Episode 1862: Dead Wallenda

Annalise 0:01

Welcome to The Strategist, episode 1862. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil, and with you, as always, Stephen Carter and Zain Velji. What a voice

Carter 0:11

to hear on the other end of the microphone. It's

Annalise 0:13

It's me. I'm back. You guys are here. Corey is not. How are you?

Carter 0:18

Well, we're good. I mean, we're missing Corey a little bit. I mean, not a lot, but a little bit. Just a tiny bit.

Carter 0:24

I'm hoping that Zain can fill it in and really just kind of, you know, go on and on and on today. It's kind of my... Corey is not

Zain 0:30

not is a statement we're going to be using quite often in the next couple of weeks. Like Corey is not a

Zain 0:35

a cabinet minister or Corey is not going to win. Like these are the statements that I'm really looking forward to. Corey's not going to win.

Zain 0:45

I'm just I'm trying to light a fire. I don't know if you know this, but the guy does calls you every day, tells you how good things are going. So let him light a fire.

Carter 0:55

he's pretty, pretty pumped. We keep sending him to the good areas though To go door knocking and stuff Yeah

Zain 1:01

Yeah I have no idea what the campaign is doing That's what you know Carter Maybe Annalise you do too But I need to let people know that Corey's not

Zain 1:09

It's a statement that I'm going to put out there in the universe Just

Zain 1:12

see how it ages Bring

Zain 1:15

him down to earth a bit You

Annalise 1:16

You want to add anything to that there Stephen Carter? No because it's

Carter 1:19

it's starting to get into prediction land And everybody knows how I run in predictions So good at predictions I'm helping you out I'm

Carter 1:27

you out. See, I say

Zain 1:28

is not. You say Corey is. Guess what happens?

Carter 1:31

What happens? Corey is not. Corey

Zain 1:33

not, which is, Carter, do the math. I don't even know what to do.

Zain 1:38

It's very simple. I don't even know what

Carter 1:38

what to do. Put

Zain 1:39

Put a prediction out there. Just put a prediction. You can put a prediction out there. Be level-headed about this.

Carter 1:44

Do it. Here's what I don't understand.

Carter 1:47

Here's what I'm seeing. I'm seeing a very good campaign out of Corey Hogan land, which he needs more volunteers for. You're a part of the campaign.

Zain 1:53

campaign. You are a part of the campaign. You can't just be like, I'm seeing a good campaign out of Corey Hogan land. At least credit Corey Hogan.

Carter 2:00

I'm also seeing the worst campaign in the history of mankind out of Jeremy Nixon.

Carter 2:05

I don't see any movement on signs. We don't see door knocking. We don't run into them. We ran into Kira Gunn the other day.

Carter 2:13

Was that her name? Kira Gunn?

Carter 2:14

Yeah. That is such

Zain 2:15

such a fucking great name.

Zain 2:18

I have to say, it's a great name. It's like Kira Gunn. It's like Kira Gunn.

Zain 2:22

Yeah. And then you're like, oh, you must be running for the PPC. see no that's your ndp

Annalise 2:26

candidate the ndp so

Annalise 2:27

what's your prediction steven carter right

Carter 2:30

right now i think that we're in very good shape and likely to win okay

Annalise 2:33

okay on on the record you're putting that out on the record on the record wow

Zain 2:38

wow yeah i am strategically trying to light a fire and you here are just saying he's gonna win well

Carter 2:44

well my problem was that annalise asked me and she tricks me right like when she asked me she's all polite and shit it's

Carter 2:51

it's just it sets the wrong tone on the podcast You're not used to polite. That's a trick.

Zain 2:56

I did talk to him about if the podcast had brought people out. It turns out it has, Carter. Is that actually true or is he fucking with me? Oh, it's like

Carter 3:03

like significant numbers. We had more door knocks on Saturday. We set a record for door knocks for the entire country of Canada for the Liberal Party. Carter,

Annalise 3:17

How? Because of the podcast?

Zain 3:21

little door knocking like the Liberal Party of Canada does?

Carter 3:24

does? No, because we had a huge turnout on Saturday. Like hundreds of people came out. It was unreal. Carter, this is 100% true. This

Carter 3:33

This is 100% true. People, it appears. Are you sure you want to put

Zain 3:37

put this out? You want to put this out like 10 days to go?

Carter 3:42

listen to the podcast. I'm shocked as well. I'm shocked as well. I thought

Zain 3:47

thought there was no loyalty. Carter.

Zain 3:50

let's say. I get that part, But you putting out the part about the

Zain 3:54

the prediction and then secondly, being like the greatest liberal door knocking day of all time.

Zain 4:00

I don't know, Carter, if we may have to say like a negative thing about Corey just to even the

Carter 4:05

Don't get me wrong. I'm taking full credit. It's all because of me.

Carter 4:08

good. Yeah, sounds good. It has nothing

Annalise 4:11

Carter, just remind us how you did on your last election there.

Annalise 4:17

Yeah, at least you were

Carter 4:18

were not here. Please go ahead and ask him how he did. Just remind

Annalise 4:22

remind us. It just happened? How did you do?

Carter 4:25

We did really poorly. We did super bad. Sixth and seventh out of three candidates. And

Annalise 4:32

predict you would do this?

Carter 4:37

There was no prediction.

Carter 4:40

Corey's not just listening to this and cringing.

Carter 4:45

Corey's actually taking the time to listen to this? His family gets back from Japan today. He doesn't give a shit about us. I would bet money Corey Hogan will listen

Annalise 4:54

listen to the first five minutes of this. Corey

Zain 4:56

Corey Hogan is not not listening to this, as

Carter 4:58

would say. Hey, Corey, get out there and door knock. You tell him to use

Zain 5:02

use this as your channel to talk. Corey, door knocking is overrated. Just stop door knocking. It's a dumb, dumb thing to do. Okay. Guys,

Annalise 5:07

Guys, let's chat about the debates. We've debate week. We've had two debates, a French one on Wednesday and English one last night on Thursday. I've got a few different angles of debate talk that I want to get into. First one, just

Annalise 5:23

just general, general vibes. How did they do?

