Episode 558: Pilgrims in a political land

SPEAKER_03 0:03

This is The Strategist, episode 558. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, how are you? Oh,

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Oh, you know us, Zain. We're doing pretty good. I'm

SPEAKER_03 0:13

Well, we're here in Washington, D.C. Now, that is exciting. That's exciting.

SPEAKER_03 0:18

Corey, you clearly do not seem excited by it. You're saying the words, but I don't see any emotion.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

I'm not emoting a lot. We're at the National Press Club. We're recording from the National Press Club. love that's the it's

Carter 0:28

it's really in the early in the morning our time yeah

SPEAKER_03 0:31

yeah so if cory seems like he's down and out it's probably because he hasn't had a sixth coffee of the day yet i'm only at five

SPEAKER_03 0:40

listen this is exciting we're here for a conference we're gonna be talking about american politics today i mean quite rightly but this is pretty cool and i think um and i think carter are you distracted there with your red

Carter 0:51

red starbucks cup i had the you know the little little plastic tab that can fall into your coffee it didn't so i'm okay yeah okay

SPEAKER_03 0:58

well listen let's just let's just get right into it because we've got a lot going on in today's show we've got a guest we've got shane greer co-publisher of campaigns and elections magazine um he's here with us right here hey shane hey

SPEAKER_02 1:10

hey how's it going good

SPEAKER_03 1:10

good how are you so we are here for the campaign and marketing summit yeah

SPEAKER_03 1:15

which is an event held by by you guys yep tell

SPEAKER_03 1:18

tell us i guess broad strokes Strokes first, what do you see as the current state of campaigns? And in your mind, where do you see them going from here?

SPEAKER_02 1:27

I mean the easy thing to say would be it's all about digital development because that's always the buzz. But the truth is it's a big part of it, right? Because what you've seen, just look at digital spend. It was something like a quarter of a billion last cycle. It's looking to be about a billion this cycle. Still pales in comparison to the spend on TV. And you do get a lot of them and us in campaigning. Meaning like, oh, you're wasting your money if you're doing this or that. And that's not true. It's a mix, right? It's about the appropriate mix. But what we're seeing on the digital side, which is interesting obviously, is the targetability, the ability to get very, very tight, very specific. At the same time, you start to see these problems cropping up for that side of the industry, ad fraud, things like that. And then, of course, the people on the broadcast are like, well, it's not necessarily as targeted as you thought. But

SPEAKER_02 2:15

point being, I think long-term trajectory, we're looking at obviously the increasing spend around digital spend overall is obviously going to go up. I mean campaign spending does not know what a recession is. It's never felt that way.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

It's up and up and up every single cycle. But I think we're going to see a lot more in the way – personally, I think we're going to see a lot more in the way of integration where you've seen siloization and people looking at different aspects of campaigning as kind of distinct things. Well, I mean, you guys, right, you're watching, say you're watching TV in the evening, you're Netflixing me. I'm assuming you have like your phone in front of you or generally.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

You know, you've got you've got a couple of screens. Well, if people are behaving like that, you've got to be able to think intelligently about how you access them across a range of devices. So it's not just about, hey, let's deliver a TV ad or let's deliver this direct mail shot. Let's deliver something into their Twitter stream. It's about how do you put all of that, all of that together? Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Yeah, that's one of those things that I always I think is the next big challenge for campaign organizers. and that's setting the mix so there are these turf wars that are developing between tv and digital and all that and the campaign managers are being asked to settle them not necessarily with the best information as to how they should be settled and not really knowing whether they should be trusting the digital guy when they say that because of course there is a vested interest there what do you what's your advice to people out there about setting the mix and how you should be determining that you have any any blinding insights i think ultimately and

SPEAKER_02 3:37

and this is the the easy get out of jail free answer, but

SPEAKER_02 3:40

it's the truth, is it depends fundamentally on where you are. I mean, if you're running in a major metropolitan area, I would expect that your digital spend and your ability to target and so on is going to be quite different. Indeed, the demographics are going to be quite different than if you're running in a small town in rural America. You've got to go, you've got to fish where the fish are. You've got to go where the voters are. And depending on who your voters are, depending on their profile, depending on where you are, you're going to be doing different things. In some places, for example, just to take the, you know, there's this sort of drive for fundraising on Twitter. That's going to be very important in some places. Some places it is not going to be very important. You're going to have places where TV remains much more important than it does in others. So the mix depends entirely on where you are. But fundamentally, I think it's

SPEAKER_02 4:25

it's about recognizing that the mix is important. It's not enough to just say we need to buy more ads or need to do more mail. It's about, okay, what's are objective and what can be pulled together to do that and you're right about one of the challenges which is vested interests and

SPEAKER_02 4:37

there's no easy way to solve that because you've got people coming from different angles who have their own perspective and it's not and it's not bad necessarily right it's just that if you're you know if you're someone who's on the digital side rightly you believe that that is you should back

SPEAKER_03 4:51

back what you do

SPEAKER_02 4:52

do of course you're going to back what you do of course right

SPEAKER_02 4:55

but it's about bringing the right team together that can actually get the best out of all of your best out of all of your vendors because all of them at the the end of the day wanting you to win yeah

Carter 5:01

so i want to shift a little bit from the mix to that what we're actually putting online one of the one of the sessions that uh i've been coming to you know campaigns and elections events for years thank you yeah for years and

Carter 5:12

and for decades come

SPEAKER_02 5:13

on now come on now put his daughter

SPEAKER_01 5:15

daughter through school exactly

SPEAKER_02 5:16

exactly exactly i checked i think the first one was 73 yeah

SPEAKER_03 5:22

really it's good it's good this is great one

Carter 5:24

one of the one of the great sessions and it used to close off the art of political campaigning with it i think is is does negative Negative advertising work. And in Canada, we don't have the incredible negatives that we see in the U.S. But

Carter 5:36

But do negative ads work? And what do you think? I mean in all of those panels, what have you seen? Before you

SPEAKER_01 5:43

you do that, I just want to say in Canada, a negative ad, an example, a real example is he's just not ready. I'm not saying forever but for right now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:51

Yeah. That is about the most Canadian.

