Transcript
Zain
0:03
This is The Strategists, episode 538. With me, Stephen Carter, Corey
Corey
0:09
Corey Hogan. Guys, how are you? Good. Really
Corey
0:12
It's been a while. We had our traditional two weeks off for Stampede.
Carter
0:15
Stampede. Every year we have to take the two-week break. I mean, it's tradition. Yeah,
Zain
0:19
ten days for Stampede, four days to cure the syphilis. We are good. We are back.
Zain
0:24
and you know we wanted to record this one episode 538 guys that's special to us that is code to us in a way cory is it is it good to you
Corey
0:31
you too i think for any political nerd it's code because 538 is the number of electoral votes in the united states and we are here in a in a u.s federal election year i mean this is uh what are the odds that all of our episodes our entire back catalog would align line this way it
Carter
0:49
it is so amazing it is
Zain
0:50
is almost like it was manufactured to be that way okay
Zain
0:53
okay guys we wanted to record this on july 4th but like any good american podcast we have procrastinated but we do want to talk about american
Zain
0:59
american politics here not just the the candidates the primaries but we also want to dig deeper into the strategy and the comparisons you know as strategists here in canada we owe a lot to um our colleagues down south but we also want to have a compare and contrast as to what's possible here, what's not possible here. And frankly, what we can do here in this country that is impossible in the States. So let's move on to our first segment. Our first segment, nation of narcs, where's your messiah now? Let's talk about two things right here. First of all, the narc in the race, and then we'll talk about the messiah. So I want to enter and give people a little bit of context. The American election is going to be November 2016. We've got our primaries going on right now in the GOP or the grand old party, as well as the
Zain
1:42
the DNC primary. But
Zain
1:44
But on the On the GOP or Republican side, there are 15 declared candidates, including one that stands out. A guy that
Zain
1:50
that is a noted egomaniac, and no, not Stephen Carter. What?
Carter
1:53
What? I'm running for president? Yeah,
Zain
1:56
who actually has some hair. I don't know what's worse. I don't know what's worse, having really bad hair or having no hair. I could have that hair for the right amount of money. Let's talk about Donald Trump, because I want you guys to first assess the situation of what he means to the GOP. But I also want to afterwards go into what that looks like in a Canadian context. And I'll get to that in a second.
Corey
2:16
second. Corey, I'll let you go first. He means ruin for the GOP. This is a bad election year to have a nut bar like Donald Trump running because there are so many people. There's what, 20 candidates declared? There's 15
Corey
2:27
speculated. Yeah, that's crazy. And in a race like that where there is no tall poppy, nobody looks better than the rest of them, you have a situation now where Donald Trump with 15% of the vote is the frontrunner and he's saying all this crazy shit so what americans hear is the front runner for the gop thinks that mexicans come to the country to rape and murder them and i suppose some of them are okay people perhaps
Corey
2:50
perhaps i i haven't met any myself but i've heard rumors of this polite mexican yeah
Carter
2:55
yeah i mean trump is is a caricature of everything that is wrong in american politics to be sure but he's a flash in the pan and the republicans have experienced the flash in the pan phenomenon phenomenon uh for quite some time my the 2012 election was one of my very favorite primary seasons because everybody came in got the 32 points and then dropped like a stone newt gingrich is going to save the party uh so santorum santorum who makes trump look sane santorum i
Corey
3:27
i wouldn't go that far come
Carter
3:30
wacko and he he was way out there and
Corey
3:33
and hold on donald
Corey
3:34
donald trump I saw an old tweet of his that said how many bald eagles have been killed by wind turbines today?
Carter
3:40
okay. You know what you're right Cory. You're right
Carter
3:43
Trump is worse than Santorum, but it's a it's a race. It's a race between those guys Huckabee
Carter
3:49
Santorum all these guys that are that are
Carter
3:54
think that their party is the Republican Party and most of them Most of them have had success at the state level and that's what's different with Trump Trump. Yeah.
Zain
4:04
first foray. Let's take this down to a strategy level, because if I am running a campaign for any of these 14 other, I'm going to say guys, and they're all guys. Well, you got Carly Fiorina. She's not going to win. You got 13 guys in Carly, right? If you are running a campaign for someone that you think is formidable in this race, I'm thinking Marco Rubio. I'm thinking maybe a Jeb Bush, maybe a Chris Christie, who maybe have a little bit more chops. How do you get out of the noise that is Donald Trump, and that is going to be the next crazy person that arrives post-Trump? It could be Ben Carson, could be someone else. How do you get past that noise if you're running that campaign? Well, I think
Carter
4:40
think you go with oppo research, right?
Carter
4:41
right? You sit down and you do your work, you raise your money, and then you put your oppo research team to work, and you allow these candidates like Trump to raise themselves to the point where they just get popped.
Carter
4:54
Because the national media in the United States is the true opposition party, and they will destroy these candidates if they get too high.
Carter
5:01
Watch what's going to happen to Trump. He's going to get crushed.
Zain
5:04
Why don't we see this in the Canadian context? And maybe the question is, do we? Do we see this where you have people that have no shot in hell in winning
Zain
5:14
getting early leads in party races? I don't remember seeing this either in the liberal leadership in the last two decades or on the conservative side. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what's the salient difference here? Or
Corey
5:25
Or is there one?
