Episode 1810: Wisdom from the sidelines

Zain 0:02

This is a strategist episode 1810. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter.

Zain 0:10

Carter, how did it go? How did playing the game called Fuck Your Buddy go, where you try to put an impossibly high 83% on the board, and then your buddy clears it? How did that work out for you? I just want to quickly put you on the spot there, see how that worked out for you. That

Carter 0:25

Corey Hogan who was playing. Oh, it was Corey Hogan.

Carter 0:27

knew that, but I thought,

Zain 0:29

thought, okay. Oh, thank you for building up the drama. Almost like I didn't know what I was doing.

Carter 0:34

No, for me, I was playing, there's no way he can achieve 68%, and I was completely wrong. There's

Zain 0:40

There's no way he can achieve 68%? Just so we're clear, you mean 68%, not 86%.

Carter 0:46

Well, I'm a little dyslexic.

Zain 0:47

Well, fair enough. That explains a few things about this show and you. Corey, how does it feel to be you today?

Corey 0:56

Pretty good. good um i i was pretty confident that that you would get in the 80s i think even you doubted me after we got off the microphone you said why why do you think it will be in the 80s and i said yeah well zane arithmetic you might recall me saying this you have a specific a little bit of a zoom out it's gonna zoom out it's been over for a while it's

Corey 1:15

it's been over for a while yeah yeah

Corey 1:17

and uh it was over in a way that i predicted so is that what you're going with good oh okay

Corey 1:22

what you're going with okay well i guess

Zain 1:23

guess well i guess one of the three one of the three of us was going to take

Corey 1:27

take a victory lap let it

Zain 1:28

it be cory then please cory keep going

Carter 1:29

going i just oh no

Carter 1:30

what this is this is cory's one of

Corey 1:32

of these victories was in doubt one of these victories was in doubt saying um

Carter 1:37

this is cory's one of these victories i'm

Carter 1:40

i'm very proud of him yeah

Zain 1:41

yeah i know cory congratulations great job by the way just like all that work right getting to a number putting it out there you know stress Stress testing it, not having many people believe you. I feel like he deserves, does

Zain 1:53

does he deserve the MVP of the

Zain 1:55

the podcast? Are we finally awarding? Is this like the golden buzzer and we're awarding it to Corey Hogan? Oh, well, look, that's generous.

Carter 2:02

He only got one fewer shout out in this victory speech than you.

Zain 2:07

It is shocking. Okay, so where do we want to go first? Do we want to talk about this leadership race at all? Because I'm not talking about it. Oh, no, of course

Corey 2:18

course you are. well i can be i

Corey 2:19

can be it's the

Zain 2:20

the strategist accountability i

Zain 2:22

i can be i gotta you gotta well we're not doing that today we've got other things to talk about um do we do i mean

Corey 2:27

mean it's not like

Corey 2:30

no one cares about saturday because it was a foregone conclusion but i still think we should talk about it it's kind of there in the calendar and it's like uh you

Corey 2:38

you know it's a real rock it'll be

Zain 2:39

be hard to walk around so

Corey 2:41

so let's just build our garden around it

Zain 2:42

it i'm happy to listen Listen, you two guys talk about it. Go ahead. Where do you want to go, Corey?

Zain 2:46

we talk? The checks are all the same regardless of how many words I speak. That's what I've realized.

Zain 2:54

long as I get one word on the show, my check is exactly the same. The check's the same size.

Carter 3:00

And my word is going to be... Can I ask you a question, Zane?

Zain 3:02

Yeah. You can ask a

Corey 3:04

a question. Go ahead.

Carter 3:04

When you chose the under on 22 Minutes, were

Carter 3:07

were you being ironic in terms of the Nenshi speech? Do we

Corey 3:11

we want to back up? Because there's a chance people don't know what the hell you're talking about. Yeah, Carter, do you want

Zain 3:15

want to add some context to the first time in your life? Maybe bring people along? Is that a thing you want to do? I know it's not in your nature. We

Carter 3:21

We made some predictions.

Carter 3:22

We made some predictions. You know that we're excellent at predictions.

Zain 3:25

predictions. Did we make predictions

Carter 3:28

did we make about this race? Oh, yeah.

Carter 3:29

83%. That was Corey's prediction. That was pretty

Corey 3:32

pretty good. It looked okay.

Carter 3:33

Yeah, nailed it. And then you made a prediction, Zane. Your prediction was that Nahid Nenshi, who you know, and I know, and Corey knows, Nahid Nenshi would speak for less than 22 minutes. I asked

Zain 3:48

asked you if you wanted to take the over or the under on 22 minutes on whoever

Zain 3:54

won the race, okay?

Carter 3:58

So Zane was kind of distributing

Corey 4:00

distributing based on the field. There were four candidates, so there was only a 25% chance that it was Nahid. Yeah, yeah.

Carter 4:06

was going to give the speech, right? That's what he was thinking. That's why he chose the under 22. Yeah, that's right. It was about

Zain 4:11

about the field and then hedging our bets. Right, Carter? Corey chose

Carter 4:14

chose the over 22. Okay.

Carter 4:16

And I chose because I— I was right there, too. I was right on that as well.

Carter 4:21

kind of. I chose the over 44, and I was actually the closest. I was actually the closest.

Carter 4:29

I was actually the closest. Explain to people how 44 came

Carter 4:33

That, well, because I just simply doubled what you put as the over. Okay.

Corey 4:37

now you, specifically, you picked over 44. But you were wrong, Stephen. I did. I picked over

Carter 4:41

over 44. And how long was the speech, Stephen?

Zain 4:46

pretty, I think, climaxed it to you. By only eight minutes.

Zain 4:50

It was over, under. Eight minutes. You said over. It's not closest. The game's not called. I won. Do I ask the question as closest? No, I ask the question as over or under. and you in your typical fashion doubled it and said over and you were wrong.

Zain 5:06

I'll be honest Zane,

Carter 5:06

Zane, we don't really listen to your questions.

Zain 5:08

questions. I like the swing, but it was a miss. We don't listen to your questions.

Zain 5:10

Corey, can you back me

Corey 5:11

me up on this? It was a swing.

Corey 5:12

Well, 100% because I won this one too. I'm two for two in this little predictions game. Corey might

Zain 5:17

might be the most active

Corey 5:20

in politics on this show.

Zain 5:22

What's the last time you've actually done anything other than predict what other people, maybe Carter and I, are going to do? It's

Corey 5:28

It's my distance from it, Zane. that allows me to oh is that okay

Corey 5:32

that how you tell you right about these

Zain 5:34

things right yeah awesome i could

Zain 5:36

just before he did get one

Zain 5:36

thing right yeah what else did he get right he

Carter 5:38

he got well both of us got this one right we there was the over under on the number of mentions of zane velgey and

Carter 5:45

and i forgot we did both took the under because it was two it was two mentions of zane velgey and we both knew that it would be less than two and it was exactly one it was exactly one i thought it

Zain 5:55

it was zero where did it hit the one where did no

Carter 5:58

no it was one we we we We watched the wrong speech.

Carter 6:02

Someone cut down the speech instead of the full speech. Somebody cut out the thank

Corey 6:05

thank yous, huh? And

Carter 6:06

And they cut out all the thank yous and stuff. So

Carter 6:08

we had to watch it again. I had to watch this fucking speech two times in order to get the number of Zane Velji mentions. So it was one. It was one. I'll take one.

Carter 6:19

I'm just proud of you, Zane. I'm just proud of you for winning this time. You

Zain 6:23

You know who I'm proud of?