SPEAKER_03 5:55

We'd love to have him later but this time we want our guy to win.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

I'm from the UK originally. We don't even have TV advertising. So, well, we do, but it's terrible and it's kind of like five minutes once every five months or something.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

No, I mean do negatives work? Again, a bit of a get-out-of-jail-free answer, but it's the truth. It depends on the negative, right? So what do we mean by – I think when people talk about negatives, what they're imagining is just those deep, dark, this person is evil and such and such. Black

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Black and white, slow-mo. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02 6:24

basically it's the political equivalent of those kind of telesales ad. where you know the person is trying to put something in the shelf and when they're not using the product that's in the ad, it's black and white. The stuff is falling all over them. You

SPEAKER_01 6:35

You guys are missing some good pantomime.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

a lot of gesticulation. But no, so I think it depends. Does negative advertising work? Yes, absolutely, 100% it does. But you've got to remember that it's not – I think you're not in a position now that you were even 10 years ago where people couldn't as easily fact-check. And not just the other campaign, not just the other campaign. campaign, supporters of other campaigns. So if you're putting something out there that you can't back up, not only can people find out and come back, they can come back immediately. They can come back very quickly. They can produce stuff to counter it very quickly. So negative works. But I think that the emphasis on being able to back up your negative is more important than ever. And not only does negative work, it's right that negative happens because at the end of the day, you're fighting a fundamental battle in which you are saying that your candidate is better than the other person that your candidate should be leading that your candidate should be elected by the people and if you're saying that you're saying that the other people shouldn't be elected i

SPEAKER_01 7:35

i totally agree with you one of my biggest beefs ever is anytime you go to a candidate forum there's always somebody who stands up is like can you just say something nice about the other people on stage with you and it makes me want to pull my hair out yeah

SPEAKER_01 7:47

yeah i can i absolutely can i'm not I'm not saying they're a monster and everything is wrong with them, but we're here to talk about a contrast of ideas. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02 7:53

Yeah, and that's it, contrast. And if you're saying I believe that I can lead, you're not saying that you don't believe the other person could lead necessarily. You're just saying that if I led, it would be better. And if you're going to say that, you have to say why. Why would

SPEAKER_02 8:05

would it be better?

SPEAKER_02 8:05

They don't have this experience or that experience or you can't trust them because they did that. And it's also about the way people set themselves up, right? I think one of the ones that is very different in the US context than, say, in the UK context is sexual scandal, for example, or

SPEAKER_02 8:21

or use of drugs in the past or things like that. In the UK, it's not as big a deal. Here it is a big deal, but it's all the bigger if you set yourself up as some kind of creature of virtue. You know, setting yourself up as like the family person and, you know, you love your family, you're loyal and so on. Then it turns out that you've been in some really nasty stuff. For sure that negative should be out there. For sure it's going to hurt you and rightly so because it points to your hypocrisy. If

SPEAKER_02 8:52

If you run that same ad against someone who isn't putting themselves out there as that or even is making something of the fact that perhaps they're a flawed character, it's not going to be as effective. So it depends on the negatives to how effective it is. But fundamentally negative as a concept or comparative, which is a term that I don't particularly like, negative works. Well,

Carter 9:09

Well, and one of the things I took away from the conference is an example that was used by a panelist where he talked about the I'm a Mac campaign. Probably the

SPEAKER_02 9:17

the best negative advertising campaign that's ever been run. It's phenomenal. I have a Mac now because of it. Yeah,

Carter 9:24

Yeah, well, we all have our Macs because of that particular set of ads. There were four of us in the room. And

SPEAKER_01 9:30

And it spoke to the truth, didn't it, right? There were four of us in the room and there were five MacBooks in the room. That's

SPEAKER_02 9:35

spoke to a truth because if you've used it and I've used PCs, it's not that it doesn't do the job. It's just I don't want the blue screen of death. Also, I'd like my computer to be pretty. This is not pretty. It looks like a big paperweight. The negative spoke to the truth and it appealed to people because it reflected what they already knew to be true or believed might be true. So, yeah. I

Carter 9:56

I think it also would have that humorous tone. You can get away with a lot more negative when you're funny than if you're just standing up there and doing – I mean I think this is one of the things that politicians need to understand is that a truly funny negative ad has tremendous impact. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Yeah, but here's the big flag. Politicians are more often than not not as funny as they think.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Humor is dangerous, right? But humor is dangerous. You have to be able to deliver it. And also it's easy for a firm that's producing – and this isn't to say you shouldn't do humor. It's just that I think of the things you can do, it's the one where you're most likely to just not hit it quite right. But

Carter 10:33

But this is where digital comes in, right? If you're jumping straight to television, we worked on a little by-election. I mean Corey designed a little website. I'm

SPEAKER_01 10:43

I'm good at hit websites. Hit websites.