Corey
5:26
Well, I'd love to correct you, But I think the big difference is in the Canadian context, particularly with leadership, how
Corey
5:31
how would we ever know? I mean, you can't really effectively poll in a Canadian leadership contest because the people who are determining is not the general public. We're not with we don't with the exception of the liberals, sort of. We don't have a primary system in this country. So you have to be a dues paid member. You usually have to be a member for X number of months before that. Then, of course, there's waiting by writing, which has had various formulas over the years. So I've seen polls in a lot of the major leaderships, but they're always seen as just kind of junk science. I mean, there's nothing behind them that you can really put your
Zain
6:03
your weight on. Is that just, frankly, a volume game as to what looks like in Canada, Carter? You wanted to touch on that. Well,
Carter
6:08
Well, I wanted to jump back.
Carter
6:10
back. I mean, it's not just that. I mean, Canadian politicians migrate to the middle. American politicians of late have been testing this let's go further right or left. because there's only two parties there can you can kind of approach things like really to win the base of the Republican Party I have to go far right and you've seen a number of people leap to the front with that type of strategy they haven't won yet
Zain
6:35
have their 15 minutes
Carter
6:35
minutes but they do win at the state level and they keep coming back to the United States are 50 states in the United States they've got a totally different proving ground for
Carter
6:44
for these large cases. They've got so many more politicians of the U.S. that this American political fray is automatically defined much differently.
Corey
6:56
Yeah, the U.S. has an interesting feeder system, right? I mean your state government, your federal government, your local government, your county government, they're all Democrats or Republicans with a few notable exceptions. They pick their team and then they move through the ranks and that has a strange effect because all of of a sudden you've got positions that would be well outside the mainstream federally but they've gotten enough success in an area such as arizona where you're able to propel yourself to a higher level of profile instantly one more thing i wanted to say yeah i was thinking here i
Corey
7:29
i remember some polling in the 2006 federal liberal leadership right at the top and it said kim dryden was going going to win.
Corey
7:38
So sometimes you do see this, you know, celebrity thing kick them to the top, but it's just not sustainable in our system. I
Zain
7:45
I want to go back to your larger point of polling here, because I think it's very interesting. The robustness of the American polling system and the political system, even in the primaries on both sides, is enormous. It's something like we haven't seen here in Canada, and we don't witness here. Carter, take us through what you you see as the differences between polling here in this country, which as of late has a horrible rap, and polling in the United States where you've got people, you know, 538 and Nate Silver, who've been able to project almost everything that's going to happen. What's the deficit? What's the delta that's taking place between the two countries? First
Carter
8:19
First off, you've got a whole bunch of people who declare themselves as A or B. You are a Republican or you are a Democrat. Right,
Carter
8:26
the voters list. On the voters list. So you are declared. Now, the highest number of independents have been registered in the united states ever right the independent movement because you can't call it really a party the independent movement is uh has grown faster now in the u.s and is not the highest level they've seen i think ever um
Carter
8:47
so but even then it's a pretty small subset right so there are now more registered independents than there are registered republicans or registered or Democrats. But when you have this two-party system, A or B, you have a much higher likelihood of being able to set it and forget it kind of a mentality on polling. So you are either going to be predisposed to vote Republican
Carter
9:10
Republican or you're going to be predisposed to vote Democrat. When you introduce a third party or a fourth party in some of the provincial and federal levels,
Carter
9:19
you introduce a whole degree of uncertainty. And I know someone's on the podcast right now Now, listening, saying, there's a whole bunch of parties in the U.S., a whole bunch of parties. No, there aren't.
Carter
9:30
The reality is there are two parties and it's a two-party system. In Canada, because we have three or more, we have a very different polling structure. That's
Zain
9:39
That's interesting. And I want to get to that whole independent movement with the candidate that's catching steam on the DNC side in a moment here. But, Corey, you had something to chime in. Well,
Corey
9:46
Well, I think you're making it sound more complicated than it is. There's just way more people in the United States. A congressional race in the United States has like 700,000, 800,000 people in it. That's like polling in a city the size of Edmonton.
Corey
9:59
If you poll in the size of Edmonton, you have a pretty good idea. We're not talking about our ridings federally, which are 100,000 people, or God forbid, our provincial ones, which are 40,000 people. So you don't chalk it up to
Zain
10:08
to any more sophistication than just volume? No, I don't. I find that hard to believe. I find that hard
Corey
10:15
believe. Well, let me put it this way. If you could get yourself a 1,500-person sample in every single one of our federal ridings, I think we'd have a very, very clear picture of what the outcome was going to be. That's just the nature of the United States because they have such a pool and because of how polling margins work. Carter, as normal, you're grunting and groaning. It's
Carter
10:34
It's just hard to listen to Corey be so wrong. So you've got a – so we call it the gaffe factor. Yeah.
Carter
10:42
Right? So the gaffe – what is the gaffe? Give a fuck factor. It's the give-a-fuck factor. In the United States, I think that it's safe to say they care more about politics. I
Carter
10:51
I know this is going to sound... Well, they
Corey
10:51
they put it on their bumper stickers. They
Carter
10:53
They care more about politics. I'm going to write it. They've got themselves... They have to. They elect... They have elections every year. Every fucking day, it seems like. Every year, they're electing something. Yeah. Then they have the off-year elections, so the midterm elections. So every two years for a major congressional, where they replace Congress completely.
