Episode 828: Let the f--kery begin

Zain 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 828. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter,

Corey 0:07

Corey Hogan. Guys, happy Sunday. Happy Sunday, Zain. Happy Sunday morning, Zain.

Carter 0:14

You guys are interrupting my worship.

Zain 0:17

Welcome to the new church. You mean the room of mirrors, Carter?

Carter 0:22

I'm supposed to be outside. I'm inside with you two. This is not the way I roll. Stephen

Zain 0:28

Carter is a modern day Thomas Payne His mind is his church And no one else is admitted And no one else wants to attend We have seen enough of Stephen Carter's mind on display On this podcast that The admission is limited to one Seating capacity That

Carter 0:42

That was a nasty turn there at the end I'm

Carter 0:44

telling you Even the

Zain 0:45

the pre-COVID seating capacity was at one

Zain 0:51

Do we want to talk about the shot? We have to talk about the shot We

Corey 0:55

have to talk about that shot shot

Zain 0:56

we have to talk about the shot

Zain 0:58

carter are you are you in to talk about the shot oh yeah okay i mean come on what part of the shot do you want to start dissecting first cory because is it the almost sean marion style release of barack obama's jumper or is it the fact that it was the arrogant walk off the court kairi irving style this is what i made for all that sort of shit where do we want to start i i wanted to talk about the swagger

Corey 1:22

swagger at the end and

Corey 1:23

whether it was a little over the top relative to yeah

Corey 1:27

i mean like come on guy you you drained a corner three that's good for you what are the odds of that i don't know one in three or better one in three

Carter 1:34

three one in three so

Corey 1:36

so uh you know to to act like you're the the biggest dog in the junkyard i thought was a bit much but uh you

Corey 1:43

you know what and it wasn't just that he said like that's how we do or whatever he said there is that he then took his mask off to say it louder and more clearly it's like um so

Corey 1:52

so nobody ever told barack obama cool guys don't look at explosions right yeah

Corey 1:59

response in that moment was to do it and

Corey 2:01

and to walk away without saying a word and

Corey 2:03

and just have all of the reaction around you be the words you speak you know like come on barack yeah

Zain 2:09

yeah love you man

Zain 2:10

he was feeling a little much

Zain 2:11

he was feeling himself i mean i just want to let barack obama know bruce bowen has hit a lot of corner threes too and i never saw bruce bowen do Antonio Spurs reference for you Carter anything to add with your vast sport knowledge um

Carter 2:27

he really he really looked like he knew what he was doing it was a good shot okay

Zain 2:31

okay thank you so much I have thank you you don't want to talk about the release Corey because I think that to me was just I think he's lost a little bit on his fundamental it was a

Corey 2:38

a little ungainly for sure right but you know it's hard to argue with results it was uh it got the job done but I think that when I think about U.S. presidential candidates he's definitely not the person with the smoothest form i think bill bradley obviously uh takes that uh you know there's a deep cut to anybody who remembers the 2000 democratic primary um but

Corey 2:59

but you know even bernie sanders uh a little more like butter i think so what are your thoughts on this thing but

Zain 3:05

but butter burning from brooklyn is was his nickname

Zain 3:09

just even up half court shots man that's what he was all about just that perfect steph curry reform he'd have the mouth guard it actually was dentures but he would just walk off

Corey 3:20

off the court it was perfect i love so listen to to kind of finalize this brack uh corner unguarded

Corey 3:27

didn't require that kind of extravagance you know when you've got somebody in your face and maybe you're where you're somewhere out at kind of a weird angle then come talk to me then you can pull that kind of nonsense but uh if you want to come on the show and defend yourself we will find time for you give us a couple of episodes notice but um i think that the analysis of the strategist was uh that that was a c-minus can i

Zain 3:48

i just can i just also uh bring it back for a sec how much do we miss brock obama oh so much yeah

Corey 3:53

yeah okay just to

Corey 3:56

be totally fair calling around uh doing doing canvas yesterday yeah

Corey 4:01

and he called like a called

Zain 4:02

called a woman with

Corey 4:04

son that's right yeah

Corey 4:04

yeah with like an eight-month-old in the background that

Corey 4:07

that you know the problem with um all of the use they've done of Barack Obama is it really, to me, does underline how deficient I find Joe Biden to be relative to Barack Obama. Like Barack Obama, say

