Episode 564: Iowa Jima

Zain 0:03

This is the Strategists episode 564. My name is Zain Velji with me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. See, now this is a thing. We just made it a thing.

Zain 0:13

What were you going to do? Carter was just not paying attention. Yeah, it's fine. Are we on now? Did this start already? Are we actually doing an episode? Is that what you meant? Who are you guys? Why are you in my house? Well,

Corey 0:22

Well, it's been our traditional January hiatus, so it's now over. Very

Zain 0:26

We took the three-week vacation. We've got no energy. Carter, are you even here? Are you engaged? I ate a cookie. There's a lot going on. I need a little bit of sugar buzz. It's going to come in a minute. Oh, my God. There's so much going on. Aren't you excited, Corey? You want to go on. If you could have this episode curated to you, there would be like seven rants that you'd go on.

Corey 0:45

on. Yeah, that's true. There's been a lot that's happened in the last three weeks. There's many things. American politics has been wild. Iowa was yesterday. yesterday um there has been an alberta cabinet shuffle we have seen the federal government deal with all sorts of stuff including bringing in a new neb process we got a royalty review here in alberta my god yeah

Carter 1:04

yeah but all i care about is our listeners and our listeners demanded an equalization episode so

Carter 1:11

hoping that belgium has been following the listeners one

Corey 1:14

one person requested it and one other person agreed to it like on it that's like a landslide

Carter 1:19

landslide on twitter That is a landslide for us.

Zain 1:22

So you're excited. You're excited to do this. I'm

Carter 1:24

I'm excited about equalization. All the other stuff we have to do to

Carter 1:27

get to it is going to be a little bit, you know,

Zain 1:31

Just because I hate you. Our first segment, Iowa what? What the hell happened last night? I know, Corey, you're revving up going. So let's give people some context, right? Yeah.

Corey 1:43

Yeah. The Iowa caucuses were last night. This is the first actual votes cast in the U.S. primaries. Now, that's not even. You're using

Carter 1:51

using the word vote loosely. Yeah,

Corey 1:52

Yeah, that's not even that true. So what happens in a caucus state to differentiate between caucuses and primaries in the United States? And there's a whole grab bag of different ways they select delegates to choose their party's candidate. But in a caucus state, you are getting together almost like a party meeting. You're electing somebody up. And in this case, those people you're electing are then going to your county convention who are electing people who are going to your state convention who are going to be determining your delegates for the presidency. So it's a bit removed. And so all of the counts that you saw last night were not

Corey 2:23

not that important, except for in the momentum game, which I'm sure we'll get to in a second. Now, in fact, four years ago, there was kind of an embarrassing situation where the winner of Iowa a couple of weeks later turned out they did not get the most delegates. So that does happen. And there is some question as to whether or not just because somebody squeaks out in either the votes as the Republicans show their votes or the delegates that are elected locally as the Democrats do, they don't release their vote totals. Whether that will actually be reflective of the number of delegates at the end of the day remains to be seen. It actually should be pretty familiar to Canadians who ever were involved in a delegated leadership convention. Very similar. And so there are alternates and there are whether or not people show up to convention and all these other considerations, which will ultimately determine the

Corey 3:11

the number of delegates Iowa sends for either Sanders or Clinton or Rubio or Trump or whatever. I'm going to call Trump whatever because he doesn't deserve a human name. And from

Corey 3:23

from there, I think we just have to say, that's great. So let's just talk about momentum, because that's really all that anybody else in the United States or Canada cares about when they think of Iowa. Okay,

Zain 3:33

Okay, so that's exactly what I want to talk about here. We'll discuss the results a little bit more. Stephen, I'll let you tee people up on that. But the discussion on this segment is about the strategy of momentum and how the respective candidates on both the GOP and the DNC side take this momentum going forward. And I'd love to get your guys' thoughts on what momentum is. Is it something that you just find? Is it something you create? And we'll talk about that in a second. But before we do, let's tee up where the situation stands today.

Zain 4:02

Bernie Sanders, Corey, you know, was not supposed to play in Iowa, was supposed to play. What does that look like? Well,

Corey 4:09

Well, it depends on your frame of reference. As of nine months ago, he absolutely was not supposed to play. If you said a week ago, I mean, there was a CNN poll that showed him up almost 10 points. So he was supposed to play. And

Zain 4:20

And last night ends up in a virtual tie, 49.8% for Clinton, 49.6% for Sanders, effectively a virtual tie. Yeah,

Corey 4:29

Yeah, I mean, we're using percents kind of loosely, because again, it's not votes, it's delegates elected. And that was the breakdown. But I mean, Clinton got six of her delegates through coin tosses. That's how close it was. If those coin tosses had even just broken based, you know, statistically average, each of them winning half of them, Sanders would have won. I mean, that's how close it was. And

Zain 4:48

And Stephen, let's talk about momentum on the other side, the GOP side. We had Ted Cruz winning by four points over Donald Trump or also known as whatever. And Marco Rubio declaring effectively victory by coming in third place as now the institutional non-Trump, non-Cruz candidate. Anything you want to add on commentary on that? Well, this is the

Carter 5:09

the beauty of these processes. You don't have to win to win. You can come in second, you can come in third. I mean, this was actually the Nenshi strategy. We didn't care about winning the election at the beginning. What you wanted to do is you actually wanted to be in third place. If we could be in third place by the time September rolled around and a municipal election that was going to be held in the middle of October, we

Carter 5:33

we wanted right after Labor Day there to be polls, and those polls would come out having Nenshi in third place.

