Episode 582: Berning out

SPEAKER_02 0:03

This is The Strategist, episode 582. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan. Guys, what's up? Happy Stampede Day. I am

Carter 0:11

am wearing Western wear all week. You guys are just losers. Where's your Western gear? I

SPEAKER_02 0:16

I wear it when I go out to events. No, you gotta wear it all the time. Brown cowboy all the time? That's dangerous. That's

Corey 0:23

dangerous. Okay. That's good. There's a lot of places we can go there, all of which will get us into trouble. all of which yeah

Corey 0:30

not what has that stopped us before never okay good

Corey 0:32

we're finding new lows every day new lows every

SPEAKER_02 0:35

every day what else we need to talk about off the top what's our what's our two

Corey 0:38

two second oh pokemon go pokemon

Corey 0:40

pokemon go what the hell it seems seems like a phenomenon uh there is great insight people getting you

SPEAKER_02 0:50

i don't know i mean i've been seeing headlines carter you have one fact on everything what's your one fact on pokemon go laid on us i

Carter 0:56

i don't have it this

Carter 0:58

is weak this is a weak

SPEAKER_02 1:01

okay i gave you some easy race baiting at the beginning you didn't take it yeah you took some pop culture pokemon go that's it and had nothing you're

Corey 1:09

you're clear hey uh duane wade signed with the chicago bulls and tim

SPEAKER_02 1:13

tim duncan retired you know that's something we can talk about carter oh we could

Corey 1:17

could but you know what we should talk about uh another great betrayal of your fan base bernie sanders endorsing hillary clinton whoa

SPEAKER_02 1:23

whoa that transition material material let's get into it our first segment feel the burn dissipating cory he

SPEAKER_02 1:31

did it today yeah i mean he finally got up and said this is a victory for us all she is now a champion of what i have championed amazing right yeah i'm not i don't

Corey 1:43

don't i was teasing him there but the fact is everybody saw this coming for a long ways and we

Carter 1:48

we saw this coming

Corey 1:48

coming since before super tuesday well that's true and you know there were people who are saying now well did he get enough did this just ruin his legacy i would point out that the sounds like the democratic platform is going to have an awful lot of sanders-esque elements in it and i don't think that sanders cares about his legacy that much beyond that uh i definitely don't believe he wants to be the reason we have president donald trump this was inevitable and he got out of it an awful lot of pretty cool things if you're a sanders supporter i mean we've got some some language it sounds like around marijuana we've We've got some around $15 minimum wage. We've got some around universal health care. The thing that he didn't get that he kind of swung and whiffed on was free trade, which I think does leave a bit of an opening to Donald Trump and his special brand of economic populism. But he

Corey 2:37

he did okay. I mean, he did okay if his goal was to get that. I'm

SPEAKER_02 2:41

I'm surprised to hear you say

Corey 2:41

say that. Carter, in your point of view. Okay. Before you jump on,

Corey 2:45

on, I'll just say like he

Corey 2:47

he is sitting there and in his hand is not even cards. He's accidentally picked up coasters and he's managed to turn that into things in the Democratic platform. She could say no to all of this. This is actually a fairly low cost. And the fact that she's giving so much up on the platform, in my opinion, I

Corey 3:02

I think that means we're going to see a more traditional VP pick. We're not going to see an Elizabeth Warren because she's already paid her price at this point. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

Okay. Carter, did Bernie Sanders, just to Corey's point here, extract full value in your mind?

Carter 3:16

I don't think so because I think there was a time when Hillary really needed him. and he wasn't there so

Carter 3:21

so the policy positions one could argue uh that hillary moved to the left but one could also argue hillary's

Carter 3:28

hillary's putting up uh the best policy platforms that uh i mean most of the things that she's talking about she'd already done not like universal health care is outside of her uh her desires this is something that she campaigned on 25 years ago when her when her husband was the president this is not you

Carter 3:45

you know she didn't have to give up as much as perhaps people thought that

Carter 3:50

that she would give up. Corey,

SPEAKER_02 3:51

Corey, are you willing to acknowledge at all that the time between Sanders technically losing this thing and today that there was an opportunity lost? Is that fair to say to some degree? I think there was an opportunity

Corey 4:06

I don't think it was the opportunity you're talking about. I think the party needed to come together better and faster, but because of the way things rolled out and laid out, it didn't happen until relatively recently and it happened around the platform.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

wasn't that some of that in his control though? Well,

Corey 4:20

Well, yeah. And it was even more so in the control of Hillary Clinton and Debbie Wasserman Schultz. So I think that we have to look at this kind of holistically and say, if you take Bernie Sanders at his word, that this was never about him and that this was about the ideas, this was his first and final opportunity to get those ideas forward, right? This is the platform of the Democrats. And he has obviously had a big impact on that even beyond what is in the platform the way he moved hillary clinton to the left yeah nobody's denying that at this point right now where i think there was probably an opportunity that was lost was that he never stopped any of his rhetoric about hillary clinton until much later than i thought was appropriate you can play the tapes you can go back i was pretty clear that i thought he was going to stay in until convention right that effectively until that strategy to attack

SPEAKER_02 5:08

attack her is a strategy you have to carry forward till convention isn't no i don't think so he could

Corey 5:13

could could have easily said no i'm saying now focused on we'll get to that yeah the

Corey 5:17

the issues it's not about hillary clinton the

Corey 5:20

the minute he says and she's taking donations from wall street after it's clear he's lost is a waste and damage to the democrats because it's over it's done it's not really wrong of him to talk about the issues and frankly it's not wrong of him to talk about hillary clinton's duplicity on these issues but it was a lost opportunity for the democrats and it was a lost opportunity for progressives if we're now looking

SPEAKER_02 5:45

looking at a contest

SPEAKER_02 5:48

carter what what would have and i'm going back to the question as an extension that i asked you initially what would have full value in your mind have been for for bernie sanders right did i ask you initially did he extract full value from what he did today by endorsing her but in your mind if you're advising him or we're advising him what else would you have looked for above and beyond ideas, if anything. A meaningful future?

Carter 6:11

A meaningful future. I mean, what is his future? I mean, he may have extracted... Let's give him what I took away from him the last time I answered. So

Carter 6:18

So you give him

Carter 6:18

You say him influence on platform. I'm going to give him that now. Yeah.

Carter 6:24

Do you think anybody else is going to seek Bernie Sanders' input in the future? The next presidential run that comes along, are they going to say to themselves, you know what we need to do? We need to get that Bernie Sanders guy.

Carter 6:33

None of that. He's done. He doesn't exist in politics anymore. No one's going to look at him and say, there's a team player that I can work with. He's done in politics, and he may not be done being a senator from Vermont, but

Carter 6:46

but he's not going to have much in the way of saying the future.

SPEAKER_02 6:49

I'm going back to Carter. Is that important in your mind to have something when you trade up for an endorsement that you have longer mileage than just that 15 or 20 minutes on stage? And maybe let's be more specific, this cycle?

Carter 7:02

Well, let's equate it to... But he's an older guy, right? So I think to Corey's point, like – He's not an older guy who's done though.

Carter 7:09

He's not an older guy that's going to walk

Corey 7:11

walk away from this and say, oh, I accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish. Listen to me. Sanders is 74 years old. Hillary Clinton looks more and more like she's got this election locked up. That means she will also be the nominee in four years barring something unforeseen, which means the next actual primary season, he will be 82. This is his last shot regardless. I'm

Carter 7:30

I'm not talking about running for president. No. I'm talking about running – No, you're talking about – Carter's saying influence stops. Having a leadership position of – not necessarily in a leadership position in the party but something that people go to him and say, you're the elder statesman who has helped us build this party.