Zain 6:24

I'm proud of Corey. That's, you know, his distant... Did you hear about my predictions? His distance from politics? Three for three we're now talking about. His distance from Paul Six has made him a fucking sage,

Zain 6:33

sage, wizard. I don't know what to call it. What other terms would you use, Corey, for yourself?

Corey 6:39

I'm aloof and around it, but beside it. Yeah, that's pretty good. I thought he was going

Carter 6:42

going to go with aloozer. It's the clarity.

Zain 6:45

post-political nut clarity. Oh, you guys want

Corey 6:47

want to talk about anything regarding that race? I

Zain 6:49

I mean, this will be the least insightful podcast about the NDP leadership race, unless you guys start saying something about it. Can

Carter 6:58

Can we just throw out a couple of real truisms here? Number one, huge voter turnout. 85% turnout on 85,000 members or thereabouts. Significant turnout. That is unheard of in Canadian politics. And that took some doing. uh the second is is an 80 plus 85 86 percent uh vote for nenshi that was dominant it was significantly dominant no one's going to be able to take that away uh as much as we make fun i mean he earned his almost 44 minute speech he earned that speech so you

Zain 7:33

mean it's under 44 minute speech okay i see i understand now almost

Carter 7:40

almost 44 is where we're

Zain 7:41

we're okay yeah Yeah, okay, gotcha. So

Carter 7:43

that was a staggering victory. I mean, I can't imagine what it would have been like for you, as someone who's so used to losing, to run something that had that kind of success. Sorry,

Zain 7:55

Sorry, I don't know, you were looking away. Was that at Corey, who lost a lot and then stopped participating? Or was that at me, who recently won? I just wasn't sure who you were looking at. It was

Carter 8:06

was you, I was surprised.

Carter 8:07

I was surprised, I expected less. Well, we had

Zain 8:09

had Corey on the board available for that comment, too, and it's weird that you went with me, but okay. Yeah, you know what? That's fine. Again,

Corey 8:15

Again, I'm a loop, Zane. It's fine. Okay.

Zain 8:17

Okay. It's my brand. I'm a loop. I'm white. Whatever. I get away with it. I got it. Carter, what else do you want to add on the board?

Carter 8:26

I think it's important to talk about what this means for the NDP. We were pretty hard on Rachel Notley in our last episode. uh it's so hard on her actually that i i went to the fundraiser on the friday night and i was fearful for my life uh fortunately i only saw lou and i did not see uh rachel so i was i feel better about that but um we were hard on rachel because she'd said this you know you got to keep the ndp inside the federal ndp family and and it doesn't matter what she said like not

Carter 9:01

not hadn't she got more votes than Rachel Notley got in any election, right? In any election. Nahed Nenshi got almost 10% of the total number of votes that the NDP got in the last election. It was a staggering, staggering performance. And to think

Carter 9:19

think that Rachel Notley or any of the past people that have been involved with the NDP have any real, well, I built this thing kind of leftover feelings. I think that that's just all gone i think that nahid this is nahid nenshi's party and from now on i'm calling it the nenshi democratic party um that is it it is the new ndp it's

Corey 9:43

it's very novel yes it's good creative

Carter 9:45

creative out of it for a long time it's good

Carter 9:47

i thought about kind

Carter 9:48

kind of distant from

Corey 9:48

from these things i um i can tell you that's a that's a bad stuff that's good it's just that wisdom you

Carter 9:54

you guys are a little too close they thought about it i bet you a dollar that they talked about it for pretty long time in their meetings um cory's

Zain 10:01

cory's cory's new podcast wisdom from the sidelines is available wherever you get your podcasts it's pretty much cory hogan who has not participated actively in politics in in a very long time oh

Corey 10:11

oh i think 40 years

Corey 10:12

years i think probably 40

Zain 10:13

40 years it's been a lot cory what do you want to what do you want to put on the board what what's interested you and of course we'll actually i'm fucking around with you guys we will do an episode where we go deeper into you know what this means going forward but top line thoughts from from what happened on saturday before we jump into uh what i want to talk about which is toronto yeah

Corey 10:30

yeah there's there's a lot that is probably more interesting than important in terms of how this might have played on various dynamics within the part like these these numbers like 86 is almost like a problem it's so big right because you're gonna have a bunch of people like can i tell you what one of the things that's interesting to me is the number of mlas that supported either kathleen or sarah and

Corey 10:57

bluntly how few memberships that transferred into right

Corey 10:59

right like that did not translate into a novel it's just another data point that these caucus endorsements mean very very little in a modern leadership context and

Carter 11:09

and we said that at the time i mean we we just said time and time again that that the MLA endorsements are worth nothing at all in the overall scheme of things. Now, Nenshi did have his endorsements, but the power of Nenshi sold these memberships, not

Corey 11:25

not the power of the MLAs.

Corey 11:27

MLAs. I mean, it's so interesting to see it, because in theory, these are people who are supposed to be organizers in their own right. You're

Zain 11:34

You're talking about the MLAs.

Corey 11:35

MLAs. That's clearly not. That's right. That's clearly just, that's not the actual reality. And it sort of ties into some of the bigger changes in politics where leaders' offices have become so omnipotent and candidates are just little cogs in the machine. And it's interesting to me because I think if somebody actually wants to break that model down the road, they're going to need to, as an MLA, kind of take on for themselves the role of organizer again. Because I think the average MLA has abandoned the role of organizer. And so it's pretty tough for me to say that

Corey 12:08

they're going to get any power back. Like the power comes from the membership. And they've shown in this case, and almost every other case I can think of recently, that the caucus is not the source of membership power. It's really interesting. So I think that's one of the things that I'm kind of interested in. And I think that when you have so many MLAs who were not on the kind of endorsement side, I do think it creates a dynamic, not one that's necessarily dangerous for Nahed Nenshi. Like I said, he won with 86% of the vote, but how many MLAs are fucking panicking right now? Like not, oh my God, I'm going to lose my job, but I'm no longer at the center of power in this party. So, you

Corey 12:48

you know, a nickel's worth of free advice for Nahed Nenshi, who I guarantee you is not listening, is reach out to all of these people. Make sure that they, you know, it's one thing to say these words in a speech. It's quite a different one for the leader to reach out and have sincere outreach and create those connections. And it's a big caucus. It's going to take a lot of work. But I think that's one of the dynamics I'm looking at. And then the final one, frankly, is with a super, super majority like 86%, what's he got in mind? Because, yeah, we've talked a little bit about the connection to the federal NDP. There's been models where it's as simple as a checkbox. There's obviously bigger disassociations possible, but fuck it, he could do anything with 86%. Like anything. He could make himself god king of the party with kind of perpetual mandate if he wants. That's a lot. a vote so is he going to use that in any kind of party sense or is that just not where his focus is going to be zane probably knows not asking him no no you know what i what i

Zain 13:45

i want to do is actually want to take these there's a couple of things both of you put on the board and i want to kind of take them into like um as i often do political strategy questions outside of the acute context we're talking about and carter let's start with this one the percentage let's leave even not had nancy's 86 aside let's talk about the

Zain 14:03

the the the massive landslide victory especially in the context of a leadership does that percentage atrophy like is there a half-life is there a time clock on that percentage to do shit with or can you pull it out whenever you need to over the course of your leadership talk to me about how politicians whether that be nancy or others and And we've seen other landslide-style victories, whether they be on the provincial level or the Polyev example is a good one on the federal level. How do you think about that voter percentage that you have, that mandate that you have? Do you put Stephen Carter a time clock associate with it yourself?

