Episode 1818: Walz on Walz

Zain 0:01

This is a Strategist episode 1818. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, 1818, you might be like, wow, are we seeing double? Well, the answer is yes. It is the same thing twice, which is a great transition for Stephen Carter and Tim Wolfe.

Zain 0:17

Stephen Carter, welcome. Welcome, Vice President Stephen Carter. Yes. No,

Carter 0:22

No, I'm not the vice president yet. Okay, vice presidential candidate. I'm a nominated

Carter 0:25

nominated candidate. Pretty excited about it. Pretty excited about it to already have gigs lined up as a double. So pretty great. Now, three of the gigs are for the Secret Service. So I'm less excited about that. But two of the gigs are at car washes. So those are going to be pretty profitable. Those will be good.

Corey 0:46

good. Do you get to wash your car when

Carter 0:47

I think so. I think it comes with a free... I'm not negotiating them myself. Of course, I have an agent. But... Hold

Corey 0:52

Hold out for the wax. Hold out for the wax. I

Carter 0:55

I need to get waxed. Oh, hold on. I said that wrong. I do not need to be waxed. Can I say,

Corey 1:01

say, one of my, so, audio

Corey 1:05

Folks, Stephen Carter and Tim Walls kind of look pretty similar, I think it's fair to say. Zane, would you assess? I agree. If we

Zain 1:15

we were going to do that primate, you know, org chart, if you can call it that, the lateral primate

Zain 1:21

org chart. Is that what you call it? The spectrum of primate? Stephen Carter and Till Moles would be right on top of each other. So there

Corey 1:31

reality. Yeah. One of my favorite things that I've seen is a lot of coverage about how

Corey 1:36

how old he looks for 60. I know.

Corey 1:39

Stephen, how old are you? I'm

Carter 1:41

I'm 55, and I look exactly like this guy.

Corey 1:45

Who everybody is saying is like an old 60, just

Carter 1:48

just to be clear. But I

Carter 1:48

don't think that people think I look old. No,

Carter 1:50

you've got some fucking city

Carter 1:52

miles on you, my friend.

Carter 1:53

But not old. You've

Corey 1:54

some city miles on you. You're the car that everybody claims that the grandmother just drove,

Corey 1:59

drove, is what I was going to say. Yeah, that just comes out all wrong. You said it. It's not what you were going to say. You said it. Yeah,

Carter 2:05

he actually let it all the way out.

Zain 2:07

But we all know.

Corey 2:08

What an opener. Riding those brakes all the way through the city.

Zain 2:12

Carter, what does this say about men who have hair on the side of their heads and some on the back?

Carter 2:19

It says right off the top, we're back, baby. We're back. First of all, Biden was elected president, one of the first bald mayors that we've seen, or mayors, bald presidents that we've seen in like, in the television. Excuse me, what?

Zain 2:32

what? Are we saying Biden's a bald? No, we don't. We don't say Biden's a bald president. I feel like that's taking liberty. He's bald. No,

Zain 2:40

No, no, no. He's got severely thinning hair, but he's also 81. Yeah,

Carter 2:45

Yeah, I mean, so he was bald. He's bald. no no

Carter 2:48

tim and i if we were to make a list of bald

Zain 2:50

bald presidents biden would not be on the list

Carter 2:53

who's on the list i

Carter 2:55

don't know who's on the list i know who's not a picture

Corey 2:57

picture of uh biden and he's got

Carter 3:00

bald people grab on to other people who have little bits of hair and say they're bald anybody that you can classify as having more forehead than chin is bald okay that's the way that's the way we define it more forehead than chin yeah

Carter 3:14

yeah look at cory he just checked too then

Carter 3:17

He's fine. He's fine for now, but it's close. It's close. If he styled it down instead of styling it back, he'd probably be, he'd be better. Joe

Zain 3:26

Joe Biden is not a bald president. You can sound off wherever you want to sound off about that, but Biden would not be classified as a bald president.

Corey 3:33

What you don't understand is that his father was bald and his mother was not bald. So he can be two things.

Zain 3:40

Okay. Well, he, he, he was not bald. And then one day he just changed. He

Zain 3:46

changed. So it's like, I don't know what to do with that. If he's just like one day bald and the other day you're like, I'm not bald. So I know it's confusing. But, you know, you guys are not the audience for that. I should probably go to a bald convention and tell people that. Completely bald.

Carter 4:02

Should we jump into this? Should we jump into this? Yeah, let's do a show.

Zain 4:04

Let's move into our first segment. Our first segment, Ted Lassar runs for VP. Guys, it's happening. We could write a book. Well, not us, but someone should write a book. Someone should. Around the viral, quick, unexpected 12-day ascent of Tim Walz. This was a guy that was not even being socialized seven, eight, nine days ago as a potential VP pick. Uh, he was then, um, throttled, uh, into, or thrust into, uh, the mainstream limelight with a, uh,

Zain 4:40

uh, interview on MSNBC in which many are crediting him with the verbiage of weird, which we talked about last episode. Then the social media darling passed clips, legislative and governor of Minnesota, his success on passing things, on getting shit done, took a life of its own, so did his dad humor. And here we are, Corey, after a successful interview with Kamala Harris this weekend, interpersonally, where he had a stark difference, both in terms of how he not just presented himself, but how he presented himself for the job with Josh Shapiro, him, you know, and reported by CNN saying, what can I do? How can I help versus Shapiro trying to negotiate the role with Kamala Harris, fighting more of an interpersonal match? And here he is. He is the VP pick for Kamala Harris 90-some days before the election. Your thoughts, Hogan, on what we've just observed. We'll give it the two-week stretch, and then we'll give it

Zain 5:45

it the Tim Walz sort of like, what are we buying when we're buying Tim Walz? What does that mean? We'll get to that in a second. Just give me your thoughts on what the last two weeks were with the campaign inside the campaign to get Tim Walz on the ticket. it

Corey 5:58

look it's crazy i'm not going to pretend i know everybody in american politics but he wasn't on anybody's short list when those first short lists were being drawn up you talk about him coming from nowhere seven days ago i didn't know how to pronounce his name like was it vaults was it waltz was it walls you know i could i'd only seen it written at that point like i'd never heard anybody say his name although i'm sure having been a congressperson that many other people had and And the way that he almost became this internet phenomenon that self-perpetuated after his comments about J.D. Vance and Donald Trump being weird is wild. And again, it's so specific to the moment because he made the exact same comments more generalized about Republican candidates in 2023.

Corey 6:43

and it's only when you hit that moment with the exact same comments that all of a sudden the zeitgeist said yeah that's that's a perfect alignment with statement and sentiment let's go and it just was no looking back from there all of a sudden we're seeing all of these social media clips of him doing folksy things there was one about you know him and his daughter at the state farm the minnesota state by the way minnesota is a state of six million people it's got minneapolis in it the way we're all treating it like it's this rural place now is hilarious to me but he's at the minnesota state fair with his daughter saying hey let's go and if if i win you eat a corn dog and she said well i'm a vegetarian he said well i'll have a turkey dog then she says turkey's not a vegetable he says i agree to disagree you know it's just it's kind of fun and dad humor and jokey and and then you just pile on all of these anecdotes and all of these stories and some of this biography about how he was 24 years in the National Guard and how he's an avid hunter. And it's just really hard to imagine that he fits into this form of dismissible Democrat that the Republicans like to play against, like this straw person, you know?