Carter 7:45

So there is no way that he is an elder statesman that helped build this party. Let's

SPEAKER_02 7:49

Let's just get this clear. Carter, do you think Bernie Sanders' influence has an expiry date in this cycle? Is that what I'm hearing you say?

Carter 7:54

say? Yeah, it's all over. I

SPEAKER_02 7:55

I think that Bernie Sanders' influence

Carter 7:58

ended today. Corey, what

Carter 7:59

what do you think?

Corey 7:59

No, absolutely not. not. There is almost a shockingly low level of overlap between Clinton supporters and Sanders supporters from the primary season. If you look at those age breakdowns, they're totally flabbergasting. They're crazy. Bernie Sanders still has an awful lot of pull with demographics that Hillary Clinton can't resonate with to save her life. If it is over, if his influence is over, that's a big mistake by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Carter do you do you think he overplayed his end like in the sense could he have been what Elizabeth Warren is right now that's surrogate that's what I'm talking about yeah like is that what you're that's

Carter 8:36

that's what you're saying right is going to be the is going to be the voice that continues uh that represents what Bernie Sanders like did she

SPEAKER_02 8:41

she outstrip him in that sense of

Carter 8:43

of course because she played the game because she played the game the game listen everybody wants to reinvent politics in Alberta the Alberta party wanted to do politics differently. Politics is not done differently. Politics is politics. And Bernie Sanders played politics. Sure, he's able to get some votes. Couldn't win. Doesn't have influence. Wasted time. Corey,

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Corey, what would you have advised him? Like, I mean, I don't know if you agree on Carter's premise of extracting full value. I clearly do not. On extracting full value, number one, let's just get you on there. Do you think he did in this regard? Because I haven't asked you that. I think

Corey 9:15

think he extracted full value of what was important to him.

Corey 9:19

Well, What do you want? I mean, that's a different question depending on the lens you're going through. I'm sure many Democrats and many observers like you, Stephen, believe he could have gotten more. But the fact of the matter is, he is now responsible for the most progressive platform the Democrats have put forward in a generation.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

Who's disputing that? Tell me this. If Sanders was, let's say, 20 years younger, right? Because I want to talk about the strategy of the situation and the reality, two different things. 20 years younger, 54, 20 years of a political future, right? Okay. Would you have advised him differently?

SPEAKER_02 9:51

No, I wouldn't. You wouldn't have? No. Oh, my God. Seriously? We just talked about the fact that he's one and done here. No. No, I mean, he's

Corey 9:59

done, so why is that even

Corey 10:00

even a question? Now

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Now you're blowing my mind on the strategy.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Lay it on me and then...

Corey 10:05

entire value his entire proposition is that he's the guy who stands up and says the unpopular truth and you're telling me that he would have increased his cachet amongst his supporters yes selling out to hillary clinton at the first possible listeners listeners because of

Carter 10:19

of politics dear listeners dear listeners you have the opportunity to weigh in on this simply tweet the hashtag carter's right or tweet the hashtag hogan's right we'll tally them up and let you you know how that worked next time you know who's gonna win i'm gonna win you know who's gonna lose

Carter 10:36

cory's gonna lose cory that's such an idealistic point of view it's

SPEAKER_02 10:41

it's so idealistic okay would you like to no

Corey 10:44

i'm like go ahead go ahead defend it what is to defend that is who his brand is you're asking him to do something meant something fundamentally off brand and you think that will grow his brand that would be like if you went to coke and said you know what your problem is coke you're not healthy enough you got to go out and you got to sell more healthy the options that's not why anybody goes and buys a coke zay

Corey 11:03

they buy a coke because they want that product and bernie sanders as a product is fundamentally incongruous with this idea of playing nice with the democrats just because that's in the best interest of the democrats i mean this is not rocket science i thought that you two would bring more to this conversation than platitudes from politico this is ridiculous all right so hold on carter i'll let you go ahead

SPEAKER_02 11:23

ahead and then and then he's

Carter 11:27

he's really being quite mean to us i don't even know what to say at this point he's

Carter 11:31

he's really being quite mean especially given that we're right but here's to what i think is appearing is that we get backed into a corner right

Carter 11:39

right he's like ferocious right he's ferocious this is good unreal

Carter 11:43

you know what you're you're an apology i just i want i don't want to give you another nickname i

Carter 11:48

i don't the orange apology just works for me that's good it just applies in this situation too. You're just an apologist.

Carter 11:54

I'm okay with that. So when

Carter 11:57

when we get people into politics, let's move it. Can I just move it a second? Move it a second. Yeah, sure. I'll come back. Because when we get someone into politics, sometimes

Carter 12:04

sometimes the objective isn't

Carter 12:06

isn't necessarily to win, right?

Carter 12:07

right? We'd like our people to win. We'd like them to win all the time, but they don't always win. But when they're in a position where they can win or move their career forward, don't don't we usually say you should try and move your career forward? Like, sure, he's 72 years old, but doesn't he want to have influence beyond the convention? Doesn't he want to have influence beyond this opportunity? So if I'm talking to someone who wants to run in the leadership of the Federal Conservative Party,

Carter 12:32

I want to talk to them about how, you know, being

Carter 12:35

being positioned to A, win, and being positioned to B, be the kingmaker, be the person who is able to

Carter 12:42

to develop alliances, to put themselves into a better position for their career moving forward. You're not wanting to be Corbyn who's out and done, right? You want to be someone who's always moving forward, not someone who's moving backwards. Well,

Corey 12:55

Well, my argument is this does not move his career forward. This would not move his career forward even 20 years ago. What you're talking about, if this would have moved his quote-unquote career, okay, here, let's play this little thought exercise. It is now 20 years ago. It is 1996. Yeah. Bernie

Corey 13:10

Bernie Sanders joins the Democrats. Do you think he has the moment he had today? Or do you think that was because he was an independent and he built up that cachet as a socialist amongst all of these people who were talking a party line and were just not willing to move off of that ideological center because that's where the party was? His entire brand is the result of him saying no to the kind of stupid decisions you guys are asking him to say yes to. He wouldn't be here today with the influence he had if he had taken your advice 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 13:40

No, I'm going to let him go.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

Okay, one more thing on the whole Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton endorsement. The supporters, you are looking at what the result of today is, and your guy is out of the race officially. You've got the ideas in the platform. Corey, what are the barriers that the supporters have to fully embracing Hillary Clinton like Bernie Sanders did today? Is that barrier higher or lower than of their leader?