Carter 14:45

Well, first of all, understand how it works. The very next thing that happens is a massive approval bank. bank. I mean, Nahid Denshi is going to be, you know, not just the most popular politician in the NDP. And make no mistake, his 86 is going to 100.

Carter 15:03

Like every single person that voted in that leadership is going to be the one saying, oh, yeah, I voted for you, Nahid.

Carter 15:09

I remember when I was working with Joe Clark, he ran and won in Calgary Center.

Carter 15:15

every single person at the Saddle Dome told us that they voted for him. If they had, we would have won in a landslide. People change their mind. It's almost like they misremember who they cast their vote for because they so want to be on the winning team. So Nahed Nenshi is about to enter into a significant honeymoon period where every one of those hundred, you know, 85

Carter 15:35

85,000 members is a Nenshi guy, right?

Carter 15:39

right? Or Nessie, Nenshi gal. They're all on board with Nenshi.

Carter 15:44

When does that atrophy? Not for a while. It only starts to atrophy if the communications aren't there. If the work doesn't happen, you know, and Nahed Nenshi does a lot of the work. I'm not thinking that he's going to necessarily lose it that way. Where he might start losing it is in the caucus. The

Carter 16:04

The caucus is where the real atrophying starts. And it's a real juxtaposition because the caucus holds a lot of control and a lot of power for the actual leadership or for the actual leader. But as you've seen, as Corey mentioned, they don't seem to hold any power in the actual leadership. So I think that Nahed Nenshi is sitting on a goldmine for quite some time. Corey,

Zain 16:29

Corey, really not about the Nenshi question as much as it is about like the broader question here on political victories, especially sizable ones. How do you think about them in terms of that mandate and how it lasts or how it doesn't in certain cases?

Corey 16:48

I don't think they last very long at all. I think memories are short.

Corey 16:53

Obviously, if you look at leadership reviews, there's so many examples in Alberta of people getting 77% of the vote and then being deposed, right? Literally the percent that two premiers in a row got and were deposed at Stelmac and Allison Redford.

Corey 17:08

And so there is that. that um but

Corey 17:11

but even if you want to look at some other models in 2003 paul martin got like 94 percent of the vote for the leadership wow

Zain 17:18

wasn't aware of that yeah

Zain 17:20

yeah yeah i mean it

Corey 17:20

it was delegated i guess so yeah so of course it wasn't 94 of the membership it just turned into 94 through some very heavy-handed tactics of paul martin's which um which resulted in him just getting a total stranglehold on the vote and by the time it got to a vote it was just him versus Sheila Copps manly dropped out but uh but it didn't matter at all like you you would think you could argue my god he had a stranglehold on the party with 94 but I think within six months a year a lot of the ill will from how he got that stranglehold came out and people were just throwing it back in his face and it doesn't last that long if the actions that come sort of cause troubles down the road. So you got to sort of watch out for that. But obviously, when the membership is giving the direct mandate, it has a little bit more of a durability. And we've seen that as well in other jurisdictions, like in the UK, where the caucus hated Corbyn, and

Corey 18:18

and Corbyn kept getting the membership to back him, right, in the Labour Party. So lots

Corey 18:23

lots of kind of counterfactuals and things that cut both ways. But I do ultimately believe that memberships are a bit like Roman Roman mobs, and they do tend to fly to you quickly and fly away from you quickly, depending on what's going on. Carter,

Carter 18:38

Carter, the second sort of... The old Roman mob. Yeah, I mean, such

Zain 18:42

great wisdom from the sidelines. Why

Carter 18:43

Why does he always go to that one? I

Zain 18:46

I mean, it's because he's old. He's old

Zain 18:48

old in spirit and old and out of practice, but great at predictions, which is why he deserves a victory lap. Hey,

Zain 18:54

Hey, Carter, here's the other second sort of strategic question, which occurred,

Zain 18:58

occurred, I guess, in this race, but I would almost want to kind of talk about more generally, which is if you know you're losing in certain cases, or if you can see the math, especially when it stacks up against you in a race like this, as

Zain 19:12

as a campaign on the other side of the ledger, so to speak, not on the winning side, one of the losing campaigns, do you have any choice but to just run hard and

Zain 19:22

and instill as much hope and narrative and story and background context and energy into your team, when do you kind of like acknowledge the reality? When does that, I'm kind of curious about this, and I'm not trying to like, you know, suggest anything in this particular race, but I am kind of curious around when you see these lopsided victories in politics, what does that ultimately mean if you're on the other side of that and how you kind of keep your team going, how you kind of keep sprinting to, I guess to use the baseball metaphor, to first base, right? Like in baseball, it is a cardinal sin to hit the ball and not run as hard as you can to first base, even if you know you're going to be out and it's right to the pitcher or right to first base. You run it through the bag every single time. There's no ifs, ands, or buts. Is

Zain 20:10

Is politics the same way, Carter?

Carter 20:12

can think of three examples off the top of my head where I've found myself in difficult situations. There's the delusion train, which I was on with Mike DeYoung, where we thought we we were going to win and

Carter 20:22

and we wound up coming in sixth uh that was that was pretty fun um so

Carter 20:27

so you're running hard all the way because you think you know this is going to go our way and

Carter 20:31

and in fairness i mean a couple hundred votes and it would have or might have uh

Carter 20:36

uh because it was very you

Carter 20:37

you know it was a seven person or eight person field and there was uh you

Carter 20:42

know no one no one had a majority of the vote it was very dispersed

Carter 20:46

dispersed amongst the candidates um the delusion train was strong but But the delusion strain, it was OK. It wasn't a big, bad delusion.

Carter 20:59

on the other hand, we knew from the moment we started practically that we were dead.

Carter 21:04

you can tell from the

Carter 21:06

the way the money works. You can tell from the way that other campaigns work. Same with ****.

Carter 21:11

And then you start to do… Hey, thanks for telling me

Zain 21:12

me about that on the **** campaign.

Zain 21:14

campaign. Hey, thanks for letting me know about that. It feels like everyone got the memo except me.

Carter 21:20

just if you couldn't figure it out on your own what kind of strategist are you i wasn't

Zain 21:23

wasn't a strategist i was helping with uh with dumb events carter yeah

Zain 21:27

yeah thank you for that i really appreciate it anyways

Zain 21:30

anyways carter was that was that was that all three of your examples was that was that it well

Carter 21:34

well i think that the you know when you're running there's a point when you say okay i'm deluded and i'm going to win and there's a point when you're running and you're saying i am running running for the party, right?

Carter 21:46

right? I'm running for the party. And I think that the candidates that we were, you know, that, that ran against Nenshi, I don't think any of them thought they were going to win. Um, I think that they were all running because they thought it was in the best interest of the party to run. And I think that that, um, makes some sense. Now, did they get into the race thinking that they could win? Yeah, I think they did. And then when the Nenshi entered, um, the the math changed. And we saw that with Raki Pancholi. She decided not to run for the party. She decided to run to Nenji and that worked for her. So good for her and good for the others for staying in there and hopefully not leaving with debt. Because I think that that's the most important thing when you're running for the party is making sure that you don't wind up in debt.

Zain 22:33

Corey, Carter loves to take the acute issue and talk about, keep talking about it. Will you You expand the scope for me. Will you talk to me about the core principle here around – because I really like what Carter said around like that delusion train as being one of the – almost instilling yourself with a sense of hope in terms of like, you know, as a practitioner. Talk to me about your feeling about this. Like I think that baseball analogy maybe applies. Do you have to run as hard as you can always? Like that is how the game works and there's no other way to do it?