Corey 4:20

say what you will, say he played the game not the way it needed to be played to get results. You know, he tried to make peace with the Republicans far too often, but holy cow, is that guy got charisma? And holy cow, does joe biden relatively not and even in that shot we're talking about where uh where brock you know drains that three you

Corey 4:42

see joe biden at the i think it was joe biden everyone's wearing a mask but you see joe biden at the end almost looking at the camera like oh that was kind of neat you know and it's just like talk

Corey 4:49

talk about too much electricity like the fact that i'm saying i think it was joe biden like the dude is not necessarily even apparent to me in his own campaign videos when he's in his own campaign videos tells you everything you need to know about the dynamic of those two men.

Zain 5:03

It reminds me of Carter's comment on our other podcast earlier this week when you said, you know, if aliens came down to see a room and Bill Clinton was sitting there randomly placed, they could pick out the leader. I have a similar sort of vibe with Barack Obama, even within the confines of the Joe Biden campaign team.

Carter 5:22

Yeah. I mean, I think he's the weakest even compared to Harris. I mean, Harris walks into the room. Everybody knows Harris is in the room. Biden comes in and they wonder where he is when he's going to get there. like it's just it's unfortunate but that's just the way it is there

Zain 5:34

there it is okay let's move it on to our first segment 10 run lead in the bottom of the ninth guys there's gonna be a lot of baseball metaphors today mainly because i also want to talk about other sports things because now that we're on a roll cory how insane is it that justin turner gets gets diagnosed with covid in the eighth inning and then they let him come back to celebrate with his team we'll talk oh

Corey 5:54

oh but did you you see like the way people clear it away from him oh yeah asshole goes onto the field uh with a covid diagnosis it

Zain 6:01

it was so fucking weird and the mlb

Corey 6:04

dodgers it's been a long drought i'm pretty excited for the boys guys

Zain 6:08

guys let's talk about the u.s election and there's a few things i want to talk about i mean we're only a couple of days away we record this on sunday morning election is on tuesday evening or i should say election day is on tuesday evening as millions upon millions have already voted um maybe let's start here with a basic question i don't think we've actually diagnosed, and maybe now's the right time to do it, which is, in this election, do we have a unified ballot box question? So Carter, maybe I'll go to you first. Maybe if you want to give our listeners a brief sort of understanding as to what a ballot box question is. I know we've done that in the past, but just a quick primer. And then in your mind, do we have one? Do we have a unified ballot box question, or is this a fractured election where we've got multiple questions we're competing for? I'd love to just get each of your takes on that that very simple, you

Zain 6:52

you know, top line premise of elections.

Carter 6:55

Well, I'll go deep and go back to 2000. I mean, so I'll explain what a ballot box question is first. What it basically is, is when a person goes to the ballot box, what question do you want them asking in their mind moments before they mark their ballot? That is the last question that they're thinking about. That is the issue at which the election is being fought over. And it is the prime question. So in 2000, and it was one of my best ballot

Carter 7:21

ballot box setting exercises, the ballot box question we set for Joe Clark in Calgary Center was, would you rather have the right honorable Joe Clark or what's his name?

Carter 7:32

Literally, you know, couldn't remember the name of the guy who was running against the right honorable Joe Clark. Can you set that type of expectation in the mind of the electorate? And when you're able to set the ballot box question, I think you're actually far more likely to win rather

Carter 7:46

rather than having the ballot box question, for example, set by the other side. Now, the other side might have been going with, do you want an old has-been or our young, youthful candidate? Those both questions will be vying for each other, and the one that's being asked is the one that wins. ends. In this particular case, I do think that the ballot box question has been set almost identically by the Trump campaign and the Biden campaign. And it is, do you want four more years of Trump, right?

Carter 8:18

right? And Trump believes that four

Carter 8:21

four more years of Trump is positive. Biden's campaign firmly believes that four more years of Trump is positive for them, right? Like people going in saying i don't want to vote for biden i

Carter 8:33

mean we just talked about the relative weakness of biden compared

Carter 8:36

compared to others that could be i mean we didn't even talk about pete budaj who is just crushing his media interviews this week um again reminding us how weak biden is in in debate and in interviews and in those formats um but

Carter 8:52

four more years of trump is the primary ballot box question voting for him or voting against him and i i think that that's one of of Trump's weaknesses is their campaign has never been able to visualize in the way that they did in 2016, what an alternative question might be that

Carter 9:09

would actually deliver victory.