Carter
11:13
Now it's the representatives. And then you've got the major
Carter
11:17
major presidentials. They are constantly campaigning. And they've got issues that they feel are at risk, that are at stake, that they care more about than the average Canadian cares about. They're still debating abortion.
Carter
11:29
Scott Walker announced his candidacy for president today. And during that announcement, they were making sure they pushed out that Scott Walker is pushing for a 20-week ban on abortion. So after 20 weeks, you can't have abortions. Why is he doing that? Because that's how you win elections in the United States.
Carter
11:48
Where's Harper on that?
Zain
11:52
saying population. You're saying the connectivity to issues and how passionate that is. I want to throw in another variable here, which is one we're very familiar with. It's the access and availability of data. Does that actually factor into this larger polling and voter ID? Do you think that makes any difference? And let's give people an idea. idea like in the united states you are not only uh have the ability to put yourself down as a registered republican or democrat or independent on a voters list they aggregate that and add other information about you so they know what type of car you drive what magazines you subscribe to they sign a voter score data so you know how likely you are to vote for hillary or jeb or whoever ends up being the candidate what
Zain
12:32
what does data have to do with all of this
Corey
12:34
this well i mean that's data modeling and i think that's done less by the news organizations and more by the campaigns campaigns, but certainly there is a sophistication that comes from just having access to more information. Here in this country, if I'm collecting anything about you, that's not publicly available. And so that's like essentially your name and your phone number. If it's in the phone book, I have to get your permission to do so. And the amazing thing about Canadian laws is I then, it's incumbent on me to check back and ensure that that information is still in the public domain. If you pull it out of the public domain and I don't take it out of my database, base, I'm in violation of Canadian privacy laws. That has effects. There's no question about that because you can only layer in so many things that you can cross tabulate on. But ultimately, the only reason that information is useful in the United States is because they can get the larger sample sizes and they can cut it down to those segments. That's
Zain
13:21
That's interesting. We can't do that. I thought you guys would be in agreement on this one. I'm really surprised that you think it's a game of volume and you think it's a game of issues. Well,
Carter
13:27
Well, I still believe that the biggest
Carter
13:28
biggest challenge, and this isn't a challenge, it's just happening in Canada. The response rate on polling has dropped significantly we're
Carter
13:37
we're talking about 1,000 samples so to get 1,000 telephone responses used to take 3,000 to 4,000 calls 25
Zain
13:44
25% hit rate yeah yeah
Carter
13:46
yeah 25% hit rate one in four people would answer the phone we're now looking at one in 30,000 or one or one 1,000 to 30,000 now that's that's on a dial that's within it's actually a live body there and on IVR you could be looking at a higher response rate negative and the online poll we
Carter
14:05
we don't like those people have signed up to a panel they're
Zain
14:08
they're self-selected yeah now
Carter
14:09
now in the US Nate Silver did an analysis of the 2012 election and found that the online polling sample the
Carter
14:17
the most accurate interesting
Zain
14:18
interesting so the self-selected group but
Carter
14:19
but I mean I'm looking at Nate Silver's site right now trying to figure out one of the other things it's just the sheer volume of polls yeah right
Carter
14:28
right you've got I'm scrolling through. They've got an analysis of rankings.
Zain
14:33
I'm going to ask a really clear, blunt question. What is the difference between Nate Silver getting 49 out of 50 states correct in the last election by aggregating polling from multiple news outlets, etc., versus what we have here, a similar enterprise happening in a few places in Canada that's been substantially wrong multiple elections? What's
Zain
14:55
man. Man, talent, ability, intellect.
Zain
15:01
don't mean to make it a trite point,
Corey
15:02
point, but I was
Zain
15:03
was just curious to
Corey
15:04
to see. I don't want to be really shitty to the Eric Greniers of the world, but.
Corey
15:08
Here we go. We're going to be really shitty to the Eric Greniers of the world. You create this model, and this model is fitted backwards, so you think it will work in the future, which any statistician will tell you is A, a bad idea, and B, junk science. And then you layer into this a bunch of polling of questionable veracity that is in itself making assumptions about the audience and using a sample size of, say, 1,000 people for everybody on the prairies if you're lucky, right? And then you extrapolate all these things out and you're surprised that when you put all these bad ingredients in that the meal that comes out tastes like shit? I mean, you can't
Carter
15:43
can't do projections based on the last election. You can't look backwards to project forwards. And Nate Silver doesn't. Nate
Carter
15:53
Nate Silver takes data modeling and data that's available and actually models it in the way that it goes. And he shares his math.
Corey
16:03
I don't know. It might be
Corey
16:03
be on there. I haven't checked.
Zain
16:05
OK, I mean, I think that was a uninterrupted, what, 15 minutes on polling for people who did not expect that on the agenda. That's a great start. See, for me, that's really exciting. That is a great start. We have lost about 40% of the people that started this thing. The other 20
Carter
16:18
For the rest of you that are here, thank you. Okay, so here's
Zain
16:21
here's – yeah, yeah. Thanks for hanging on.
Zain
16:23
I want to talk about – I got a little bit more excited about this candidate field on the Republican side. You've got 15 people.
Zain
16:29
Suppose you guys are running a campaign for one of these individuals that can actually win.
Zain
16:35
How do you break out of the noise of 14 other people? I know I asked, but I'm asking it in a different way. You're running a campaign for Cruz
Zain
16:40
Cruz or Rubio, someone you think you can actually win. He's going to choose Cruz because he's from Calgary. Is that what we're saying? We'll give him a hat. The Canadian candidate.