Corey 7:49

So it's just like, it was just such a moment. And of course, me

Corey 7:53

me being a cynical bastard with no joy in his life, I do wonder, all right, well, we didn't know who he was two weeks ago. Are we going to find out things we we don't like about him two weeks from now. Right,

Zain 8:02

was the vetting shit maybe as well?

Corey 8:04

well? Well, let's see, because there's vetting and then there's vetting, right? I mean, any Albertan can tell you, sometimes it's a comment that you don't even think is like that outrageous, or maybe it just gets torqued. And the famous one here, of course, is where Sarah Hoffman referred to the UCP, or maybe it was the conservatives at the time, as sewer rats, and then it became, she's calling conservative voters sewer rats, then it became, she's calling all Albertans sewer rats as this myth grows, right? yeah so

Corey 8:31

so we'll we'll see like we'll see what happens when the product is out there every day for us but uh man what a great start for the guy amazing meteoric and just part of the overall

Corey 8:42

hollywood drama of this particular campaign just crazy just fucking crazy the last two weeks donald

Corey 8:49

donald trump was shot what like 20

Corey 8:51

20 days ago i keep

Carter 8:54

keep forgetting he was shot i keep forgetting three weeks on saturday actually happened three

Zain 8:58

three weeks on saturday um carter two

Zain 9:00

two weeks span 10 day span eight day span tim

Zain 9:06

the vice presidential pick of the democratic party

Carter 9:10

worries me zane it worries me nervous oh

Zain 9:13

oh interesting okay it

Carter 9:15

it leaves me with a sense that you know normally these processes take months months and absolute months i mean already ready it's not like it's just surface that the guy has a dui he has a dui from back in the day in the 1980s when he before he stopped drinking um but he has a dui and personally i don't think that people with dui should necessarily seek higher office see scott moe um i think that people who are are faced with that kind of charge and uh you know there's

Carter 9:47

there's a ban but here he is and and And what's the cost, quotation

Carter 9:52

quotation marks, what's the cost of that DUI charge in today's election environment? You know, how important is that going to be? I would love to know if the electorate, you know, if the polls that were done when this choice

Carter 10:08

choice was made, if people had the full information. I mean, Corey didn't even have the information on how to say the guy's name. You know,

Carter 10:16

know, how is everybody else supposed to have all the information that they need to know whether or not this is the right pick? It looks really solid right now. But how's it going to look in 95 days? That's the question that we're kind

Carter 10:30

kind of left with, because the speed with which this happened from zero to 100 in literally, I think, 10 days. And

Zain 10:39

And Corey, jump in and then I've got some I've got some follow ups for you guys around what this pick means and what lessons we're to learn, if any, in this political moment.

Corey 10:50

Well, look, I agree with Stephen, mostly because he was agreeing with me. But I do want to put out the counter argument that maybe he is a bit of a known commodity, at least in ways that it matters. So he was in Congress. When he got appointed, I mean, Democrats are over the moon with him. And it's just, again, it's a moment and they want to be over the moon. They want to fall in love again. And here he is, right? But you had AOC and Manchin. Do you feel like they would have fallen in love with anyone? If it was Shapiro

Zain 11:16

Shapiro today, do you think they would have? No, you don't think so. Okay, keep going

Corey 11:19

going on AOC and Manchin.

Corey 11:20

Yeah. I think part of the reason why they're so easy to fall in love is they don't know him as well as some of these others. Or he hasn't made the statements out there. Or it's just the biography you're reading. And let's be clear, though. Voters will not usually get past the first couple of pages of the book either. And those first couple of pages are pretty effing compelling, especially if you're a Democrat looking to balance off your ticket. And, you know, the comments about what might be in his past, what do we know? What have we maybe not fully digested, such as the DWI? I think it was the 90s, actually, Stephen. Oh,

Corey 11:53

was it the 90s? I could be wrong. But who

Corey 11:57

who knows, right? Like, who knows how that is going to be interpreted? Who knows if anybody will care? I'm reminded of my own country here in 2011 when Jack Layton, it was reported, was at a rub and tug.

Corey 12:10

nobody gave a shit. Nobody gave a shit because the momentum had already carried him to a point where it felt like any attack like that was like, oh, sour grapes. You're just mad that he's doing good.

Corey 12:20

And so it's hard to say what the electorate is going to care about and not. Carter,

Zain 12:26

Carter, let's talk about where I think the Democratic Party, at least in part, has shifted from over the course of the last two and a half weeks. It seems to have gone from this overly intellectual, insular, anxious movement to, at least in part, right, because it's very early still, and we still have to run out 90 plus days on the clock. but at least in part, seems to be vibes.

Zain 12:59

I'm curious if that gives you pause or if that gives you hope. What I heard from your Walls response is it gives you pause. But argue as a strategist, as we've talked about the wave, does that not continue to you're re-engineering the wave. If you have two weeks on vibes and then you go with the vibes pick for VP, is that not just doubling down on the joy to re-engineer, keep, not even re-engineer, continue, extend

Zain 13:29

extend the wave that you are riding? Talk to me about this as a strategist who I would argue intellectualized, I wouldn't even say over-intellectualized, intellectualized the walls pick around what's left on the vetting, what we don't know about this guy. Talk to me about the other side of the argument about using the heart versus the head here and trying to ride it out that way well

Carter 13:50

well i mean the heart is is 100 engaged right now you know the democrats the independents people who were you know didn't want donald trump to win the the the the people who were against both trump and biden everybody is starting to come around like they are partying in the streets they are thrilled and and this is just the next step in in the party you know Everything that she has done, everything that she has touched has been expanding

Carter 14:19

expanding the party. All the things

Carter 14:21

things that they came after her for in the first days, everything that she's done since then, the naming of walls today, everything

Carter 14:29

everything is just furthering the party. And I think that when they get to the Democratic

Carter 14:35

later in August on the 19th to the 22nd, I have this feeling like it's just going to be vibe central. Everything that's there is going to go viral. everything that people are talking about is going to be huge. I mean, this was an announcement made during the Olympics that totally overshadowed the Olympics. This is bigger than any other event. The vibe check has been seen and heard by all those around it, and everybody's buying into this being the winning

Carter 15:09

winning ticket, if you will. I mean, it's unbelievable how much has shifted in the past 10, 15 days. Corey,

Zain 15:16

Corey, we're coconut pilled. We are all about Bratz summer. We

Zain 15:21

We say hope is not a strategy. Let me ask the question this way to you. Is vibes a strategy?