Corey 23:04

No, you absolutely don't need to keep running. and it depends on what you got into it for if you got into it to win and

Corey 23:10

you can't win anymore well then why are you in fucking wasting your time if you got into run for the party and you didn't care if you won well then why would you leave if you were going to run for the party and if you were running for because the one that i think carter didn't really mention maybe it was implicit is like running for the cause and you see this in a couple of that's

Corey 23:31

that's not the same as the party for

Corey 23:33

No, not at all, because there are branches of every political party, and often you will see somebody say, well, you've got to represent this branch, right? You've got to go and you've got to wave the flag for the fiscal conservatives, the social conservatives, the environmentalists, the labor wing of the party, right? And Gil McGowan, probably a great example of labor in this most recent race. You've got to represent labor. The NDP race right now looks like it's a bunch of new, new Democrats. Where's labor? And so Gil McGowan enters the race. I think that that's a really important one, too, and it manifests in a different ways. And I say the cause, because the cause might not even be something like labor or a policy or a philosophy. Sometimes the cause is different.

Corey 24:17

different. Sometimes it's more personal. And I think an example of that would be the race that Daniel Smith won. One, Travis Taves came in second. He was the finance minister.

Corey 24:27

Travis didn't really want to run. He didn't necessarily have his heart in it, but he was considered like the grown-up in the room, like a very serious, credible fellow of the Jason Kenney mold. And a lot of the people around Jason Kenney said, you've got to run. You've got to support basically this philosophy of the UCP. And so sometimes the cause is as simple as that. Sometimes the cause is the people around you and saying, you know, we're all going to be in this together because we've always been in this together. And you see this a lot in leadership races, right? Like I can think of the 2006 liberal race where the

Corey 25:05

I'm just kind of sequentially going through liberal leadership races here. Yeah, this is nice. It's

Carter 25:08

It's nice. You're getting one every time. Yeah,

Corey 25:10

Yeah, but the 2006 liberal leadership race had a lot of people who kind of created little pods out of either like, they

Corey 25:18

they came from the PMO under Martin, or they came from the PMO under Chrétien. There was, of course, a lot of intermingling there. But like, these were their people, and they were going to stand together, and they were going to work together here. And so that's another reason why people might decide to run. But where

Corey 25:33

where I think candidates get themselves into trouble is where, and where I think they start to board the delusion train that Stephen's talking about, is when they decided they were going to run for one reason, and

Corey 25:43

and they fucking forgot, and they started running for an entirely separate reason, and maybe their tactics don't align. line so i just want to throw this on the table steven

Corey 25:51

steven said all of these people joined the party to win or like join the race to win and then only one of them realized when they couldn't win that maybe they shouldn't be in the race and i think racky played this brilliantly for what it's worth i think she's one of the real winners here she was just made deputy leader today that all tracks for me but i think that uh if you ran to win and now you're running for the party and you some of of your supporters came on to win and you're running for a different reason, maybe you're not being 100% truthful with people, maybe your communications don't match that, maybe there's a big disconnect. Problems in communications, problems in politics come from when two people have an entirely different understanding and yet the same end goal. And so it can cause things like people spending money they don't have because they think they're going to win, right? And so they run up debts. It can cause situations where somebody doesn't try that hard because they don't think they're going to win but the people around them are going to the mat and then that might create resentment down the road so i it's really challenging when you drift from one of these categories into the other accidentally and without intentional strong conversations in that spot and let me just sort of wrap by saying if

Corey 26:59

if the other candidates have big debts what

Corey 27:01

what the fuck was your plan yeah

Corey 27:03

right did you think you were because you didn't think you were going to win so where did you think the money was going to come from once this leadership race ended so i certainly hope that's not the case but i guess we'll see soon yeah

Zain 27:12

yeah on this specific case carter we don't know but can you remind folks your you got a really succinct analysis of why in politics leadership debt is the worst debt and why we've seen even some of the most well-to-do well-recognized name brands in canadian life still have leadership debt hang on to them like an anchor in some ways now they're continuing their lives and they're living good lives but every little

Zain 27:38

little while it kind kind of comes up back in the media that hey remember x had leadership debt and often it doesn't get can you remind people what the what the basics here are well

Carter 27:46

well basically i mean leadership debt but that is super easy to to run into because we don't have uh because we run into a very governed group of donations right like you can't get a donation for more than uh i think it's $1,700 right now was $1,200. And it's just kind of gone up with inflation. So the rules are very constrained on how much money you can raise, but they're not constrained on how much money you can spend. So you can lend yourself basically as much money as you want. That coupled with the fact that everybody is spending for

Carter 28:22

for the leader, right?

Carter 28:24

Everybody is out there and there's, this isn't like a party where you've got centralized control this is a leadership and everybody's just doing their own thing they may silos

Carter 28:37

and and they're all spending the same oh we got ten thousand dollars in last night three people spent it three people spent the same ten thousand dollars oh shit right and it literally is hand to mouth so you make one or two mistakes and then you start to make the the final mistake which is if we just spend ten or fifteen thousand dollars more right now we're going to wind up winning we've seen hugh siegel lose his house we've seen uh ken dryden you know carry his own debt

Corey 29:05

debt hundreds of thousands forever

Carter 29:07

forever um we've got uh all kinds of examples of candidates that that overspend in their campaign races uh because they fall into the delusion that it's

Carter 29:18

it's not their personal popularity it's the problem it's 20 30 40 100 hundred two hundred three hundred thousand dollars that's the problem and invariably um it's

Carter 29:30

it's just not we see this in mayor's races too uh mayor's races tend to have very similar models of debt uh i know that a lot of candidates have to dig themselves out and

Carter 29:41

there used to be a really healthy uh there used to be a really healthy theory that the or or kind of camaraderie where the winning candidate would help the losing candidates dig out their debt uh that camaraderie has smashed into the gutter it is no longer around well

Zain 29:57

well in certain cases the rules just don't even allow for that too when you're governed by certain rules by by elections but

Carter 30:02

but you can still hold the joint fundraiser and things like that but

Corey 30:05

but you know there's a real problem with i i just gotta say jump in court when everybody starts to assume that that camaraderie is going to be that that net that catches them at the end people start to abuse that and they think fuck it we'll run the debt but you know what out of party goodwill out of kind of just this general sense that we're all going to help each other out that'll all be taken care of that's a fucking tragedy of the commons if there ever was one and the reason that's gone away is frankly too many candidates have abused it they've sat there and said oh fuck it i'm just going to run a debt and it doesn't really matter if it's 20 30 grand the leader will help me clear it but you know to steven or zane to your point the rules make that a lot harder too.

Corey 30:45

And Stephen, you said at one point, lend yourself money. Well, in most jurisdictions, you really can't anymore, because that was one of the ways that leadership candidates got incredible debts. This has really become more of an accounts payable, accounts receivable problem. You've talked about the spending of the $10,000 three different ways.

Corey 31:02

Part of the problem is that $10,000 might not actually be in hand yet. It might be a pledge for $10,000. Maybe it's going to come in over three months or something like that, right? And you're spending multiple times money that's not even in the door yet. And political parties in general tend to have pretty lax financial controls. It's something political parties need to get way better at, and they're supposed to be better at it, but they're not. They're not very good at it because political parties are built, including leadership campaigns and leadership candidacies, are built to last for like a few months. They're not these rocks upon which you can build whatever the fuck you want. They are designed to fall to pieces in front of you after 30 days, after 90 days, after 120 days, because any time and money you spend in durability is wasted time and money because the thing doesn't need to exist the day after the election.