Carter
16:51
Christie's interesting because Christie seems to come closest to the Canadian value set for a right-wing Canadian.
Corey
16:58
Well, look, as much as these nut bars come up and they get 15%, 30% and they fall off, It
Corey
17:04
seems to me that mostly they're interested in getting a position on the Fox News talking circuit. At the end of the day, the Republicans have been pretty consistent of nominating the more moderate voice. It's a big country, and yeah, there's a lot of crazy states. But there's a lot of Californias. There's a lot of New York. Well, there's one California. There's one New York. But they've got a lot of seats. They get a lot of decision-making power. And the Republican votes that come from those areas have a pretty significant pull towards the establishment. So let's look back at the last couple of candidates they had. Mitt Romney got his ass kicked in the first number of primaries. Oh yeah,
Corey
17:38
he was done. Mitt Romney was done. But then he ended up pulling it all out. You had, the time before that, you had John McCain. And he similarly had trouble with a bunch of nuts, who also moved him off of some moderate positions, I think, to his detriment. Before that it was Bush. We all forget because of Iraq and all of that, but Bush was the compassionate conservative. That's what he ran on. Bob Dole was an establishment guy. George H.W. Bush was quintessentially...
Corey
18:06
quintessentially... When's the last time the Republicans... They've never actually nominated anybody like this. Nobody who's like this has ever actually sniffed the nomination. So are you
Zain
18:13
you trying to tell me my uncle Bobby Jindal will not become the next president of the United States? I'm going
Zain
18:19
to tell you why, too. It's going to be money.
Carter
18:22
Okay. Money in the United States is speech. I mean, this is an important thing, and at some point, the
Carter
18:28
the money's going to run out for these also-rans. Yeah.
Carter
18:31
So if you are running the campaign for – I'm going to pick Chris Christie because I think of the candidates, he's the closest one to a Canadian conservative. Sure. If you're running Chris Christie's campaign, the first thing you need to do is raise enough money to survive the crazies. I
Corey
18:48
I really hope that a Canadian political strategist saying he was as close as it came to being a Canadian ends up in an attack ad in the United States. That is right. I hope so.
Zain
18:56
so. It could very well be. I really hope so. Okay, I want to go from the Republican side to the Democrat side. We've got a tale of almost two different things going on right now. We've got the lunatics in
Zain
19:08
in the GOP that are emerging for their 15 minutes
Zain
19:12
versus what looks like the messiah on the other side. Now, she was the messiah in 2008. She's back again for a second run at it in 2016.
Zain
19:20
Hillary Clinton seems to be taking this thing as a cakewalk, and we're a year and a half away. way. I disagree. I mean,
Corey
19:25
mean, she's Lucy with the football. She's gone down this
Corey
19:29
road before. She certainly has a larger edge even than she had over Obama. But
Zain
19:35
But Corey, do you see an equivalence of a Barack Obama or a game changer here to usurp her streak? I mean, I don't see it. I'm looking at it. You got Webb, you got O'Malley, you got Sanders.
Zain
19:46
Sanders. I mean, Sanders, yes, we'll talk about him in a second. Well, let's talk about him right right now this is a guy who
Zain
19:51
who was an independent is now running under the dnc banner has a very connect i'm going to say it's socialist agenda he's declared the u.s socialist many
Zain
20:01
in the yes a social democrat at the very least yet
Zain
20:05
yet yet is being embraced by social medias bringing tens of thousands people to his rally in himself is not active on social media but is
Carter
20:12
is it our dean is
Zain
20:14
is it a matter
Corey
20:15
matter of there's no one else or is there something to be said here is that what you're trying to get too, Corey? Well, I think it's both. I think that there is some excitement for somebody who's got this economic socialism in his blood. You know, this is making a huge comeback. You're seeing minimum wage debates across the United States. It's true. The same debate we're
Carter
20:31
we're having here in
Carter
20:32
polarization, actually. One group moving right, Scott Walker, you know, Wisconsin moving right wing, destroying unions, and then California bringing in a $15 minimum wage. Well,
Corey
20:42
Well, the other thing is people just don't like Hillary that much. And I think if somebody like Like Joe Biden gets in the race, who's got a broader popularity. And you've got a Sanders kicking the crap out of her from the left. I don't know what happens at that convention. Interesting. You think it just
Zain
20:55
just takes someone to weaken her to kind of get someone up through the middle. I think that she's already weak. I think she was always
Corey
21:01
weak. No, that's an interesting
Carter
21:01
interesting analysis. I mean, I'm going to get in trouble. The Democratic nomination's over.
Carter
21:09
is going to go to Hillary Clinton. I can't
Corey
21:12
can't wait for you to be wrong about it. Episode
Carter
21:16
when you're going to kick the crap out of me on this. No,
Carter
21:18
No, I think that the reality is, I
Carter
21:24
is an interesting candidate. No one seems to want him.