Zain 9:10

You know, Corey, there seems to be some competing narratives, you know, despite Carter's comments that, that we've perhaps harmonized on a ballot box question with the two camps, you know, Trump's campaign is largely in most recent weeks been about Biden being corrupt, right, that COVID is not all that bad, that the media is unfair to him, and then recently talking about the economic, you know, upgrades that the US economy has seen in this third quarter. And then Biden's really, you know, his campaign to his credit have tried to frame him as someone out of central casting, if your ballot box question is about decency, if your ballot box question is about going back to a version of normal and a politics of normal. So in your mind, do you feel like we've settled on a harmonized ballot box question to Stephen's mind? Or do you feel like we're a bit more fractured in terms of what we might be seeing?

Corey 9:59

Oh, I definitely think we're fractured. And part of that is the man that is Donald Trump, he can't stick on a ballot box question for more than a week or two, you can tell his campaign is trying, you know, it'll be law and order. And then all of a sudden, it's, it's Hunter Biden's laptop. And, you

Corey 10:14

you know, and then all of a sudden, it's the COVID is cured, and the guy bounces around, and he doesn't show an awful lot of discipline. And that lack of discipline is also flowing into the Biden campaign. Now, all of that said, there are some themes that the campaigns are clearly orbiting around there. You know, it has been mentioned by you, Zane, that both of them are talking about corruption.

Corey 10:35

I really do think in many ways, Trump's corruption accusations are,

Corey 10:41

if we were going to give him credit, I would say it would be savvy defense, because he's trying to say that guy's just as bad as what I'm accused of, right? But I wouldn't even do that. I would would be corrupt in those matters so why joe biden must be too and that's why he's running around um but you know biden wants to talk about covid the response to covid is always the first thing that comes out of his mouth their compassion and decency are the second trump wants to talk about the economy and building the strongest economy and building it again um and uh compassion and decency are the last things that come out of his mouth but both of the campaigns have are running their own flavor of do we like what america's becoming and you don't like campaigns shouldn't have the same ballot box question that's not the purpose of a ballot box question if everybody thinks they're winning on the same question somebody is wrong and so um if we uh if we wake up on wednesday and there is a you know a biden landslide i would say it is because the republicans frankly

Corey 11:40

frankly misread the numbers and didn't figure out quite what they were uh what they were all all about this election. And that lack of ballot box question and that defaulting to the two bases yelling at each other was

Corey 11:52

was probably a failure if Trump's base wasn't nearly large enough to carry the day.

Zain 11:57

Guys, I want to move it on from here, because this is a very interesting sort of comment around where we find the question and the messaging. Let's talk a bit about before we head into what I think is the most interesting part, which is the night of and perhaps the the morning after. But let's talk very briefly about what we call the enthusiasm gap. You know, we've talked a bit on our other podcast about voter turnout, but maybe Carter, I'll go back to you to help us define what's an enthusiasm gap. And do you feel like the one that we might see in this election could be a factor?

Carter 12:29

Well, so enthusiasm is just a simple measure of how likely a person is to vote and it can come from both sides. So, you know, in the elections that I was winning in the early 2010s, we had an enthusiasm gap for our candidates. So people chose to vote more. People who were more likely to support my candidates voted more. So the voter numbers increased because those people were excited to get out and vote, whereas the other side's voters weren't quite as motivated, and they basically

Carter 12:58

basically maintained the numbers that they'd had before.

Carter 13:01

So in other elections, they would have been fine, but in an election where more people people voted, they weren't fine. So

Carter 13:08

So in this particular election, in the election in the United States, you're seeing, for example, massive advance voter turnout, where 93 million votes have been cast as we're recording the podcast this morning. I'm anticipating it might go as high as 100 million advance votes.