Corey 14:08

I mean, some of them will just decide to do it now. Some of them had already decided to do it and we're just waiting for the cue. Some will need some convincing. You can think of this in many ways as Bernie Sanders has now given the window for Clinton to make her case, which is why – To his audience. Yes, which is why he's saying this today and next week or the week after will be the DNC where she can roll out this platform. They can have this big love-in. Everything can be playing out to the Clinton script. It doesn't work if he leaves after, obviously. that he needs to leave a bit before give that opening what what needs to happen beyond that is simply she needs to keep it together she can't be petty or vindictive or do any of these small like uh microaggressions that the clinton campaign has thrown at both bernie sanders and his supporters and i'm not saying they didn't deserve it sometimes but you know there's this book where there's this guy who suggests you turn the other cheek uh take a page from that and just see where you get okay hillary because right now the last thing you want is to move into this sense like yeah bernie

Corey 15:10

bernie was good enough to endorse you and you're still being kind of a jerk you know she's got to avoid that altogether she actually has to sort of kill everybody with kindness in the party in the next bit no matter how unreasonable they get carter

SPEAKER_02 15:20

carter let's let's talk tactics for clinton cory's talked about killing with kindness you you're nodding your head is there anything else she needs to do to actively bridge this gap on a supporter level i

Carter 15:31

think she needs to decide which supporters she wants to go get right how far do you want to go how how much capital you're prepared to burn to get the burn um because it's just too it's too much to go all the way to get them all because

Carter 15:45

because some of those folks weren't interested in the political system that we have currently right

Carter 15:49

uh very few i'd say i'd say less than 10 but there are some people who view uh the corporate donations the corporate funding model of the elections campaign yeah the hundreds of millions of dollars that are required to run for president as just is just the an extension of this corporate capitalist society that is destroying the world. She can't go that far to go and win those folks. She can go as far like you're talking about things like universal health care now, and maybe never speaking about it again, talking about these issues that are important to

Carter 16:22

Bernie Sanders folks, and then getting them on side a little bit and then moving moving past and trying to win the general election.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

Corey, anything else to add to there in terms of what she needs to do in this window?

Corey 16:33

I think that she's not going to really do anything in the next bit as we all turn our eyes to the GOP. And she's just going to run a good convention. She's going to put up with a certain level of protest. She'll bend, but she won't break to some of the promises of the hard line Bernie Sanders supporters. And generally speaking, when that happens and they get mad, she's not going to react. And that's what she has to do. You

SPEAKER_02 16:53

You mentioned the term, you know, she may not do anything, but let's talk about something that could be done to her. And that's the fallout, or let's just even see if there is one, based on your guys' point of view, of the email scandal, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:06

right? Yeah. So we touched upon this last episode very, very quickly near the end. But I want to talk in more depth in terms of saying, is there still an issue out there for

SPEAKER_02 17:15

for Hillary Clinton on the email scandal? Now, to cover people off, she did not get, you know, the recommendation is that there's no indictment, etc. Donald Trump's losing his mind. However, is

SPEAKER_02 17:25

is there still anything, any meat left on the bone in this story, Corey?

Corey 17:28

Yeah, these quotes by the FBI director are going to be in any number of attack ads come fall. they play right into that narrative that is hillary clinton's biggest problem i think which is the consummate insider too comfortable in the gray yeah

Corey 17:43

you know you morality becomes an ambiguous sliding scale to her uh this is a critique i'm not necessarily saying i buy into it 100 but this is the knock against hillary clinton the other thing is now unfortunately for her the state department has reopened its investigation to look at that which means it will still be in the headlines at least to some degree at different times over the next couple of months and i mean it just sucks for her it's very frustrating but guess what you reap what you sow this was obviously a very stupid thing for her to do uh she lied uh she was called out by the fbi for lying let's just let that sink in let's just think about that in the context of any other campaign except for one against i'm

Carter 18:20

i'm not buying it that's what they did well

Carter 18:22

well they said she didn't

Corey 18:24

they did not say

Carter 18:25

didn't know they said and

SPEAKER_02 18:26

and to fill people in when what cory's saying this was a very almost an unprecedented move right they come out and they say we recommend men not indicting her and then they go into details like specifics yeah they give quotes about like the number of emails that

SPEAKER_02 18:39

said the other way around but yeah

Corey 18:40

yeah it was funny that's right built

SPEAKER_02 18:42

built up to that oh but we're not going but we're not going to right right right and they said you know she said that there was no emails that were confidential and there turned out to be yeah a couple of dozen then she said this and

Corey 18:52

and what actually the

Corey 18:54

yeah i mean so if you want to parse it like that steven and say they never said she's a fucking liar you're right Right. But they said, she said this, this turned out to be the case. She said this, this turned out to be the case on multiple occasions. And you just need to play those clips.

Corey 19:08

You don't even need to use the word lie.

Corey 19:10

It's right there for you. Carter,

SPEAKER_02 19:10

Carter, how are you weathering the storm if you're Clinton on this? There's been a bit of time between right now and this happening and this coming out. Is there anything you need to actively do to weather the storm, especially given your new reality, which is the attracting of the Bernie Sanders supporters? Yeah,

Carter 19:28

I'm not working too hard to attract the Bernie supporters, right? So I'm

Carter 19:35

two minds, right? One of my first mind is that generally

Carter 19:39

generally speaking, it's hard to sustain any single scandal for like a period of three months, right? Like that is, this is four months. This is four months that they'd have to sustain this until election day. That is a long time to carry a single scandal. Now, we've seen a single scandal get legs and go for a very long period of time. I'm thinking of Swift Boat and

Carter 20:01

and John Kerry were something that just kept going and going and going, and Kerry's team never really figured out how to deal with it. I think that Hillary's team is more on top of the email scandal. I don't think it will matter. I think that by the time we get to September and we're reporting the podcast, we're talking about different scandals because Lord knows that Hillary Clinton being in public life as long as she has, there's going to be skeletons in closets. Corey,

SPEAKER_02 20:26

Corey, to Carter's point, is there a possibility of this becoming even one

SPEAKER_02 20:30

one-tenth or one-fifth of a swift boat style scandal for her? She's been dealing with this

Corey 20:36

since last year. I actually do not know that it's going to go away that quickly simply because it is such low-hanging fruit by the FBI saying that she was putting, you know, all of this bad judgment forward that led to this email decision. If you only want to go that far, and I'm quite sure people will go further and call her a crook and say she should be in jail.

Corey 20:57

That's not easy to get by. And I actually do believe we sort of diminished just how big of a deal this is that she's in this position. opposition and again i mean if we weren't talking about trump on the other side i i really do believe this could be one of those crippling things

Carter 21:12

things so we are talking about trump i know and you can't remove

Corey 21:14

remove it from that vacuum but that doesn't mean that there aren't people who are reasonable reasonably clever operatives in the republicans and in these super PACs and whatnot who aren't going to run ads that really play on that and try to make this campaign about hillary clinton that's the other thing you got to keep in mind yeah

Corey 21:29

those guys do not want the campaign to be about donald trump so

Corey 21:32

so if they make it about hillary clinton and a referendum on the clintons i

Corey 21:36

think that uh that could play to her or to could play to his

SPEAKER_02 21:40

advantage donald trump final question on the same one i asked carter cory and it's if

SPEAKER_02 21:44

if you are in this mode of trying to attract sanders supporters as hillary clinton what do you need to do with this particular story knowing that that is one of your your new objectives that you have i just think

Corey 21:55

think you've dug in and you've entrenched so much Which, I mean, my first reaction is

Corey 22:00

maybe you should take a page from your husband's book and just mea culpa and try to move on. You know, like, indeed, I did have a relationship with that email server that was inappropriate.

Carter 22:09

No, I love mea culpas. They almost always work. They do, because what do you do with them?

Corey 22:12

them? What do you do afterwards?

Corey 22:13

Yeah. But I just feel like she's been so strident in her language and even in her denial sense about that's just one man's opinion about the FBI director. director um i

Corey 22:25

i don't know if that's open to her anymore i think she's just gotta ignore it i think ignore it just

SPEAKER_02 22:30

just gotta yeah go

SPEAKER_02 22:33

okay we move from clinton to donald trump and here's an issue that we haven't talked about as it relates to trump and carter i want to go to you on this one because we've talked about money in politics quite a bit on this podcast and

SPEAKER_02 22:44

and donald trump's fundraising numbers are historically the worst fucking fundraising numbers we have seen for a presidential presidential candidate. I think this is fair to say, in a very long time, I

Corey 22:55

I was not going to say ever in modern history. I suspect since they've had to report them. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02 22:58

Yeah, since they've had to report them. I suspect.

