, and I use that in the broadest sense, that wants the exact same thing. Like, how as a strategist would you think about this? Helpful or hindrance that what this group wants, eh, kind of copy and paste what everyone else needs or wants?
Carter
41:10
I think that they may want the same thing, but the way that it's realized and the way that it's discussed is different. And because of that, I think that it's unique to the generation. So, you
Carter
41:23
know, I want affordable housing because I want my kids close to me, not because I need affordable housing in the same fashion. Right. It doesn't impact me the same way. Cost of living to me is an annoyance, not a real issue that defines my life. Right. Right. So, you know, I think that you've got these people are talking about the issues and they're saying that they're the same issues. But the impact of those issues are different. And
Carter
41:52
And because those impacts are different, I think that you have to approach the solutions differently. You have to be able to point to young people and say, see,
Carter
42:02
see, we're solving your problem for you. Like when Nenshi ran in 2010, everybody said all these young people came out and voted for him. them. That's not actually what the data shows. What the data shows is that not the young people didn't really come out and vote for them. But their parents did. Because their parents were like, Oh, yeah, my kid really likes that Nenshi guy. So I should vote for that Nenshi guy. I think that that's where these types of solutions lie. Not in these, the you know, the the liberal solving them equally for everybody. Because I just think that the way that they're being experienced is different.
Zain
42:38
Corey, do you agree with that? And
Zain
42:40
And really, this is partially an intellectual thought exercise of like, you know, as a strategist, what if the needs of one group are the same as the needs of the gen pop in the most simplified sense? Or is this like an interesting opportunity for the liberals? So hindrance or helpful for them, if that is indeed the case?
Corey
43:01
Yeah, I do think that it's even beyond, I agree with everything Stephen said, but even beyond that, a lot of the solutions for younger people will hurt
Corey
43:11
hurt homeowners, quote unquote, it won't hurt them. It'll make them on paper worth less in many cases. Some people will have purchased houses that will go down in value and that will, you know, that'll annoy them immensely, right? And I think that's a challenge that the liberals might have to deal with. Your bigger question is a bigger and more important one, right? And I'm going to rephrase it a bit. Do you need young voters? That was going to be my next question. Can
Zain
43:34
Can you write them off?
Corey
43:36
I mean, I'm not sure. I think part of your brand is tied to them. But when you look at the demographics in 2015, and I think it was an Angus Reid poll that just went in and sort of gave us age breakdowns in some big numbers. I'll try to find it and maybe post it on the Discord or something for our patrons. But it
Corey
43:54
it showed that there wasn't really like an age gap for the liberals. Like they basically did consistently well across all of these age groups. In 15, you mean?
Corey
44:04
in 15 right there's been two elections since then but i guess i would say like the the purest form of the liberal coalition doesn't
Corey
44:11
doesn't necessarily it didn't run on youth i guess is what i'm trying to say no
Zain
44:15
no and it's it's once
Zain
44:16
again like it's it's like it was it was credited for
Zain
44:19
for for putting it over the
Zain
44:20
credited it was credited for
Zain
44:22
for for helping the obama election was credited once again in that same sort of yeah
Corey
44:27
and there is something to it like i will say say in 2015, the number of voters increased so significantly. And a lot of that had to do with younger demographics voting. But in terms of percent of the vote, you know, it was it was not it. The story is a little murkier. It's not quite what people remember or believe it to be. This
Corey
44:43
This really goes back to what are the liberals trying to do? What is their overall strategy? Because such a fundamental part of that is identifying the coalition that you think you can win with.
Corey
44:54
And I know the liberals have approached this with great sophistication in the last bit. You know, they've won some writings by the skin of their teeth because they've been so targeted on these particular things. But for whatever reason, at least from a distance, it feels like when they zoom out and they look at the whole country and try to figure this out on the macro level, they don't quite know what
Corey
45:15
what their winning coalition is. I mean, I'm sure they have theories of it.