Carter 5:40

Third place obviously isn't winning, but third place puts you in a different type of conversation. If you're sitting down at the bottom of the field, if you're sitting where Santorum or Chris Christie or Mike Huckabee, those people are going to have a very difficult time translating this, especially if they don't perform well in New Hampshire. So their momentum is nonexistent, especially Huckabee and Santorum, both of whom have won the Iowa caucuses before. So you've got a situation where people who've won have shown tremendous negative momentum. And I think you're going to see candidates on the Republican side start dropping out relatively quickly when their money is going to run out now. Right.

Zain 6:23

Right. So I think you make a great segue there. And I should note that Iowa, as much as we provide importance to it, hasn't necessarily been that great of a bellwether. We haven't seen nominee Santorum or Huckabee show up in the last two cycles. But at the same time, there's something to discuss here around momentum. Do you not agree, Steve? You wanted to chime in on something. thing well

Carter 6:43

well i mean i don't think either new hampshire nor iowa are necessarily good bellwethers like the winners of those of those um caucuses or in the new hampshire state the the primary those don't necessarily uh go on to win the election they don't necessarily even go on to win the the the the battle but they do start winning money yeah

Carter 7:03

right so they are going to be more uh in the game it's second and third place that are really the ones that you have to put and watch closely sanders came in second right but it was a really close second now did he fall 10 points like cory mentioned before that there was a pull out uh you know a week ago saying

Zain 7:21

saying he was up yeah did he

Carter 7:22

he fall 10 points that's what the clinton people made us believe right so the clinton people for which obviously cory's an agent because he was talking about how great sanders was going to do every

Carter 7:33

every time you talk about how great someone else is going to do and

Carter 7:36

and then they don't yeah

Carter 7:37

even though by really any reasonable measure sanders did great yesterday any

Carter 7:43

reasonable human being would say that was amazing but the spin today is this was actually a victory for hillary because her ground game was obviously much stronger than people thought because she was able to stop the upsurge of bernie sanders and that's the win oh that's

Corey 8:00

that's the game no No, no, no. That's spin. And we'll see if that gets spun out the way you're talking. Oh, I'm sorry.

Corey 8:06

fact is the one

Corey 8:07

one poll that showed Sanders up 10 points was an outlier. And in fact, the poll of polls, the average showed Hillary Clinton up by three points. Right. That's not what happened at the end of the day. So, yeah, he still outperformed expectations. I do have to tip my cap to the Clinton campaign. It is amazing to me that we are sitting here talking about whether or not this is bad for Sanders. Sanders got – Sanders took on the establishment. Hillary Clinton had this thing locked up. You talk about money. You talk about organizers. You talk about it all. Those were all things that were in Hillary Clinton's corner and yet somehow Sanders pulled it to a drop. Like honestly, we're talking about coin tosses where the difference between winning or quote-unquote losing that state last night. Totally amazing. But it is a good lesson in momentum and expectation setting because – well, it's funny, right? Like Rubio won by coming in third. Trump

Corey 9:01

by beating Rubio and

Zain 9:01

and coming in second. So that's – Corey, you make a great point. And I know we want to talk more specifically about this, but let's talk about that formula for momentum. It's the combination of expectation setting. What else goes into it in

Zain 9:16

in your mind? Well,

Corey 9:17

Well, in the case of Iowa and in New Hampshire, like there's a certain point where you win, you win. in but it's so early in the contest that you can actually look at this and say what's the trajectory going to be and try to project a couple of months out and and and so that's the value of these early contests you see who's relative to expectations performing and i don't

Corey 9:37

don't know i don't know if there's value to these early contests beyond this at the end of the day i think the democrats had 44 delegates up for grabs out

Corey 9:45

of i think almost 5 000 this is this is not going to change the race regardless and now it's so close we're talking about two or three delegates the difference between the yeah

Corey 9:55

yeah the much bigger difference frankly in real terms is the fact that hillary clinton has 400 or so super delegates already locked up like she's she's 10 iowa's ahead of bernie sanders before we even start the race but now now we're all talking about bernie sanders right

Zain 10:12

so so stephen carter let's let's drill this down a little bit more

Zain 10:16

Corey talked about the expectations going into momentum. What is the theoretical, even philosophical, you know, underpinnings of momentum? Is it something that happens to you and you take advantage of? Is it something you have direct control over? You're someone who's very familiar with riding the big mow to victory. Yeah,

Carter 10:34

Yeah, I think that amateurs think it's luck, right?

Carter 10:36

right? The momentum happens and it's just lucky. I think pros, and I might, if pushed, include Corey in this, but probably not. not. I think that pros are in the business of generating momentum. The difference between a successful campaign and a failing campaign is a successful campaign is one that understands how momentum will be created and how momentum will matter. When is the time that you want to actually start showing your momentum and actually start winning? That to me is the most important Now, I've

Carter 11:12

I've been on the I've been on both sides. I mean, we into, you know, 2012, the first polls in January had the progressive conservatives winning 83 of 87 seats. I mean, it was going to be an unbelievable bloodbath.