Zain
21:29
Castro is not running. I'm just trying to think who the cream of the crop is. Bernie Sanders
Carter
21:33
Sanders is the cream of the crop, and
Carter
21:35
and he's not going to get there. If Biden comes in and Bernie Sanders tricks the crap out of her in the next four months, which he won't do which he will he can't let's talk more about that he can't he doesn't have enough i
Zain
21:50
let's set the table bernie sanders is getting popularity but cory he's nowhere near where hillary clinton clinton is right now in the polling 68.8 to 14.3 you're
Corey
22:00
you're going to look at national polls but let's talk about iowa which is caucuses yeah
Zain
22:04
yeah maybe let's let's give people a little bit of primer on how iowa works and what the difference between the caucus and the primary is a little bit because this was the gravy for for barack obama in in 2008 was the the real delta between the caucus and the primary model there's
Corey
22:17
there's effectively two different ways the states uh select their their votes their delegates for the presidential you know convention and one of them is more similar to the canadian model it's caucuses you you're a member of this party you go you get together in a party you elect delegates it's very familiar to anybody in canada who's been through a delegated leadership convention. The other is a primary, and the primaries were created in the states effectively to take power away from backroom organizers, and many states have mandated, we'll hold an election, and
Corey
22:46
and that allows the parties to piggyback on and say the general public has selected. Depending
Zain
22:51
Depending on the state,
Zain
22:53
some are open primaries, which means you don't need to be a registered Democrat to vote, and others are closed, but they're moving more and more to the open modal generally if they're going with the primaries. Right, and there
Corey
23:03
there are different flavors of all of those things. You were talking about Iowa, so let's go back to that. Iowa is a caucus, and Iowa was a real problem for Hillary last time around. I
Corey
23:13
I believe it could be this time around, too. The polling in Iowa the last time I saw had Hillary Clinton at 55, Bernie Sanders at 35. That's a gap. Let me tell
Carter
23:23
much Iowa loves the Clinton name.
Carter
23:26
In 1992, Bill Clinton, you may remember him.
Corey
23:29
He was an okay guy. Yeah, he may
Carter
23:31
may have won the one. He came in fourth
Corey
23:36
Who? President Tom Harkin. President
Carter
23:38
President Tom Harkin. He came in fourth.
Carter
23:40
fourth. Let me give you a sense of the split. Tom Harkin got 76%.
Carter
23:47
Paul Tsongas got four. Bill Clinton got three.
Carter
23:52
They're not big fans of Hillary Clinton in Iowa. And it's a pretty red state. I
Carter
23:59
I mean, Iowa is going to matter more for
Carter
24:03
the Republicans than Iowa is going to matter for the Democrats. I don't know, Carter. Historically, Iowa has
Zain
24:10
has had a powder keg sort of situation where it has kickstarted a lot of – I mean, I'm thinking about it, right? I'm going with Corey's analysis here. You have Bernie at 35. He catches up a little bit on that. and
Zain
24:22
and understanding that on the Democrat
Zain
24:25
Democrat side, it is not a voter, it's not a, you don't take all. You get a portion of the vote that you have, you take that in terms of your delegates. Right, so guys,
Corey
24:33
guys, what's the next contest up? New Hampshire. New Hampshire. What's the state right next to New Hampshire?
Carter
24:39
Well, there's several. It
Corey
24:39
It starts with a V. We're talking about Vermont. And it's Bernie Sanders' home state and he's polling pretty well there too. I think that you're going to have a possibility that Hillary Clinton loses. He does two
Carter
24:50
two states and dies.
Corey
24:52
No, and then he goes on to South Carolina, and that's where things get interesting. Did
Carter
24:56
Did you just quote the West Wing? Did
Carter
24:59
Did you just quote the West Wing in this podcast? Didn't we have a rule? We
Zain
25:02
We did have a rule. We did have a rule. You have to... Never mind, I'm not going to say it.
Carter
25:08
I want to talk about a
Zain
25:09
a consideration here. If you are the Hillary camp, you're
Zain
25:12
you're in first place a year and a fucking half ahead. A year and a half, you have to do this and be in first place. embrace it i mean does that scare you as strategist for being in i mean i guess the question is number one what would you yeah what would you rather have being being second or third and want to climb up or number two sustain a lead for so long you always want to be in first really
Carter
25:33
really who says otherwise i like i like the second third place positioning well
Carter
25:38
first place is a tough spot because all that happens is that people throw stones at you and at some point the stones start start hitting. And Hillary Clinton, unless she develops some sort of Teflon reputation like her husband did, right?
Carter
25:53
right? Because Bill Clinton, they threw all kinds of stuff at her, at
Carter
25:56
at him, and it never
Carter
26:00
I mean, it would bring him down for four or five days, but then he'd pop right back
Zain
26:03
So tell me, you're writing the strategy to keep Hillary in first. What are the top two tenets that you need to have in that strategy to be able to get her in that position where Where she's at the front of the pack for the next year and change. She's
Carter
26:15
She's running for president. She's running for president today. She's running for the 2016 election in November. There is no... Is that not presumptuous?
Corey
26:22
Well, here's the knock against her. She's been running for president half her adult life at this point. And
Corey
26:28
And I think people are a little tired of the Clintons. And they're a little tired of the dynasty. At one point, it looked a lot like we were going to... And we may still. But it could be Bush v. Clinton again. I
Carter
26:38
I think Bush v. Clinton would just be fun. Because... and and jeb bush is i say again but
Corey
26:43
but actually that never happened
Carter
26:45
well yeah no well i guess it didn't but he was okay that's our american history yeah liberty
Carter
26:51
okay the dynasties the two political family dynasties would be spectacular i
Zain
26:55
i want to move it on to our next segment it's called spend like it's going out of style guys this is all about the jeffersons the money the money the money that is the biggest difference
Zain
27:05
difference i would say between outside a population because because Corey will want me to mention that, the tenfold increase in population that the U.S. has.