Carter 10:44

websites. It was pin the LGBTQ pin on a candidate and you try and get it on the candidate and of course the candidate would dodge and he couldn't get it on the candidate. He just never would quite allow the pin to get onto him. So it was quite hilarious. It was a very funny ad and it was a website where

Carter 11:03

where it was highly targetable. So you don't necessarily need to have that broad media piece. I think it got picked up in the media. Yeah, it

SPEAKER_01 11:12

it was in a few places but pretty broadly distributed for a by-election. Yeah,

Carter 11:16

Yeah, those types of things I think – I spent a lot of time trying to explain in the Canadian context that negative doesn't necessarily mean hit. Shane,

SPEAKER_03 11:25

Shane, where do you see – we talked about digital, and I know that was kind of where you wanted to say campaigns are going. But specifically – and more of it – where do you see it going else from here? Is there anything cool that you've seen in the American context? I know you layered on your British context as well. Anything interesting, not necessarily novel, that you see being developed in the campaign space? I mean there's a bunch of cool sessions at this conference, but what's exciting you in campaigns right now? So

SPEAKER_02 11:53

So what excites me I think is probably more a reflection of my geeky interests in certain things than some kind of broader macro point about where the industry is heading. Sure. Two things. One, we actually shared in the most recent newsletter and another that I just have kind of like a totally nerdy interest in. So if you look at kind of say focus – and this is not widespread. They're doing some of it down in Mexico. I'm not – I'm sure they probably have done some in the US. I personally haven't come across it. But where you're actually – so neuropolitics. Oh, yeah. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02 12:27

So rather than putting the ad in front of people and then asking, what did you think about it? Because there's always a layer of like dishonesty, not necessarily willful dishonesty, but it's just like you're in a group and there's a group thing. I'm not dissing sort of focus grouping. I'm just saying –

SPEAKER_01 12:41

will do that. I'll

SPEAKER_02 12:42

But I'm saying that you have to – it's all part of the mix, right? And I

SPEAKER_02 12:46

I think what's interesting is where you can actually get to the – what is the physiological, emotional reaction to this piece? That's incredibly powerful. You're seeing it being pioneered more on the consumer side at the moment. So again, in this piece we shared, great example of a billboard down in Mexico, which is reading facial expressions and then trying to adjust the ad based on the reaction of people to it. That's very powerful, and you've got to imagine that the impact for that in politics is – in the long term. It's not going to happen this cycle or next cycle in a big way. But I think that for me is where we can actually get into reading people better. The other side is behavioral economics where

SPEAKER_02 13:23

where it's been very academic for a long time. You've seen a lot of the big sort of marketing organizations using it, campaigns using it as well. But I think we're only scratching the surface and stuff like that. I'll give you a good example, one that I love. And it's small things, right? But it's not

SPEAKER_03 13:38

not just the campaign,

SPEAKER_02 13:39

campaign, but I love little just nuggets like this where if you have people hold something warm, presumably a warm beverage from your red Starbucks cup, that immediately evokes more positive feelings, feelings of warmth and feelings of trust. If you put those people in front of a speaker, their feelings of positivity are higher for that speaker than they would be en masse if they were holding a cold beverage. Now, that's – you're talking like it's statistically relevant, statistically meaningful. Things like that I think are really interesting. Now, the question is at what point do you sort of reductive ad absurdum and you're just kind of – you're micromanaging to the extreme. But I think the fundamental understanding of human behavior is most interesting. See,

SPEAKER_03 14:24

See, that's fascinating, and I think it hits on what you're trying to do with this conference as well, right? It's an intersection of many different industries colliding effectively, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:32

right? So how this conference came about, we're doing it with two partners, Capital Communicator and Potomac Techwire. They're two other DC area, mid-Atlantic publishers, and they focus on the marketing, PR, consumer-facing world and the consumer-facing and government-facing tech world. We happened to be at a conference of theirs in Baltimore last year, and we were really struck that we talk about a lot of similar things to very different audiences. So generally the campaign world doesn't come together with the consumer world in a huge way. And we thought, well, let's bring these audiences together and see what they can learn from one another because for sure some are going to be ahead in some areas than others and others will be ahead in other areas. But there are going to be lessons that can be applied from that. So we wanted to do that and kind of talk about trajectory because the trajectory when it comes to – whether you're selling soap or you're trying to get votes, you're doing a lot of the same stuff. So what is – what direction is it? What's the direction of travel? Especially

Carter 15:30

Especially when you start breaking it down to that psychology piece where you're really trying to understand the psychology of how a person makes a decision. We assume this rational decision-making process. Homo

SPEAKER_02 15:41

Homo economicus, right? This complete myth in economic theory. For sure, I didn't get an iPad because I went through a tick box exercise. The thing was pretty and the ads were good. And I didn't even know why I'd use it, but I bought the thing. We don't make rational decisions.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

decisions. We talk about rational economic thoughts and then I see somebody buy a $1,000 pair of jeans. I mean they're not doing it necessarily because it

SPEAKER_01 16:03

10 times better than

SPEAKER_02 16:04

than the $100. Do you know why

SPEAKER_02 16:05

economicus exists? Homo economicus exists because economists can't – People like saying. No, economists – and this isn't a criticism. It's just the numbers are too difficult. They can't do the math. If you're trying to build an economic model without homo economicus, you simply cannot do the math because you can't build in those other factors. The one point on this kind of moving away from rational thought, I mean it's not like it's necessarily even that new in politics. I mean you think of one of my favorite books, Drew West in The Political Brain, where he spoke precisely to this pre-2008, was speaking precisely to this point, which is when you're dealing, whether it's with a swing voter or a floating voter or indeed with your party rank and file base, they are making decisions emotionally. Emotionally, they will look at an argument. They will look at a policy position, and they will not make that decision rationally. They could see the same policy position from two different parties, and they'll agree with it in one case and disagree with it in the other because of partisan bias. And in both cases, in both cases, they will believe that they're being completely rational. Well,

SPEAKER_01 17:06

Well, so my favorite example of that is from my career in politics. We had a government in Canada take

SPEAKER_01 17:12

take a strong position in favor of an economic vehicle. I don't want to get too in the weeds on this. And we polled in an area of Calgary and we found that people agreed with the government entirely on that position. Well, and then a week later, the government flipped its position 180. They went to the exact opposite and the opposition party took the government's old position and they went to war on it. We polled in that same area and the positions had flipped entirely. The tail had wagged the dog and it turned out that they were really just following the leader on this thing.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Whatever they said, we were fine with. I had to do more with the brand and the thinking, but they all thought they were being rational. I'm excited because people

SPEAKER_01 17:47

people lie or people mislead or people aren't necessarily even – I don't even know if that's fair but there's this shy Tory effect of course, right? I mean look

SPEAKER_02 17:54

look at – there's a great poll and I wish I could remember when it was from. But in the UK where they took conservative party manifesto positions and they polled people on it. And then they polled people separately on those same positions identifying them as conservative party positions. And people's support was much higher when they didn't know it was a conservative party position. That's not rational. Nor should we expect it to be rational. We

SPEAKER_01 18:19

We had the same but opposite in our home province for years. People loved the positions of the center-left parties. But when they found out they were center-left positions, they – They abandoned them.