Carter 11:24

bloodbath. Within three months, we'd gone down to essentially being predicted to be at like 20 seats. Right. Truth was, of course, always in the middle. But that perception of momentum was such that, you

Carter 11:38

you know, when you are on the downside, when momentum is working against you, it

Carter 11:42

it feels like you cannot do anything right. Everything that you're doing doesn't give you the balance that you want. And you have to fight like hell to try and turn the momentum to your side. And sometimes that takes a little bit of luck. But a little bit of luck can only be capitalized on when you've done the planning and you're ready to take advantage. Yeah, I

Corey 12:00

I mean, I'll echo the point. It is not luck. I think you're a little harsh saying amateurs call it luck. A lot of people say it looks like luck. But the fact is, luck plays a part. External circumstances play a part. But you know, those are the waves. Momentum from a campaign standpoint is about riding those waves. You know, a pro surfs where the waves are. And that's really what we're talking about with a campaign. What waves can we ride? And I think this was potentially the failing of the Trump campaign in particular. They, by

Corey 12:28

by most accounts, always knew that Iowa was going to be tough for them, but they started to set expectations so high. And of course, their brand had been so much about winning. I mean, that was a big mistake, I think, a real misstep for them because they set this expectation that

Corey 12:42

that they would compete and they almost came in third there.

Corey 12:47

I don't know what they were thinking there. At the end of the day, that was a big misstep. The Sanders campaign got

Corey 12:52

got closer to doing it right, but not quite. There was a lot of talk about Sanders being able to pull this off. Sanders himself said he could pull this off.

Corey 13:00

Probably shouldn't have gone that far. Probably should have said, look, even being in the hunt is an overwhelming victory for us. Hillary Clinton losing or winning by less than 20 points is a total failure for her. That should have been more of the messaging coming out of the Sanders campaign. Carter,

Zain 13:14

Carter, is not meeting expectations just a pure momentum killer? Is that a universal?

Carter 13:20

Yeah, I think that it is. I mean, I think if you've got expectations that you're going to achieve something and then you don't achieve it, you've

Carter 13:26

you've let down a lot of people. And keep in mind that at this particular moment in the election campaign, the people who are principally paying attention, like we didn't have a ton of Iowans voting because they don't care, right? So you've got the highest population of people who care are your activists. Then your money is paying attention. So when you don't meet expectations, those two groups are let down. And when those two groups are let down, it's

Carter 13:53

it's really hard to bounce back. And I think that the ones that it's probably going to hurt the most, like Rand Paul has actually turned this into a success. He got one full delegate out of yesterday. But he's making this turn into a success. success jeb bush also got one delegate right he's it's not working for him it

Zain 14:14

it looks like a disaster it's a disaster yeah exclamation

Carter 14:20

right so each of them still have a week i mean new hampshire the beauty of this is that new hampshire is very quick what happens after new hampshire is you know you kind of go into a couple of states in nevada and south

Carter 14:35

And then you run into Super Tuesday. Well,

Corey 14:36

Well, and the order of those two is different for the Democrats and Republicans. Yeah.

Carter 14:40

Yeah. So you've got this really wild kind

Carter 14:43

of momentum opportunity. So let's say you're John Kasich, okay? And you're stuck down at one delegate. You're the last guy who got a delegate just above Mike Huckabee.

Carter 14:56

If he does well in New Hampshire, he can actually turn his dismal performance in Iowa into a stepping stone that generated momentum. Interesting.

Zain 15:05

Interesting. Corey, here's what I'm hearing on momentum. Number one, it's expectations. You have to ensure that you're not over-promising and under-delivering. So expectations is one. Number two, I'm also hearing it's a framing thing where both people can get one delegate or you can get the same, yet you can really position it. I want to understand what are the other universals that go into momentum. When you're on that campaign trail, trail. Whether you're Steven who's trying to create momentum, and I'm not going to put this badly, or you're Corey trying to fight against that momentum when you're in that 2012 campaign.

Zain 15:39

We'll talk about that in a second. But what are other universals that go into this? Because I think that's what I'm interested in when you're on the campaign trail. What else are you thinking about?

Corey 15:47

Well, you talk about expectations. The fact is, it's just, are you moving away or towards expectations? That's the nature of momentum. And at some point, you swing past them. And that's That's when you're really in trouble if it's on the downswing. And that's where Trump has to worry about right now. But beyond that, it's a fairly simple concept. I do think it's interesting, though, that, you

Corey 16:08

you know, it's not about winning, you know. It's just not at this point in the game. It's about expectations. You know, in 1992, Bill Clinton got to claim he was the comeback kid because he came in second in New Hampshire. Didn't even win New Hampshire. Yeah,

Carter 16:22

Yeah, but he was coming from a long way down, too.

Carter 16:25

Like he got beat up really hard by – it was the Jennifer Flowers incident just before that. I'm

Corey 16:31

I'm not saying. Someone has seen the war room. But we talk about momentum. That's what we're talking about. Dude, I've read Primary Colors. Oh, God. Yeah, thanks.

Corey 16:41

The West Wing and Primary Colors. That's all that anybody needs to be an expert in politics apparently according to Twitter. Okay,

Zain 16:47

Okay, so expectations, framing, and also it can be totally contextual. You do not need to actually win to win. in. Stephen Carter, let's talk about leveraging momentum, because this is something we briefly touched on. You're Marco Rubio right now. You stand there giving a very Barack Obama-esque speech, saying that you're going to now bring life to the Republican Party. You are the institutional, non-Trump, non-Cruz candidate. How does someone like him leverage this momentum going forward?

Corey 17:15

You know, I saw on Twitter the best thing ever. Somebody said that RC Cola could learn or something about Rubio, from Rubio about being in third and being excited about it.

Corey 17:27

Like that was over the top.

Carter 17:28

Well, but here's his reality. No, he took

Zain 17:30

took a victory lap for sure. He definitely did.