Zain 31:54

Yeah, that's really interesting, Corey, and an interesting piece of analysis by both of you in regards to how it can hang on. And the Carter the Merrill side is interesting. I guess the question I have regarding campaign financing, Carter, is at the end of the day, um do you have to have a system in place even if you have this campaign being built for like a very small process for very small number of weeks months that that you you have a rule of money coming in has to uh hit the bank before money goes out or is that just not the way modern politics can work. And I know that's not the way. No, no, no organization. No,

Zain 32:38

I know that. That's why I'm asking the question. And do we need to do politics in this case differently? Because there's another interesting question that Carter talked about, which is this aspect of the limitations of money. If you're unpopular, 500 grand can do very little in certain cases to kind of boost that popularity or bridge that popularity towards viability. But talk to me about processes here, Carter. I know we're getting a bit nerdy on this, but I don't think we've talked about this before. What would Stephen Carter do on his financial controls process in a leadership race? Because I think that is quite interesting to me.

Carter 33:12

Well, the first thing I do is I tell everybody that you don't get your expenses reimbursed if they are not approved.

Carter 33:18

And there is only one person on the campaign that can approve the expenses. That person doesn't have signing authority on the account. So that person is removed from being the person who can sign the checks right so the person who is responsible for for saying yes or no is this independent arbiter who is literally in control of the entire spending process and is on the fundraising team so

Carter 33:44

so it's not like if the money hasn't hit the account we're not going to spend it because

Carter 33:48

because sometimes that's just not viable and

Corey 33:50

and sometimes it's like a hundred percent certainty it's coming yes yes we've got

Carter 33:54

you know if you put this twenty thousand dollars on your credit card i can guarantee that within the next 30 days we will pay it and they write it down in their little ledger that is the first payment that's coming out that's the trick is to make sure that we're not you

Carter 34:09

going to a place where that twenty thousand dollars is spent three times and the way to make sure that happens is to make sure there is only one person on the campaign one

Carter 34:18

one person who can approve your expense request and if that person doesn't say yes then it does not happen

Carter 34:24

happen period and if you spent that money now

Carter 34:28

now legally if you spend that money on a uh on a campaign expense we still have to pay you back right legally i have to pay you but i threaten you with we're never going to pay you so don't don't do it do not do it that's that's uh that's the threat that we give but if you're listening to this uh believe my threats because uh if you don't uh we're really sure listen

Zain 34:57

listen to this put your hand up to volunteer with stephen carter on any campaign and just blow the budget carter will have to pay you that's the lesson i took legally legally

Corey 35:03

legally you have to pay it if the campaign then takes possession of it but you could you would actually be a total hard ass and if the person's not assigning it or refuse it campaign and say you bought 20 000 brochures we don't have money for fuck you yeah

Corey 35:18

we're not taking them or but you know more realistically what i think tends to happen is the threats that steven says plus saying well you're the last dollars being paid have you guys seen like awkward or

Zain 35:28

moments between people who freelanced financially on campaigns and central chem like talk to me about it jesus oh

Corey 35:34

oh i have to sometimes you guys

Zain 35:36

guys realize i ask questions that i have the answers to right it's called keeping a conversation going the fucking eye rolls from the two of you being like oh have i ever that's the fucking point of the podcast is to give you questions you may have answers to

Corey 35:51

zane it's it's like you've never worked on a campaign now it's been a while for

Corey 35:55

me but as like a dispassionate observer certainly

Zain 35:59

about that actually like do it like don't name names don't even name campaigns but i'm like curious if you have any stories that like were were teachable moments, either for you and the decision-making element of it, or maybe you were on the other side of, of, uh, of trying to get your expenses reimbursed. Oh

Corey 36:13

Oh my God. Zane, the number of times I've been a campaign manager or like on the campaign leadership team and a bill has shown up after the campaign by like 60 days. And it's, oh, by the way, uh, there was this whole lit drop that you didn't know about that was not paid for, uh, or too many, sometimes even the opposite happens sometimes i've had like i there was once a time where there was an account that had tens of thousands of dollars of donations it came through like it was back in the era when there were like a million like there was the paypal option and there was interactive and all that and one of them was just not being accounted for at all and there was literally tens of thousands of dollars in it so that's happened too but like i i think it all goes to this idea of like people freelance they'll set shit up they'll just do stuff and

Corey 36:56

they think they're being helpful it's

Corey 36:59

it's usually coming from a pretty good place well

Carter 37:01

well and i i have two examples from from a campaign where we specifically

Carter 37:05

specifically said we weren't going to do campaigning in a certain location and all of a sudden that location had brochures show up um

Carter 37:12

um and uh they were paid they were put on to the a family

Carter 37:18

family relation of the candidate uh and also that same family relation wound up buying uh some uh i

Carter 37:27

think five ipads to uh to power the door knocking crew uh because the batteries of people's cell phones just weren't lasting uh for the duration of this of the uh the door knocking and apparently we were just going to be able to buy five

Carter 37:43

five thousand dollars and this is an expense capped campaign um

Carter 37:47

um because sometimes the expenses aren't capped sometimes

Corey 37:49

sometimes it's more the donation sometimes

Carter 37:51

sometimes the expenses are capped and we're going to suddenly buy five uh five

Carter 37:57

five fucking ipads those ipads went back um the brochures unfortunately were distributed before we even knew that what had happened uh but both of those situations like like

Carter 38:08

like you're trying to explain to them like and and then i get the well we'll just i'll just pay for them myself and i'm like that's totally fucking illegal that's

Carter 38:17

that's an illegal contribution to the campaign you can't just fucking pay for them yourself it

Zain 38:22

back this all must be worse on a campaign that that ultimately loses or that you know in

Zain 38:27

in the campaign is going to

Carter 38:28

to lose oh yeah that was a losing campaign and

Carter 38:31

and it was uh it was a loser from the from day one even though we did fall a little bit into the delusion category but uh realistically

Carter 38:40

realistically we knew we were dead and really

Carter 38:43

really had to marshal the spending yeah

Corey 38:46

yeah zane i I can think of one time where the candidate all of a sudden had like reams of billboards everywhere that like had not been approved by everybody. And it's like, oh, you know, and it was a friend of the candidate who's like, I have gotten just a really great deal on these billboards. Oh, no. Yeah. Like, I know a guy. And so, I've just sort of

Corey 39:08

And what sort of race? You

Zain 39:09

You don't like, is this like a citywide race, a provincial race? Is this like- No,

Corey 39:13

No, it was a federal race. It was some time ago. okay and um and yeah these billboards just kind of showed up and and the problem is

Corey 39:22

i mean there's a lot of problems but like it's also like you just can't but it's a very visible expense category too right yeah it's and and this is just something that was decided to be done and no decision had been made and all of a sudden like 20 of your budget has been blown by somebody who thinks they're getting you a great fucking deal like well you were gonna advertise weren't you and I just got you the best deal in the world.

Zain 39:44

world. Yeah, these would cost

Corey 39:45

twice as much. Don't worry about it. It can sit on my credit card for a while. Very much the Stephen, like, you

Corey 39:50

you know, I'll just pay for it myself if I have to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You

Carter 39:55

it. Can't do that.

Carter 39:56

Talk to me. Cannot do that. Carter,

Zain 39:58

Carter, talk to me. Explore this a bit with me and then we'll move on to Toronto. Sure. And I'm delaying because I'm actually waiting for some of these results to come in. Yeah, we're all waiting for the results. I'm ragging

Zain 40:08

ragging the puck a bit. Yeah.