Carter 18:30

them. Well, we have Vote Compass, which tests your reaction to various policy positions. And everybody says it's broken. It's biased to the liberals because it says I'm a liberal. I'm clearly a conservative. Actually,

Carter 18:40

Actually, your positions are almost all liberal, but you identify as a conservative, so you vote that direction. You see this

SPEAKER_02 18:45

this time and time again, groups that when you look at their values, at their positions on economic issues, they would be in one party. But actually, they vote completely differently.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

I've never liked the idea of the rational voter. That's not to say there aren't some, but the vast majority are not. And that's not a criticism. It's just a reflection of our nature as people. The

Carter 19:05

The only rational voter is Mitt Romney, who

Carter 19:07

who goes through his pros and cons checklist in the Mitt documentary. That's it. Where

SPEAKER_03 19:14

that? Oh, my God. Yeah, he could have desperately used that humanizing. Let me ask you a question

Carter 19:18

question about the Reed Awards. So you've added some international categories. What's the purpose or what's the design of that? What do you want to see from us Canadians?

SPEAKER_02 19:26

So we started having international categories a few years back now, really, because, I mean, I mean C&E started in 1980 as a magazine principally for the U.S. consulting industry.

SPEAKER_02 19:38

Reeds grew out of that later and initially was awarding the U.S. consultants. And the reality is there's a lot of incredible work across the world. We wanted to open that up. So we went to having international categories and now we started to break out some different places. So there we've got Canada's one, Latin America. Latin America is one and we've got sort of general international categories as well. Because we tend to see that – we see the areas where international entries come from. Obviously, Canada just had a big election. We would love to see Canadian consultants and vendors, notwithstanding some of the NDAs that seem to be in place with the parties out there. But anyone who's prepared to put their head above the parapet and get their work to recognition, it should. In the same way that happens in the US, we'd love to see that happen. Because at the end of the day, good work is good work. I mean one of the ads that – an ad from the Canadian election TV ad that I think is absolutely phenomenal, one of the best I've seen in the last year, is the escalator ad.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

And actually the camera ad to it isn't bad either. But there's great work all over the world. We want to see it get recognized. And so if people can – are not held back by frankly absurd party NDAs, Canada seems to be the same as the UK in this regard.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

There's no secret sauce here, guys. There's no secret sauce. No, I mean, yeah, it's all

SPEAKER_01 20:59

all about execution and what you can do on that front. The survey thing I wanted to touch on quickly and this notion of like people's reactions when they find out who the party is that's presenting them. This is this is kind of my my broad plea to people out there who are listening and doing those kind of surveys. Keep that in mind, because just when you when you're creating that pure, you know, research space for that homo economicus and all that. But don't forget, when you're testing something, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be received the same way once you release it to the public as a whole. Consider lifting the veil at a certain point in the survey and saying, like, now if the conservatives introduce it, figure out a bit about how they might react.

SPEAKER_03 21:38

Shane, I want to respect your time, and we've only got a few minutes left in this case. But I wanted to ask you about this. You know, when we look at what you're talking about here, you know, the difference between trying to get votes and sell soap, right? It's just really about engaging the customer or the voter. What do you feel like the future of engagement looks like right now? You know, Stephen and I over dinner yesterday were talking to a friend of ours and saying, you know, how many calls do you have to make to get someone on the phone on a live call? And that number astounded me, frankly, because that number used to be a lot lower. You'd have to make a lot less calls to get people on the phone. So what do you think of consumer or voter engagement going forward? Like are we just going to start bombarding people or do you feel like there's – and how does this end effectively? I'm

SPEAKER_02 22:18

I'm not surprised by the phone numbers, and I think it's just about changes, right? I mean if we tried to phone people 200 years ago, we wouldn't have got anyone because they didn't have them. But we probably would have got them with letters, and I think it reflects the changing patterns of behavior, right? So if I get a call on my cell phone and I don't recognize your number, for sure I'm not going to answer. And if you give me a voice message, I will delete it because I don't care. If it's important, email me. So you go where the voters are. So we're going to see – whether that means we're going to see the rise of kind of online polling in some way as, for example, with the YouGov example in the UK. There's still a lot of problems with online polling. It is far from perfect or I guess from Stephen's perspective completely imperfect in any kind

Carter 23:01

kind of – All of them are bad. But the point

SPEAKER_02 23:04

think to your engagement thing, fish where the fish are. You go where people are and you gauge with them on their terms. I think it's going to get a lot more intelligent in some ways because you're able to tell a lot more about people. You know, whether it's about geo-targeting, where they've been. Hey, you know, if you're driving in the HOV lane to a school every day, odds are you've got kids. So you're going to be targeted differently. You're going to be receiving messages based on that. So I think that obviously helps the engagement. I'm not sort of a pessimist about, you know, turnout and stuff like that. I think, yeah, it's not as good as it should be. But I don't know that it's going to change hugely over time. I don't think we're ever going to see a catastrophic drop-off. I think there's still a level of civic engagement that's going to be maintained. But I think engagement overall gets more intelligent and people become more engaged precisely because they can be. They

SPEAKER_02 23:51

They have platforms. Engagement used to be I sent you a letter and you read it and maybe you voted. Now you can send something back to me. Now you can put your position out there. There's a lot more that people can do.