Corey 22:59

suspect. I don't know that for sure.

SPEAKER_02 23:02

don't even know what the question here is. I mean, what do you make of that, Carter? Is this a deficit, the financial deficit that Donald Trump has? Is this something he can't even get over even with his own cash injections?

SPEAKER_02 23:18

How big of a deal is it? Let's just start there. How big of a deal is it?

Carter 23:22

Well, in the United States, money is speech,

Carter 23:25

right? They've said that, that money is speech, and they're going to allow for as much money as can flow into the system. If you don't raise money, you're done in politics. It's just, it's basically that

Carter 23:37

that simple. Now, it's not like it, I'm

Carter 23:40

I'm going to, he's raised money. He certainly has raised more money in June. I'm looking at the Washington Post. They've got $51 million in dollars in june um

Carter 23:49

um that's not bad right like it was better than may may

SPEAKER_02 23:53

may was the end of the month that was historically

Carter 23:55

so we're moving in the right direction if you're donald trump but at the same time this is the first month that people really come to to uh

Carter 24:04

the conclusion that there is it's going to be trump right like the i know that some people are still talking about a convention that's going to be somehow brokered it's not it's going to end with donald trump uh coming out as the as the uh nominee and people

Carter 24:17

people just said i think the people who are republicans just said okay this

Carter 24:21

this is who we've got let's get going and

Carter 24:24

and so money has started to flow back in um the way it would flow if

Carter 24:28

if it was uh mccain

Carter 24:30

mccain or if it was uh romney or now it's it doesn't matter they've got to go and try and win an election so

Carter 24:36

so money is coming in um

Carter 24:39

that's That's not what bothers me. What bothers me is the disconnect between the candidate and what he says and

Carter 24:45

and the actual money that's flowing in. He continues to say, we're

Carter 24:49

we're breaking all the records. We're doing better than anybody else. His constant lying

Carter 24:55

lying about what is actually happening, the

Carter 25:01

the wall that he's putting up around himself where no one – I shouldn't say no one. Only his followers are believing what he's saying. he's continuing to put build a fence he's building a wall around himself where all he's keeping in around

Carter 25:14

around trump are the true believers and the people who are outside of that true believer the the people that you have to get to go to build an election campaign they're

Carter 25:21

they're looking at him and saying what do you mean you're raising more money than ever before he raised 51 million it's good but it's not great it's okay it's better better ain't great like he should be in he should be nailing down 100 100 million bucks a month minimum

SPEAKER_02 25:34

minimum rate what's is there a concern here with with the fundraising for Donald Trump?

Corey 25:39

Well, his numbers last month were much improved. They were. If they're borne out in the FEC filings. I don't know if they're in, if that's what it was based on. I suspect it was just the Trump campaign at this point. And he does have a habit of playing fast and loose with the facts, right? So, yeah, he's raised money. How much is to the RNC? How much is super PACs? How much is, how much is? And we'll see when it all comes down, how much can actually be attributed to his campaign and his campaign's cash on hand. We still don't know, for example, as far as I know, how much he had to spend to raise that money, right?

Corey 26:07

right? So what is his cash on hand? It better be more than that 1.3 million he had in May, but that's the historical low you were talking about. That's epically bad. Money is lifeblood in US politics, and

Corey 26:20

and it's not about ads, although it's a bit about ads. It's about ground game as much as anything else. You've got to be able to pay staff, you've got to be able to get out the vote, and you've got to be able to tie into all of these local campaigns to maximize your efforts. he doesn't

Corey 26:33

doesn't look well positioned to do that and while i still think that donald trump could win this election i don't think it's likely but i think it's possible and we shouldn't discount that i

Corey 26:42

i reserve the right to downgrade it to no fucking way if his fundraising numbers don't take a significant turn for the better because donald trump won his primary by being

Corey 26:55

the dumpster fire we could not turn away from yeah

Corey 26:57

right we looked at it there was coverage of him constantly here's

Corey 27:00

here's Here's the thing about presidential elections as they get into the stretch.

Corey 27:04

It's just a dumpster fire period. Every day

Corey 27:06

day they are going to cover both candidates. They're going to give a lot of thought to how to make sure it's equal coverage to both candidates. You can't just outrage

Corey 27:14

outrage your way into this disproportionate amount of coverage the way he was able to in the primary season. It's just not possible anymore. They

Corey 27:20

They have way too much experience with equal coverage between the Republicans and the Democrats because guess what? But every year people complain and

Corey 27:28

they have to give equal billing if you're a news, you know, an entertainment show, anything like that. So his big advantage is going to be a bit dull going into it.

Corey 27:37

Yeah, he's got Twitter. Who cares? I mean, he's talking to the converted one way or the other on Twitter. I doubt he's moving that many votes. Yeah, he's got some reach into some interesting social media channels beyond that. But again, it's not going to be enough to offset that. What you need is money. You need money so that you can afford to give people more than hats, right? You need to be able to do brochures, door knocking, lawn signs, things of that nature. You need to make sure that your ads are running because it's going to start feeling really funny if you've got equal coverage but only one side's running ads. It's going to feel very lopsided. He needs money or he's out of this thing before it started. And he might not just be out of it for himself. He may lose the Republicans the House. I've been looking at some House polling lately.

Corey 28:19

Man alive. Things are not looking good for the Republicans as far as trend lines go. So, on

SPEAKER_02 28:22

on that point, should House Republicans be concerned, extremely concerned? Where would you put their level of anxiety right now?

Carter 28:32

Right. So, you're already, the Senate is

Carter 28:35

is in trouble, right? The Senate could definitely go to the Democrats. You've got, the

Carter 28:42

the House is the Republicans' mainstay. Like, to lose the House, you know, it's, that's

Carter 28:48

that's problematic, big time problematic. And frankly, that's where the Republican Party is

Carter 28:56

is kind of – when you talk about the right wing and its grassroots, the Republican Party is Congress, right, from my point of view anyways. And I think that that's the point of view of

Carter 29:06

of Americans is that they

SPEAKER_02 29:08

They manifest themselves in that house.

Carter 29:10

house. Yeah, well, that and state legislatures, right? This is where the Republican Party is really at its strength.

Carter 29:16

they're at risk. Suddenly,

Carter 29:17

Suddenly, they're at risk because they've got a madman at the top of the ticket that doesn't

Carter 29:21

doesn't represent the two factions of the Republican Party. So eight

Carter 29:27

eight years ago, four years ago, you had two factions of the Republican Party, the

Carter 29:31

the Tea Party and the Republican Party.

Carter 29:34

But the Tea Party won in some areas, the Republican Party won in other areas, but they would, generally speaking, stay cohesive. Now this madman has appeared who represents neither of these subsets. He

Carter 29:46

He represents some sort of, I

Carter 29:48

don't know, I almost want to call it a populist, you know, the Rush Limbaugh. He represents the talk show Republicans. And the talk show Republicans, I

Carter 29:58

guess, used to be more Tea

Carter 30:00

Tea Party, but they've even moved further away than that. Like this reality show has gone crazy. Corey,

SPEAKER_02 30:04

Corey, the level of anxiety for the down ticket races right now, is it high, like Carter says, if you're on the Republican side? Yeah, let's contextualize this a little bit.