Carter 17:33

Yeah, I mean Donald Trump is going to win this nomination according to every media outlet, right? Like that's what they're saying. They're building him up to fail and this is the problem with momentum. Marco Rubio has to move as quickly as humanly possible to to become the single candidate but if he moves too much he's going to find himself in the exact same spot as trump see what happens is when the media elevate you up to that star status

Carter 17:59

at some point they start looking for ways to tear you down and that's i think what's happening with trump we i mean we've seen time and time again i mean the latest thing stephen colbert's trump versus trump debate sure uh they went viral a few days ago i mean that stuff is it

Carter 18:15

it takes time but eventually it starts to tear down the celebrity and there's nothing more um that can that canadians and americans like than to watch someone rise to the height of celebrity and then tear them down piece by piece so rubio needs to get up into the stratosphere so he can beat casick and he can beat rand paul and jeb bush and all those establishment candidates right although rand paul's not but okay but he needs to get up there but he can't He can't get up there too high too early because he still needs the biggest momentum aiming for November of 2016.

Zain 18:51

Corey, what does someone like Rubio need to do? The guy who took multiple victory laps right now. You would think that he won by 40 points last night after that speech. That thing was hilarious. It

Corey 19:00

It was a good speech. He hit a lot of nice tones about securing the promise of America for future generations. All that motherhood stuff that Americans love to hear. Very hopey changey though, I tell you. It was very Obama-esque. yeah um it's

Corey 19:13

it's now he goes into new hampshire and his expectations will be higher and i think that's his first real like gut check moment so he's going to have to um keep expectations low for new hampshire how do you do that just say look it's it's great that we got this bump in iowa but the fact is new hampshire's ground has been set for a while trump was always going to win this by 20 points and when trump wins it by five points and you're in the race you look like a rock star yeah

Corey 19:39

there are ways that you can physically do that i don't think he's going to go so far as to avoid

Corey 19:44

avoid not avoid but like spend more time in south carolina than new hampshire for example really

Corey 19:48

really set the image out there that you don't think that new hampshire is a winning proposition for you the

Corey 19:54

the other thing we haven't really talked about is the

Corey 19:56

the more resources you pour into it the more those expectations are set right you spend every damn day in iowa like cruz did i mean cruz was in an interesting situation i'm not sure he would have been considered i

Corey 20:09

i think if he had come in second he would have had a similar problem that donald trump has he had put so much into iowa oh yeah yeah does he go from there right right it's hard to win well he he'd spent so much time

Zain 20:18

time and tons and where is the comments on rubio was we haven't seen this guy for a long time in iowa he shows up 11th hour gets in third place very close uh to taking over second and donald trump but cory so with that being said lowering expectations going forward Was it a mistake to give this victory lap speech that he did last night? Does that effectively make him, quote-unquote, frontrunner

Corey 20:40

frontrunner status? You know what I find interesting is everybody always talks about the two speeches. Like you write a victory speech and a defeat speech.

Corey 20:47

What does that look like when you're sitting in Iowa and victory is so contextual? I would love to know, like, did he have a victory and defeat in real terms and he gave the victory speech? Like there has to be more than two. It has to be a little more nuanced than that, I'm sure. Sure. I have to imagine that's just something a campaign says to someone. But that was really over the top, and that does risk setting expectations sky high. The establishment might say, our lord and savior, he's managed to come and protect the Republican Party from the wolves. But he lost to the two wolves. Yeah, yeah. First place, Cruz. Second place, Trump. Combined vote, well over 50%. I don't know that the establishment should be celebrating, and I don't know that the establishment's candidate, Rubio, who by the way how he became the establishment candidate is something we'll look back on someday and say that

Corey 21:34

that is a master course in triangulation because he was nobody's establishment candidate a year ago but he um he

Corey 21:41

he he went a little far there and i think that if the establishment starts getting this strut in their step like okay we found a way to check these guys you checked nothing in iowa you came in third

Zain 21:51

third yeah with with what and i think that's interesting because Because well over 50% is one thing. But at the same time, and we've talked about this in the past, outside of someone like Huckabee, it doesn't seem like these other, quote unquote, institutional guys are dropping out anytime soon.

Corey 22:07

Yeah, Huckabee had a great line when he dropped out too. He said, I'm dropping out because of illness. The voters are sick of me.

Corey 22:15

Which I thought was good. That's a great

Corey 22:17

And he's just done it a few times. He's been around the block. He understands. the the problem that we

Corey 22:23

we have is one of money we've talked about it before but as long as jeb bush has the largest super pack these guys all have their billionaires it seems yeah and and sure you've got new hampshire coming up next but i don't know if jeb bush is dropping out after new hampshire he's already managed expectations around it so that brings you all of a sudden which is in the march

Carter 22:40

march bush is in the game for second place in new hampshire right

Carter 22:43

right so i mean if he came in fifth maybe he drops and i think this is the interesting thing is that in the

Zain 22:49

the game for second

Zain 22:49

we have not Last night did not crystallize who the institutional candidate was, number one, is what I firmly believe. Anyone can come out of the pack, not anyone, but institutionally, anyone can come out in New Hampshire going forward. And as long as that happens, as long as other people in the field are seeing that that baton has not been firmly set, they will stay in the race, it seems like.

Corey 23:13

Yeah, the baton firmly set. Or

Corey 23:15

firmly held. That was just fine, put in their hand, I guess, by the establishment. That's what I was thinking. I'm not really sure the establishment has the baton is my point. I think they've totally lost control of this race. And I don't think that Rubio coming in third and Iowa changes that one bit.

Carter 23:32

the joy of essentially one-member, one-vote leadership processes, right, which is what we've established across the country now. There's some – the national ones have a little bit of nuance to it because they have 100 points per riding. But

Carter 23:46

one member, one vote leadership contests removes the opportunity for the establishment to influence as much as they'd like to, or in some cases, as much as they need to. And I'll just leave that for a different episode for us to dig into how much should the establishment be picking again. Last

Zain 24:04

Last question on this. Stephen Carter, I want to go to you first on this. For you, you have always believed, and correct me if I'm wrong, that second place in a multi-person race is the worst position to come out of. Is that true, second or first?