SPEAKER_02 24:03

Carter, do you want to chime in? No,

Carter 24:05

No, it's what I – this is why we had him here. I

Carter 24:09

I get all these answers, so I'm super happy that Shane was able to take the time. Yeah, I wrote about half

Carter 24:15

batting above our average.

SPEAKER_03 24:16

Well, with Stephen on the show, it really brings down the average. So, no. No, that's great. Thanks, Shane. And, you know, we're going to be talking about American politics in our next segment. I'm not going to ask you for prognosticating, but general sentiments on the U.S. election right now. What are you feeling?

SPEAKER_02 24:34

Here's the thing. It's so far out, right? None of it really means anything at this stage. You've got to wait for the field to whittle down. On the Republican side, you see a lot of people pulling their hair out about the state of the field. That's going to change once we get into the primary season. Personally, and I'm by no means an expert in this, there's no way Trump gets really that far. You look at his polling. You look at who's actually being put – the numbers behind the numbers. It just doesn't stack. It's great for the media. It's great to have a horse race and yada, yada. But at this moment, I'm just – I'm not that interested until it actually starts to really, really mean something and we see who the real candidates are and get into the primary season. I

Carter 25:14

I think that every Canadian is right now breathing a sigh of relief that Trump is not going to be relevant.

SPEAKER_03 25:20

Shane Greer, co-publisher of Campaigns and Elections magazine. Thanks, Shane. Thank you. All right. Let's move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, guys, Canadians make half-witted comments on the U.S. election in D.C.

SPEAKER_03 25:31

It's the most literal title. I had nothing.

SPEAKER_03 25:34

very literal title. Nothing on that, eh? Yeah. No, people will know exactly what's coming next, which is a conversation on the Mexican election. No. I don't even know if they're having an election. No,

Carter 25:43

No, they don't anymore.

SPEAKER_03 25:45

I'd be the general. Yeah, they just stopped doing it. Let me just ask you the broadest question because I'm very lazy. What do you think of the American election so far?

Carter 25:55

Just a rehash of

SPEAKER_03 25:56

of the one you asked Shane? Just take it somewhere

Carter 25:58

for me and then we'll go from there. I love that you asked that question twice. Yeah, well, listen. Here's what I think.

Carter 26:03

It's so easy to get trapped into the Canadian paradigm when you look down south. What's the Canadian paradigm?

Carter 26:09

paradigm? The Canadian paradigm is are those fucking Republicans morons or what? And we look at them and we say there's no one who could possibly be that stupid. And we forget to look at it through the lens of the American people. And the lens of the American people is so different. I mean we were just wandering around D.C. We went and saw this video that they show, the propaganda video, the prop video before the Capitol tour.

Carter 26:40

in it, they talk about independent people so many times. They're an independent people. They're an independent people. And it's so different than kind of our – and I don't want to call it the welfare state that we have in Canada. But from their point of view, we have a welfare state in Canada. And they have an independent state where people are responsible for themselves and they value that so much that we as Canadians often discount that and we pretend that they are crazy right-wingers when really they're representing the values of their people. Well,

SPEAKER_01 27:13

Well, I think I think it's more than that. First of all, that video was definitely filmed under George W. Bush. It was it was neutral, but like leaning right. But but it is more than that. I mean, this is a great nation that has done great things. We were also at the Aerospace Museum yesterday. And like every single one of those aeronautic things was like an American milestone, right? First in flight, first cross in the Atlantic, first in space. Well, not first in space, first on the moon. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

They're all American. Like this is this is some really impressive stuff. And that was most certainly the 20th century, the American century. And I think people naturally, when they're on top, get nervous about maybe not being on top. And they start to look for those solutions to kind of go back to the good old days that were never necessarily that good. And they were never not even that old. That was not so long ago. Right. But I think there's a little bit of that. And there's a little bit of anxiety about America's place in the world. There shouldn't be – I mean we're changing. Like the world is going to be a different place. America will be an important nation for

SPEAKER_01 28:14

for the foreseeable future. There's no question about that. But I think that to me it's pretty clear anxiety is driving a lot more of this because it's not just a question of the right. It's a question of the left, and there's these swing-for-the-fence solutions we're seeing that we weren't seeing in the 90s, you know, at the

SPEAKER_01 28:30

end of history when everybody was feeling so confident about America. Okay, so let's

SPEAKER_03 28:33

let's just get right into the strategy of both of the parties right now. No. Let's go with the Democrats first. Let's do it. If you're Hillary Clinton right now, can she be accused of being complacent? I mean, or should she be just preparing past Bernie Sanders right now, Corey? No,

SPEAKER_01 28:48

No, you know, I think the polling is interesting in the Democratic one. And look, if I'm Hillary Clinton, I'm not necessarily sweating that I'm going to lose this thing. She's actually had a pretty good month. She's had some good appearances. We're going to have one on Saturday, I believe, in Iowa. That's going to be a big debate. Right. Yeah. But the

SPEAKER_01 29:06

the Bernie Sanders thing, let's just call it the Bernie Sanders. The

Carter 29:10

The Bernie Sanders thing is exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

BST. Yeah, there there is something there that should keep her up at night. And it's not necessarily that he's going to win the election, but that it's even with all of the campaign establishment she has on side. Bernie Sanders is at 30 percent nationally. And this is a 74 year old crotchety man. I like could you imagine if there was like some youthful, inspirational person espousing the same views against Hillary Clinton? So are

SPEAKER_03 29:34

are you effectively saying the Bernie Sanders movement is bigger than Bernie Sanders the man? Is that what I'm hearing you say?