Carter 5:28

Oh, vibes. How did they do Stephen Carter? I thought that Mark Carney was boring, which might be good, but I thought he was boring. I thought that Pierre Polyev did fairly well and almost almost to the line of good, very well, but fairly well. And I thought that Jagmeet Singh was was just terrible. Blanchett lived in there somewhere. But when he said he didn't want to be prime minister, it becomes easy to not really listen to him.

Annalise 6:02

So Zain, is boring good? What's your general assessment of how it went last night?

Zain 6:08

boring is fine if you're Carney. It's absolutely fine. The way I'd analyze Carney's debate performance, and in fact, this is my wife who kind of said this, and I think it's absolutely correct, which is he looked less like someone who was actively at a debate and debating others versus the guy that was chairing a debate. All the attacks came to him, and rather than trying to fend them off, he reconciled them. He pretty much said, I like this point. This one is dumb. This one is stupid. Four points. Here's the solution to all of them, what's the next question? It looked like what a really experienced board chair would be doing at like a board meeting versus like a candidate debating three other candidates. And you'd think that that would actually be a losing strategy. But in this case, when we're looking for consensus, unity, someone to lower blood pressure, really not really caring as a country who came up with which idea, when, where, and how, the guy who can kind of say, say, Jagmeet is right. Pierre makes a good point on Iran. I will work with Quebec and then just kind of reconcile and say, this point doesn't make sense to me. I need to examine it more. That's actually kind of the vibe Mark Carney has been building as a candidate. And it's the vibe and energy brought to the debate. So in some ways, he

Zain 7:20

he was boring. In other ways, you could look at what I just said. And if you agree with and say, he just won that debate just by being the guy that reconciled all those things. Now, on pure debate metrics, I think Pierre Polyev was fantastic. I think Pierre Polyev last night was really good. I think he dialed in on his emotional answers. I think he dialed in on his

Zain 7:40

his propositional, what he was going to do. A big criticism of Pierre Polyev was not just vibe and tone, but was like, what the fuck do you stand for? You got to see some clear distinction between him and Carney around what they stood for. What I found fascinating was just if you look at the focus on energy development projects last night, I took, I don't know, like maybe 40 minutes of the two hours, Carter, between the first segment and then the actual dedicated energy segment. And both men were talking about reaching the same outcome, but I thought were really substantive around how to get there. And I frankly thought Jagmeet was not just entertaining, but quite helpful to his cause to be like, as these two fuckers talk about development projects, are you forgetting about climate change? Are you forgetting about all those things? I thought he was like a positive additive, not a distraction to kind of ground us as Carney and Pierre went down the policy rabbit hole on how you would fast track one approved development projects in this country. So on the overall basis of it, my argument would be Carney chaired a debate effectively well. Pierre debated effectively well. Jagmeet made a case for his cause, which he has not been able to do over the last number of weeks. And let's not forget, for Jagmeet Singh, it's about winning two to five percent more back of his voters. It's not a huge task. It's a hard task. I'm not saying it's not. It's an easy task, but he needs to win that two to five percent back.

Zain 9:04

Blanchet was like entertaining non-factor to me in both debates, which is an issue for him for the first one, because he had to be a factor on the first one. It seems like the consensus is that he was not. Of course, I'm not Quebecois. I'm not French. I'm not from Quebec. so my analysis of that and

Zain 9:21

and how it plays is like useless it's like fucking useless who cares about what i have to say my

Zain 9:27

yeah okay well thank you carter um yeah my biggest concern at least you might be getting to this is what

Zain 9:32

what the fuck around the debate commission what the fuck around polling we'll get into that

Zain 9:38

and okay so let me let me skip out all the all the sort of post ezra levand stuff but like pulling the greens with 12

Zain 9:44

12 hours notice when you knew this for weeks if not and let's be charitable a week is insane and then all the other stuff with ezra and the tpa and and and the third party stuff which which we can get into really

Zain 9:58

really just blew this thing up and uh yeah like the

Zain 10:03

the on-stage performances i thought were quite good and one final shout out i thought pagan was fantastic carter like i steve pagan has been earnest for fucking 50 years and it's been kind of annoying in between but man did i think he was fantastic i know there's some mixed reviews online fuck that you can't do a better job than i think pagan did last night because he was earnest he was honest he was he could watch the clock well and he knew where to where to poke i thought he was great man so

Annalise 10:30

so zane who who would you say were winners who were losers it sounds like you were impressed by uh by three

Annalise 10:36

of the four who's

Zain 10:37

who's who's phrasing is this that i'm gonna steal but i was whose ever it is i it might be bruce anderson's which is um or chantilly bears um which is rather than winners and losers i thought this was really about who helped their cause and

Zain 10:50

and i think this might sound pollyannish and like not a political analysis of the situation i think carney helped his cause because

Zain 10:58

because he didn't lose i think pierre helped his cause and i think chugmeat helped his cause the only person who i do not think helped this cause was Blanchette. I

Zain 11:05

I think three out of the four helped their cause rather than hinder it.

Zain 11:08

That would be my takeaway. Outright winner, based

Zain 11:11

based on all of this, probably Carney.