Corey
45:19
I just don't entirely buy that it's coming through in a coherent fashion right now. But
Corey
45:23
the liberals need to figure that out. Carter,
Zain
45:25
Carter, this is, Corey's going exactly where I wanted to go here, which is, okay, we've got all these rules, these are helpful, but maybe at the top of the list is another question I have, which is, okay,
Zain
45:35
okay, we've got a Gen Z and millennial plan. Great.
Zain
45:38
We're going to have the PM doing things, we've got our principals, we're going to flesh out tactics. But the main question I have is, how hard are we actually trying here?
Zain
45:47
Like, how hard should we actually be investing our time, energy, and our political capital on this group? Because there is a case to be made, and Corey talks about theories. The other theory is that, you know, as we're seeing this younger group get more conservative, we're seeing older folks, reliable voters, as they've been called, get more progressive. So in some ways, are you just like, you know, you do the thing, you do this exercise, you listen to this podcast, you develop a plan. You make it all work. But Carter, answer me the question. How hard are you actually trying here? How much political capital are you actually spending here with this group?
Carter
46:28
Probably not very much. This
Carter
46:30
This group, you know, the millennials are getting interesting. Millennials are starting to have children. And the beginning of having children tends to change your engagement levels with voting. so when you have kids you have uh you're much more probable to vote so until
Carter
46:49
until you know i would probably not focus too much on what i would call the millennials and the gen z what i would probably focus on more is
Carter
46:59
is uh parents right and that could include millennials
Carter
47:03
millennials and you mean parents of
Zain
47:07
oh parents i'm sorry okay just so clear yeah right
Carter
47:10
right like i don't know if you know this but you've got a child and so we call you a never see him
Zain
47:14
him he's been i heard he's been doing wall raising himself yeah
Carter
47:17
yeah oh that's good that's good um he's
Zain
47:19
he's he's on the hunt for a father figure if anyone on the pod is available yeah but keep going that's
Carter
47:24
you're just you're keeping him away from me i don't understand it um
Carter
47:27
um anyways bike riding
Carter
47:29
yeah he had a blast today and by blast i mean we almost died um
Carter
47:35
um anyways we move on um
Carter
47:37
um yeah yeah, probably not the way to sell bike riding.
Carter
47:41
But nonetheless, I think that I probably wouldn't put too much time and effort into it. They're going to vote less. They're going to, they start to be, it's kind of like for, you know, first
Carter
47:51
first generation immigrants behave one way, second, another, third, another, right? And that's been predictable, you
Carter
47:58
you know, regardless of your country of origin.
Carter
48:01
That I think is the same with parenthood. The second you become a parent, you start to behave as parents do not necessarily as uh the predictable um
Carter
48:15
force of your generation you
Corey
48:16
you start to get very strong opinions about bluey
Zain
48:21
blue is not even a kid show it's an adult
Corey
48:23
adult see you've got you see you've got strong opinions about bluey did you have strong opinions about bluey two years always always had strong stop stop speaking for me cory
Zain
48:31
cory are you are you gonna are you gonna to counteract carter's argument here that that it's the answer is actually at the top of your memo here's the plan here's the strategic principles let's not put a lot of effort into this or would you are you from a different school of thought so to speak well
Corey
48:48
well i do agree well look i don't know of too many maybe in shorthand but you're probably not actually building your demos that you're after by the generations as defined by you know whoever like these generations like Like the definitions even shift so much. Like in some definitions of millennial, you can be 45 and a millennial, right? So are you really a millennial? You know, I don't know, right? And for those reasons, like it's just, it's such imprecise language. People are driven by so many other things. Like you really have to ask yourself, like one of the things you will both recall that we often used to do in our old job at Hill and Knowlton is we would do like massive surveys on these issues and then we would survey them on all sorts of other things you know demographics geographics psychographics i used to tell people i would ask them if they were left-handed if i thought i could sell ads to people who were left-handed right like it was all about how you got in front of them but from there we would then do a recursive partitioning and we would try to find the variables that mattered right
Corey
49:53
right so maybe it doesn't matter like maybe it's not going to to tell us anything about whether you vote liberal or not if you drive a car or take the bus maybe it tells us everything about if you vote liberal or not based on whether your postal code has like a population density above or below 100 and
Corey
50:09
so these are the things that political parties do and they do it with some precision and then they try to build it out to these models so that you know the organizing class can understand the conservatives did this famously we're now in a bigger data world but historically you talk about these personas right well it would would sarah vote for this would would bob vote for this would um minhas vote for this it's just like whatever it might be you would create these people and then all of a sudden these people are are who you're actually talking about in shorthand but you're not talking about gen z i guess that's what i would say and if you are god help you you you're probably actually breaking it out the way Stephen is, because you're probably looking at it and saying, it turns out it's actually predictive if you're a parent or not, whether you're going to vote liberal and whether you're going to vote at all.