Zain 40:10

Carter, talk to me about this. what

Zain 40:12

is the limitation of money for you when when when someone isn't popular or when someone's brand isn't necessarily growing in the trajectory you want it to i found that such an interesting comment and i think you're referencing dryden or maybe it was on the back end of a comment about dryden when you're saying you know it's only three four hundred thousand dollars that's the issue it's not my popularity as you kind of take it away as like a stephen carter core construct or commandment what have you what's your relationship between brand and um frankly

Carter 40:47

money follows popularity you

Carter 40:49

you you have you know like we always want to do more opinion polling oh if i could just do more opinion polling if i just knew how the general population was but i can't afford opinion polling oh okay then you fucking suck if

Carter 41:00

you can't afford opinion polling um then let me tell you what everybody's opinion is you're not going to win yes

Zain 41:06

yes right so that

Carter 41:07

that becomes you know money is i don't know if you guys are aware of this but it's the currency of policy oh yeah i'm i was i was made aware i

Carter 41:16

when you have it you are viable when you do not have it you are not viable and you cannot spend your way to viability you must be viable before you spend how many campaigns have we seen where they spend a million dollars and they still don't get more than 14 i mean hello point yeah

Corey 41:35

people think that money leads to popularity but it's kind of the the virtuous cycle starts the other way popularity leads to money and it allows you to do more of the things that are making you popular but if if you're not getting the cash come in the door like if you don't have the the five people who are willing to give you a couple thousand dollars each if you don't like if you don't if that stuff's not coming organically your friends are probably just too polite to tell you you're not going to be a great candidate yeah

Zain 42:02

let's move on to our next segment our next segment would you rather be justin would you rather be connor carter right now i know the the wound is fresh this

Carter 42:13

this is who would

Zain 42:14

would you rather be in this moment june 24th 9 51 p.m mountain time would you want to be connor mcdavid or would you want to be justin trudeau right now justin

Carter 42:24

justin trudeau because he still has has a chance to win.

Zain 42:28

Corey, there's always another season. McDavid's still young.

Zain 42:32

Would you want to be McDavid or would you want to be Trudeau?

Corey 42:35

Well, I really do appreciate how the Edmonton Oilers taught us a valuable political lesson tonight. Which was? Right?

Corey 42:41

start to see how the number of goals and the number of games don't necessarily tell you the same story. And you've got to be very careful what you're playing for. You're playing for games. And it goes for the same with ridings too, right? So think about this. the panthers got 16 goals across the series 16 goals that was enough for four wins the oilers got 23 goals i'm sorry that was only enough for three so i guess we learned about gerrymandering too yeah

Corey 43:07

yeah we learned about how the riding boundaries can really affect things yeah

Corey 43:12

yeah yeah i'd rather be conor mcdavid he's teaching people things life lessons carter

Zain 43:16

carter let's talk about something we've got expertise in or as it relates to you know this particular race we can assume expertise in because as of right now now 9 53 p.m east mountain time i should say uh it's pretty late it's it's almost midnight in toronto we only have 44 of the polls reporting in toronto st paul's

Zain 43:36

the liberal candidate leslie church is up 43 to 36 so a single single digit vote here and i and i I don't know this place well enough to understand where these votes are coming from or where the conservative sort of growth was expected, if at all. But Corey, we know one thing that if this holds, this is not the Carolyn Bennett style landslide. This is going to be a mid to, you know, at least maybe we don't know that. Maybe you're telling me that you put your hands up saying that that's exactly what could happen. But tell me what you actually think you're seeing here when you see 44% of the results come in. Corey, first. There's

Corey 44:11

There's a couple of ways you can look. I mean, if I'm the the liberals i've got i've got a way to spin it as long as these percents hold which is the

Corey 44:18

the percent of the vote the liberals got isn't actually down a

Corey 44:21

right you know it sends it looks more like it's a consolidation of conservative opposition at this moment we'll have to see how it all shakes out you know when it shakes out but uh a win can be a win and one of the things that we've seen a lot in the last bit is people say well look this is by elections are actually fairly predictive

Corey 44:42

But for a few examples, we've seen the by-elections the year before an election kind of tell us what the trend lines are in the race. Well, if

Corey 44:53

if that's true, and the liberals managed to hold their vote pretty firmly or like, you know, only lose a couple of percents, yeah, that might not be enough for government,

Corey 45:02

government, but it might be enough to keep... I don't really believe this. I just want to say before I finish this sentence. I'm going to

Zain 45:08

to make Carter play the conservative role in a second. So keep going. But, you know, as liberals, you can

Corey 45:12

can say, hey, look, you know, we were told we were out of this. We were told we were down 20 points. Well, we only shaved five off our result from last time or whatever the end result ends up being. Right. And and that's

Corey 45:23

that's not good enough for us. And we intend to do better. But you count us out at your peril. Carter,

Zain 45:28

Carter, spend this for the Conservatives. Let's assume some version of what I described, this 43 to 36, as it stands right now, holds. Do the Conservative talking points, what are they going to be?

Carter 45:39

I mean, if you increase 10 points across the board, I

Carter 45:42

I mean, this is one of the Liberals' strongest ridings. And we got an increase of 10% for the Conservative Party of Canada. If we did 10% growth across the board, across the country, we have a stable majority conservative government for the next four years. That's just Pierre Polyev would be the prime minister for four years guaranteed because a 10 point increase across the board. I

Carter 46:06

I mean, forget about the fact that this is the strongest riding in

Carter 46:10

in Canada for the Liberal Party. Forget about that for a moment. this you know 10 points is going to be i

Carter 46:17

mean this is a huge step forward for the conservative party of canada um and i think if this is predictive of what's going to happen in the in 2025 election uh bet on a landslide bet

Carter 46:31

bet on a landslide cory

Zain 46:33

let's assume this holds we can record another episode or replacement we won't you guys will just you guys well i won't i won't show up for it um yeah

Zain 46:41

let's say these hold these

Zain 46:43

these are not push trudeau out numbers right

Corey 46:49

uh well again if you're going from 49 to 43 election to election you can make the case they shouldn't be but steven is telling the other part of the story which is the conservative growth at that rate would for sure give the conservatives the government for sure there's no question about it um i don't know i i think that because of the way the conversation unfolded in the last week and everybody started to say oh my god the conservatives really could do this

Corey 47:17

expectation game becomes the liberals friend here because people started to think that the conservatives were a serious threat if the liberals end up winning this by six seven points which we would consider pretty poor i think in a different expectation game we'll start to say oh that wasn't so bad i gotta be honest even i'm looking at this and thinking oh that wasn't so bad but at the start of the by-election i would have considered this a disaster for the liberals so yeah there's probably a way that trudeau can spin this there's probably um you know a bruising but along the lines of what we talked about last episode where you can you can say the things that will allow you to get through the particular pain point i'm sure it will make the caucus nervous but if they squint they'll be able to see what they want to in it and it will be um you know something they should be able to manage from the pmo well

Carter 48:07

more importantly if you're if you're an mp sitting back thinking you know should i dive in on this thing should i dive in and be the one who who's going to be calling for the resignation of the prime minister yeah

Zain 48:16

yeah what do you think today um

Carter 48:18

i'm probably not going to do that uh

Carter 48:20

uh i think that the expectation game was played well i don't know who was leaking that the uh the conservatives were going to walk away with this they

Corey 48:27

they could still they could still win like we're oh

Carter 48:30

oh i know we're watching i

Corey 48:30

i don't think it's likely but these numbers have tightened up a fair bit even since the start of the night well