Annalise 11:16

That's a positive assessment from Zane. I mean, it's

Carter 11:20

it's a little sickening how glowing that was. I mean, three

Carter 11:24

three winners out of four. Did

Zain 11:25

Did you not think, no, no, not winners, three people helping their cause, Carney overall winner based on the state of the race. I think that's

Carter 11:31

that's a pretty fair assessment. I think Pierre talked more

Carter 11:32

more to his base than he talked to anybody else i

Carter 11:35

think and i think that i think you're skipping over the the annoying factor uh and pierre pauliev was more annoying and

Carter 11:42

and uh jagmeet singh were more annoying i talked to my mom my mom's birthday today so she had a birthday so i gave her a call this morning asked her what she thought and

Carter 11:52

and she thought pierre pauliev and jagmeet singh were just rude rude

Carter 11:57

who just constantly interrupted and i'm always interested in that feedback because it's one of of the foundations of the debate structure is you know kind of fuck your buddy interrupt mark carney came across as more polite and i saw that a lot on social media how he how polite he was and how you know the the boring critique that i gave was probably not a bad thing for most canadians uh so for me i i would pick one winner uh

Carter 12:23

uh maybe a 1a but i certainly wouldn't go

Carter 12:29

you deliberately don't listen you're

Carter 12:31

winner is mark carney i

Zain 12:34

said the same thing just

Carter 12:36

more robust analysis so robustly what yeah no why why on the same page because carney didn't lose okay

Annalise 12:46

he didn't lose and why why is poly of your one a because

Carter 12:49

because he he got closest to winning he almost won he he could would have won he had some really neat emotion stuff but his his stuff was ultimately he can't stop being pierre poliev and pierre poliev uh two years ago would have won but now hell six months ago would have won but now he just the pierre poliev uh show

Carter 13:14

doesn't play in this marketplace anymore well

Zain 13:17

well well the pierre poliev like challenge was actually fundamentally like kind of like this election, the ground was moving underneath his feet. Because if this was six months ago, he would have come out as Pierre Poliev trying to tear a strip off of everyone on that stage and declare victory. And that's what Canadians would have wanted. That

Zain 13:36

That is what he would have been rewarded for.

Zain 13:39

But the task for Pierre Poliev, especially with the wide gap that he was facing with women voters, was to soften his image, which I guess, and that's a good point, point, Carter, which I guess turns the question back to you, Annalise. When you saw Pierre Poliev, our sample size of one on this show,

Zain 13:55

even if his content, if I agree with Carter,

Zain 13:58

even if I agree with Carter that his content was very much to his base, did you feel

Zain 14:02

feel anything different? Did you sense anything different? And I'm making some assumptions around the ick factor that you have around Pierre Poliev, but did

Zain 14:10

did anything change for you when you saw him?

Annalise 14:12

No, which I think gets into another thing that we're going to get into, which is what is the point of all of this what is the point of debates especially in in today's day and age which is in i'll turn this one to you because i think this is a bit your area of expertise yeah those

Annalise 14:25

those those viral clips those viral moments that

Annalise 14:29

that um that campaigns are looking for that you know you want to get it up right away it's easter long weekend everyone's looking at it on tiktok and instagram do you can you i guess speak to that in general but do you think we saw that in either debate age?

Zain 14:43

No, we didn't. And I think there's two things at play that I think are quite interesting. Number one, we've taken this idea of

Zain 14:52

of taking a two-hour debate and then taking one viral moment, which is what the play was, Carter, when like the internet began. I'm going to talk like an old man here, right? Or like when this concept of organic virality began on a broader sort of digital platform it was about taking two hours condensing

Zain 15:09

condensing it to one moment and saying this is what matters and

Zain 15:13

and i think campaigns have lost the plot which

Zain 15:16

which is what you saw every campaign do is they took the two hours and then they took the 25 most viral moments threw them at the wall and said that was the debate who the fuck does that serve right like the the lack of discipline to be like Like my guy nailed it in this moment and this is the moment I want to almost engineer as going viral versus let me give you 25 mediocre answers to mediocre questions is not the strategy. I feel like campaigns have lost the plot on this, right? It was supposed to be one or two things that define a debate. Rachel Notley in 2015 did not clip 25 moments. They found one that they saw a little bit of buzz on and that was it. Do we remember anything else? No. Is that deliberate? Yes. But these campaigns now are trying to throw shit at the wall, which means they're throwing nothing. It's like if you have 20 priorities, you have zero priorities. And I think that same lesson applies to when you're trying to engineer moments.

Zain 16:14

Carter may disagree. So that's point number one. Point number two. That was point one?

Zain 16:19

Yeah, Carter. I've got substantive fucking things to say. You wanted me to wrap the puck up.

Zain 16:27

Point number two. Everyone knows everyone else is doing this. And last night was really interesting. when someone would get on a roll, especially Pierre Palliev, you could see he did this thing that no other can. There's two things that I noticed, body language wise, that no other candidate did. Thing number one, Pierre Palliev was the best at making a point to someone and then slowly pivoting directly into the camera and then saying the rest of that point as a monologue. Did you guys notice

Zain 16:53

that? He was trained

Carter 16:54

trained to do that. Thing

Zain 16:55

Thing number two that you noticed, Mark Carney made very, very sexy bedroom eyes to Jagmeet Singh every time Jagmeet Singh would address Mark Carney would refuse to make eye contact with Pierre Polyev also deliberate I think those are two body language things that I throw out there as being really fascinating but when

Zain 17:14

when Polyev was going direct to camera about any sort of point crime leadership whatever outside of maybe that moment around his rallies when they asked him like what's the most like biggest regret you have about this campaign Jagmeet Singh Blanchett knew exactly what he's trying to do and watch back they would interrupt him they would try to ruin his clip yeah

Zain 17:35

would they would try to make that let that direct-to-camera monologue look less professional less polished less whatever less ad worthy which i think is the most important thing less ad worthy so they would interrupt him they'd kind of try to get him off track say something ridiculous right try to do that because they know exactly what each other is going to do there

Zain 17:55

there was no viral moment but i also think the campaigns have not tried to engineer the viral moments in the way that they should have. They've lost the plot on that. And now notice what each campaign is doing as everyone tries to get their clips.