Corey
50:58
And those are the two metrics that you want to look at, whether they're going to vote liberal and whether they're going to vote at all, as you build out this winning coalition, whatever it might be. Carter?
Zain
51:07
Here's my final question on this strategy. We've spent nearly 50 minutes on this.
Zain
51:13
Is there a world in where the liberals take all this feedback and And take even the top, you know, sort of part of the memo, the executive summary, being like, you know, don't spend a lot of time on this sort of thing. Corey's saying, you know, it's actually not Gen Z. There's actually a bigger sort of, you know, partitioning, so to speak. He made you switch to Gen Z. Oh, no, I use it interchangeably. I can't believe you bought into that. Sorry, Gen Z is actually the way I used to say it 50 minutes ago. But, Carter, you changed me. You persuaded me.
Corey
51:41
I did. Carter, is there any
Corey
51:43
part of you that
Zain
51:44
say, here's all the work, but spend no attention on this? Not because it's not strategic and not because we don't need them, but we can also just pray that they come back because they always do.
Zain
51:56
How crazy of an idea would that be as a strategist to say, you know what, this is a group that is historically, you know, not voted very often, which is where the low effort sort of stuff comes in. but when they have they'll come home they'll
Zain
52:10
they'll come home like and you put that in your memo carter would you advocate for that would that be a recommendation that would come from you or would that be something a crazy person would do in a 2024 world give me your thoughts cory really
Carter
52:23
really feels like a cory hogan strategy um no i probably wouldn't do that uh i would probably Probably, I
Carter
52:31
I mean, first of all, these
Carter
52:33
these people aren't coming home. And I guess the heart of my question, Carter, is has the world changed?
Zain
52:37
Has the world changed for this group fundamentally, or is this like a one-off in your mind? That's what I'm interested in with the root of that question.
Carter
52:44
Here's the thing. These
Carter
52:46
These people aren't returning home. They've never really had a home, right?
Carter
52:50
right? They've never voted in such a percentage that you could say, you
Carter
52:54
you know, they're liberal voters forever. forever keep
Carter
52:56
keep in mind as they move through generations as we move through generations we change our voting patterns and so because of that um you
Carter
53:06
you know young people just might be changing their voting patterns and you wind up with a bunch of alex p keaton's running around yeah i also know family ties cory well i knew you
Corey
53:16
you knew family time
Zain
53:17
okay but did you know urkel was actually stefan the whole time and
Corey
53:22
don't think they hid that in the show they didn't hide that in the show man he
Corey
53:26
he he split himself into two eventually and then both characters were there in the final season jaleel
Zain
53:31
jaleel keeps giving that's
Zain
53:33
that's all i'll say go ahead carter keep going
Carter
53:36
like i don't even know what this show is anyways no family matters you
Corey
53:39
you don't know family matters what
Carter
53:42
what is i don't care to know family that matters i have family ties and that was enough for man sounds
Zain
53:46
sounds racist to me right you'll
Zain
53:50
you'll get that once you
Carter
53:51
kirk cameron was the only teenage male i needed to know uh pretty
Carter
53:56
pretty great guy sounds
Zain
53:57
sounds extra racist to me after that okay i don't
Carter
54:01
don't remember what the question was zane i
Corey
54:03
i i do i would say this it's
Corey
54:07
it's not that you need everyone in the demo i want to go back to that right can i just go
Zain
54:11
go before you go back to that hold that thought steven carter i'm going to give you a quote they aren't coming home they've never really had a home um isn't
Zain
54:18
isn't that yeah thank
Zain
54:19
thank you that was really good that was the best part of it before we accused you of uh not wanting to experience the the african-american family and family matters cory please go ahead
Corey
54:29
he was carl winslow was a chicago police officer i know chicago pd yeah
Corey
54:35
he bought his son eddie an old police cruiser and they fixed it up into a a hot rod in one episode it was it was a banger that's
Corey
54:44
that's pretty good i
Carter
54:45
don't know what we're talking about sounds
Zain
54:48
sounds about right gory gory would you at the top of this memo say you know what at the end of the day they're gonna come back home politically we have always been their landing spot this is what they do this this is not a blip uh they will come back there's a plan in place but they'll come back. That's the heart of our plan.