Corey 30:13

Please. the house of representatives has a well-documented right word tilt just by its nature and its build i do want to talk a little bit about that because i think progressives in particular like to pout and moan and say it's about gerrymandering well it's it's not really it's a little bit about gerrymandering so in the states the states themselves set the districts within them and

Corey 30:33

and certainly some republican uh state legislatures have taken advantage of that But that maybe gives them like a 2%, 3% lean. The

Corey 30:42

The actual amount that Democrats need to win the House

Corey 30:45

House is estimated to be around seven or eight points. Obviously, it depends on where those points are picked up. The

Corey 30:51

The reason and the bulk of the reason why there's a baked in Republican example is because Democrats congregate in a way Republicans don't. So they live – everybody knows in the states that a district has to be contiguous. So if you're building urban districts, Democrats win those with 80%, right? They don't get more seats for winning by 30 points instead of one point. Meanwhile, the suburbs, which again are contiguous, but have a much more of a blend and a melange of like political views tend to be slightly Republican. And it's not because of gerrymandering. It's because Republicans don't congregate in such small areas as Democrats do. Democrats love cities, and it kind of kills them when it comes to contiguous ridings in the middle of urban areas, right? So, you

Corey 31:38

know, progressive, let's just lose the whole gerrymandering will fix everything because it frankly won't, okay? Okay.

Corey 31:45

eight points is what you need. Eight

Corey 31:47

Eight points or so is what you need in order to lose the house. The

Corey 31:51

The Democrats are leading by eight points in the average of polls on pollster.com right now.

Corey 31:55

That's crazy. That is such an edge when you talk about a nation that's as divided as the United States is that like the Republicans really have to be on the wrong side of a wave like they were in 2008 in order for them to be in such a jam as to possibly lose the house. they've they've definitely had a bit of an institutional advantage since 1994 so it is funny to think though because the democrats used to be the ones with the advantage because there was a solidly democratic south this is not a good situation for them and if they manage to lose all three so uh you know the house of representatives the senate and the presidency

Corey 32:32

mean i don't know i i often thought that barack obama tried to work with people too much In his first years when he had that advantage, squandered that time. Hillary Clinton is not making that mistake. Hillary Clinton is going to get everything

Carter 32:45

everything done she ever

Corey 32:46

ever wanted to get

Carter 32:47

get done. She'll have a two-year system or two-year plan. It won't even matter if she's got the last six years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:52

Carter, strategist time. Okay. You are a strategist on a down-ticket race looking up at the madman that is Donald Trump and you're saying, fuck, this is a disaster. Suppose you're running a race for even a state senator or even a senator like John McCain or something, right? right? Someone who's more reasonable. John McCain's in trouble, right? That's a really good example. What is your advice to John McCain right now?

SPEAKER_02 33:14

Because usually you rely on the top of the ticket to bring you over, not over the finish line, but you do rely on them for something.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

If it's a no-name, if it's John McCain, whoever it is, what are you advising them right now? I think

Carter 33:27

think that it's actually, when you say no-name or John McCain, it's interesting because normally we wouldn't give the same advice to the two.

Carter 33:33

I wanted you to separate them, I

Carter 33:35

in this situation, you would give them the same advice because

Carter 33:38

because what I would do if

Carter 33:40

if I were running a state Senate campaign like – or a Senate campaign like John McCain or

Carter 33:47

or if I was running a House of Representatives campaign, I

Carter 33:50

I would focus on IDing as much vote as humanly possible and

Carter 33:54

and then getting it out to the polls. So

Carter 33:56

So find those people who are loyal to me. Find those people who know my name. To me. To me. Right. Right. And identify those votes and get them out and hope that my Democratic rival is

Carter 34:08

is relying on air war and Hillary Clinton cover. Right.

SPEAKER_02 34:11

Relying on party apparatus. Right.

Carter 34:14

one of the things that we tend to see happen when we have two unpopular candidates is we see voter turnout go down. So Ed Stelmack versus Kevin Taft in Alberta in 2008, no one wanted to vote for those guys. And you know what? They didn't. They stayed down. We had historic lows. So I think that when you – if

Carter 34:34

if you have two candidates that people do not want to vote for, you

Carter 34:38

you will see that in

Carter 34:40

in voter turnout. So if you're able to then really focus on your own GOTV, you may be able to get a four or six-point bump because you've pushed your GOTV harder than everybody else.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

So Carter is suggesting you do a GOTV based on your personality, your particular brand. Ben. Corey, I ask you the same question. What is your advice to the Republican senator, state senator right now?

Corey 35:04

My advice is that remember that people show up at the polls for the presidential race, but that doesn't mean they need to show up at the polls to vote for the Republican candidate. And depending on where you are, you might want to consider reminding people that Gary Johnson's a thing, right? If they show up and vote Libertarian for president, but vote vote GOP down ticket. That's okay. I think that those are options depending on the state you're in. Maybe not in every state. It really depends on where Gary Johnson has drawn the votes. An interesting study showed that he may be drawing more right now from Hillary Clinton and kind of that Sanders hard column. But there's

Corey 35:40

there's also the idea that you are somewhat different and special and they're all going to be playing on that. And that's not groundbreaking advice, but it's still good advice it's like yeah we understand you have problems with trump but

Corey 35:54

but you need a solid republican uh bulwark against whatever happens out there you got to get out and you got to vote for me on that ticket you got to raise the stakes of your own race and you've got to find ways for the people who don't buy your argument that the stakes are risen to

Corey 36:09

to go vote in the presidential anyways

SPEAKER_02 36:11

last question on trump card i'll go back to you on this trump's vp pick you are part of the gop whether it's establishment or not whatever donald trump gives you a phone call is there an upside to saying yes you're

Carter 36:27

you're going to be the vice president of the united states that's

Carter 36:29

that's an upside okay and you're going to be your name is going to be on a ticket and you potentially could be the

Carter 36:35

the number two person like the next person in line to be the president of the united states is

SPEAKER_02 36:38

is a good and

Carter 36:39

and there's no guarantee

Carter 36:40

guarantee that trump serves four years if he wins i

Carter 36:43

i mean interesting um

Carter 36:46

who the hell knows the guys, you know, he's, he's flighty. He knows, you know, there's a reasonable chance that if you're new Gingrich, this is the closest you will ever get to being the president of the United States. You should take this job, but

Carter 37:00

new Gingrich doesn't have a future.

Carter 37:03

If you're Paul Ryan, if you're Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, I

Carter 37:07

mean, Chris Christie's right on the bubble of not having a future. future. But I think that Chris Christie thinks he has a future. But for some reason, he's throwing himself in with Trump big time as though that will give him a better future.

Carter 37:21

So he might say yes, because New Jersey, New York, Trump, there seems to be some affinity there. But if I was Paul Ryan and I got the telephone call, I'd hang up the phone and hope that no one could trace it. It would be horrific. But the people who they're talking about, I think at this stage, This is their only chance to become vice

Carter 37:42

vice president of the United States, so they're more likely to say yes.