Annalise 18:07

Carter, you're shaking your head. Do you want to respond to point one or point two? Well, first of all, Zane had two

Carter 18:11

two points, and that's just ridiculous. And I only have one point. And my point goes like this. I nailed

Carter 18:17

it. Have you ever watched a tightrope

Carter 18:20

tightrope walker going across a canyon?

Carter 18:23

If you've ever watched a tightrope walker going across a canyon and it is exceptionally boring but we all watch why do we watch why do the debates exist because we want to watch someone falls yes

Carter 18:35

yes that's the only reason that the debate exists if someone falls then it becomes interesting until such time as someone falls it's not interesting you talk about a viral moment that the ndp chose in 2015 zine the viral moment was when jim prentice fucked up it

Carter 18:52

was the fall it was the fall and it's john turner when john turner fucks up against brian mulrooney it's the fall it's not the actual debate no one fell yesterday everybody made it across the tightrope across the canyon that's fucking boring we want to see someone get out into the middle have the shaky legs yes yes

Carter 19:12

yes try and balance themselves out and fall to their fucking death that's what we're watching for we're not watching for everybody to make it across the canyon and declare three winners in one honorable mention. That's not what we're watching for. No,

Zain 19:26

No, I agree, but I disagree. I think there's something to be said around what we're looking for is someone to slip up and then engineer

Zain 19:34

engineer the fact that that slip up means that they should be killed and let's euthanize them together, to extend your analogy. And I feel like what campaigns are doing is rather than, the

Zain 19:45

the falls are not going to occur. These people are too good at what they do. too. Even Mark Carney, as a rookie, these people know where the pitfalls are. They've studied on this. Your

Zain 19:55

as a campaign... Yeah, okay. And if it doesn't happen, then your job as a campaign should not be to put out 30 clips and hope that one of them catches fire. It should be to say, here's one fuck-up moment. Mark Carney not knowing that Keystone and TMX are different, throwing out a fucking example, and saying, this actually proves something. It was pretty fucking bad. But the problem is that the CPC have crowded it out with 15 other things.

Zain 20:16

Rather than being like, this guy doesn't have... And I I would much rather take in my bet on one like sort of slip up moment and say this proves something rather than throwing up 30 things. You and I don't disagree that we watch for the same reasons. But more and more, those outright like stabbings or falling off a tightrope are not going to happen in these debates. You've got to pick your strategy correctly and say, what do I want to amplify to 11 rather than just spray and pray, which is what every campaign seems to be doing.

Annalise 20:46

Carter, does everyone not win if no one falls? Like, if the point is for someone to fall, to Zane's point, people are disciplined, people are professional, they're not going to do that. Then, by argument, boring debate, thus everyone won.

Carter 21:01

Yeah, but you can't, everybody can't win. Like, there's an N group out there, and there's N group of undecided voters. And that group of undecided voters, if it splits equally four different ways, then everything

Carter 21:13

everything remains the same. And that everything remaining the same benefits Carney more than it benefits anybody else. You want, you know, if you're the conservatives, if you're the NDP, you need someone to fall and you need to be the beneficiary of that fall. And if it's just, you know, four people made it across the tightrope, isn't that exciting? then this is why we all this is why both zane and i said carney wins because everybody made it across ergo the guy who's in front is still in front this

Zain 21:47

this is why we watched sigmund and freed we wanted to see a tiger rip someone's head off and then and then years later it did

Zain 21:53

was that was that televised carter that's what i or one of the walenda brothers just fall to their death yeah

Carter 21:58

yeah the one walenda's we saw but

Carter 22:00

but we didn't see the tiger sadly unfortunate yeah I like

Annalise 22:04

Carter, what about your, Zane brought in his expertise, your expertise, the theater, the theater background. Talk to us about the body language and the performance of it. Yeah,

Carter 22:15

Yeah, I mean, I think that I quite, I

Carter 22:18

I didn't enjoy Pierre's theater. I found that the theatricality of him, it

Carter 22:24

it just annoys me. I find it's off-putting. It's kind of like me watching Justin Trudeau. Justin Trudeau has certain tics and certain structures. I was

Carter 22:33

going to say the same thing.

Carter 22:36

Yeah. And so it's difficult for me to watch Pierre Polyev. Mark Carney's theater, you know, it just doesn't exist. He hasn't been taught the theatrical elements yet. And I think that goes back to one of the things I think Corey said, which

Carter 22:50

which is if you were going to start training Mark Carney, you're going to get worse before you get better. Yeah.

Carter 22:55

And that is, you

Carter 22:58

you know, that's absolutely not what you want to go through in the election. So, you know, Mark Carney still needs to get some training on how to do these, how to be more engaging in the media and in press conferences and debates.

Carter 23:13

jagmeet singh you know how long has he had to do this zane 20 30 years to figure out how to do this i may have i may

Zain 23:21

may have i may have a divergent i should say rather than conversion opinion on jagmeet jagmeet

Zain 23:27

to me reminds me of every guy i grew up with um

Zain 23:29

um for obvious reasons

Zain 23:33

just plain spoken just like kind of funny straightforward i think his debate performance has always been better than his poll numbers and i think this was no exception i

Zain 23:43

liked what i saw with jagmeet singh i

Zain 23:46

i mean i think he made a case for himself oftentimes when when carney would go down a rabbit hole he'd be like okay but how about this you needed workers to you need like the ndp to remind you about this stuff he's also had some funny moments when pauliev was like how much uh are the steel tariffs and jagmeet said in the corner be like fuck you don't even know what are you talking about i felt like that was like very clear quite

Zain 24:05

quite funny by by jagmeet singh so So I've got a divergent opinion because I know I'm not in the majority about Jagmeet Singh's performance.

Zain 24:13

Does that mean it helps him in the polls? No.