Corey 15:28

Enthusiasm and building an enthusiastic base is a strategy. And it does seem like that's what the Democrats have. It feels like they were really desperate for a moment like this, and now they found it. And I think part of why the VP pick is smart, in my opinion, is that Kamala Harris said, I

Corey 15:45

I don't want to risk anything that would kill the vibes. We are running on good times and energy. I don't want any fighting about this. I want the guy that the internet's thrilled about. I want the guy that AOC and Manchin will both say is just an awesome guy on that day. and maybe it doesn't deliver me Pennsylvania's electoral votes and maybe

Corey 16:04

maybe she'll still regret that at the end of the day but she's decided that what she needs is the national campaign just humming right and it's

Corey 16:14

it's funny I mean it's funny what catches on I mean it'd be easy to say you've got this old weathered beaten down haggard old dead ringer for Carter white guy why would he resonate at all with this crowd but he's become almost a mascot got to

Corey 16:30

to a younger generation we see him as a coach as a dad this

Zain 16:36

this is this is not the same but it's also not entirely different when an older white guy from maine caught you know the same crowd with a bolt of energy vermont

Corey 16:51

vermont yeah you're talking about uh bernie sanders

Corey 16:56

sanders here never been as mainstream as as walls is right like walls

Corey 17:03

walls was a middle-of-the-road democrat who got a ratings from the nra until he decided at some point you know fuck those guys right like and this is just and good for him right for identifying that something is happening and changing his views even as an avid hunter right but

Corey 17:19

but bernie sanders has been down for the cause right the thing about bernie sanders which got him so much cred was you could run clips of him in the 70s and 80s and they They would age perfectly.

Corey 17:30

They would age perfectly, championing gay marriage, championing you name it. You name a progressive cause that ultimately came back into the limelight, he was right there. And always, well, again, being very selective, I'm not Bernie-pilled, right? But people would say, hey, look, he was right about the banks. Hey, look, he was right about these social issues. He was right about everything. Walls is not that. There's an interesting distinction. Walls is not that at all. There's an interesting distinction. He's total normcore, right? He's the guy who was a middle-of-the-road Democrat, who won because he was middle-of-the-road, who won because he had personal characteristics of a Republican, and that's what's propelling him forward. Bernie Sanders is not a hunter. No,

Zain 18:10

No, no, no. There is an element to this, Carter, that is fascinating. We talk about this in politics all the time, right? The message versus messenger. And the fact that only a guy perhaps that looks like Tim Walz could pass, you know, universal lunch programs and could pass all the bills that maybe he did as now. And I'm not going to argue and say that that Minnesota is a deep red state. It is a it is a blue state that, you know, in Biden's lagging polls was entering into swing territory. But, you know, it is a blue state. But he did big things. He did big things there. And there's something to be said about the way he looked, the way he presented, the way he spoke, and frankly, who he was as a messenger that allowed him to do these small P and big P progressive things. And when you talk about that on the national stage, what lesson does that kind of teach you? Because there's a conjoining element around vibes that I want to talk about. But before that, what kind of lesson does messenger versus message kind of teach you right now? Because it's really interesting around a guy that looks like that delivering the messages that are just making everyone pop off right now.

Carter 19:20

Yeah, I mean, there's kind of a playing against type, right? Like when people expect you to look and speak and be one way, and then it turns out that you're a different way, you

Carter 19:28

you create a paradox that people are attracted to or not attracted to. I mean, it can go both ways, Zane. I mean, there

Carter 19:35

there are lots of people who play against type, whose voices sound different, who have ideas

Carter 19:42

ideas that don't fit against what people's expectations are, where it doesn't go well. But when you're playing against type, at the very least, you're going to get attention.

Carter 19:53

When you're playing against type, people are going to pay attention to the words coming out of your mouth because they are not

Carter 19:58

exactly what you're expecting. I mean, there is a little bit of dissonance between what

Carter 20:03

what he says and does versus what he looks like he would say and does. He looks like a stereotypical Republican, and yet he behaves like a progressive Democrat. And that juxtaposition

Carter 20:18

juxtaposition is going to create a lot of attention, and people may be willing to listen to his ideas, is, thinking,

Carter 20:26

thinking, well, he's just like me.

Carter 20:29

There's something that we learned in politics for quite a while. That is the every every man syndrome.

Carter 20:36

One of the things that we look for in our political candidates is people who look or sound like us. This guy looks and sounds like swing voters. So it looks

Corey 20:47

looks and sounds like somebody on this pod.

Carter 20:49

It looks and sounds like me, really. I mean, it's pretty spectacular. But and people often say that I'm very insightful, or at least that was said once um that this is a this is a great way to break through with a candidate frankly kamala harris looks and sounds exactly like you'd expect her to as a progressive uh politician out of out

Carter 21:13

out of california out of san francisco she sounds that way i mean she does have some uh you know, prosecutor cred, but she, she's, you know, she's risks being pegged as a, as a liberal Democrat. Whereas I think that Walls now brings us back to the center that, that Harris and Walls will represent.

Zain 21:37

Corey, talk to me about attention. If you win the attention war in this race, do you win the race? And attention's clearly been something Trump has captured for the last several years. And she wasn't just doubling down on vibes. You may argue she was doubling down on the candidate that continues to extract,

Zain 21:52

extract, at least in part, media attention, which may not have been Shapiro, but certainly was Walls and has been over the last, don't want to overstate this, two

Corey 22:03

It's a great point. I think one of the things that we were even observing last week when we were talking about the Harris campaign is they

Corey 22:11

they are taking a bit of a page out of the Trump playbook. They've been doing the name-calling of the Trump playbook. We chatted a bit about whether that was good, whether that was bad. You know, your mileage will vary here. But now they seem to be taking the attention-grabbing out of it. And let's be clear, politicians have always wanted to grab this attention, but Harris has got pop stars opening for her. She's running with the ball that the Internet gives her, right? Just living meme city, living vibe city there. and i really think it's getting under donald trump's skin so is it going to be successful i don't know the the early polls are pretty good we haven't really chatted about them but the fact is harris is climbing in the polls and it's

Corey 22:54

it's not about the overall number it's about the states and where they break down but she is she has gained a lot of points and now leads pretty consistently in every national poll here and

Corey 23:04

and meanwhile trump's going out of his mind trump is talking at rallies Allie's about, hey, did you hear she had so many people? But yeah, she had to give opening acts in order to get it. And then everybody left after the opening act. And you see the Harris campaign jump in the other way now, just baiting the fucker. They posted a picture on Truth Social, on Truth Social of the crowd that she had in Pennsylvania in the exact same venue, picture taken from the exact same angle versus the crowd Donald Trump had. So

Corey 23:33

So she's I don't know if she thinks that the vibes are going to win her the election, but she knows Trump

Corey 23:38

Trump will implode if he thinks he doesn't have them.

Zain 23:42

That's interesting. Carter, you know, what's what's fascinating about that is that we actually don't know most of the stuff Trump has said over the last little bit, other than his disaster of a performance at the Black Journalist event where he says even more crazy and crazy things to try to get attention. And frankly, in the normal Trump way, which is still graded on a curve as being quite insane, we haven't heard from him. We haven't necessarily heard from him because it has all been about Kamala Harris and now Tim Walz and Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg and the whole constellation. What do you think about attention in this sense? Like, is attention grabbing a strategy? And did you like the fact that, if I ask the question this way, that she chose the attention candidate, Walls,

Zain 24:29

versus the candidate Shapiro, when we've talked historically that the only real help that VPs can provide is in their home state? So Shapiro may have been the head choice. Walls was the heart choice. If I frame it that way, still a strategically wise move to Corey's point on keeping the party going?