SPEAKER_01 29:38

say? What I'm saying, and it's almost a continuation of my last thought about those solutions that are more extremist, there is an appetite right now for big

SPEAKER_01 29:48

big ideological debates that we haven't seen for the past couple of decades. And Bernie Sanders is an avowed socialist who is getting polling at 30 percent in the Democratic primary. Carter,

SPEAKER_03 29:58

conventional wisdom here says that people rally around the establishment candidate regardless. I mean, where else are they going to go has been the classic mantra to a movement like this. What do you think? What

Carter 30:09

What if I was to blow everybody's minds and say that Bernie Sanders is the same as Donald Trump, right?

SPEAKER_03 30:15

I don't even think that's even a thought. Two

Carter 30:18

But they're not outliers to the right and left. What they are is outliers in terms of authenticity. Because they aren't going to win, they can be far more authentic. They can say whatever pops into their little heads, and they can do so in a fashion that people are really responding to right now. You know, it may not be politically correct, but damn it, I was just happy that he said it. That's kind of the model that we're getting because they don't have to survive this primary. This is their moment in the sun. This is their moment that they get to have, whereas Hillary Clinton needs to survive this primary. Jeb Bush needs to survive this primary and compete in a general. Jeb Bush is not surviving this primary. He's totally surviving this primary. Mark it down on your calendar, okay? Stephen Carter said today Jeb

SPEAKER_03 31:02

Jeb Bush is the guy. Hold on. Carter, tell me this. Should she be looking past a primary at this point? There's a lot of articles, a lot of commentary right now saying that the Democrats are in trouble if they don't start looking at Rubio or Bush, whoever the prospective nominee is going to be, rather than just middling through this coasting win for Hillary. When

Carter 31:20

When you have so much money, as much money as Hillary Clinton has, you can afford to do two things at once. So one thing would be deal with this campaign, deal with Bernie Sanders. And the other thing is get your ass ready for Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

No, totally incorrect. I mean, she has so much money. She has the same amount of money as Bernie Sanders. This is not over. And she's got to get it over. The

SPEAKER_03 31:42

The one interesting thing, Corey, brings this up, and it's accurate, is that the outliers in the other side might be doing okay in the polls. But the outlier here is doing well financially as well on the Democrat side. Bernie Sanders raised the same last quarter as Hillary Clinton affected one quarter. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 31:57

Yeah, well, we'll see. We'll see. As much as people have been talking about Hillary having a good month. And I saw an article just yesterday talking about Hillary Clinton maintains lead or or being like after a good month, Hillary is still continuing to to dominate or something. But it actually showed still the gap narrowed by five points between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders is, if he comes out of Iowa strong, which who knows, it's a caucus state. It wasn't particularly friendly to Hillary last time. And if he wins New Hampshire as expected, it starts to become interesting. It starts to become really interesting. And again, I'm not saying Bernie Sanders wins, but I'm saying that movement looks so legitimate. I think Hillary Clinton has to respond in a way that, who knows? I mean, like it could have serious ramifications on the actual on the actual election. Let's

SPEAKER_03 32:44

Let's transition to the to the GOP and the other Republicans. Carter, you were talking about and I find this interesting, this notion of outliers versus authenticity. Do you feel like the guys at the top right now, Carson, who's I don't even know. I don't

Carter 32:57

don't even know what to say. And

SPEAKER_03 32:59

And Donald Trump, the guys at the top right now in terms of polling. Where do you feel like they bring authenticity or is the appetite now for someone from the outside? side and that's it what do what do you feel like they bring how

SPEAKER_01 33:10

how are they palatable ben carson is the natural outcropping of the history channel running alien artifacts shows like this is just fucked up i can't even understand how people uh like allow uh you know these kind of people to be in the debate but like let's put that aside right now what's

SPEAKER_03 33:27

what's what's going on here i mean from the what's going on here from your

Carter 33:30

your vantage point on here i mean there there's there are a bunch of problems but one of the problems is the american education system which is fantastic in many many places and might be one of the best in the world but it is then complemented by the absolutely terrible education systems that exist that allow people to think that the pyramids were used for grain storage or this so so you can't hang that on the hold on yes you can but

SPEAKER_03 33:55

but but i think are

SPEAKER_03 33:58

such a dichotomy i think carter brings up an interesting point do you feel like Like this is an anti-intellectual movement that's powering it? There is a total anti

Carter 34:04

anti-intellectualism that is occurring all

Carter 34:08

all over the world, not just here. And that anti-intellectualism is being – is giving voice and person. I

SPEAKER_03 34:16

I think that's an interesting point. I think the notion of intellectualism has been kind of grabbed to the left. Absolutely not. OK. So what are you thinking? That's the most cliché,

SPEAKER_01 34:23

cliché, trite – that is such nonsense. People have been saying that forever. Look, there has always been anti-intellectual people. There was a group widely known as the Know-Nothings who essentially tried to take over government back in the 19th century. This is not new. In fact, I think – No, no. I don't think anyone is saying it's new. I think people are saying it's relevant. Hold on. Let me finish the thought here. This is not new. Nerds are having their moment right now too. I mean when you start looking at how people are reacting to science and technology relative to how they've had those opinions in the past, which have been a little more colored by the fact that we can create weapons and nuclear bombs and all of that stuff. There is nothing to suggest that Americans or anybody else are less educated or more anti-intellectual than they have been in the past. That is utter trash. That's the kind of stuff that people have been saying since Roman times about kids today. It's utter

Carter 35:15

The tracks – I mean first – I mean I don't know how to respond to the utter trash comment. This is a reality. This is one of our great challenges is – so let's just make this into a social policy problem. One of our great challenges is that poverty dictates educational outcomes and health outcomes. This is our reality. And in the United States, it is exacerbated because they do not have the social safety net that we see in Canada to the same degree. And it continues to be furthered. I mean being in the US is fascinating. fascinating there's a whole different dialect down here there's different conversations and it's not so much of it is colored as black white uh racial relations or black white latino and there's obviously overlays on that but the poverty poverty it's this poverty impoverished group that is that is that i find fascinating because it is currently and i guess it always has been i will concede that it always has been but i think it's just getting bigger and bigger This impoverished group that almost clings to their poverty and clings to their separateness, their togetherness. And part of that is grasping and believing things that are absolutely and completely unbelievable as espoused and represented by a Republican presidential candidate who has the title doctor. None

Carter 36:40

None of this is mattering to you. None of this is striking a chord. My

SPEAKER_01 36:46

rolled any more, I'd detach a retina. I

Carter 36:49

I think they rolled fully backwards and came back up. You are doing

SPEAKER_01 36:52

doing your perfect smug Canadian this morning. I am.