Zain 24:17

First is the worst. First is the worst. First is the worst this early. This early. Now, you're Donald Trump. You finish in second place, well below expectations. You're effectively now going to be fighting what Cruz is going to be labeling as his momentum, what Rubio and the institutional brand of the GOP is going to be labeling as their momentum. Is he in a really bad position right now going forward? No,

Carter 24:38

No, because he's going to crush in New Hampshire.

Carter 24:41

So if he was

Carter 24:43

he's going to be huge,

Zain 24:44

huge in New Hampshire. Walk me through this bad Trump. It

Carter 24:48

It was a really bad job, but that's all we can do.

Zain 24:50

You think it's just as simple as that? As long as he does find a new hamster, he can regain that mojo and power through?

Carter 24:57

Yeah, I do. I think he's

Carter 24:59

he's in a pretty good spot. But again, then he'll be in first place, right? He's got everybody's guns aiming at him. And that's the reason I don't want to be in first place right now. Corey,

Zain 25:07

Corey, talk to me very quickly about your experiences fighting against what is momentum. You feel like you've carved out a spot on the political spectrum or you feel like your agenda is resonating and then all of a sudden you're battling a tide. That comes from another – you

Corey 25:21

you don't agree with the premise? Well, look, I mean, first is not the worst place to be in when you start counting ballots. And it's really about the expectations that people had going into that contest that are so damning to Trump. But nobody had voted before then. I think that now there needs to be a bit of a recalibration of the Republican race. You're going to hear a lot in the next bit about can Trump actually deliver on ground game. I know Trump is saying out there like, oh, we're leading in the New Hampshire polls by a billion. We're so great. the problem that he has is that's his personality and that's so much his brand i don't know if he will ever be able to manage expectations i actually think that might be donald trump's kryptonite and i wasn't sure there was a donald trump kryptonite before i'm still not sure but i think that's as much as anything you can bait this guy into suggesting he's going to win by a billion and and that's that's great that's great in the expectations and momentum game when you're facing seen momentum and you're looking at that freight train coming down your

Corey 26:14

instinct is okay but i'm still in first let's not screw it up stay the course this is how i got to first you got to fight that instinct you've got to realize that everything is fluid and you got to create your own sense of momentum going forward the

Zain 26:26

the strategy of momentum we will leave it there on that topic much more to be discussed around that i'm sure is the political race we

Corey 26:32

we didn't even talk about bernie and the coin tosses what

Carter 26:36

what do you want to tell you know what okay there was Because Rosencrantz

Zain 26:38

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead and everything makes sense. Let me just tell you, it's a fucked up

Corey 26:42

up process, okay? No, no,

Zain 26:43

no, no. It's a fucked up process. Coins are

Corey 26:45

are fine. But you know what is interesting is that—

Zain 26:49

told me last night through a text message that, what was it, nine precincts where they didn't actually have recorded counts, so they were asking the campaigns what the effective count was?

Corey 26:59

That is what CNN was reporting. And effectively, they were trying to hunt down people in official capacities who could talk about the count and asking campaigns to verify it. It's ridiculous.

Zain 27:07

Oh, it's insane, but let's... It's a fucked up process, exactly what I said. Can I make a point

Corey 27:12

process at this point? Fine, make a point, and then we'll move on. I'm going to make a point about process. You're right, that's ridiculous. The other thing that's ridiculous is the coin toss rule, rule 28, which is really poorly worded, but ultimately... I knew

Corey 27:24

into it. Everybody on

Corey 27:25

on the internet who thinks that the coin

Corey 27:27

coin toss rule says that because Hillary won the coin toss, she loses the delicate... Here we go. ...needs to cool down, and here's why. Can you just step

Zain 27:35

step back for a second

Corey 27:36

second so people understand what they're talking about? Not yet.

Zain 27:40

We'll give you context. Go ahead.

Corey 27:42

There is a broader concept that needs to be talked about before we even talk about what happened, which is basically if everybody participating in the process understands what the outcome is and the spirit of the rules was met, there

Corey 27:59

there is not really a problem. Now, what has happened on the internet is some Bernie Sanders supporters have decided that by reading Rule 28 in the Iowa – like whatever rule book, Rule number 28 came from to select delegates, that the wording

Corey 28:14

wording is not if you win the coin toss, you win the delegate. It's that a coin toss will determine who loses the delegate. Therefore, by winning the coin toss, Hillary Clinton loses the delegate in cases of ties. And of course, Hillary Clinton won six coin tosses. So the logic in Sanders land right now, not Sanders land, but some French Sanders supporters, I think, is that that means

Corey 28:38

means Hillary should have lost all the delegates. That's

Corey 28:40

That's as unfair, frankly, as like the fact Hillary won all the delegates. gets i don't understand why there wasn't a more robust process around there but it's weird okay it's it's a weird situation here's

Zain 28:52

here's what there's more yeah

Corey 28:54

yeah i gotta i gotta say this because this is my overall point that's weird there were awkward rules it allows people to say things like this nobody

Corey 29:02

nobody ever looks at the rules when things are going right i

Corey 29:06

i think we agree to that that's a fair point process just moves along and the rules for the obscure cases are written the the most hastily like oh if this ever happens we'll just do a coin toss and in fact it was like it even said like in a three-way tie they would do a coin toss to determine the loser i don't know how that works but