Carter 24:52

Well, let me read to you what Donald Trump responded today, right? This is, if we're playing a head game and Donald Trump was in Hillary's head and Biden, you know, like, and Kamala Harris is now in Donald Trump's head, the pick of Walls has resulted in the following and i read to you i

Corey 25:11

i was just gonna pull this up you know what

Carter 25:12

what are the chances that crooked joe biden the worst president in the history of the u.s whose presidency was unconstitutionally stolen from him by kambla barack

Carter 25:23

barack hussein obama crazy nancy pelosi shifty adam schiff cryon chuck schumer and the others on the lunatic left crashes the democratic national convention and tries to take back the nomination beginning with challenging me to another debate he feels that he made a historically tragic mistake by handing over the u.s presidency a coup to the people in the world he hates he most hates and he wants it back now so

Carter 25:54

so i'd say that getting in his head's working pretty well hey cory i

Corey 25:58

i the tweet is so unhinged for obviously a bunch of reasons obviously the biggest one to me is the way he capitalized barack obama's middle name yeah

Corey 26:07

not even hiding anymore yeah that

Corey 26:09

that he's just this racist fuck but he is now creating this fiction that joe biden is furious and trying to mount a comeback like this is this is delusional the idea that the democratic party is somehow divided i've never seen like i you have to go back to obama to see the democratic party this excited and this united about anything again Again, Manchin, who quit the Democratic Party because he thought it was too

Zain 26:33

many. And in the

Corey 26:34

early days, like I said, two

Zain 26:35

two weeks ago, was flirting with potentially challenging Kamala, as

Zain 26:40

initially reported, and then quickly

Corey 26:42

quickly denied by him.

Corey 26:44

And AOC. I mean, everybody's there. Like, he's trying to create this drama that simply does not exist. Now, does Joe Biden say, man, I wish it didn't end this way? I'm fucking sure he does. Is he trying to do a counter coup, to use Donald Trump's language?

Corey 27:00

That's ridiculous. Final note. Yeah, give me one

Zain 27:03

and I will zoom on on something.

Corey 27:06

you have been saying for three years that Biden stole the election, and now you are saying that he was the legitimate president that had the election stolen from him.

Carter 27:19

Yeah. Consistency is not really their strong point. Oh, okay. Good point.

Zain 27:24

Ah, man. Okay, can I zoom out for a second? Because I think there's a fascinating leadership question here. The Walls-Shapiro thing is fascinating to me for many reasons, because number one, many, myself included, count for nothing, was expecting the announcement to be Shapiro today, especially with the announcement happening in Pennsylvania. Great reporting by CNN, which, by the way, their new term for Tim Walls is the blue walls. That's what he's supposed to protect. I

Zain 27:54

I don't like that.

Corey 27:54

that. It's way too close to blue

Zain 27:57

that's on purpose. I think that's on purpose. I don't think they missed it.

Zain 28:02

Great reporting by CNN. But I think there's a really fascinating leadership question here. I want to read you this excerpt from

Zain 28:09

from the CNN reporting, where this Democratic advisor on background tells a journalist, he, in this case, Shapiro, was negotiating the job with her, being Kamala Harris, over their weekend interviews, while Walls was saying, what can I do to help?

Zain 28:25

I find that so interesting from a simple sort of political lesson here, which is, Carter,

Zain 28:32

Carter, which is your preference? I know in this case, we know the outcome, the aw shucks guy that said, what can I do to help won the race, right? But from a pure political strategist, as someone who helps candidates work together on a team, do you like the negotiating one's role, position, clarity? Or do you like the more open-ended, what can I do to be part of a team player, helper, happy warrior, as Tim Walz is being called? And is it to each their own? Or is there a preferred lane in politics? I'm not trying to codify a rule, but I'm going to try to codify a bit of a rule. Like, I'm curious to get your strategist leadership assessment, because there was two different tacks taken here. And if you believe the reporting, which looks first rate to me, you almost conclude that it had a lot to do with who came out on the end of this process. The happy warrior who said, I'm happy to do anything versus the A-list governor who was trying to negotiate what the role of VP would look like.

Carter 29:33

yeah i mean in the a-list governor is now not going to be on the uh presidential shortlist in in 48 years you know depending on how things go um sorry

Zain 29:43

sorry he's not i would

Carter 29:44

would much rather he's not i mean the the shortlist will be the the vice presidential candidate i mean it almost always is uh if you know the only exception of recent time was joe biden who chose not to run The Price president, generally speaking, if Kamala wins, you know, Walls will be the guy next in line. That tends to be the way that it works. So Shapiro put himself in a position where he negotiated

Carter 30:13

negotiated himself out of a job and also, I don't think, recognized the fear. And the fear, of course, is anti-Semitism. You know, you have this problem with anti-Semitic views in the United States and Canada and around the world that are growing and growing day by day. You know, having a Jewish vice presidential candidate has only happened once before in history. That was Al Gore choosing Joe Lieberman.

Carter 30:43

That didn't work out. Well,

Corey 30:46

don't think that didn't work out because of his religion. It

Carter 30:49

It turns out it didn't work out because they can't count in Florida. But nonetheless, it didn't work out, Corey. They stopped counting

Carter 30:57

Yeah, I mean, you can do what you want to do. But, you know, that didn't work out.

Carter 31:03

And I think that anti-Semitism is a hell of a lot worse today than it was then.

Carter 31:09

Hell of a lot worse.

Zain 31:11

Corey, I've changed my mind. I am looking for a codified rule on this. Happy warrior who's happy to do whatever, is part of a team, or someone who's wanting to understand clarity, not a bad thing to want, in the job that is being asked of you. Two different approaches, one outcome that we know of, sample size of one, maybe not. You've got probably additional sample sizes since I'm asking you to codify a rule. Your thoughts on this as a strategist and someone who works with political leaders.

Corey 31:38

it's just it depends on how much they need you and how much you need them and in some ways this is negotiation 101 right shapiro went into it as a negotiation and to be fair to him i

Corey 31:52

don't think that's a bad thing to do you're talking about the vice presidency which is a job that has

Corey 31:59

tasks underneath it it's casting the tie-breaking vote in the senate end of list everything else is based on what the president asks you to do, right? And

Corey 32:07

And maybe Shapiro didn't want to be a VP with nothing to do. He's the governor of a pretty big state. He's got a big future in front of him. Maybe he doesn't want to sit there on the shelf, or even worse, be relegated and not get that nod in four years. Maybe he was trying to pull out some of that. And maybe that's smart, right? Certainly, I think it's a pretty standard tactic to show that you're not so over eager that you you know you want to you want them to kind of chase you this is in negotiations this is a dating standard recruitment

Corey 32:38

the other challenge though is you do need to think about it in terms of negotiation and what the what your counterparty is thinking about and

Corey 32:45

and if you're kamala harris and you're sitting there you know we talk about batman right best alternative to a negotiated agreement you're negotiating with with Shapiro, your walkaway position is walls. You don't need to negotiate at all, right? And so if you're in that and you've misread it, and it's not a question about having a sincere conversation, and maybe the tone is a little off, maybe it seems a little bit too transactional because of those negotiating components, well, maybe she says, you know what? I'm not getting a good feeling here. I'm going to go with the guy who says he'll do anything, right? Who doesn't want the guy who says he'll do anything? thing now maybe she'll regret that down the road maybe Shapiro would have been the smarter choice down the road we don't know today although certainly early early scores are good for her choice right but it's a very interesting move that he did to negotiate knowing that there was another person on the short list right there like that kind of negotiation that kind of hardball often happens once they've already extended the offer and now you're talking terms now

Zain 33:48

now you're talking what's

Zain 33:48

what's my comp sort of thing with the packets you've

Corey 33:51

you've already taken a step towards me it's harder for you to back out further that's when you start talking about what kind of vice president you're going to be so i do think that maybe he put the cart before the horse here but that's based on some very limited reporting i

Corey 34:04

i don't want to yeah

Carter 34:05

yeah it's kind of speculative yeah let the reporting

Zain 34:08

be what it is um though i do think it is quite solid from from you know uh how it's being shared online by journalists and such. But Carter, is there a lesson here? Like, let me ask for some clarity. Is there like a crystallized lesson for someone in and wanting to pursue this line of work with this example that's happened right now?