SPEAKER_01 36:55

People are overstating this.

Carter 36:56

this. I said we couldn't approach this as smug Canadians. I explained the value differences. This was done already, and now you're not allowing me the opportunity to point out the poverty situation. The

SPEAKER_01 37:08

talking about is real. The gap, the income inequality gap is real. There will be outcomes on that front. They are all real. I am not disputing any of that. But

Carter 37:15

But you're rolling your eyes out. But

SPEAKER_01 37:16

But let's not simplify it to that point. There's more going on behind the scenes here, and there's more happening. There is absolutely a frustration with where people are. The fact that income has not grown for a large number of Americans. GDP has become a number nobody will be talking about in the future. We talk about GDP growth. What's in it for me? I don't care. The economy has become two questions, right? Right. Nobody cares about the national economy. They want to know how it's helping them. Right. And you're seeing this reflected in American confidence, the economy by GDP per cent. And like Barack Obama in when he took over the economy and let's not simplify to that. But when he became president, the

SPEAKER_01 37:59

the Americans, America was in some dire straits. They're largely out of it by any traditional economic metric. But the one that's not there is income. And people aren't, you know, feeling like they're being carried along for their own, which is why you're seeing this kind of swing for the fences thing. It's really – there's very little difference between supporting a Ben Carson, Donald Trump as there is buying a lottery ticket weekly. You're just swinging for the fences and hoping things work out because nothing is working right now. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 38:24

Okay. Let's get back to strategy for a second. How do you – from your strategy hats, put those on for a second. How do you send a message or what message do you send if you are Jeb Bush, Rubio, one of the establishment that many feel like have a chance to win this thing in the long run? How do you position yourself in the noise that seems – I asked this question last time like five months ago when we did our previous episode

Carter 38:47

episode or whatever. So the difference this cycle over last cycle was last cycle you'd see Rick Santorum go to the top and then you'd see Mike Huckabee go to the top and they die. And then you'd see Herman

Carter 39:00

Cain go to the top and die.

Carter 39:02

Four, five, six candidates all go to the top. And all Mitt Romney has to do is sit back, weather the storm, let them explode.

Carter 39:12

Cain and Trump have both said something that

Carter 39:21

is enough to end their campaign under any normal circumstance. And

Carter 39:25

it hasn't ended their campaign. pain so the strategy of simply waiting for this implosion that is bound to happen and maybe we're watching it right now for carson maybe maybe right now scrutiny

SPEAKER_03 39:37

scrutiny is my yeah

Carter 39:38

yeah because carson is is i think starting to implode but trump

Carter 39:42

trump takes those weaknesses and flips them into strengths and continues to survive i mean that was the best part about listening to shane today is that don't worry it won't it won't be but i think that that's almost the establishment of american politics going we couldn't possibly we couldn't possibly elect we can't be that we are not that stupid we'll be fine we'll be fine we're not that stupid okay so you're

SPEAKER_03 40:03

you're in the you're in the war room of some of these establishment guys in the gop who've been like yeah you know what i think 2016 is going to be my year and they're like look at these weak candidates this sounds great what do you tell them right now how do you keep their head in the game this

SPEAKER_01 40:15

this is for me this is a bit of a prisoner's dilemma because as long as the field is this wide and there's this many people in it it's going to to be very difficult for the the sensible right to take back control of their party and some of the rule changes they made to to fix the problems that mitt romney had to deal with are potentially disastrous for the republican party going forward because they're unfavorable

SPEAKER_03 40:35

unfavorable to well like

SPEAKER_01 40:36

well they well maybe they go to winner takes all i think after march or they can that's a possibility the states have well so what if what if we've still got a field of 10 what if trump is is winning these primaries with 25% of the vote and getting all the delegates in.

SPEAKER_01 40:50

in. Oh, my God. That's a disaster. So they've really got to narrow their field pretty quickly once these primaries and caucuses start. Or this could very easily be Trump. I'm actually not willing to discount Trump yet for that very reason. Things could happen.

Carter 41:03

This is going to be fun to

SPEAKER_03 41:03

to watch, though. Okay, last question

SPEAKER_01 41:05

question on this very quickly. Oh,

SPEAKER_03 41:05

Oh, yeah, get your popcorn.