Corey
55:07
We're talking about Gen Z. You know, this will be anybody who is 22 or younger, what's coming home? This will be their first election, right? Like they've never voted before. I think it's, again, got to be a little bit more precise than that. You got to get in there and you got to test that assumption. So I'm sure, well, I sure hope the liberals are running focus groups that say things like, okay, so I'm going to tell you a bit about Pierre and you do it in a way that doesn't make him like a caricature but like who he actually is here and then i'm gonna do a couple of messages here and i just i want to test you know tell me how much you agree with them or not let's talk about them and then you throw things out like saying things like i like pierre polyev's housing focus but i find his lack of environment policy disqualifying do you agree or disagree with that statement and you sort of test to see it's it's a little bit message testing it's a little bit probing through them and and you try to understand whether that that thesis is accurate, right?
Corey
56:02
right? But if you're in those focus groups and all that's coming up is like, yeah, but housing, yeah, but housing, yeah, but housing, but I can't find a house, but my friend can't find a house. Did you know my best friend just had to leave this city? I was crying about it for the last week. You're going to understand that particular issue. You're going to understand how accessible that voter pool is, and you're going to understand whether you think you can pull them back. And that's all part of the work that a political party does as it's starting to define its coalition. Now, one of the challenges any political party has has i
Corey
56:31
shouldn't say any but if you're not it's quite possible then your first spin of defining it like who is willing to vote for us you come up with a number that is not sufficient then
Corey
56:41
you have to start saying things like okay is
Corey
56:44
is there a way i can change the conversation with certain demos if so which ones you do tend to go back to the demos that you used to have in those situations and then you start saying how do i crack that nut because i had that before and i don't have that now how can i get that again and maybe they'll find themselves there but that's probably not going to be the first place they go like they're going to try to build their coalition based on what's accessible now not what i'm not on what they hope will be accessible in the future carter
Zain
57:09
carter anything else to add no
Carter
57:12
no i actually really agreed with cory there uh although i was wondering how come my monthly nut became a website and his nut comment isn't going to become a website i
Zain
57:24
could find that um if that reference at his uh nut comment isn't going to become a website.com
Zain
57:32
which is where we'll have that that comment carter so you're you're welcome you're welcome don't
Carter
57:37
don't spend more this is why you can get that much money this is not because you weren't hosting it's because we invested all of our money in
Carter
57:46
we're gonna move it on steven
Zain
57:46
steven carter to our over under our lightning round of course we do this for you we do everything for you as As we round out the hour, overrated or underrated for our friends, the Liberals, Carter of Canada, the governing party, Anthony Housefather is staying. He's not leaving the caucus. In a long letter, he announced on Friday that he's not leaving to join the Conservatives. He's not leaving to become an independent. He is staying in his safe, secure seat as a Liberal. For the Liberals, overrated or underrated that Housefather remains?
Carter
58:22
Overrated. Now they still have to deal with him. I would think that they would, you know, their nice, comfortable, winnable seat was still going to be a nice, comfortable, winnable seat.