Corey 29:23

but that's a problem and so my organizational procedural point to everybody is you spend a lot of time when you write these rules about when

Corey 29:32

when things are going well you really need to think about those cases when things go wrong because those are the times the rules matter the most and

Corey 29:40

that is my point i

Corey 29:42

secretly kind of love that

Zain 29:47

it and then he got it in at the end yeah the 11th ever okay

Carter 29:50

okay can i move it on is that

Carter 29:53

great melgie when did you lose control oh

Zain 29:55

oh my god like five minutes ago how long was that right eight minutes chester

Carter 29:59

chester chester would never our

Zain 30:00

our next segment chill dude Dude, just equalize it. Okay, we want to talk about Stephen Carter's favorite, favorite topic. Here we go, baby. And so we talked about Iowa, a state that many will argue has a disproportionate amount of influence when we talk about politics, influence, and viability for presidential candidates. Iowa

Carter 30:21

Iowa is America's Quebec, baby.

Zain 30:24

look at that. I was going to make it for you.

Zain 30:27

There we go. Stephen Carter,

Zain 30:28

Carter, tee up what our disproportionate political equivalent is here. And I think for you, it's the whole notion of equalization payments. People are freaking

Zain 30:35

out about equalization payments. Tell us why. Give us some context. Okay,

Carter 30:38

Okay, so here's the thing.

Carter 30:40

People in Alberta, as you know, want to get a little pipeline down to the east. And Mayor Denis Coderre, in his infinite wisdom, opposed the pipeline before it's even applied for. The mayor

Zain 30:50

mayor of Montreal. Yeah,

Carter 30:51

Yeah, and he likes to jump out ahead of the game. So he gets his way out there, and then all of a sudden, everybody in Alberta starts tweeting, tweeting hey dude if you don't want our pipeline you don't get your equalization payment okay

Carter 31:04

okay so this drives me crazy so that's the crux of of all of it that's where it starts for bottom line everybody has this sense that the money flows from alberta directly to quebec in some sort like we have uh oh

Zain 31:18

oh yeah that like a pipeline some would say there's

Carter 31:21

there's a pipeline of money we have a bank machine in alberta where everybody takes withdrawals and there's a bank machine in quebec where all they do is deposit and that makes me crazy and that's what we're going to talk about because he got to do his little rant and now i get to do my little rant well cory

Corey 31:38

cory i'll chime in with you in this sense people look at equalization the way they look at alimony they feel like it's a check to alberta to their ex-wife quebec to pay for all of these things and that is not how equalization works equalization is it's and you know what it's moneyed further i think by the The fact we call them transfer payments, it's since that – like let's reach into Alberta's bank account, take money out and put it into Quebec's bank account. But that's not what equalization is. Equalization is a federal program where they spend more money in

Corey 32:07

in regions that are economically depressed. Full stop. Well,

Carter 32:11

Well, let's look at other places where they may do that. The

Carter 32:14

The province of Alberta takes money in from the big cities, Edmonton and Calgary, and then redistributes it through essentially a series of transfers to people, to education or to school districts that don't have the same tax base. We do that every single day in the province of Alberta where we take money from essentially the big cities and we redistribute it to rural Alberta where they don't have the taxation base to support their school systems. No one's up in arms about that. You know why? Because it's fair.

Carter 32:46

Because it's fair to put the same education system in rural Alberta as it is to put the same education in urban Alberta. sure isn't

Carter 32:55

isn't it therefore the same the same principle to put the same health care system in quebec as the health care system is in uh in in alberta why do we need to do that very very simple reason it

Carter 33:10

it turns out that the gross domestic product per person in alberta is eighty four thousand dollars yeah

Carter 33:17

okay what is it in quebec forty

Carter 33:19

forty four thousand dollars so it's almost half right it is a fraction of what our gross domestic product and product is in alberta therefore we're making more money and

Carter 33:31

and that's what this basically boils down to because we pay the exact same taxes in alberta as

Carter 33:38

as they pay in quebec so a person is making four hundred thousand dollars federal

Carter 33:43

the person is making four hundred thousand dollars in quebec the one guy that's there, making that much money, is paying the exact same amount of income tax as the person who makes $400,000 in Alberta. There is no, I have to pay more because I'm a rich Albertan. You're paying more because you're rich. Okay, that's it. It's a fundamental premise of taxation. If you make

Carter 34:05

make more money, you should pay more taxation. That is just it. If you buy a more expensive car, you pay more GST. If you make more money, you pay more taxes. It has nothing to do with whether you live in Quebec or whether you live in Alberta. Everybody pays the same federal taxes. And so when we talk about what's this giant transfer payments or better yet equalization, first of all, we're conflating those two things. Equalization last year, or I guess this fiscal year, is $17 billion.

Carter 34:40

Our total transfer payments are

Carter 34:45

So when we talk about all the equalization that goes to Quebec, yes, it's true. They get about $10 billion in equalization, keeping in mind their gross domestic product is 50% of what Albertans are per capita. So they do get more money sent to them in

Carter 35:01

in this kind of a function, but we're getting money too.

Carter 35:05

people of Alberta get – let me just scroll down here because I have to – it goes all the way down to the bottom.

Corey 35:10

Oh, he's ready for this. Yeah, when Stephen Carter has charts, I tell you. People

Carter 35:13

People of Alberta got $5.5 billion in transfer payments from the Canadian government last year, or this fiscal year, I should say. $5.5 billion. That's $1,312 per person.