SPEAKER_03 41:06

What do you do if you're the two parties right now, right? Right. You have the

SPEAKER_03 41:12

the two nominations going on, but you're also trying to create a machine to prepare for the general election. And effectively, the question here is, is how do you ensure that you've got stuff in place so that your down ticket races can also be successful? I know all the attention is going to go on to your main races, but very similar to what you do. Right. You've created an infrastructure where you've got a leader. But how do you ensure the success of everyone underneath provincially, federally, et cetera? Well,

SPEAKER_01 41:37

Well, it's a bit different down here compared to, you know, in our country, the party just has to run everything, you know, for the candidates for whatnot. But the Hillary machine or the Sanders machine, they're

SPEAKER_01 41:48

they're just going to take over that infrastructure. They become effectively the party. And yes, there's the DNC and they're dealing with racism, they're allocating resources and whatnot. And that work will continue. And I think that because of the different nature and the way they set things up, you just do your thing, right? And you just be ready to pivot if you're that big organization. But it's not like you all of a sudden win and then you've got to staff up a bunch of positions. You just, you have the nomination and your organization continues to be your organization. It's much more continuous than in our system where you have a leadership team and then all of a sudden you're in a different job and you've got to actively hire different people into those

Carter 42:24

those roles. Yeah, I mean, the Canadian experience is this kind of ramping up for campaigns, getting ready for a campaign. The American experience is this campaign is always on. We are never going to stop campaigning. So the DNC or the RNC, you know, they never stop seeking

Carter 42:43

seeking candidates. They never stop preparing for the next congressional. It just goes on and on and on. And the candidates themselves, again, one of the foundational differences, we always go, oh, my God, it was a 78-day campaign. How hard was this? You know, you're elected as a congressman.

Carter 43:00

You have to get elected again in two years. Your fundraising starts the day after you get elected. Your campaign structure starts the next day. So they run, you know, a two-year campaign year after year, you know, segment after segment constantly to get ready. So this always-on campaign cycle down here in the United States, it drives you to always be ready. You're not in a position where, okay, well, let's see how the top of the ticket turns out, right, which is really what we do in a leadership race, right? You know, the Conservatives right now, the Conservative Party of Canada is sitting back and saying, well, we'll have to wait and see who our leader is in order to determine the flavor of the party. party the flavor of the party here is going to be determined by these down tickets as well same

SPEAKER_01 43:47

same same in alberta right where where you've seen the fundraising numbers go off a cliff for the pcs because yeah because they're waiting to see what this organization becomes you don't really have the it's it's very different and of course that's a lot to do with the command and control nature of canadian politics too right it is it is elected dictatorships as you've put it before steven you just you elect somebody and then they're in charge and they've got all of the power but power is much much more diffuse in the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.

Carter 44:12

Party. It's very, very, very diffused.

SPEAKER_03 44:14

Okay, let's move it on to our last segment. Our last segment are over under a lightning round. Guys, are you ready?

SPEAKER_03 44:18

Look, Carter, I have not heard from you, so I'm just going to just ask Corey these questions. That's fine. That's

Carter 44:22

That's fine. I mean, no one ever listens to mine anyways.

SPEAKER_03 44:26

Give me one piece of advice you'd give Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as it relates to this American election. If you're sitting there with him right now, what do you tell him?

SPEAKER_01 44:34

Don't pick sides. Stay out of it. You know what? But even if the Democrats win the White House, you're still going to have to deal with Republicans in the Senate for sure and the House for sure. So just don't pick sides.

Carter 44:45

Well, this is the problem with the Alberta experience in Washington is that they always wanted to appeal to the Republicans. And it doesn't matter. You have to have relationships on both sides. Build the bridges before you need

SPEAKER_03 44:55

need them. Bernie Sanders, the man. Scale of 1 to 10. Chances of his message penetrating. Bernie Sanders, the man. Corey. But

SPEAKER_01 45:03

Oh, 10. I think his message is going to have a huge impact going forward, if not in this cycle and in future cycles. Carter, what do you think of

Carter 45:12

message? How about a three? Really? Yeah, I mean, he's going to be forgotten in the annals of history. What

SPEAKER_03 45:16

What do you think happens? His message just gets encapsulated with the DNC and that's it? That's

Carter 45:22

I mean, it's going to be Hillary, the juggernaut that is Hillary, will take over and this will be a forgotten memory. Well,

SPEAKER_03 45:29

Well, how about this? Over, under, on one, the number of primaries he wins. Primary slash caucuses that he wins. One. Oh, over. Over? Oh, yeah. Corey's

SPEAKER_01 45:39

No, this isn't even in dispute.

SPEAKER_03 45:40

Interesting. Combined. Okay, I'm going to give them combined. Combined the over, under, on four, the number of primaries that Carson and Trump win.

SPEAKER_01 45:51

I don't know which one of these is going to take the cake. I mean, they could flame out, but I'm going to say over. I

Carter 45:56

I think it's over. I think it's over, too. Really? Oh, my God. You know, one of the reasons that I think that is actually listening to all these, quote unquote, experts saying, oh, don't don't worry, it'll be fine.

Carter 46:07

Don't worry, it'll be fine. You

SPEAKER_03 46:07

You think you think that's just that that counter narrative? I

Carter 46:10

I think it's I think it's wishful thinking.

SPEAKER_03 46:13

One word strategy, if you could give it to to the Republican establishment candidates right now, what would you tell them?

SPEAKER_01 46:19

Drop out. And like, that's not necessarily to anyone specific, but they've got a narrow like they've all got to get behind somebody. And, you know, you've got to have, like, every one of them essentially being like, no, we've got to go with Rubio or Bush or something. But get together and figure this out before you really regret it. Dropout and Reckonsack.

Carter 46:37

Yeah, it can't be one word. But it's like, man, it's almost like it's not the last person who drops out who's going to be vice president. It's the first.

SPEAKER_03 46:48

Scale of 1 to 10, the importance of this American election to us in Canada.

SPEAKER_01 46:51

Canada. What do you think? This one in particular. particular i think it's a seven i i mean it's hard to ever get beyond seven with these elections because of that diffuse power and the fact that the american system moves so slowly like what's really going to happen yeah

Carter 47:03

yeah i mean i i think it's a five actually really low work yeah i

Carter 47:06

i think uh you

Carter 47:07

you know congress will continue to be a republican i i you know i i don't believe that a republican will be in the white house um i don't think it's gonna have that big a deal coolio

SPEAKER_03 47:16

coolio well thanks to To Shane Greer for joining us as our guest from Campaigns and Elections. The Reed Awards at TheReedAwards.com. And that's a wrap on Episode 558 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

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