Annalise 24:15

Did he have anything to lose, Zain? Like in terms of him? The

Zain 24:19

The election? Yeah, the election was something. All his supporters, literally every single one of them.

Zain 24:24

I might be the last one. That's even theoretical

Zain 24:29

because a guy named Corey Hogan is running in my writing.

Carter 24:32

Right? Like, so, yeah.

Zain 24:34

yeah. Like, yeah. So he had me to lose. Uh, and, uh, I guess, uh, what did he have to lose? He was much freer and you could tell.

Zain 24:44

So you, you make a good point. Like he,

Zain 24:46

he, he is so close to the NDP floor right now, which

Zain 24:50

which by the way, Carter, I don't even know. Have we realized what the NDP floor is? If we see

Carter 24:54

see some tightening over

Zain 24:55

over the next 10 days, could the NDP, I was talking to Mulcair about this. I'm like, could the NDP floor be five?

Zain 25:01

And I don't think he'd, you

Zain 25:03

you know, complain about me saying this. he's like yeah maybe like around there maybe lower like the ndv floor could be like five to four points man yeah

Annalise 25:12

yeah so did did he have anything to lose like what he didn't he did because

Carter 25:16

because if it's five

Carter 25:17

or four points it's zero seats this is it if you get zero seats i mean if you get less than 12 seats you no longer get your funding true

Carter 25:25

true yeah and that is it's huge epic

Zain 25:27

epic we are in a position that six months ago the question around the liberal party still existing which

Zain 25:34

which is a the question I was circulating on this podcast and other places, being like,

Zain 25:37

guys, if we go now, the Liberal Party's dead. Because the theory was the Liberal Party goes away, Trudeau loses all his seats, they're done, and they don't have a provincial infrastructure across the country, at least a reasonable, robust one like they did 10 years ago, to get back up. You need those provincial infrastructures to get back off the mat. Now we're talking about a similar reality with the NDP, the saving grace for the NDP, and we're projecting into the future a bit. But let's just say they lose party status is that they've got decent provincial infrastructures however

Zain 26:08

most of those provincial infrastructures let's say alberta don't

Zain 26:11

don't want anything to do with the federal ndp they're really trying to tell the ndp to fuck off uh unless you're david eby uh you know most federal most provincial ndp um branches or brethren are telling the federal ndp you got to change your game yes he has his party status to lose i think this is beyond losing his seat he's He's got a lot to lose here.

Zain 26:32

But Jagmeet Singh, last two elections, every time he's had something to lose, he's always come out a winner.

Zain 26:38

And I'm not saying that as like he's going to have it's going to happen this time. I think third time is not the charm. Right. You're smiling.

Zain 26:45

his saving grace last two elections has been holy shit. He went from they go from the the the latent high. Mulcair has that Jagmeet has that half and then comes out with a win with the minority parliament. So he holds the balance of power and then comes out with that same exact copy. Minority parliament celebrates like he's a winner. I think this time it's it's actually going to be fundamentally different. So he's got. Yeah,

Carter 27:10

Yeah, it's going to be the end.

Carter 27:12

It's the end. It's all over, Annalise.

Annalise 27:15

OK, question, though, because Zane brought it up. If it is all over, interesting Alberta question here.

Annalise 27:21

They're already studying whether they should separate. Why not take this as your chance before they're decimated? Take it as your chance. You're not had Nancy say, hey, once

Annalise 27:31

once in a lifetime election, we're endorsing this

Annalise 27:35

this liberal or this liberal or like, why not? Oh, no upside for them. Do the separation now.

Carter 27:40

Just, A, there's not enough time.

Carter 27:43

And B, there's, so there's not enough time, meaning that the impact would be minimal. I mean, you'd get a lot of attention, but you wouldn't necessarily be able to do the full breakaway in the next eight days. So that's not going to work. And secondly, I don't think it's going to give you any long distance lift in the future. So your best bet is to wait, watch the NDP flounder, perhaps disappear at a national level and then become the Alberta Democrats like I've suggested 36 different times on this podcast. But obviously Nahid doesn't listen to the podcast either. And, you know, that's going to be a bit of a problem. Yeah,

Annalise 28:24

Yeah, but what about the fact you've got two very close, like look at the 338 poll in Calgary Centre, Calgary Confed, super close and that NDP of the 4% or 5% would annunciate coming out in two specific writings make a difference in those writings it

Zain 28:39

it wouldn't help him it has to be he has to get something out of it that's like literally associating himself with the liberals is like an official kiss of death it's already the argument that the ucp are making about ninchi gets nothing out of that um and

Zain 28:53

and i don't really know if he care why why would the provincial idp care if they've got like two additional

Zain 28:58

additional liberal seats right like i get it makes sense from like a broader ideological umbrella,

Carter 29:07

Yeah, I think that the NDP seem to think that they're being accused of being a liberal like the liberals is a bad thing. The liberals, you know, the idea of moving to the center, I think, is a very strong push for the New Democrats in Alberta. I think they

Zain 29:23

they can move to the center without being associated with the federal liberals, which is exactly the plan that you would suggest and probably exactly where I Yeah, but that

Carter 29:30

that was the plan that I suggested a long time ago, and it's not actually being ... Okay, sometimes things happen slowly. It might happen in the next year. It might happen in the next year. We'll see. That being

Zain 29:38

I've got this ... I know this isn't the question, but

Zain 29:42

but if the federal NDP lose their status, Carter, the Corey Hogan question is, would someone rebuild that party from the ground up if it died, right? Like a version of that. And I think there is still a case for the federal NDP. If Carney becomes prime minister, he's

Zain 29:57

he's going to move to the right. There's really no one left fundamentally to the left. I think the rebuild for the NDP might be a lot quicker and swifter than people realize. But the short-term pain seems almost inevitable at this point. By short-term pain, I mean the electoral pain that Jagmeet Singh might face in, what, 10 days now.