Carter 48:36

well the start of the segment yeah

Zain 48:38

yeah it's tightening up

Carter 48:39

since the start of the segment 47 to 37

Zain 48:41

37 4 okay interesting yeah it has yeah

Carter 48:43

yeah we're we're seeing oh wow

Zain 48:45

wow yeah yeah they are in real time hey if we talk long enough not an issue for carter keep going carter not an issue this is going to be great run out out the clock here what do you think oh yeah sure the final result i

Carter 48:56

think we can go i mean how many more polls do we have well

Zain 48:58

well we've only got 45 so we increased by two percent since the last time we spoke there's

Carter 49:02

there's still 100 polls i think i can do this listen

Carter 49:05

listen the the the expectation game has been played well by the liberals um but

Carter 49:10

but i i as much as i don't think that anybody's going to stand up in caucus uh in september and say sir it's time for you to stand down um i don't think think there'll be letters to the editor sent that are certainly signed at any rate um but

Carter 49:25

but i i i do think that this still does show a weakness and how the prime minister is going to address that weakness is an open question um my

Carter 49:35

my view the the weakness needs to be addressed um in

Carter 49:40

in caucus there needs to be some discussion about what the plan is and uh if that plan is good enough then you you start winning people back i'm just not sure that i'm feeling like there's

Carter 49:52

there's a plan yet quite

Corey 49:56

well certainly i think that there will be grumblings amongst the caucus you're gonna have a lot of caucus members talking to each other and say well we pulled that one off but fuck that's pretty grim for the rest of us like oh if this trend holds you know and there's gonna be a lot of that rumbling i agree with steven it needs to be addressed directly and the best case kind of of present it and say, let's just have it out. Let's just have the full argument. Let's have the full conversation here. Here's what's going on. Here's what I think. Because there are some things that you can point to as the PMO, assuming you kind of eke out a victory here, right?

Corey 50:30

the percent of the vote actually not down that much and by-elections are often used to punish governments. We all know that. B, yes, by-elections before campaigns tend to have been predictive, but you know the election recently where they've not been remotely predictive?

Corey 50:43

the last fucking election, right? Where the liberals did much worse in the by-elections in the lead up than they did in the actual general. So you can say, this is not a hypothetical. This is exactly the situation we faced last time. And we were okay. I'm not saying we were okay because of like just some sort of natural gravity and inertia. It's going to take some hard work, but let's fucking talk about this. You know what's going to guarantee the liberal party to implode and be back to where it was in the Ignatiev days or worse? If we all lose our heads. And so let's talk about what can really occur in the next year and the best thing we can do is be a strong team with a good product that will ultimately deliver at the polls will it be government i sure hope so i believe there's a way but even if it's not if we play a fundamentals game we're

Corey 51:28

we're going to be in this thing and and you guys are

Corey 51:31

are going to be there to hold the conservatives to account carter

Zain 51:35

tell me about this you're circling justin trudeau you're part of the liberal i want i want his job Bob clan. You could be on the inside, you could be on the outside. Let's say today holds and it tightens up even more.

Zain 51:47

But it's in this ballpark.

Zain 51:50

Anything different? Anything changed for you today? I know maybe doesn't change if you're an MP being the first to raise your hand and asking Trudeau to go. But if you've got ambitions yourself, does

Zain 51:59

does it change anything?

Carter 52:01

I think that what it changes is that, you know, we thought that there would be a clear line. And you'll will recall when we draw when we drew the lines it was if he's over 10 percent then there's no problem no

Carter 52:13

problem he's gonna you know if it's over 10 percent he gets to spin this as a giant victory and

Carter 52:17

and if it's uh under under five percent or under three percent whatever number we came up with who

Carter 52:23

know maybe he has to go well

Carter 52:25

well we're right in that middle section we're

Carter 52:27

we're right in that middle gray section where we said oh this is going to be a problem uh

Carter 52:31

uh we don't know exactly how to to play this. So if I'm one of those people who is, you know, circling looking to, to perhaps put my name forward, if it happens right away, or perhaps put my name forward after the next election, if it happens, then I'm

Carter 52:46

I'm still going to be organizing, I'm

Carter 52:48

I'm still going to be making sure that I build my connections across the country. And you'll see me show up in different markets doing fundraising events for MPs, ultimately things that I can point to that say, I'm just building the party i'm not running for anything i'm just making sure that we've got riding associations or uh you know district associations whatever the hell the titles are these days uh electoral districts that all have money that all have money in their bank account that's what i'm doing that's what i commit and i think every every minister

Carter 53:19

minister every cabinet minister every person that's involved in the liberal party should do exactly what i'm doing and that's go across the country raising money because that's the thing that we need to do together and oh the fact that Did I happen to be increasing my profile, building relationships with MPs or prospective MPs? That's just coincidence. It's just coincidence.

Zain 53:41

Corey, finish this off on here. Does this change the calculus for anyone circling Trudeau for his job?

Corey 53:50

Well, yeah, in some interesting ways. At a certain point, any sensible person is going to say, do I fucking want this right now? Am I just coming in to lose? And we talked a bit about this last time. At a certain level of unpopularity, just

Corey 54:08

just let him go down with the ship, right? Because, you know, why do you want to go put your name forward, become the leader, just to be the person who leads the party into kind of a dystopia? In fact, then people will say things like, man, I really wish we hadn't ousted Justin Trudeau. And then anybody who was involved in the ousting of Justin Trudeau was going to be, you

Corey 54:29

know, viewed rather dimly, I suppose you could say. That's a real risk you have at a certain point. And there might just not be enough time, too. So, yeah,

Corey 54:39

yeah, that's one way it might change your calculus. listen other is if you're hell-bent on doing it you've got yet another yet another proof point that things are not going well in liberal land and you just start pouring poison in their ear call people up and say fuck are we really gonna do this like i listen i love the guy i got elected under him but are we really gonna do this like we are we are driving off a cliff here

Corey 55:06

why are we pulling this thelma and louise shit this is crazy you know how that movie ends right right? And those conversations

Corey 55:13

conversations can sometimes lead to other conversations, because you start to get almost a bit of a sense of who's actually with you. And if you have an understanding that the numbers are with you, your options expand.

Zain 55:23

Thelma and Louise, of course, the original Dave, for those that are at home keeping track. Yeah, it was a prequel. Sorry, the prequel to Dave. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Zain 55:32

if I'm not mistaken.

Corey 55:34

Thelma and Louise, I think, was released. Yeah, Dave was released after Thelma and Louise. No,

Zain 55:37

No, no, Dave was first, and then Thelma and Louise, which was a prequel. It was Dave. Was released before. That's right. Yeah, that's right. That's

Zain 55:44

Carter, let's move it on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. I don't know if you know this, but we do it for you. Already? We do it for you. This is

Carter 55:51

This is fantastic. How long have we recorded, Corey? We've

Zain 55:54

for a long time. Yeah, it's about 56 minutes. Carter, I'm keeping us on track. I'm like, I'm doing it. I'm doing it for you.

Carter 56:01

I'm telling you, the listeners don't care if it's an hour. It's just Corey. It's just Corey.