Zain
27:13
But the money is different, and the money is huge. And let's
Zain
27:16
let's talk about that. Corey mentioned an average congressional seat has about 700,000 people in it. To win an average congressional election takes about $1.8 million.
Zain
27:25
That's money that's kind of equivalent, but not really when you consider the third-party money that's thrown in, all the PAC money that's going in. On average, it took about $2.7 million last year to win a congressional seat for about 700,000 people. So, broadly, let's firstly just talk about the difference in money between our two systems and what that means as strategists.
Carter
27:45
Well, we are paupers in Canada, and they are the wealthiest of the wealthy in the United States. They have all the money, and they are completely – they
Carter
27:54
they spend so much money, they don't know where to spend it all sometimes. Every year, you go down to the political conferences, and they talk about the declining effectiveness of television.
Carter
28:06
television. Yeah, but the problem is they can't buy enough ads in other mediums. They
Carter
28:11
They have they don't know what else to do They have too much money So
Carter
28:14
So they wind up buying a whole bunch of ads that we wouldn't even consider So
Carter
28:18
So when we look at you know, Cory's running campaigns on a buck fifty Yeah,
Carter
28:23
you know and and I've run a few I mean I look at the first ninji campaign Yeah,
Carter
28:28
when we had I
Carter
28:29
think twenty five to thirty five thousand dollars. No eighty five thousand dollars up till September So from April to September, we ran on $85,000. Well, that's a week's worth of burn in a traditional campaign. Their system is about money. Money is the defining factor, and money matters
Carter
28:50
matters way more than it does in Canada.
Zain
28:52
So what does that teach you about strategy? Corey, I want you to get in, but what does that teach you? Do you see lessons from the states where you're seeing them trying to figure out what to do with their last $250,000? And you're like, well, crap.
Zain
29:04
crap. I mean, we run it so efficiently down here. Do you ever have moments like that where you're like, well, now I know what works for $100,000?
Corey
29:12
There is just so much money that it's really hard to assess what's working and what's not sometimes, which is why they spend so much on research as well. And so when
Corey
29:25
when I look at the states, there's a ton of lessons to be learned because they actually look at what the variable effect of taking an entire area is and sending half of them the lit piece and half of them not and controlling for all of those other factors.
Corey
29:37
They're a great incubator. When we look at them as Canadians, we can definitely take a lot of political lessons. The one thing we can't do is replicate it exactly. So we have to end up doing a poor man's version of micro-targeting, of data sciences, of all of these things relative to the American counterparts. But they're just...
Corey
29:58
just... I sense some sadness in your voice. I'm just depressed about it. When
Carter
30:04
When you're a political strategist and you want to get somebody elected, money helps. It's the same thing if you were to try and sell a product or a brand. Having more money will enable us to define and sell the product better. But
Zain
30:16
But I see a dilemma here where I think a silver lining is probably in the mix, right? Do we not have, and maybe I'm trying to put words in your mouth, but do you not sense a more robust sense of what works in this country when you
Zain
30:29
have $250,000 to run
Carter
30:30
run a campaign? I totally
Corey
30:32
totally disagree. I think they have a much better sense. Really?
Carter
30:34
Really? You're talking to someone who got to run Alnur Kassab's mayoralty campaign.
Carter
30:39
campaign. Carter, you spent over
Zain
30:41
it. I spent a million four.
Zain
30:42
is huge. I want to put that into perspective. You're running
Zain
30:46
campaign that had no chance of winning. That got, what,
Carter
30:50
18, but we would have done better if it wasn't for the Thanksgiving Day Massacre article. Again, big thanks to Kim Gatormsen and Colette DeWars. You spent $1.4
Zain
30:59
.4 million on a campaign for a city of, what, 920, 930?
Carter
31:03
It was nearing a million. Okay, yeah. So we would have spent half of a good congressional race for a population roughly the same. Same size. And we did buy radio. We bought television. We did a ton of data. We did a ton of online. Online wasn't quite there yet. Yeah, yeah.
Carter
31:22
bought as much as we could. And what we really started to see was that micro-targeting was the way to go. and micro-targeting is less expensive. And what I learned on Al Nurkassam's campaign at $1.4 million is what powered Nenchi's campaign at $450,000. Because
Zain
31:39
knew it worked. Corey, you disagree with that notion. I totally disagree. Well,
Carter
31:41
Well, I can prove to you that it actually works because I took a
Carter
31:45
a third of the money and turned it into a much better result. You also had Nenchi
Corey
31:50
Nenchi instead of Al Nurkassam. I'm not going to lie to
Carter
31:52
to you. That helped a little bit.
Corey
31:54
Let's not forget there were some conflating variables there. Yeah, just minor ones. Just minor ones. Candidates don't seem to matter at some point. They do
Carter
32:02
do until they do. And then, like, Sam was doing way better than we wanted. Like, it was a little bit freaky because
Carter
32:07
because he was doing really well until the Thanksgiving Day Massacre. And, Corey,
Corey
32:11
Corey, you wanted to add on that. Well, I just wanted to say that there's no evidence that Canadians spend their money better. The thing is, there's always a depreciating return for every dollar that you spend. And simply because we get to spend the first $20, we're not geniuses because those dollars have a better effect than the next 80 that follow them. The Americans just wring every damn dollar out of their system. If
Carter
32:33
If I was to criticize federal politics in Canada based on what I've learned from the American system and what we've done, we
Carter
32:41
we rely far too much on television ads for the size of population we have.