Carter 34:30

I think there's a lesson for the leader. I mean, I know, take the one who's offering to help you, who's offering to be a teammate. mate don't

Carter 34:38

don't take the person who's who's offering to uh

Carter 34:41

uh you know who who wants to negotiate take the person who's always who's offering to be a team a

Carter 34:47

a teammate that's the way that i would play this um i remember can't

Carter 34:52

can't that lack of clarity bite

Zain 34:53

bite you bite you in the ass down the road that love that but

Carter 34:55

but you're the boss you get to be you get to declare the clarity later um you're the boss man like you're the person in charge i mean we we wanted uh allison redford not to negotiate with um with

Carter 35:07

with Horner and uh and she did and Horner turned out to be a giant pain in Redford's ass uh but Manmeet Bhullar just said how do I help put me in whatever ministry you need me in right and he was great just

Carter 35:22

just great you know so he you know maybe not the the all-star minister but certainly the minister that we went to to get shit done and

Carter 35:32

are the relationships you you want you want a group of people who just get shit done and it sounds like walls is going to be one of those guys who just get shit done cory

Zain 35:40

cory what's what's the lesson here if you were to you know look at this scenario and impart some wisdom on someone who's wanting to enter the political fray yeah

Corey 35:49

politics is not a job in the conventional sense it's not a white collar job where you go in and you negotiate these things and you write up a contract politics is a fucking cult and what the cult leader wants to hear to stephen's point is i will drink that kool-aid you put in front of me you just tell me how much and when right oh the army's coming now is the time let's fucking go and um that

Corey 36:12

that i think was something that perhaps shapiro i

Corey 36:16

think he misplayed his hand i do think he misplayed his hand based on the reporting that's available because like those are conversations to have after you've gotten them to yes in politics and ultimately what a leader wants to hear is that that you're there with them that you are part of the team that there's a bigger cause that it's not about you

Corey 36:35

know if you're up today you're down tomorrow like that that would be the thing that would stress me out as kamala harris looking at this it would be this idea like oh my god i'm negotiating this right now it seems so contingent if he gets this he's in if he doesn't get this he's not in you don't want that in politics because there are bad days in politics and you want to know somebody is going to stay with you through those bad days we've talked a lot about the increasing importance of loyalty in politics. And this is, I think this is a pretty good conversation about that. Corey,

Zain 37:04

Corey, this may be a cousin to this same topic, but I find it really also quite interesting. Many have touted Shapiro as a number one, that if there was not a convergence around Kamala Harris instantly on the day Joe Biden resigned, that Josh Shapiro could be one of those people that puts their hand up and would have at least a swell, whatever that may mean, of support within the party do

Zain 37:29

you buy the argument that that a number one can't be a number two if they see themselves as a number one right now um

Corey 37:39

and carter same to you in a second i

Corey 37:41

i think if you were pulling that energy out and walking around as though like i could be the boss i literally

Zain 37:47

think josh shapiro brings that energy to everything he does yeah i don't know if you just you might he literally does i'd say i

Corey 37:53

i mean i only know him from the last couple of weeks of veep states here i'm not going to pretend otherwise but certainly

Corey 38:01

you've got to know your role within the system and that that role is not as fluid as you might want it to be and and politics and government these are very command and control environments and increasingly so and you can talk about whether that's great or bad and in terms of a legislature and in terms of the party whip but you are the vice president it's you're the vice president you

Corey 38:23

you you work for for the president, basically. And to suggest otherwise is kind of silly. And so you really need to understand your subordinate role there. And if you can't appreciate that, that you have no source of power besides the president, then

Corey 38:35

then it's probably just heartache, and it's probably best to avoid.

Zain 38:38

Carter, your final thoughts on this, a number one being positioned as a number two when, you know, they tout themselves as being a number one all around. Is that possible? And And what happens when we see that?

Zain 38:52

extrapolate from the Shapiro example, right? Like I'm using it as a very loose singular basis to talk about a broader thing.

Carter 38:59

Every single person who runs for leadership, every person who thinks about running for leadership, every person who puts their name on a ballot has a very special relationship with their own ego. And that relationship is, I am amazing. If only you got to know me. If they lost the leadership, it was never because of what they were saying. It was because they weren't heard. If they won the leadership, then they are, of course, being recognized for the wonders that they are, not because of the vagaries of the electorate. This is a standard thing with politicians. And it's true because I've talked about it a thousand times. You know, you're sitting in McMahon Stadium or you're sitting in Commonwealth Stadium. There's 50,000 people in the stadium. And, you

Carter 39:44

you know, a call goes out on the PA. We need one person to decide for the next four years where these 50,000 people are going to go. And you put your fucking hand up? You put your hand up? What kind of a nutcase are you? Right? That's not a normal thing. And when you're putting your hand up to be the governor of a state, or you're putting your hand up to be the president of the United States, of the 380 million-odd people that are living there, you're going to be the number one? Your

Carter 40:14

Your ego is astounding. So the jump from a significant ego at a governor level to an astounding ego at a presidential level is not that far. are these

Carter 40:26

these egos uh know no bounds and they are almost all number ones they're this idea that you're finding a true number two um you think it

Carter 40:37

so you can think in your heart yeah interesting

Carter 40:40

i think walls has got the same ego that shapiro has it just happens that he he learned an awful lot more being a teacher uh

Carter 40:49

uh than shapiro did in his previous career which i I don't know, because I was only involved in this in the last, oh, a lawyer? Yeah, okay, yeah, there you go.

Zain 40:59

Hey, Corey, okay, two strategy questions I want to throw at you guys. Taking a slight detour down the track of walls. Two strategy questions. Here's the first one. Give me your take on this, Corey. The first vibe fuck-up that happens for these two. so these guys are like the fun aunt and the and the and the the dad joke machine they're they're they're filling out arenas things are happy people are enthused there's gonna be a fuck up at some point i don't know what shape it's gonna take it might be an own goal it might be an oppo story something is going to happen at some time that you know screech music stops for a bit

Zain 41:38

talk to me you don't even have to give me specifics even give me this directionality Is it to come down to earth and then keep going on the land that the rest of us kind of occupy day to day? Or is it to try your level best to keep that music going and re-engineer it? Answer that basic question for me. I know what I'm asking at a very high level, but there's a strategy choice to be made. As soon as the fuck up happens, do you walk on the land that the rest of us do or you try to keep the party going?