SPEAKER_02 37:44

yes. So maybe I'll rephrase my question a little bit, Corey, right? Because I think Carter brings up the point that I wanted to make, which is about your political future as the person on the other end of the phone call when Trump calls you, right? Right. How much are you – is it at all good politics or even – or is it circumstantial in your mind as to who that is? Suppose you've got someone with a future. Do you say yes? Yeah, it's national profile. If

Corey 38:06

If I'm Paul Ryan, the main reason I'm hanging up is because I did it. And by doing that, because don't forget, he was the running mate to Mitt Romney. He's now Speaker of the House of Representatives. He built his profile from that. Even Sarah Palin was a governor of Alaska, one of the smallest states in the union. And we all know who the hell Sarah Palin is now, much to our great shame. But is this

SPEAKER_02 38:26

this an anomaly of a case, ultimately? Is Donald Trump so much an anomaly that by saying yes, you are jeopardizing your political

Corey 38:34

future? I want you to consider that question, but flip the onus there. Has there ever been a case where being the vice president has destroyed your reputation like being on the – maybe Dan Quayle but he still got to be vice president of the United States and his reputation wasn't destroyed because he accepted the ticket. It was destroyed because he's an idiot. So my

SPEAKER_02 38:52

my question, Hogan, is we're uncharted waters all the way up until this point and I'm wanting to know if by saying yes and accepting it, if you have a political future, if you are risking something. Okay. Okay.

Corey 39:05

Right. That's one in five chance Trump's president. Let's just, let's go with the betting markets and say one in five chance Trump is president. Yeah. Which means there's a one in five chance you're vice president. Yeah.

Corey 39:15

There is the possibility he doesn't finish. You become president. There's the possibility he's so crazy. He drops out partway through the campaign and you get moved to the top of the ticket. There is the fact that you get national profile. There's the fact that you could say in the darkest days of the Republican party, I still stood up and let my name stand. You also have to keep in mind in the United States, unlike the Canadian system, you're able to run for multiple positions at once so you saw this in 2000 for example al gore his running mate lieberman actually ran for

Carter 39:42

for the senate at the same

Corey 39:43

same time he was running to be vice president paul ryan ran for re-election in wisconsin the same time

Corey 39:48

he was running to be vice president so and what did he get out of it he got a big national stage joe lieberman even became much more of a household name after all of that went down it is not like this horrible disaster of a situation and you know you can say i was being the good party soldier

Corey 40:05

the first rule of vice presidential picks is do no harm and and that's because generally speaking the vice presidential pick once made just slides into the background and

Corey 40:14

and so you don't want to pick somebody who's going to be a disaster for you i will say this by nature of you sliding into the background like that i don't know how given that the entire structure is based around not tying the president and vice president too closely, that works in reverse too. I'm not sure it's a total loss. And there are certainly people who could jump out of nowhere and become national profile because they're now vice presidential pick to Donald Trump.

SPEAKER_02 40:39

Carter, your guy gets a phone call from Trump saying, listen, I want you to be my VP pick. What is the caveat that you make in your announcement? Corey mentioned a few of them, right? I was just being a good soldier, X, Y, Z. said, what's the one that you feel like would have the most resonance to protect your political future? What's the angle you want to pitch? I

Carter 40:59

I always like this one. I always think when you say I've been asked to serve my country and it's not a request that I'm ever going to turn down. Corey,

Corey 41:05

Corey, anything to add? Yeah, no. For me, let's

Corey 41:08

let's just assume, let's game theory it out the other way. 80% chance he loses. People will forget Trump. He will move into the background and there will be four years at least of President Hillary Clinton. And you will be one of the few people as people run away from donald trump who can say i was so convinced she would be such a disaster i stood up on a ticket with donald trump to stop her where were you guys you turned away you decided that trump was too bad i like

Corey 41:32

because guess what the hypothetical bad of trump will have faded and the actual bad in the eyes of republicans of hillary clinton will be front and center for the next four years well

SPEAKER_02 41:40

well played cory okay that that let that leaves that segment for For us, our next segment, our sponsor, Stephen Carter, Campaign Tech Chicago. Campaign Tech Chicago

Carter 41:49

Chicago is getting close now, kids. I got an email from someone from New York. He used to be an operative in Edmonton. He's looking to go and meeting us out there. There's lots of people who are interested in this campaign tech experience because when you go out there, a

Carter 42:04

a couple of things that Zane has talked about and Corey has talked about and I think I've talked about. Number one, you're going to learn stuff. The stuff that you're going to learn is going to be immediately useful on campaigns. Guess what, kids? Leadership campaigns underway right now. If you're working in them, if you want to work in them, pick

Carter 42:19

pick up the phone, pick up your computer, get onto the Internet or whatever the new kids are using these days. Sign up for Campaign Tech. But also the people that you're going to see there, right?

Carter 42:30

right? This is the thing that, you know, you can build relationships. And being from Canada is really interesting. One of the nights that I went

Carter 42:37

went around to one, it wasn't Campaign Tech. It was the Art of Political Campaigning produced by the same folks.

Carter 42:45

one night I went out with a group of Republicans, and

Carter 42:47

and the next night I went out with a group of Democrats. Mind blown?

Carter 42:51

You know what? It was fantastic. First of all, outsider, they don't look at you. They don't have to hide anything, right? They're not couching

Carter 42:58

couching their language. They're not behaving like, you know, there's an imposter or anything.

Carter 43:03

They're just being themselves.

Carter 43:04

First of all, remarkably similar, right?

Carter 43:07

right? Very caring, very interested people who care about the country. And I think that that builds that legend that I talk about all the time, which is I don't care if you vote NDP, liberal or conservative. I have more in common with you. Because

SPEAKER_02 43:21

Because you're a voter.

Carter 43:21

voter. Because you're a voter, because you're a person who cares about politics than I have with a person who doesn't vote. I can't relate to that person. At least the people, you know, Corey is crazy, you know, left wing nutcase. But I can relate to him because at least he wants to change the province, wants to change the country. in a better way.

Carter 43:39

These people who don't care enough to even learn, I have no inkling

Carter 43:44

inkling for. So my recommendation is to get down there. If for no other reason than to start to see how other people approach politics and how much they care and the passion that they have, because that will carry you forward through the dark days as you're going through a campaign, when it becomes hard.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

CampaignTechChicago.com, our offer code. strategist strategist use that say five percent it's awesome we hope to see you there all right our next segment questioning the questions cory hogan okay so this is once again the cory hogan vanity segment no i'm just joking this is actually very very interesting so if you're about to just put pause on your on your podcast don't do it because there's excitement ahead okay oh great excitement okay so in our midnight brexit episode cory you put together a you said said, you know what, I'm going to do something. So I'll let you take it from here. And we'll chime in. So what were you going to do? And what do we have the results of today? Explain that to us. Okay,

Corey 44:39

Okay, well, why don't we play the clip?

SPEAKER_02 44:41

Play the clip. That's good.