Carter
32:47
And the regionalism of ads really matters. The NDP released an ad today. and the NDP have used the regionalism of Quebec to release ads that don't really play in English Canada and they've worked exceptionally well.
Carter
33:03
That regionalism of ads needs to be replicated across
Carter
33:07
across multiple micro-demographics and we don't do that at the federal level.
Corey
33:13
Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think that was my point, right?
Carter
33:15
right? No, but we can do that for less money. We
Corey
33:18
do that for a
Carter
33:18
a lot less money. Instead,
Corey
33:20
we buy the GRPs and we do it the same way that we've done it before. Well, I will agree with you in this. The Americans have no clue how to do these kind of things for less than $100 million. Oh, it's crazy.
Carter
33:30
crazy. It blows their minds.
Carter
33:31
You talk to an American strategist and you tell them what we've been able to do with the types of money that we have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they look at you like… We've done it before
Zain
33:37
before in DC. I remember we've had conversations. Yeah. They
Carter
33:40
They look at you like, what
Carter
33:41
what do you mean?
Carter
33:42
How can you do that? That doesn't seem even possible.
Carter
33:46
So I think we're better with the money that we have. So let's
Zain
33:50
let's sit on a point you just brought up, Carter, about ads. You know, the American emphasis on television is the holy grail. Strategists get paid as a percentage of the ad buy. TV is still king, even though digital is slowly catching up. We
Zain
34:05
We do barely any television, especially on a provincial constituency or writing level race. But even on the federal side, television is rather limited as compared to what we do or what they do in the States. But
Zain
34:17
moreover, I want to talk about the negative ads. Do you think we would ever get to a point of negativity that the U.S. has gotten into? Or do you think that's even a byproduct of money or that's a totally separate conversation? We've
Carter
34:28
We've had some negative ads in Canada go horribly wrong. I think of the 1993 Jean Chrétien ad that
Carter
34:34
that was run by Kim
Carter
34:37
Kim Campbell and her campaign team of John Tory. And
Corey
34:41
And was it 04 or 06 where there was the guns in our streets? Guns
Corey
34:44
our streets. I think
Carter
34:45
think it was 06. That's
Corey
34:46
That's considered tame. Like, that's considered tame in
Carter
34:48
in American terms. Oh, it's nowhere near what Americans are. I
Zain
34:50
I wish I could just make you listen to some of these ads, but they're nuts. Some of these American ads are vicious. They are absolutely personal and go straight to the jugular. Is that a result of having too much money, a partisan divide, or a bit of both? What do you think
Carter
35:08
It's a factor of it works. It's a factor of it works. I mean, every year, the Art of Political Campaigning Conference finishes their
Carter
35:18
on... With a guy
Zain
35:19
guy who says, do it... Negative
Carter
35:21
Negative campaigning is consistently used by every campaign for one reason and one reason only. It works. There are only
Zain
35:29
only two times to use negative campaigning. When you're behind and when you're ahead. Those
Carter
35:33
Those two times. I
Zain
35:35
get that. We've heard these lessons. But I want to talk about if this is a byproduct of something bigger than that. because you're saying that it works but we clearly do not seem to have the appetite we have an ad we have an ad about justin trudeau and and people are freaking out that it measures
Carter
35:52
snowcoats and isis the hyper engaged are freaking okay but no one else i'm not saying we're
Zain
35:57
we're a different person don't don't get me wrong that we're a totally fundamentally different person than that of the u.s but is there a sense of priming that's necessary to be able to have those level of attack ads resonate in canada let me ask you a question
Carter
36:11
was nenshi's first election negative
Carter
36:14
negative or positive because
Carter
36:16
because if you ask barb higgins or rick mckiver the two primary competitors that were going to win that race they were in the 40 percentile in august nenshi was at one right
Carter
36:27
right if you ask them they will tell you it
Carter
36:31
it was the most negative campaign ever and it was we took the crap out of them every opportunity we could it was negative negative negative 2012 i don't know if you remember were
Carter
36:42
were we winning was the redford team winning you were in the liberal side you're an objective observer oh
Carter
36:48
were we winning no
Corey
36:49
no but there was the ability to to go for the jugular and we went you went for the negative and
Carter
36:57
and negative defined that campaign um
Carter
37:00
um now they tried to go negative a little bit this election yeah but it was pathetic like
Carter
37:07
they didn't go after the candidates until after the election all
Carter
37:12
all of a sudden deborah drever became an issue post
Carter
37:15
post-election never would have happened in the united states is is there is there is there a deficit
Zain
37:19
deficit and i'm sorry if i'm going on this more than you want core you haven't said anything but is there a
Zain
37:24
deficit between our public education on negative ads and what i mean by this. In the US, it really seems like negative ads are justified as painting a fuller picture of a candidate. Do we have that
Corey
37:34
that lack of education? No, come on. Here's the situation with negative ads in the United States. The very first so-called political ad of that whole Daisy ad where LBJ's like, these are the stakes. You can't have... I mean, that was tame by today's standards. They all start tame. It's like sex. You start with vanilla and you kick it up from there, right? Vanilla to go messy. That's how you... If the Americans' first political ad was the kind of race-baiting, insane shit that they put on now, people would have lost their minds. But it's a frog in water. The water has been boiled up so slowly. And the reason why... It's an iterative thing you're saying. The reason they've gone through the iteration so quickly is the money.