Corey 42:06

Yeah, it's, you know, there's that old political adage, don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative.

Corey 42:13

but it's okay to be compared to the almighty if people think that's a natural comp right and maybe you want to let that run for a little by the way how crazy is it we haven't talked about jd vance and we're at minute 42 oh yeah we've been talking about the vice president and jd

Zain 42:25

jd vance is just fucking up at every turn but it's it's yeah keep going yeah

Corey 42:30

and so i i think it's an intriguing question like do you try to move back to that rock star status or do you just say yeah here we are are back on earth and now let's talk about politics as is i

Corey 42:41

think that he's got a couple of advantages here one of them is he

Corey 42:46

he has done a pretty good job of of doing this aw shucks midwesterner thing so part of his brand story can be like aw shucks you know i didn't get that quite right or yeah you know that was where i was before but i've done a lot of growing up and and then even some of the things that i've talked about already here how he went from an a to an f in the nra it's

Corey 43:05

it's so interesting when when carter was talking about playing against type and how that can cut a couple of different ways i was sitting there and i was thinking to myself yeah like one man's iconoclast is another man's hypocrite right it really depends on how you view them here but i think that's also true about changing opinions that's true about even fucking up to a certain point if you're in the right headspace and if it's part of your brand that that you are, you

Corey 43:31

you know, willing to adapt or change, or that you will occasionally make an error, you can weather those things a lot more easily. It also depends on the nature of the fuckup. If it's something that cuts against his brand so ruthlessly, like right now, to use your thing, he's, you know, the pun dad, you know, he's the guy who's throwing out a joke a minute.

Corey 43:51

If there was a story that came out that Walls was, I don't know, he was at a Burger King and he's just started shouting at a bunch of teenagers until they cried and then threw his american size two liter coke in their face and said fuck you i'm gonna be vice president obviously that would be no no sorry let's

Zain 44:09

let's just take it back uh he's at a burger king so he says fuck you i'm the king now give

Corey 44:16

give me all the crowns you have in the back i don't give me the one that kid's wearing i don't care if he's gonna cry you give me that crown yeah that's that would be problematic because it cuts against his brand but if it's something that's more on the periphery and part

Corey 44:30

part of his brand story might allow him to weather it and again there's also the the jack layton thing but but

Zain 44:35

but to be clear they're

Corey 44:36

they're just being mean to him

Zain 44:37

him they're choosing to ride this vibe train together right

Zain 44:40

right so it's a walls harris thing right she is doubled down on the party i

Zain 44:44

i like and i say like not the democratic party the party like she's doubled down on vibes as he's yeah yeah as you've said you know you've

Corey 44:50

you've got some people in the corner saying we all got to work tomorrow and then your buddy walls shows up with a keg and And you're like, we're

Zain 44:58

Yeah, yeah. She has made an explicit choice that that's the tone of what the next 91 days, at least, they're going to try and park to make. Carter, same question to you.

Zain 45:09

When that fuck up happens, do you try to keep the party going or do you walk on earth and kind of deal the hand or play with the hand that you've been dealt?

Carter 45:19

I mean, it's hard because you're asking a hypothetical about what type of fuck up. and the the type of fuck up will dictate the outcome um

Carter 45:27

um you know i i suspect though that if the fuck up comes relatively quick the vibes will carry it if the fuck up comes really close to the end um it may be that the cake is already baked um but where i think it's really going to be dangerous is somewhere between the end of the the convention uh and the because the convention won't be a fuck up because it's it's too heavily scripted so the beginning of the or the end of the convention to mid-september let's call that the danger zone where people's minds could still be changed and um

Carter 46:04

you know the outcome could be shifted but even then i

Carter 46:07

i gotta be honest i mean i'm not sure i can see anything uh messing with his vibes and uh we should probably note that cory so we can play that back when it does go horribly wrong yeah no absolutely

Zain 46:19

want you want to say it as a complete sentence just just so we can have it yeah let's get some clean audio on that yeah let's go let's go i can't see

Zain 46:24

no hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on carter

Zain 46:30

okay go yeah i'm

Corey 46:35

here's the thing we talked about this either it was last step or the one before there's this hollywood element to it and at the time i said oh it's It's just so cinematic. People doubt you. Your mentor stumbles. You step up and you slay the dragon, I think. I said something to that effect. But part of the long form of that story is the hero falls and the hero rises. And there are challenges along the way. And if everybody is in that mindset, like we are making fucking history right here. And if we're playing this story the way it seems to be playing right now, you

Corey 47:05

you can write a couple of fumbles into that without breaking your campaign.

Zain 47:08

Second question, strategy. Corey, I'll start with you again on this one.

Zain 47:13

how do you take vibes and convince people that they have to work?

Zain 47:18

That vibes alone will not necessarily win us this thing. And your strategy answer might be, in fact, you don't. Vibes alone could win us this thing, that it could be a pure air war, how we feel, and that will galvanize people to the polls. But if you're a strategist helping this campaign, this wave, how

Zain 47:37

how are you taking what you're seeing and converting that energy energy and enthusiasm into a different type of energy, more conventional energy and enthusiasm that involves the political work. Give me some of your building blocks. Well,

Corey 47:52

where machine comes into play, right? You want to, we always talk about riding the wave. And so here you go, you got a fucking wave. Where's your surfboard? Yeah.

Corey 48:01

What are you going to ride on it? And so you need to have the systems in place. You need to have that enthusiasm that bubbles into, well, I'm going to donate, become part part of a funnel the volunteering actually gets picked up very quickly people get put to work they get paired with a system that is making use of them and not just grinding them down to a nub but increasing and maintaining that excitement along the way and and there are just big machines in politics i think everybody knows that but there is a place for the operations manager at this point using that term broadly this is where you want to make sure everything is just humming coming moving along the first time somebody comes out they're going to be a little less durable than the 12th so you want to make sure that first time volunteer is paired up with paired up with bobby and bobby's a laugh bobby is so good you know you hit the doors with bobby he's going to have those little little whiskey bottles there he's going to offer you a nip you know bobby's fun you know we're talking about bobby kennedy is this no

Corey 49:01

think i just went into fun bobby from friends you remember that season i don't know no

Carter 49:06

no no one remembered that

Carter 49:07

that yeah no everyone

Corey 49:07

everyone did i was probably too busy bearing a bear cup at central park then yeah point being you want to think about these things and just have really tight smart well thought out systems that are moving people through it at the speed uh that they can and with

Corey 49:23

with kind of the comfort and guardrails that they need depending on where they are in that system you

Zain 49:26

you know carter there's there's the there's the the The inverse of this question, and I think you and I have both been on the other side of this, which is we've talked on the show quite a bit around the mechanisms and how to take the wave and convert it into energy, as I just did for Corey. I want to ask you a slightly different question.

Zain 49:44

What do you do with too much enthusiasm?