SPEAKER_02 44:43

Coy, any other nuances you want to add to to the strategy of referenda before we get into what happened

Corey 44:48

here? The way you asked the question has such a dramatic impact on the way you frame the campaign. So in

Corey 44:55

in the Canadian zeitgeist right now, we're all talking about, we're

Corey 44:58

we're talking about electoral reform so

Corey 45:00

so we're going to put our three heads together we

Corey 45:02

we are each going to come up with a different phrasing of that question and we are going to run actual polls on all three to kind of show that point i

Corey 45:10

i love it all

Corey 45:11

all right so we did it we went out and we actually ran this poll with three questions to see what the impact would be about changing the language on the referendum result we uh we used google consumer surveys for this this is not what we'd recommend if you were are going and doing like straight up actual political survey yeah

Corey 45:28

but keep in mind what we're testing we're testing how changes in language impact the results it really doesn't matter if you believe the audience waiting is particularly appropriate in this context what we're trying to show is that just by changing the questions you can have dramatic shifts in results so i'll say right off the bat i haven't yet but i will post in the next 24 hours on prvote.com all of these results including the raw tables you can go through you can weigh it you can tell me me why i'm an idiot let's talk about this we chose three

Corey 45:57

three wordings for this question okay

Corey 46:01

the first wording was do you agree that canada should update its voting method for federal elections proportional representation okay we sent this to 500 people tried to get their response the next one we asked is should canada change the method it elects members of parliament from first past the post to proportional representation also you know a fairly neutral language there and the final one was should canada eliminate first past the post elections and replace them with proportional representation so

Corey 46:29

three wordings on the first one i want to point out we talked about do you agree that we should update right

Corey 46:36

on the second one we asked should you change and

Corey 46:40

and on the third one should you eliminate okay

Corey 46:44

update change eliminate that's right and agree being a big part of the first one correct

Corey 46:49

so i'm going to point out agree first one of the the things that people who look at the neutrality of questions around referendum or

Corey 46:55

or referenda say is that agree biases people right off the top because agree implies uh something you know positive right like you don't want to be disagreeable generally by nature humans don't want to do that as well updating sounds pretty positive so

Corey 47:11

do you agree canada should update its voting method for federal elections to proportional representation 58

Corey 47:22

so again i'm not saying that 58 percent want it this is just of this particular audience but the same audience uh different subsection of it but the same audience asked you

Corey 47:32

should canada change its method of election 45

Corey 47:35

45 yes 55 no wow

SPEAKER_02 47:40

wow so we went from 58 to 45 that's

Corey 47:42

that's what you're saying on the yes just by changing the language from do

Corey 47:46

do you agree that That Canada should update to should Canada change its method.

Corey 47:52

Very similar results on the final version, which is should Canada eliminate first, past, and post elections. I actually thought this one would do worse. But the fact of the matter is change is scarier to people than eliminate. Eliminates the cerebral word that triggers different parts of you that makes you think about a question more. Psychologically, yeah. Psychologically,

Corey 48:09

change is just scary. So should Canada eliminate first, past, and post elections or replace them with proportional representation?

Corey 48:15

47% yes. guess 53 so that

Corey 48:19

that one was actually the closest to being razor's edge of this particular model

Corey 48:23

here's my point and

Corey 48:25

and it's a pretty simple point but let's talk about this sure

Corey 48:29

you out there in the universe the twitter sphere the conservative party of canada you talk about referenda as though they are this pure form of democracy that will just go to the people to settle the questions that the representatives couldn't possibly or shouldn't be trusted with How

Corey 48:45

fucking democratic and fair is it if just changing the language swings the question by 15 points? Well, and I don't think you

Carter 48:53

change the language dramatically on that. I think that it was very subtle shifts. The degree is very subtle.

Carter 48:59

We could see a lot – I mean with the Quebec referendum. That's right. I had a much more challenging question where the language was completely torqued. So, this particular – you didn't talk the language as much as I expected you to and you're still getting dramatic differences. And

SPEAKER_02 49:15

And so, there's a concept in politics where we talk about this thumb on the scale, right? That's right. Yeah.

Corey 49:19

Yeah. And to Stephen's point, there are ways you can put your thumb on the scale more. But just like if you were at the butcher and all of a sudden that meat suddenly looked like it was twice as much weight as you expected, you would notice. People can be more subtle with this than you expect and still get the result that they want. it is not democracy at its finest if the person who chooses the question can swing the outcome i don't care how many times you ask your elected representatives the answer to the question of should we change from first past the post to pr and yes i know i kept it simple for the purposes of this this proof of concept right no matter how many times you ask that question they are going to give you the same answer and in fact beyond that if there is disagreement and a bridge that needs to be made they can work on a compromise yeah let's try this but let's vote you later yeah yeah, let's do this for one house, but let's not do it for the other house, or 50% of the seats. Those are options available to representatives working something out. It turns complicated questions into binary yeses and noes that are ultimately incredibly gameable by the political class in a way that votes in the House of Commons. Your representatives cannot be gamed. So don't tell me this bullshit that Canadians deserve a referendum on this. Canadians deserve better than a referendum on this. Canadians deserve the best thought of our elected representatives. And by God, I'll tell you something, I'm not even convinced that we should change from first past the post, but I don't want to hear this referendum bullshit anymore. This is nonsense. And we need to move past that and be more thoughtful about this as a country.

SPEAKER_02 50:46

I'd be remiss if I didn't expand the scope of what Corey is trying to talk about here in terms of the strategy of altering small nuances in questions. Talk to me about the broader application of this in politics, in polling, during a campaign, in the heat of it. Have you used it before? Do you got any stories or –

Carter 51:06

into one of those areas that when we talk about it, we're going to sound evil.

Carter 51:11

And we don't mean to sound evil. But you can change a question on a poll and

Carter 51:15

and get the answer you want. So when you need a poll that tells you something, change

Carter 51:21

change the question. Construct a question that will give you the answer that you're looking for.

SPEAKER_02 51:25

I'm going to pause you for a second because I have – Corey, did you expect these results, by the way? When you said agree and – was it agree and change, right? Yeah. And then you had eliminate, right, as well. Right. Did you expect the results

Corey 51:39

results that you had here? I definitely expected agree. I actually thought change would be the most neutral of them, should you change, and I thought eliminate because of its pejorative nature would have been the most negative. That didn't really turn out to be the case. I sort of did some backfilling of my knowledge after the fact, and the more prolix a referendum question is, the more you have to think about it, the more you can kind of get past those short circuits that we use on things like agree and change. so

SPEAKER_02 52:04

so so when carter says you know you can get the answer that you want if i were to task you with the exercise of saying get me that first response you knew that the first question that you had that was a great update

Corey 52:14

that was my opening

Corey 52:15

opening gambit yeah i mean if you gave me more time if i was running multiple surveys i could refine that above two-thirds oh

SPEAKER_02 52:20

oh yeah so this is a thing right you can get the results you want as it relates to poll questions can't you well

Carter 52:26

well i mean you know you're just saying it blanket right no no no no i can get them for everything

SPEAKER_02 52:31

which specific nuances you can certainly improve the results if you want if you want to get an outcome yeah

Carter 52:37

yeah you can get an outcome here's

Corey 52:39

here's so now you go with the blanket here's my version of that proportional

Corey 52:44

proportional representation this will become harder the more people think about the question which is why our representatives can't be easily cowed like that when they think about the issues people will come to different conclusions but that doesn't mean that we have the time in any kind of reasonable sort of length to to get to a point where people will look at the question neutrally and dispassionately. Referenda are best on a situation where everybody sort of understands it and it's a root moral judgment, right? It's not about gray, which is why Brexit was such a stupid thing to have a referendum on.

Corey 53:14

I really want to highlight a couple of things. One is that in the Quebec referendum question with that horrible long sovereignty association thing, they had some polling around the time of that where something like 20% of Quebecers believed they were still going to be able to elect MPs to the House of Commons after this vote. Amazing.

Corey 53:32

Amazing. Totally unreal because that was not the impression anybody outside of Quebec had. That was just the way they were able to play with the language on that one.

Corey 53:42

there is just, there's not really the way that you can get the population to that point in any kind of middle term. Like we talk about Brexit, right?