Corey
38:12
We all come back to the money at this point. If they're running an ad against candidate X, and it's kind of negative, candidate Y responds with a bit harder of a blow.
Corey
38:20
Candidate X responds with an even harder blowback. Yeah.
Corey
38:22
And this has just gone on for so many election cycles. As Carter's mentioned, every two damn years they're electing the House of Representatives.
Corey
38:29
They don't even know how bad it's gotten. They
Carter
38:32
They don't know. And they're not looking at Canadian ads going, oh, really? Is that how they do it in Canada? You know,
Corey
38:38
Americans are... Which is also kind of my point from earlier. Beautiful.
Carter
38:41
Beautiful. In that they are focused on being
Carter
38:44
being Americans. They're not looking at Brazil's ads and saying, well...
Zain
38:48
well... No, there's lessons to be learned
Carter
38:50
learned here. Oh, look
Zain
38:50
look at that. So tell me this. If you had, within the realm of possibility in this country, if you had, let's
Zain
38:55
let's say, 50%, 60% more money on a standard writing
Zain
38:59
writing level or provincial level or even national level campaign, what's the one thing you would do with it? What's the one thing you'd want to do with it? Corey? Well, I never find enough
Corey
39:08
enough money for digital, especially now that we can go down to the writing level. Carter, anything
Carter
39:11
anything outside of digital you'd want to add? Well, I'd use digital to do increased data collection.
Carter
39:16
I'm cheating. I'm cheating. You asked for one thing, and I put them together into two. I acknowledge that, and I am going to continue to cheat because I'll probably win.
Zain
39:27
– That's your bumper sticker. I'm going to cheat. It
Zain
39:31
Okay. I want to move it on to our lightning round. Are you guys ready? Over, under, lightning round. Okay. Here we go.
Zain
39:37
Which Canadian politician would be best suited to run for the GOP?
Corey
39:43
Which Canadian politician? Which Canadian politician? Yeah.
Zain
39:47
say Rob Ford. Rob Ford. Interesting. He went with the Lunatic. Are you going to go with someone more
Carter
39:51
more tame? I'm also going to go with the Lunatic. I'm going to go with Jason Kenney. Interesting.
Corey
39:56
Rob Anders would still be a lot.
Zain
39:57
lot. Oh, my God.
Zain
39:59
Rob Anders. How did we forget
Carter
40:01
forget Rob Anders? Said nobody ever.
Zain
40:03
How much would we love the Santorum Anders ticket? Oh, my God.
Zain
40:07
God. So good. I'd vote for that. Okay.
Zain
40:08
Okay. Over, under. under on
Zain
40:11
on bernie sanders winning five primaries over under under
Zain
40:21
at any point in time yes or no yes
Zain
40:23
yes or no at any point in time does
Zain
40:25
does bobby jindal does uncle bobby become the front runner of the gop no
Zain
40:32
don't think so you don't think you don't think you don't think he's
Zain
40:34
he's the crazy that has his 15 minutes i mean there might be
Corey
40:36
be that bad one poll out of 20 but you
Zain
40:38
you show me two polls that show him in the lead interesting okay um at any point in time does ted cruz have his 15
Carter
40:46
15 minutes i thought he had his 15 minutes when he announced he seemed to go up as high as possible i think he's just going down okay
Corey
40:53
okay they're a metric 15 and they're already over that
Zain
40:59
was a little late on that i was gonna ask
Zain
41:00
ask my next question that's well done well done yeah it'll give you your your pen on the back the
Zain
41:04
the dark horse in the gop race Who do you think it is? If there's anyone that can emerge that isn't last name Bush, who emerges? I know you love Christie,
Carter
41:12
Christie, so I'm going to let you
Zain
41:14
you say Chris Christie. No,
Carter
41:14
No, but I love the idea of a Santorum Bush runoff. And for those people who didn't think that was funny, it was funny. Google it. Google it. Google it. You need to Google
Corey
41:25
You just wanted to say Santorum runoff.
Zain
41:31
Runoff onto the Bush. Okay.
Zain
41:33
I've lost my questions. Who wins the GOP nomination? Guys.
Zain
41:37
I think it's probably still Bush.
Carter
41:41
think it has to be Bush, but I'd like it to be Chris
Zain
41:43
Chris Christie. One word that you feel like is a strategy to beat Hillary Clinton. Carter.
Corey
41:53
Wow. Going for the jugular.
Carter
41:56
I'm just saying. Are you offering? No, listen. I mean, the relationship that the Clintons have does not reflect the majority values of the United States. That's actually an interesting point.
Corey
42:09
Corey, do you have... Yeah, it's Clinton. There's a reason she's running as Hillary. People are tired of it and they want to turn the page.
Zain
42:16
Who becomes the next president of the United States?
Corey
42:20
There's a coup and it's going to be like a Tom Clancy novel. Great answer. Carter,
Carter
42:25
Carter, I'm going to let you go straight on this one. Yes, we're going to follow our first minority president with our first female president. Very
Zain
42:31
Very nice. Minority president, I like that. Did you see what I
Zain
42:35
That's a wrap. Episode 538 of The Strategist. As always, I'm Zane Veldry. With me, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan. We will see you next time.