Carter 30:15

I'm looking forward to his election night resignation.

Annalise 30:19

Is that your prediction, Carter?

Zain 30:21

If he loses his

Carter 30:23

He loses his seat and he steps down as leader that night. Right. I see no point in hanging on. I'm hearing it's

Zain 30:28

good at its seat, too.

Annalise 30:32

Carter and Zane, let's get into this, like, does the debate matter? What's the point? And I'll preface this a little bit. I was a journalist. When I was a journalist, we cared, like, deeply about this sort of thing. You see it.

Annalise 30:45

You saw how many people were there, the coverage, et cetera, et cetera. I had a different experience watching it last night. I was listening because I have a one-year-old and a three-year-old, and it was on at 5 o'clock. It was on at dinnertime. time then i

Annalise 30:56

catching up after like

Annalise 30:57

like what and i think my current experience is probably the same for a lot of people it was like 4 p.m bc time 5

Zain 31:05

5 p.m here yeah i'm in bc right like

Annalise 31:07

like people have kids people have lives it was nice out yesterday it's the the thursday before the easter long weekend uh i guess all that is to say like what what is the point and you've talked about the fall carter and that that's why people are tuning in but for the average person our

Annalise 31:23

our our minds being being changed? What's the point? And people always bring up the undecided. Are the undecided actually watching the debate?

Carter 31:31

No, not necessarily. What they're watching is the stuff that comes out of the debate, the analysis that comes out of the debate. But one of the things that you've touched on, it's the Thursday before advance polls, it's the Thursday before the long weekend.

Carter 31:43

By the way, yeah, people can

Zain 31:44

can vote today, right? Yeah.

Carter 31:46

go vote. Vote early, vote often. but the the the point of putting it into this period is to minimize the impact if things go horribly wrong so the debate commission gets the the the

Carter 31:59

the input from all the different parties and some of the parties would would have wanted it earlier some

Carter 32:04

some of the parties don't want it at all some of the parties you know like uh

Carter 32:07

uh the the liberals would have i'm sure been fine not having a debate at all i'm sure that they pushed it to

Carter 32:13

to a day that it would have the least possible impact impact the

Carter 32:16

the thursday before the long weekend at a time when half of the country isn't isn't going to tune in in the same fashion um you

Carter 32:25

you know i'm sure that they were looking at the the montreal canadians game and saying you know what that's not a bad thing that we're on top of it uh reducing the number of eyeballs that are watching the french language debate uh this it's

Carter 32:38

it's not always about how do we get the biggest audience how do we get this to actually occur sometimes the debate negotiations are, how do we protect ourselves? How are we going to create a hedge where if we do fall

Carter 32:50

and fall to our death or fall to some sort of injury, that

Carter 32:54

that fewer people are watching it? And I think that that's why they pushed it to this week.

Carter 33:00

It should have been last week.

Carter 33:01

It should have been the week before. Week

Zain 33:03

Week three. It should have been a week three exercise. I agree.

Carter 33:06

agree. Yeah. It should be two weeks before election day. That would give time for things Things to kind of settle before the advance polls, you know, people would have time to talk about it, talk about it, because this is really the moment in a campaign, right? There is no other moment. It's not like, you know, someone's announcement at a car factory is going to really shape

Carter 33:28

shape the news for the rest of the campaign.

Carter 33:30

campaign. The debate is the confrontation and

Carter 33:33

and the confrontation is the moment that people

Carter 33:35

people are looking for. so with the confrontation happening only you know the day before advanced polls everybody's trying to minimize it now i'm not sure if if the conservatives were pushing super hard for last week if it were me i would have been same with the new democrats uh but at any rate they wound up holding it uh possibly at the least effective time in part because they wanted to manage the the overall impact of the potential negativity of the debate.

Carter 34:11

Carter, have you, sorry,

Zain 34:11

sorry, I'm going to jump in, but I'm asking a hypothetical question here. But like, have you ever seen someone as lucky as Mark Carney?

Zain 34:19

Like, holy fuck me. Like,

Zain 34:22

Like, fuck me. Like, you could even extend that to the trajectory of his life, and I'm sure there's been, you know, resilient moments, but fuck me. me from

Zain 34:29

from a pure political sense i have this is insanity the fact that like just

Zain 34:34

just everything every bounce everything

Zain 34:37

everything is just i cannot like we're going to spend years analyzing this election and i think people like me are going to relish in the and i'm going to knock on wood before i say this if pure polyev loses we're going to relish in that narrative but

Zain 34:49

but the amount of lucky bounces

Zain 34:51

inadvertent and otherwise that mark kearney has gotten uh

Zain 34:56

uh including this week for debate

Zain 35:00

are you kidding me i think

Carter 35:01

think they pushed for it i think that i mean there's some luck but i think smart people sure

Zain 35:05

sure and i'm going to credit those smart people are soon to be overlords of government but um but but but there is something to be said about that your point though what's the point of these debates there's

Zain 35:19

there's the democratic one which i think kind of opens up the question of the commission and and and my big fuck you to them but

Annalise 35:27

let's get there then zane but

Zain 35:28

but like there is look i'll just quickly add there is a there is a democratic job interview question and i think peyton did a great job in the english debate trying to hold people two hours feet to the fire i think we should have gotten more in the scrum afterwards um we didn't um but that's the true true democratic purpose. The political purpose is really to try to see if there is some sort of like, you know, vulnerability

Zain 35:54

vulnerability in the armor and or quality that has not been exposed through the set pieces over a course of two hours of what is now with increased and enhanced training becomes scripted, but

Zain 36:06

but was traditionally much more improvised, so to speak. So that's

Zain 36:12

of the purpose but yeah like i think that there's there's a few points of fail uh in this debate and i think questions that people will be asking themselves being like should the next one look even remotely like this one timing quantity participants other things well