Corey 53:52

right? And I know right now some people are thinking like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but we'll do PR and everybody everybody will understand it by the time we vote brexit

Corey 53:58

brexit was years ago they said that they were going to have this referendum

Corey 54:01

years ago and they're just now unpacking what some of those things would be again there was no opportunity for compromise and now they're just sitting there going oh shit what did we do this is a real problem the political class is totally flummoxed by this i

Corey 54:15

i just don't know how you can in good conscience suggest that a referendum is the way to go on this if you are ultimately the conservatives i ask you do you really want the liberal and ndp majority to be choosing a referendum question here do you do you really think that's a good idea i mean maybe that's your faint hope because they have a majority in the house of commons but that is not trying to get the best outcome for canadians carter closing thoughts on this short

Carter 54:40

what seems like an easy solution um that hasn't been well considered you you do not want to take this thing to a referendum cory

SPEAKER_02 54:47

you want to add something Yeah,

Corey 54:48

Yeah, PR vote. I'll post everything. The other thing I'll say is if you want a lesson beyond me just scolding people who like referenda here,

Corey 54:58

it's that it is pretty easy to lie to yourself with these data sets depending on how you frame the questions. And you see this all the time in like dueling polls about issues. issues if you are an organization that actually wants to know something i challenge you to be honest with yourself and ask the worst framing of the question the best framing of the question looking at the daylight between really understanding where the situation is not just where you want it to be prvote

SPEAKER_02 55:20

prvote.com that's where cory's gonna throw all this up okay our final segment over under lightning round guys are you ready we finally arrived we finally arrived here carter i'm going with you first okay i'm really

Carter 55:30

really paying attention oh

SPEAKER_02 55:31

oh thank you scale of one to ten how good was Was Bernie Sanders' exit from the Democratic race?

SPEAKER_02 55:41

For him. For Bernie. For him? Then it was a seven. Oh,

SPEAKER_02 55:44

God. I think we've been over this. Okay. If you are a Republican right now, how excited are you if Donald Trump gives you a phone call to be your VP? Stephen Carter, between one and ten. Well,

Carter 55:54

Well, you don't put a gun in your mouth, but you get pretty darn close.

Carter 56:00

No, I mean, do I have to do one to ten? I answered

SPEAKER_02 56:04

answered a better answer. He likes his scale better, whatever. Corey, give me a number.

SPEAKER_02 56:08

I think a five. It really depends on who you are and what your profile is. Over, under, on seven, Carter. How worried are GOP incumbents right now for their job? Over, under, on seven.

Carter 56:18

Probably over. I mean, every election is something you should be worried about. I think that a lot of them are pretty darn concerned. Corey?

Corey 56:26

Corey? Under. The majority are still in rotten burrows and will be reelected, no problem.

Corey 56:32

But some should be very concerned. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 56:34

Okay. Okay. We talked about electoral reform. The federal government came out with an electoral reform do-it-yourself guide.

Corey 56:40

guide. We should have devoted more time to this.

SPEAKER_02 56:44

Same number over under on the do-it-yourself electoral reform host people for wine and cheese to talk about PR guide. Corey.

Corey 56:53

Look, I have some sympathy.

Corey 56:55

It is so nice to believe that you can just harness the crowds to do your work for you and that there's just going to be this crowdsourcing. Look, I I don't know how many political parties I've worked with where it's like, yeah, we'll build a kit and then they will just take it on themselves and they will do this for us. We'll have champions

Corey 57:11

champions in community. It's just, it never works. And it just makes you look kind of embarrassing in this case, right? Like the wine and cheese thing is,

Corey 57:19

you imagine? I mean, there's something so liberal about what they propose there, right? Just so high minded. And like, I've got time for this shit. That just, it's just like, it's not entirely out of touch and it's very on brand with this notion that we should all participate. But it's just yet another thing Justin Trudeau does that makes my eyes want to pop out. The back of my head, they rolled so quickly.

SPEAKER_02 57:39

Stephen Carter, over on Round 7 on the do-it-yourself kit.

Carter 57:43

Well, it was bad on Twitter and it will be worse in implementation.

SPEAKER_02 57:49

run a campaign that actually was – We did a DIY for

Carter 57:53

Nenshi. I remember that. Yeah, but we didn't say host your own coffee party. We said, here, here's a way that you can hand out some brochures for us. or put a here's a makeshift poster you can put in your in your window like it wasn't you

Carter 58:05

you know do our do our work for us and let in report back how your neighbors feel about uh an important and duff issue it was just not done like that carter

SPEAKER_02 58:14

carter if you are a progressive conservative party member right now if you're a card carrying member how valuable

SPEAKER_02 58:21

valuable on a scale of one to ten was the stephen harper endorsement of jason kenney minus seven

SPEAKER_02 58:27

good If you're a PC, keeping

Carter 58:30

in mind that the progressive conservative people, the people who are progressive conservative, view Stephen Harper as the guy who came and stole their party from them.

SPEAKER_02 58:38

Corey, what do you think? If you're a PC, that's

Corey 58:41

I mean, it just reinforces the fact that this is not a question of Jason Kenney taking over the PCs. This isn't even a question of the PCs taking over the Wild Rose. This is the conservative party taking over the PCs and the Wild Rose. It's the guys who think they're the big kids coming over and taking over. don't

Carter 58:57

don't worry daddy's home here's

Corey 58:58

here's the thing if

Corey 59:00

you're a pc this whole situation should make you absurdly uncomfortable i just want to unpack for a minute like just imagine a scenario a not too remote scenario where jason kenney wins right

Corey 59:12

right and then he says okay wild rose do you want to merge and wild rose says thanks jason but no i mean what are you doing like what's the equivalent this is like jason kenney showing up outside somebody's house with a gun to his head saying I'll kill myself if you don't marry me because the reality is if the Wild Rose rejects the PC merger after Jason Kenney has said this is everything and the PCs can't exist without it you've destroyed your party Jason

Carter 59:36

Jason Kenney has no desire to go nicely and ask them Here

SPEAKER_02 59:40

Here we go Final question Scale of 1 to 10 One week of Kenney in Carter, what do we feel?

Carter 59:46

Probably about a 3 I went to a PC event yesterday and it

Carter 59:51

it was kind of funny I mean there was a group of people There were people who were really interested in Jason Kenney and Jason Kenney moved around the room. That

Carter 59:57

That group of people moved around the room with Jason Kenney and

Carter 59:59

everybody else moved around the room. It's like, you

Carter 1:00:01

you know, when you put salt and pepper into a bowl of water and then you put a little bit of liquid detergent in and everybody, he runs away. Jason Kenney was liquid detergent. I've never done that before,

Corey 1:00:12

Sounds like fun science.

Corey 1:00:14

One week of Jason Kenney. Corey Ogun. uh

Corey 1:00:17

you know he got a bit of a rough ride from some of the opinion leaders in the province saying we're gonna need a little more than jason kenny 1.0 that was don braid's comment we saw uh

Corey 1:00:27

uh a collective freak out on on twitter which then the reaction by kenny supporters was like well see if everybody's upset about this we must be on to something which is like the most twisted

Corey 1:00:38

twisted logic i've ever ever

Corey 1:00:40

ever heard it's pretty good stuff yeah i mean that's that's that's big time denial there guys way to go uh i

Corey 1:00:47

i think that he got he did okay for his first week it will be interesting to see how the field winnows or doesn't as a result of him jumping in so early he

Corey 1:00:56

he did what he had to do people are talking about it let's see if they're still talking about it after stampede who

SPEAKER_02 1:01:00

who cares about giving me the numbers okay we'll leave it there that's a wrap on episode 582 of the strategist my name is zane velji with me as always stephen carter cory hogan and we'll see you next time

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