Carter
58:34
They were going to have that seat, and Housefather wasn't going to have that seat. So, you
Carter
58:39
you know, for them, it's a bit overrated. Corey,
Zain
58:41
Corey, overrated or underrated? Could have been a political headache. Should he have left? left, could have been a harbinger of things, a symbol of certain things, especially on the very divisive Israel-Hamas file, overrated or underrated, that Housefather stays for the Liberals.
Corey
58:56
I generally agree that it's overrated, but let me make an argument that it might be underrated in terms of what it tells us about the Liberals. Like, I
Corey
59:05
I have been thinking about this the entire go of the Housefather comments, right? And just this and a hundred other things, whether it be a newfoundland mp who talks about the carbon tax in a bad way or whatever this is this is a party that's showing some serious weakness you know mps are feeling like they can speak out with pretty relative impunity on on more than one file at this point and so i don't think that his particular action is is that significant but i think the fact that the liberals found themselves
Corey
59:38
how is this his decision you know in in a stronger liberal party this wouldn't even be his his decision. I guess that's what I will say. And so in that sense, I think it's a bit underrated. Corey,
Zain
59:47
Corey, I'm going to stick with you for our next question.
Zain
59:51
I'm going to ask you to give the Jyoti Gondek Recall Mayor Gondek campaign a grade from one to 10. The number, just so you know, was just above 514,000, the number of signatures that they needed to successfully recall Mayor Gondek, the number of signatures that they got. Drumroll, please, Stephen Carter, Carter, 72
Carter
1:00:13
Yeah. Corey? That's what I heard. Give
Zain
1:00:15
Give them a number between 1 and 10 in terms of how well they performed in this recall effort. We knew they were never going to hit the mark, but give the campaign its grade.
Zain
1:00:33
Carter, are you going to at least play by the rules?
Carter
1:00:36
How did they do? How did they do?
Zain
1:00:42
is not correct carter carter
Zain
1:00:44
carter this is a serious question 440
Zain
1:00:47
carter's a serious question that requires a serious answer you're so close here we've just crossed the hour-long mark and people are expecting you to give some intelligent
Carter
1:00:59
to the fifth fourth
Zain
1:01:03
we should probably we should probably reboot him
Zain
1:01:05
carter i'm going to go to go go to you for our last question here final question political
Zain
1:01:11
political damage yeah for
Zain
1:01:12
for the conservatives the federal conservatives alex
Zain
1:01:16
alex jones endorsing pierre paulieffs calling him the real deal
Zain
1:01:21
is this overrated or is this underrated in terms of the political damage this could do to the conservatives give me your take i
Carter
1:01:27
think it's real i i think that well i
Carter
1:01:30
think it's i think it's real i think that people will will
Carter
1:01:33
will know that info wars isn't all that and you really don't want to be called the uh the real deal by a guy who's who's uh who's
Carter
1:01:41
who's bankrupt and owes a billion dollars
Corey
1:01:44
sandy hook stuff in particular
Zain
1:01:45
particular yeah that that was what i was gonna bring up i'm glad cory did uh carter uh cory
Carter
1:01:49
cory i should say billion dollars okay
Zain
1:01:51
okay well also also the billion dollars that he owes yes
Carter
1:01:53
yes but maybe some crazy
Zain
1:01:54
crazy unhinged shit he said about people why
Carter
1:01:57
why he owes a billion dollars understood
Zain
1:01:58
understood i understand that there's a very direct correlation cory's the political damage
Carter
1:02:02
damage i said that i
Zain
1:02:03
can kind of but now he's engaged fucking now he's engaged jesus christ uh cory overrated or underrated the political damage here for the federal conservatives with an alex jones endorsement coming pure polyev's way yeah
Corey
1:02:19
yeah i mean if i was going to quantify it i'd probably say about 72 000 yeah
Zain
1:02:25
i'm gonna leave it there that's a wrap on episode 1297 of the strategist my name is zane velgey with me as always cory hogan stephen carter and for those shows in Alberta, it's not over.
Corey
1:02:36
We'll see you next time.