Annalise 36:27

well in the media aspect so let's get into the debate commission kind of three main things the scheduling and rescheduling um with with the hockey game the green party what do we want to call it disinviting at the last last second essentially and then um this rebel news press conference q a um sort of stuff both french debate and then last night the fact that there wasn't even a q a after um the quote was we don't feel we can actually guarantee a proper environment is what a media were told you know minutes before the q a was supposed to start stephen carter what what is the debates commission doing and uh and should people care yeah

Carter 37:06

yeah i mean people should care um there has has to be some group of people who who have uh control of our elections if you will uh we have a very efficient and effective elections canada that i think is uh stands among the world best for running a free and fair election um i would not put our debate commission necessarily at that high of a level i didn't mind the rescheduling um i thought the rescheduling was fine you know there there's a circumstance where you're going to lose a significant portion of your audience audience rescheduling it by an hour or whatever it was uh i thought it was fine um the disinviting the greens uh they

Carter 37:44

they shouldn't have been invited in the first place also

Carter 37:48

they should never have been invited it's it's um it's a frustration that we have to put the greens up there uh it's a frustration and frankly to me that we put the bloc quebecois up in the english language debate debate.

Carter 38:03

think that we should have them there, but I don't think that they have the internal fortitude to

Carter 38:07

to say, I'm sorry, you're not competing in English Canada. We're not going to put you up in English Canada. You had your French language debate, now fuck off. But the Greens should never have been invited. And the Q&A, frankly, the failure wasn't the second day when they stopped it. The failure was the first day when the rebel got to ask all the questions in english after the french language debate as though they were real fucking media and this this mistake was made um years ago when people started letting the the rebel actually pretend that they were a real media organization they're not fucking journalists they're not journalists ezra levant is a fucking hack he is not a journalist he has stumbled upon a fantastic way to make money.

Carter 38:56

Good for him. He has to sell his soul in order to do it. But nonetheless, he is not a journalist. This is not a journalistic enterprise. And it's just a money-making experience. And the journalists that are in the room that pretend like these people, like True North and

Carter 39:15

and Countersignal and The Rebel, are

Carter 39:18

are in some fashion real journalists. Fuck off. You're bringing down your own demise you're bringing the demise down upon your own heads you guys

Carter 39:27

i'll just leave it there and

Annalise 39:30

zane do you want to jump in do you have uh i

Annalise 39:33

i want to get a little bit into this like the the um the right-wing outlet what what other media should do what leaders should do that sort of

Zain 39:43

of thing but it's

Zain 39:44

it's a bit layered right because you you add a few

Zain 39:49

so the premise is rather the preface i should just say is i want the debate commission to succeed because if the debate commission does not succeed i think what opens up is a world of fucking insanity with like different networks trying to hold different debates fucking right wing debates left wing debates we're going to put pierre pauliev on a stage with maxine bernier whoever the next leaders are they're going to debate the right wing insanity of the world and then we're going to have the the union labor debates with carney and uh you know the left wing part it's just it's it's a world of hurt uh

Zain 40:17

uh what we saw last night on the stage the two hours i thought was actually really good i thought was i think pagan was good i think the leaders were good i listed three out of the four of them helping their cause i

Zain 40:30

think that was good like i think that served the democratic process it may not have like tickled everyone's political fancy and and had people falling to their you know demise but

Zain 40:39

but it was good it was a debate

Zain 40:42

But everything around it, like I'll kind of list, because

Zain 40:45

because Carter and I agree, timing didn't mind that. Green should have never been invited. You knew about this weeks ago. BQ, why are they showing up in the English debate?

Zain 40:55

The stuff with rebel media, though, is interesting because people

Zain 40:59

people are scared of rebel media. That's an ongoing mindset. One of the reasons they're scared of rebel media is because they sue a lot. They're litigious. And

Zain 41:07

one of the reasons that they were able to make an appearance in the last federal election is because they took

Zain 41:13

took the commission to

Zain 41:17

got a question in in 21, I believe, and the commission did not want to take the chance this time to

Zain 41:23

to find themselves in a courtroom with

Zain 41:26

with Ezra Levin and Rebel News, so they handed out the press passes. Rebel News, of course, knowing how, you know, squirmish the commission was, applied for multiple passes, including with their third party registered advertiser, which

Zain 41:39

which is not a media organization, which should, in any given circumstance, even if they were to kind of sue them, be very clear cut that this is not a news organization, but a right wing organization, which was running trucks around like video wall trucks around the CBC in Montreal with like anti- Carney messaging, that that group would be able to ask questions. um

Zain 42:00

think part of it was just a commission that was just scared and did not have the facts i think that very much became clear around that second part not having the facts that rebel media had as actually um

Zain 42:11

you know being paid by for canada which is a third-party advertiser kind of like the one that i'm involved in right like a registered third-party advertiser there's

Zain 42:20

business asking questions at a debate.

Zain 42:25

But that relationship exists. And I think that that was not made aware or was ignored by the commission.