Carter 35:28

Is that less than the $3,000 or so that Quebec got? Yeah, it is. But again, keeping in mind the gross domestic product, we didn't get any equalization, but we got the same amount of money that everybody else got for health care. We got the same amount of money that everybody else got for other programs like the Canadian Social Transfer. This is – the only thing that we were different in is equalization. It's only $17 billion of the budget. It's like – it's a fraction of the overall spending and it's designed to help areas that are disadvantaged be able to provide the same services that we get in the advantaged areas. Well

Zain 36:05

Well done, Stephen Carter. Corey, I'm not going to ask you to necessarily summarize but tell us what the takeaways here are. What should we be looking

Corey 36:12

looking for? Look, we pay the same tax rates. The things you've got to keep in mind. We pay the same tax rates, right? It's not redistribution. It's distribution. It's not like the money was given to us and then we have to give it to somebody else. That's redistribution. This is just the federal government deciding to put more money into different areas of the country. It never hits Alberta accounts. You can't say Quebec has to give back equalization because if they were giving it back, they would be giving it to the federal government, not to Alberta. And you know what? I think that if the equalization program was not based on provinces but like on metropolitan areas or something, people wouldn't even know to be mad about it. But there's this sense that provinces get it and therefore it's a bad thing. But Stephen's right. Every province does a form of equalization. Every country sort of does a form of equalization. Every

Carter 37:00

Every city does a form of equalization. That's the reality. Because we don't make the same money and the reason we do a taxation system to begin with is to redistribute funds to those in need of them. Let's

Zain 37:09

Let's put a bow on this. this. Stephen, what's the strategic takeaway here? Who should be concerned about this? Are there any winners or losers when it comes to this debate about equalization, especially when there's that myth out there? Any order of government, any party, who should be careful about this? I want to talk about the strategy a little bit more. Personally,

Carter 37:26

Personally, the people I want to be careful about this are the politicians who choose to be ignorant and choose to misrepresent this. At some point, I'm going to come and get you, right?

Carter 37:35

right? This is driving me crazy to the point where I will come Come after your party, and I will make you fess up to the fact that there is no equalization check. Ralph Klein was the best at this. Ralph Klein was the one who started to establish this idea that we're sending a check somewhere down east. Well, I'll tell you something. Before the 1970s, we needed it too.

Carter 37:55

People have to remember that in Alberta, we were a have-not province. Then we got a little bit of oil and gas going our way, and things started to work for us. But it didn't really start to work for us until the late 1960s and 1970s.

Corey 38:07

Final point. Does anybody think that Quebec's got a better deal than Alberta overall? I'd

Carter 38:12

I'd take our GDP, baby. I

Corey 38:13

would take our oil reserves over their transfer payments any damn day of the week. So let's just tell the wild rose to shut up about this.

Carter 38:22

this. Well, this is one of the things. Only 50% of our oil and gas revenues even gets calculated in to how much our revenues are. So we get so much more by having this wealth and this resource. We get so much more than is, quote-unquote, taken away by Quebec. Okay,

Zain 38:38

Okay, let's quickly go on to our next segment. Our next segment, the Allen Wrench Cabinet. We have a new cabinet of sorts here in Alberta, just announced today. Corey Hogan, the orange apologist, sitting to my left. Rightfully, I guess, to my

Zain 38:52

Corey, explain to us what this new cabinet looks like. And frankly, maybe not in the specifics, but why now? Why a cabinet change?

Corey 38:59

What does this mean? Why now? Because we're going to be going into a new session. why a cabinet change because the first cabinet was small uh i think the first one was a bit of a training wheels cabinet it was a chance to see who were the good performers out of all of the freshman mlas they now have a good sense of that and they can promote some of those mlas and remove some of the burden of having two ministries at once that some of the ministers had for example we talked about when the original cabinet was set that having health and seniors together was a bit unwieldy now this actually transitions nicely into my next point yeah because health is so high touch seniors is so high touch but you know what we didn't hear a lot about in the past few months late on health or seniors because hoffman did such a good job of managing those ministries which is why she was also promoted in a sense to a deputy premier to take on some of those broader responsibilities from the premier and help lighten her load so this hit a few boxes this checked a few boxes this moved some people around this allowed us to uh see how what some of the people the bright stars like ricardo miranda uh first openly gay uh alberta cabinet minister correct yeah what they're going to be able to do with this uh with this responsibility i'm pretty excited about it it now makes it it's still a small cabinet and what i actually thought was funny on twitter was i saw almost immediately somebody be like uh another promise broken by the ndp well did i miss a promise where rachel notley said cabinet would only ever be 10 people no she

Corey 40:22

never I never made that promise. That was never an expectation. This is still a small cabinet. This is a much more appropriate size cabinet for a Provence our size.

Corey 40:29

This is good. This is going to be good. Stephen

Zain 40:31

Stephen Carter, you have constructed, deconstructed, put together cabinets in the past. What did you take away from the shuffle that we saw today? An expanded cabinet, more members from Calgary. Three out of them were from Calgary. Any takeaways for you?

Carter 40:44

It's absolutely expected. We knew that there was going to be more. I thought three.

Carter 40:48

I didn't think she'd go from 13 to 17. Yeah.