Zain 49:48

I think right now the Harris campaign might actually have the opposite problem, where too many

Zain 49:53

What a fake problem

Corey 49:55

no. Is it fake? You tell me. Yes, it is. Because effectively

Zain 49:58

effectively using people to their max capacity before that enthusiasm wanes, I think is actually like a problem that campaigns can face if they're not structured the right way. You've

Carter 50:09

You've got to make 300

Carter 50:10

300 million phone calls. And I'm not exaggerating. How do you get people into place? What do you need to

Carter 50:18

just got to cut more lists. That's all you need to do. I mean, the volunteers that are coming in aren't all going to be saying, I want to be part of the Harris strategy team. You've got an election machine that has so many different levels of Democratic races that are being run. You know, it's not just the presidential. You've got people that can activate these people, you know, for Democratic mayor, Democratic congressperson, Democratic governor, Democratic senator. I mean, there's so many different ways to activate these folks. It doesn't all have to happen in the seven swing states. There is a tremendous amount of opportunity to add these people in. And I'll tell you something, Zane. One of the greatest ways that enthusiasm shows up is

Carter 51:04

is in cash. And when you raise $310 million in July, that buys you a lot of operatives to make sure that the enthusiasm is maximized. That is a big, big chunk of money. Corey,

Zain 51:22

Corey, tell me about

Zain 51:23

fake bullshit problem I've introduced. It's a fake bullshit

Corey 51:26

bullshit problem. It's an optimization problem, right? If you're not using somebody to their full effect, that's not likely going to quote unquote hurt your campaign. It's not as though somebody will say, oh, they didn't soak every last bit of money and effort out of me, right? It'll just sort of be floating out there as a thing that's been not used to full advantage. And I

Corey 51:46

I don't know. I mean, there will certainly be people who are like, I called. They never called me back. that's a bit of a bummer but i doubt it's going to like rocked him to their core and i think even a halfway as competent campaign will avoid those particular challenges but one of the things about enthusiasm which is i think scary for campaigns is often what happens is it propagates a bunch of activity that wasn't directed on your behalf you

Corey 52:09

didn't do it like they're just going out and they're doing i gotta tell you zane you just you came off this nenshi campaign and i'll I'll tell you, the day I was like, well, this is probably over, was after Nahed's launch, I was just at work. And people, like not necessarily even colleagues, just walking around. Like I work at a university. I could hear just random conversations about, did you hear Nahed Nenshi's in? Did you know you can just buy a membership by going to Alberta NDP? Like this was just fucking happening. Like I've never, I never see that. People don't talk about the mechanics of buying a party membership randomly out when you're at the grocery store. And you were hearing that when Naya Nenshi was in. And I'm sure it was a little bit unnerving for you because they didn't all go through your portal and you didn't know where they were. But that was fucking happening. And you're going to have similar things without that membership at the end occurring across the United States. You're going to have family dinners where the daughter is really excited about walls. And, you know, the sun was just door knocking for the Harris campaign out in Pennsylvania. Him and his buddies went down for the weekend. You know, this is going to start happening and it's going to propagate activity.

Corey 53:20

The other example I'll have is also a Nenshi one. When he first won, I

Corey 53:24

I remember talking to my mother who I

Corey 53:27

I don't, you know, she's just like, I guess I'm going to vote for Nahed Nenshi just because everyone's talking about him. Like, what a buzz. How crazy that all is.

Corey 53:34

It just happens that way. So, I don't know, like, you

Corey 53:38

you want to optimize it, but it being there and you not having the surfboard ready doesn't make the wave any less real.

Zain 53:46

Let's move it on to our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, we've got so many things to talk about in this second. I'm excited. It's a bit of potpourri. Are you in or out on the political strategy of Trump pulling out of the ABC debate with Kamala Harris? he's proposing an alternative one on fox from a pure political strategy perspective in his and the gop shoes in

Carter 54:09

mean this makes tremendous amount of sense i mean he was going to lose that debate 100 times out of 100 uh by putting it over on fox the you know kamala is now in a position where she's going to have to choose whether or not she wants to even go on that network and i mean at this stage she's riding such a high i'd be like inclined to say yes but um i hope uh cooler heads prevail and and they keep her out of uh the fox network but uh uh you know it's exactly what needs to happen you think you think her her

Zain 54:40

her staying out of fox is is the right strategic move that she shouldn't try to buddha judge this and try to go into to to their their home and do something about it when

Carter 54:50

when pete buda just goes on fox what's at stake

Carter 54:54

not a fucking thing right

Carter 54:55

right and so you know we see all the highlights of his good ones i mean i don't know maybe he's got some bad ones we don't see any highlights from but the the kamala harris going on there and fucking up nah

Carter 55:07

nah i wouldn't do it it doesn't make sense and you got the easiest out out in the world it's fox fucking news it's fox phone news like it's not even real we can't possibly uh go on a state and on a network that's paying out 700 million dollars to dominion

Zain 55:26

cory what's your take in or out on trump from a pure political strategy level uh pulling out of the abc debate and and then proposing one on on fox as an alternative i

Corey 55:39

it's great i mean I don't like Donald Trump. But of course, this is exactly how you pull out of a debate. We had this conversation a couple of months ago, you just create a bunch of conditions on the debate where it's your opponent who has to say no. So effectively, that's what he's trying to do. And

Corey 55:54

of course, he's doing it in a moment where a lot of people are calling bullshit on it. But he now has the talking point that he needs, he can say, I didn't back out. In fact, I wanted a big crowd, I wanted Americans to be there to hear this debate. And she said, No, she's scared to face you she's fine sitting there with a couple of reporters in a room she is scared to face you she's scared to face me she's scared to face you and again

Corey 56:19

again a lot of people are going to call bullshit on this doesn't really matter he's now got the ability to walk away from it what will be interesting is if he starts to really solidify his his uh laggard status in the polls does

Corey 56:34

does he does he break does he say fuck i gotta shake this up i gotta have the debate i gotta have the moment and come crawling back to the abc debate and

Corey 56:41

and the other thing is i don't

Corey 56:44

don't know if enough people are talking about i don't 100 know this but i'm pretty sure the terms of the abc debate where they were going to invite anybody who was over 15 in the polls like it wasn't specific to biden and trump it was because if robert kennedy was over 15 he was going to be allowed in there too so it's a bit of like epic

Corey 57:04

epic bullshit that he's suggesting that harris is somehow illegitimately there at the abc debate and

Zain 57:09

and cory i'm going to stick with you for for our next one uh let's do you know a lot can happen in a couple of weeks right now we've seen that uh understatement of of the month uh

Zain 57:19

uh three weeks ago uh trump named uh jd vance yeah

Corey 57:26

do you want to give him a letter grade on

Zain 57:27

on how his performance um thus far is is is going for for young jd uh just dance vance as his full name is uh

Corey 57:36

uh i i feel like i'll give him a d but that's like a charity d i don't i actually don't know what he's done well on i'm just going to assume there are parts of the internet that love him and there are parts of the mega universe that are thrilled with him but

Corey 57:51

he he doesn't really provide a swing state he's from ohio that's going to be republican for sure it has been recently

Zain 57:57

recently absolutely yeah he's

Corey 58:00

he's written about small town america

Corey 58:05

maybe you can argue that that's part of the overall midwest strategy but now you've sort of been blocked by walls right who definitely has a stronger claim to being from small town america here his policy is toxic his commentary about everything is toxic and people are just throwing these things up left right and center he's become a punch line walls today made a joke about uh it was pretty good it was a pretty good joke i think it would have been better if he didn't like sit there and be like yeah