Carter 56:07

Value for their money. blah blah fucking blah talk to

Zain 56:09

to me about this carter overrated or underrated the the the fact that nahed nenshi got more votes than danielle smith and perhaps the as we as we have seen thus far from the data um comparative data i should say more votes than any other provincial leader in a leadership race across the country ever perhaps overrated i think overrated or underrated that those those stats or that's kind of stat package if i can call it that yeah

Carter 56:37

yeah i mean i think it's underrated by the general population but overrated by nahed uh so i i'm

Carter 56:44

not gonna i'm kidding nahed it was a joke it was just a joke i just did it for the cheap laugh

Zain 56:50

yeah i'm sorry are you shaking your head saying it's not a joke it's not okay saying it's not a joke okay that's good that's what i have make sure he's on the record well someone learned the mute button uh cory overrated underrated that that stat package i just uh uh listed to you around round nine and she's uh evoked totals um

Corey 57:08

um i look i think it's overrated the reality is he he was the he was the eight trillion pound gorilla in the race he absolutely dominated it if you look at the membership of the of the um of

Corey 57:23

of the ndp it's it's big it's fairly consistent with like those 2006 you know pcs right and

Corey 57:30

and when you adjust for population probably a higher proportion of the population was involved back then i don't want to overstate it is all i'm saying it it obviously shows that in both conservative circles and in new democrat circles in alberta people

Corey 57:44

people are fucking animated and they are going to get engaged and i saw some uh some discourse passed on to me that albertans are the most likely to be in a political party in the country based on the like these last two cycles which is

Corey 57:57

is pretty cool i think like we're quite an engaged population in that particular sense.

Corey 58:03

I, you know, I think it's such a sea change from where progressive politics was even a decade ago in this province. And that's really impressive. Like literally in 2014, Rachel

Corey 58:16

Rachel Notley was elected with a fraction of this, right? She has built an enormous party and that enormous party attracted an enormous personality that went in turn and sold a ton of memberships too.

Corey 58:28

It's really big, and I'm not trying to underplay what he's accomplished here. But I would say, I

Corey 58:33

I don't think that there are more active progressives than there are active conservatives in Alberta. Roughly the same numbers you could sell me on. There's not this big sea change that's predicted because of these numbers. Some

Zain 58:45

Some excellent wisdom from the sidelines, once again, by Corey Hogan. Hey, Corey, lay it on me. Are you in or are you out

Zain 58:55

one of the GTA Liberal MPs looking at this by-election result today. You know shit's going to get tough, and you know that your riding has also been perhaps a bit of a lock.

Zain 59:06

You own a lot of the GTA. You own a lot of Toronto proper. You look at tonight, at least from what we know of tonight in St. Paul's, are you in or are you out?

Corey 59:18

There's two kind of instincts politicians have, and they can carry them at the same time them in different directions one is the well that's them i'm fucking awesome it won't happen to me like yeah i i can i can push different forces in my own i can pull 20 30 percent additional because i'm i'm

Corey 59:36

i'm i don't know name the name yeah right yeah yeah but uh then the other one is i

Corey 59:42

just pooped my pants a little bit i saw something and it made me really scared and now i'm going to be really scared about that for the next bit and i'm a bundle of nerves and anxieties and a deeply flawed person and that's why i ran for office in the first place and uh not saying everybody who runs for office is deeply flawed i'm just saying a lot of deeply flawed people run for office yeah and so that's

Corey 1:00:05

that's that's a thing that might push the other way carter

Zain 1:00:07

carter are you in or out if you're a gta liberal mp looking at the results as they stand right now in st paul's it really

Carter 1:00:13

it really depends on who you are fundamentally as a person i remember counselor back then alderman barry erskine would

Carter 1:00:19

would basically run around i cast him as the cowardly lion in a drew farrell fundraiser what do you hear what do you hear well you know i'm gonna be knocked out is someone running against me what do you hear you know like that's that's how half half the fucking candidates approach uh politics so some of them are going to be scared shitless other ones are going to be delusional i've always outperformed the fucking party i don't care who the leader is you know know i've i've had i've had dinner with these people oh yeah i got it all laid up i know everything i've already bought my media i'm all ready to go uh no you're not but i have

Zain 1:00:52

have a guy who does that price billboards trust me yeah exactly i'm fucking killing this shit yeah

Carter 1:00:58

i am killing it yeah

Carter 1:00:59

yeah no it's it's they're both you know all

Carter 1:01:03

all people all sizes inside and and smells carter

Zain 1:01:07

carter i am scrolling down this uh what seems like 500 candidate ballot by the way this ballot for for Toronto State polls, has a lot of people on it. I don't know if people know this. There's a lot of independent candidates who've just thrown their name into this. Carter, 47%. It's a thing. It's a thing. It's a thing. 47% of the polls thus far. Based on that, are you going to give me a prediction?

Zain 1:01:28

Where is this going to land? Yeah, I am. Where is this going to land? Remind people where you were on your previous predictions, because I think you've documented where the three of us were. He's actually looking pretty good right now. Give us your revised prediction today. Right now, 42.9 to 37. seven i'm going to give you another shot at it so

Carter 1:01:44

so mine was liberals by three uh

Carter 1:01:46

uh zane's was liberals by nine cory liberals by 12 cory's basically out of this basically cory's cory's done for me

Carter 1:01:54

um i'm going to stick with liberals by three i think it's going to tighten up when we get to the advanced you're

Zain 1:01:59

you're not going to change it you have it's it's 37 to let's say 43

Carter 1:02:02

43 the monty hall problem man you never change it never

Carter 1:02:05

never change the monty

Corey 1:02:06

monty hall problem is you always oh you

Carter 1:02:07

you always change it

Carter 1:02:09

monty hall okay i

Carter 1:02:10

i never change cory um or you're gonna also can i just point out though the ndp i predicted they'd be at 14 percent cory predicted they'd be at seven percent right now they are sitting sitting pretty at 13 i'm gonna win that one too so cory

Carter 1:02:24

cory you may have gotten that whole not had nancy thing but i am crushing everything which by the way congratulations

Zain 1:02:30

congratulations length of the speech on that campaign for you length

Carter 1:02:33

length of the speech mentions

Carter 1:02:34

mentions of zane liberals rules by three ndp 13 i got them all don't

Carter 1:02:39

don't ever play that clip again of me predicting jenna bush

Corey 1:02:42

bush i'm putting it in right now but like uh okay uh cory yeah so it just cory you're yeah okay thank you

Zain 1:02:49

you for that carter yeah we really appreciate that um hey cory um

Zain 1:02:54

you were 12 you can stick at 12 yeah

Zain 1:02:57

but half the polls reporting do you want to change 12 well

Corey 1:03:01

well it It doesn't feel like it's going to be 12, but I just don't know enough about where the votes are coming in and how and when. I don't think it's going to get to 12, but I'm going to stick where we are. What's the benefit in changing? In fact, I'm convinced it will get back to 12. Okay. Why am I even- Fantastic. Why am I even losing nerve? Yeah, you shouldn't lose nerve. You've been so- But I do think I was wrong about the NDP. And can I say- Why?

Corey 1:03:25

If I had been right about the NDP, I would have been right about the liberals too. my theory was the vote would go to the liberals but here's the thing that i i failed to appreciate and this is something we've talked about in the past i actually think it's uh it's i'd be curious your two thoughts on it there

Corey 1:03:38

there when your party is not really ever in the race but is kind of there and getting a certain percent of the vote those are the diehards who are just going to always be at that percent and i think i underestimated how movable that vote is that's probably a pretty

Corey 1:03:51

pretty solid rock for the ndp like it probably can't really move down too much Awesome.

Zain 1:03:55

Awesome. Some nice, humble wisdom from the sidelines. We're

Corey 1:03:59

We're going to leave it there. We're always trying to learn from the sidelines. That's where all the learning happens if you're Corey Hogan.

Zain 1:04:04

That's a wrap on episode 1810 of The Strategist. My name is Abe Belger. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan, and we will see you next time.

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