Carter 40:51

I'm sorry, 13 to 19. I thought you'd go from 13 to 16. But it doesn't matter. Bottom line, the government is big. There's a lot of decisions that need to be made. And by having this number of cabinet ministers, you actually have a number of people pulling on the oars together. Is this a big cabinet? Absolutely not. This is still the smallest cabinet that we've basically seen in alberta since the 1960s um this is not a big cabinet this is not a big change the big change here is that she has kept it as small as she has uh you'd be really i mean outside of the maritimes in newfoundland and labrador you're not going to see small cabinets like this uh maybe the territories are small too but yeah of

Corey 41:37

of the big four though this is a small

Carter 41:39

small this is a a very very small cabinet um so for them to uh for anybody to be critical of this this this was all about her

Carter 41:47

her not knowing who her performers were saying

Carter 41:50

saying to everybody in her caucus we're going to add more people prove to me that you deserve to be in cabinet and you'll be there and i think that she's appointed people who can be we'll

Zain 42:00

we'll leave it there let's move it on to our last segment our over under our lightning round and our in and out you guys ready in or out in and out

Corey 42:29

Get it out, baby. lackluster and um and then i had to keep seeing the same commercials for like pharmaceutical drugs where one of them was like you cannot take this drug if you're allergic to this drug what lawsuit led to that disclaimer like the whole experience was just grating to me and and it made me say thank god for twitter thank god for the internet i left it on his background noise i don't know i guess i i felt like i needed some self-immolation or something but it was bad oh man it was bad

Zain 43:06

Stephen Carter, are you in or out on American 24-Hour Broadcast News? I've been out on

Carter 43:11

Broadcast News for about 10 years.

Zain 43:13

Good. Let's quickly flip it. Rachel Notley, after today, are you in or out on her? Corey? Oh, in. Carter?

Carter 43:19

Orange Apologist likes her. That means I can't. No, she made a good move today. Justin

Zain 43:23

Justin Trudeau, last week he sat down with Canadians, had this interesting Peter Mansbridge, 10 Canadians will interview Trudeau, making some interesting moves. In or out, Corey?

Corey 43:33

don't think I'm out, but I certainly don't give him any points for that. I thought that was the most lame thing ever.

Zain 43:43

Are you out or exhausted? We

Carter 43:45

We don't need more citizen journalists. We need more journalists with the resources that they need to ask questions that need to be asked. And the post-media cuts, if this is what we're replacing journalists with, is 10 random interviewers of the prime minister, it's not good enough. Well,

Corey 44:01

Well, let me clean it up because our good friends at the CBC might otherwise be hurt. I don't really have a problem with the fact they did it. It was ratings, but I don't think better of the prime minister because of it.

Zain 44:12

Corey, I'll start with you on this one. Who is the next rising star on this not-league cabinet in your mind?

Corey 44:17

Oh, you know what? I still think you've got Shannon Phillips who can really – look, I would say this. When you saw how the environment review went relative to the royalty review, that to me says something good about Shannon Phillips. She's tough. She's feisty. I still think that's great. Sarah Hoffman, though, you have to start saying somebody

Corey 44:34

somebody to watch. Sarah

Carter 44:36

Sarah Hoffman is the power beside the premier. She is the one to keep your eye on. Shannon Phillips, I mean, I

Carter 44:43

I love Shannon, okay? But she didn't – the environmental climate change rollout did not go very well. Oh,

Carter 44:50

hold on. Are we talking about the tape? Yeah. The royalty review went way better. The

Carter 44:57

The industry has responded. Oh,

Corey 45:00

I'm in the middle on this, but that's weird, Carter. I'm going to quote Stephen Carter. People are deciding whether it was the best thing ever or, oh, I don't know, the best thing ever. That's what you said about the environment review. I

Carter 45:12

review. I was drunk.

Carter 45:13

The royalty review. Find the tape. Was more. Belgie, pull

Zain 45:17

pull up the tape. Over, under, on six, the royalty review. Carter, I think I know your number.

Zain 45:21

Over, under, on six. I thought I knew it.

Corey 45:25

Corey, what did you think? I'm going to preamble. I'm going to take the lightning round, and I'm going to turn it into something different here. Oh, my

Zain 45:32

I've lost control. Do I need to be here anymore? I feel like I'm expendable in front of my own eyes.

Corey 45:38

Strategically, it was great. It probably set them up for a lot of things. Fundamentally, though, I do wish that – I can't give too high of a mark if it came to that conclusion after that much time. Like if this had been what they rolled out in late November or December, I would have said, oh, man, home run all across the board except for the fact that I still believe in my heart of hearts that we need to be charging higher oil royalties. Just to hear that we are competitive with other regimes doesn't say that we're getting our fair share. That just means we're in a race to the bottom and we don't want to lose it.

Corey 46:08

But that said, there are realities on the ground. There was only so far the industry could be pushed. It is part of a broader package. That broader package is ambitious.

Corey 46:17

So good. Good on them. But you can't hand in your paper that late and get full marks from me. I'm going to just hold the line.

Zain 46:25

Stephen Carter, over, under, on seven. On seven on the moves that Rachel Notley made today with her cabinet.

Zain 46:31

Under. Under on seven. Corey?

Zain 46:33

Corey? Over. It was great. What's to complain about?

Carter 46:35

No, it's just the people aren't that strong. Over,

Zain 46:38

Over, under, on ten points. Over, under, on ten points. The margin of victory for Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire. Carter?

Zain 46:45

Under. Under ten points. Oh, over. He's killing it? Who

Zain 46:49

has the momentum On the GOP side Heading into the next primary The

Carter 46:55

next, like being New Hampshire, or the next after that New

Zain 46:58

Hampshire, next one after that Yeah, I

Corey 47:01

I think it's Rubio

Zain 47:03

Rubio has the momentum, Carter Who has the momentum

Zain 47:08

love John Kasich And the

Zain 47:11

the last question On it, I hope it's an easy flow Who wins on the GOP side in New Hampshire Corey

Zain 47:19

Trump! So Kasich's got the momentum, but Trump's going to win. Contextual, really well tying back to our momentum strategy. That's it. That's a wrap on episode 564 of The Strategists. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

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