Zain 58:34

that was a great joke after and basically that

Corey 58:36

that was such a dead thing

Zain 58:37

thing to do yeah it was

Corey 58:38

was such a dead thing to do but he said he's gonna debate jd vance as as long as he gets off the couch you know like if we could just get him off the couch that's so good that's such a good joke and uh and the fact that everybody in that arena got the joke because people have been calling jd vance a couch fucker for two weeks is is incredible so

Corey 58:59

so yeah i mean i think the d feels really charitable but you know i'm a charitable guy uh

Zain 59:06

uh carter there's something that jd vance wants to give the d2 and it is that couch um the

Zain 59:11

the the overall letter grade for one just dance vance that

Zain 59:16

that is actually his real full name i'm

Carter 59:18

i'm gonna have to give him probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 45 percent i just think that he's he's he's he's struggled to uh to get over the line he's he's he's he's pushing and pushing but he just can't get there uh and uh that's really disappointing yeah

Zain 59:36

yeah hey cory uh political slogans actually you know what carter let me start with you on this one are you in or out on on the new um harris walls slogan when we fight we win what

Zain 59:50

what do you think about this and and and you can spend some time deconstructing it if you want you can give me like a guttural emotional response there's like a pugilism to it there's a political viability to it um so there's the fight element there's the win element um it's got some of the political raw ingredients i know you're not a slogan guy like you've historically said i don't like slogans you're not but

Zain 1:00:15

deconstruct and or just give me an assessment on this one and and with some rationale from your strategy i

Carter 1:00:21

i think it's way

Carter 1:00:22

way too fucking literal um

Carter 1:00:24

um i'm worried about fights everywhere uh i don't think that we need to talk about when we fight we win and i think that there was uh there's a naturally like you mean

Zain 1:00:32

mean literal but not like metaphorical literally you mean like this literal literal yeah

Carter 1:00:38

and and i also think that there's a another one uh another slogan that has just been

Carter 1:00:45

been naturally grabbed onto by the population that needs to be focused on and that is uh not going back yes

Carter 1:00:52

we're not going back and

Carter 1:00:54

and and i think that that is you

Carter 1:00:56

you know i can't tell you how many political parties you know like the municipal political parties in in in bc you know all wind up naming themselves forward right forward forward forward you know surrey forward vancouver forward delta forward forward anybody forward and not

Carter 1:01:14

not going back captures all of that forward energy but it is unique to kamala harris and i think that that's a a much much stronger slogan cory

Zain 1:01:24

cory when we fight we win in

Zain 1:01:27

in or out well

Corey 1:01:29

well it's obviously for for the base because it's about the base right and it is part of that vibe

Corey 1:01:36

vibe thing you've been talking about right it speaks to enthusiasm it's this idea that That you just got to get people off the couch and then you're going to win. Like you just need them out there on the doors. And so I guess I get it as long as it's targeted. But I always worry about a slogan like that bleeding out into the broader world and having some of the effects that Stephen talked about in this notion of fighting. And it kind of undercuts this argument that you are doing it for America and Americans. And, and so I do also like the ones that are more targeted about what you're trying to do for people, but I get it as long as it's carefully targeted there.

Corey 1:02:15

As a bit of an aside here, I wanted to see if this was in broad use on their website, which it's not, but how

Corey 1:02:23

how minimalist have websites become in political campaigns? Holy cow, it's crazy. But we can

Zain 1:02:29

can do an entire website review now that these things are getting baked. I do wonder if the Harris-Wallace one is going to remain as minimal or is this just a byproduct of the speed and

Zain 1:02:44

and frankly of a singular conversion metric, which is money, right? Right. These websites are pretty much just, you know, elaborate donate pages, the best copy, the best images, the best video to get you to donate even a small percentage more than you would have at a mass scale is pretty much what these things are built for these days. But we can have that conversation. Corey, later on, I'm going to stick with you on this one. In or out, Corey, the

Zain 1:03:10

the northern migration of

Zain 1:03:15

We are seeing it in our politics. The Tim Walz line is now being applied by liberals, I believe by a few new Democrats on the federal level to describe Pierre Polyev. He's a weird. He's also weird. Cringeworthy, strategic, doesn't

Zain 1:03:30

doesn't really matter, I guess, because question, Corey, is in or out for

Zain 1:03:34

for Corey Hogan? I

Corey 1:03:36

I mean, I'm out. I was not really that in the United States. I said it's something that I'll see how it plays out here. I'm not convinced it's having any material effect, although it does seem to get under Donald Trump's skin. And so maybe that's all it needs to do here. But it just

Corey 1:03:53

just seems kind of pathetic and me too-ish and little brother-ish with the Canadian co-opting of it. Like, it's just like, come on, guys. You're so out of ideas.

Corey 1:04:07

It's been a joke for weeks here that it's after years, we finally got into weird in the United States to talk about these weird people. And now the Canadian politicians are thinking, yeah, actually, let's use that too. That'll

Corey 1:04:18

That'll turn it around. that'll make it all work for us here it won't it's not going to work it just makes you look even more bereft of notions as to how you should run this country if you're looking south and you're saying the import we need is weird you're

Corey 1:04:33

you're doing it wrong just stop carter

Zain 1:04:36

carter you in or you out on the northern migration of weird i'm

Carter 1:04:41

i'm totally out i think that these things have a moment they They have a location. They have a time. And Canada is not the moment, the location, or the time.

Zain 1:04:51

Well said. There you go. Stephen Carter, final question.

Zain 1:04:57

Kamala Harris picking Tim Walz as her vice presidential selection?

Zain 1:05:07

Thank you. Thank you, Carter. You want to add any more words to that?

Carter 1:05:12

No, there's no more words to be added.

Zain 1:05:14

Damn near perfect. It's pretty good. Corey, good episode title.

Zain 1:05:18

We'll never use it, though. No, no, no. Corey is the panel of one for episode titles. Corey Hogan finishes off on this particular

Zain 1:05:27

particular segment. Overrated or underrated? The pick of Mr. Tim Walsh, Governor Tim Walsh, as a VP pick for the Democrats.

Corey 1:05:36

I think it's a fine pick. I personally think it's pretty great because I'll know the vice president of the United States if Stephen wins this in November. But I think

Corey 1:05:46

think it's overrated. We do know historically vice presidential candidates don't have a huge effect on the ticket. I don't know if we have any real reason to believe that's going to change besides this moment of enthusiasm. It does allow her to propel those vibes you've been talking about a little bit further. But will it fundamentally reshape the race? I know he's from a blue state. He is popular. He's doing the first rule of vice presidential picks, which is doing no harm. And that's great because we've seen the alternative with J.D. Vance, who is every day there's a new thing coming up that shows what a shitheel he is. But yeah,

Corey 1:06:24

I think it's got to be overrated simply because right now you would think that he was just selected to be president of the United States the way the way everybody online is talking about him. We're

Zain 1:06:33

We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1818 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velgey. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Tim Walsh, and we'll see you next time.

Transcript