Zain 42:34

I am surprised it took Stuart Benson at the Hill Times to call these folks out. I was really surprised by that. I don't know if you guys saw this moment that was that kind of led to the ultimate weird

Zain 42:44

weird scrum that Ezra did with the media that he hates. But Stuart Benson of the Hill Times pretty much was yelling at Ezra, talking to him about like, you know, breaking down the facts. All the rebel folks were recording this this moment that kind of led to this space where one was asked to calm down, the other one was asked to leave. Ezra then did a scrum with journalists in which this for Canada relationship was brought up by Justin Ling. And then the added element of this is how the rebel media folks tried to storm the CBC set with David Cochran, rosie barton to the point that those two had to have security details have them escape their own fucking building this

Annalise 43:29

it's insanity but is it also not what the rebel wants to get that video of that yelling match to do the fundraising said to carter's points to make more money i

Zain 43:37

i can't i can't say better than what rob fife quoted yesterday so if carter wants to try to like you know match that energy there's an amazing one minute clip of fife talking about exactly what this group is look

SPEAKER_00 43:47

look these are not journalists these are right wing agitators and they they what they do is they they use these kind of activity at stunts and antics to raise money we've

SPEAKER_00 43:59

we've seen these people chase down liberal politicians or ndp politicians screaming in their faces and then uh they then they try to raise money off of it but when they go to deal with Mr. Polyev, they're like little puppy dogs. Hello, Mr. Polyev, very nicely. And it's, you know, it is a disgrace to have these people pretend that they're journalists. You know, we all work for different organizations. Some of ours may have editorials maybe lean to the right or to the left or in the middle. But the journalists themselves conduct themselves themselves honorably and try to be as fair as they possibly can these journal these are not journalists these are people who are political partisans who try to raise money off of uh because of their what they're doing with their right-wing antics that's simple it is uh

Zain 44:54

uh yes i think we all know this their grift is to raise money this way this is what they do they raise money in this in this particular way yeah

Carter 45:02

yeah but there's a point where you just don't just because that's what they want doesn't mean you don't give it to them give

Carter 45:09

give them the you know don't let them do their fucking shtick now that means that they're going to get because they're they win either way right they win either because they get to go in and ask the stupid fucking questions or they win because they you know we did with the carny uh launch which was you know keep the counter signal uh and the western standard out they aren't journalistic organizations period Period. They are quasi journalists at best and they are provocateurs at worst and give them what they want. Give them the clip of them being kept out because that's better. It's better than giving them a clip. They had a massive

Zain 45:48

massive win yesterday. They will fundraise off of this. They will create sympathy, victimhood, all those things off of what happened yesterday. For

Carter 45:56

For the 86,000 people that are going to subscribe to Rebel News every month and pay their $10, that's fine.

Zain 46:04

And this is their business model. That's

Zain 46:07

model. And the commission played right into it. But the commission

Carter 46:09

commission had no choice because the commission should never have let them in the building in the first place.

Zain 46:14

I should think the commission should have, in this particular round, despite the fact that they had court precedent back from 21, in this particular round with the Rebel News and For Canada relationship, the

Zain 46:26

the media outlet and the registered third party anti-Carney advertiser, they

Zain 46:33

they should have taken the risk to be sued

Zain 46:36

because the case is much more clear cut than it was back for them. But I just think they lacked, frankly, Carter, I think it's one thing we go back to a point we've made often on this podcast, what are political instincts? And you'd expect that the commission would have political instincts. We talk about political instincts at a corporate level, what those look like, how to kind of understand them.

Zain 46:55

They just don't have the political instincts, ironically, for a group organizing a political debate. I think they look at themselves as a democratic institution that is here for broader sort of democratic appeals. They need to be an institution that has a political IQ.

Zain 47:10

In this case, I hate to criticize them so aggressively, and I'm just piling on to what many people are saying today, but I want them to succeed, but they need a better political iq than the one that they had that put these debates together on the onstage product i thought was great everything around it was a lot of stuff around it was a ton of bullshit well

Annalise 47:27

well people people are asking if it's time to dismantle and i i think from the journalism point of view the the yeah which has been addressed but the um the the q a stuff and the fact like that's those headlines are almost overshadowing the debate stuff maybe that's just me in my world because of the the journalism stuff but they yeah i saw headlines

Annalise 47:46

headlines all across last night of here's what happened here's the rebel stuff no q a that sort of thing is overshadowing that as you say zane a good well-managed well-run two hours yeah

Zain 47:58

yeah these people are only helping themselves in that way like this does not help pauliev who actually had a great i thought a pretty solid great night this

Zain 48:06

this is not helping him this is just helping carney they

Zain 48:09

they don't they don't care to help pauliev that's they're not in it for that.

Carter 48:12

They're in it for themselves, right?

Carter 48:13

right? The counter signal and the rebel don't get rich when the conservatives are in government.

Zain 48:21

There's something absolutely to be said by that. And they need a mirror. They need opposition. They need a big guy that they're fighting against. Establishment media continuing to exist and a liberal government is the recipe for how they exist. Now, I'm not saying that was their strategy going in, but it is clearly what is coming out of this if a if the status quo remains in this election in the next 10 days these

Zain 48:44

these guys continue to thrive i'm

Annalise 48:46

i'm sure we will continue um to chat about this down the road guys last last question and then we're going to end it is just saying we'll go with you first what out of the two debates one favorite moment out

Zain 48:59

out of the two debates one favorite moment what's

Annalise 49:04

what's something you really like that you're still you're gonna be talking about this long long weekend nothing

Zain 49:09

nothing other than the analogy of Carney being a chair of a debate rather than actually debating I think that was a really wise move on his part it led to a bridge builder United sort of guy who doesn't have the debate chops but almost didn't need them in order to win I will be I'll be thinking about that and saying can can more candidates do that Or does this unique moment just provide Carney, unique moment and unique skill, and frankly, lack of skill in actual contemporary

Zain 49:36

contemporary debate, allow him to do this? Fuck, has there been a luckier man in the world than Mark Carney? I just can't fucking think

Annalise 49:42

think about it. Good question.

Annalise 49:45

Stephen Carter, your favorite moment? Well,

Carter 49:47

when I got to turn off the debate and walk into the GOTV preparation room for Corey Hogan, where there were dozens of people stickering the GOTV flyers so that people would know where they voted. I

Carter 50:04

I thought it was great. It was fantastic. Look at

Annalise 50:07

at that last minute Corey Hogan plug. Guys, that is a wrap on episode 1862 of The Strategist. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil. And with you, as always, Zane Belchie and Stephen Carter.

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