Carter 13:25

That's showing an enthusiasm. The question is, is there a gap between the Republicans and the Democrats' enthusiasm? So as we go through and we're We're looking and people are, of course, Nate Silver and Nate Cohn are are cautioning people not to read too too much into the early voting statistics. But if you look at the states that have that

Carter 13:48

are reporting by their Democrat by by party affiliation, there

Carter 13:51

there is seems to be a much higher participation

Carter 13:56

participation from Democrats than participation from Republicans. So it seems to be showing an enthusiasm for early voting anyways, for getting out and voting in advance for

Carter 14:08

for the Democrats. Why that's important, that gap may reverse itself and you may see a enthusiasm gap on election night. But if there is a gap for the Democrats, then the polling that we've been seeing, which kind of balances these things out and make sure you're not pulling too many people of any one group. the polling will be skewed because more people turning out for one set for one group with enthusiasm will

Carter 14:34

will skew the polls we saw that i think a little bit in 2016 when uh the republicans were far more enthusiastic uh about voting for trump uh than the democrats were for voting for um for for hillary clinton and i'll say this i'll just finish with this thought i'm not sure there's an enthusiasm gap. I am watching

Carter 14:54

watching Texas so carefully. They have gone over 107 percent of

Carter 14:59

of their 2016 total. There is an enthusiasm in Texas. I just don't know who it's for. And

Carter 15:04

And I am I'm really looking forward to seeing after election night who it was for or if it was just everybody was amped up. The election of 2020 was on fire.

Zain 15:13

Yeah, Carter, you make a good point. I mean, this could be the election where we have 330 million people in the United States. You might quite literally have half of America voting, which is an unprecedented Democratic event. We'll put Democratic in quotes because we want to talk about the day of and the morning after, but could be the most unprecedented voting event that we have seen in the country. And so your point is valid in the sense that if you can't read who the enthusiasm gap is for or have it necessarily telegraphed to you right now, it's hard to tell. Corey, your comments on the enthusiasm gap, we've heard it a lot in the last sort of weeks or so. Where do you kind of see it playing Do you feel like any side has an edge? Love to just hear your comments on that.

Corey 15:53

Yeah. So, you know, enthusiasm gap is one of these painfully imprecise phraseologies that we need to unpack because depending on how you define it, you're going to see different enthusiasm gaps. So Trump

Corey 16:05

Trump supporters are more enthusiastic about Trump than Biden supporters about Biden. You did a poll recently. Seventy seven percent of Trump supporters are enthusiastic. Forty eight percent of Biden supporters are enthusiastic about their candidate. But if

Corey 16:16

if you ask more generally, are you enthusiastic to vote? Democrats have a major, major edge, something like 15 points over the Republican Party. And their enthusiasm almost seems to be fueled by hatred, frankly. They disdain

Corey 16:29

disdain Donald Trump and they want to get to the polls and they want to vote this guy out. And so this

Corey 16:36

this will be one of these concepts people will unpack for a bit, but I think it's absolutely true that Trump's base is more beholden to him than Biden's – I won't even necessarily say base, but the Democratic Party is beholden to Joe Biden. But Donald Trump, everything orbits around this man, this election. Carter's comment about maybe the real ballot question is, do you want four more years of Trump?

Corey 16:59

I can't really say that's for sure wrong, because Trump

Corey 17:03

Trump supporters support Trump. And they are Trump supporters. They're not Republican supporters at this point. You know, the overriding thing is Trump. And Biden supporters hate

Corey 17:13

hate Trump. It is really about how they're going to be able to stop Trump. So, this

Corey 17:19

is one of those things where depending on how you cut it, you're going to get a different answer. I would say at the end of the day, what

Corey 17:24

what matters is results. What matters is getting to the polls. And if the Democrats are more enthusiastic than the Republicans about voting, that's a problem for the Republican Party. That's a big problem for the Republican Party, because whether it's driven by positive or negative emotion, whether it's driven by connection or repulsion, more Democrats appear to want to get to those ballot boxes and vote than Republicans and Republican supporters.

Zain 17:47

Corey, I'm going to stick with you talking about the election night. You know, one of the things that even Trump's aides have have have signaled this morning on the Sunday morning talk shows is that they're very excited to ensure that that the president is named on the night of, despite what media organizations and social media platforms have said. They're very excited to claim that they know that their supporters, they're so nakedly, you know, obvious about this, are going to show up in greater droves on Election Day, as even early polling has indicated on, if we can call it enthusiasm or vote intent, right? Right. So what do you kind of look at when you're looking at, you know, the election night and leading into the next morning? And we've used the V word before on this podcast. It's been in our in our general orbit and zeitgeist violence. Are you more or less afraid that that might be a reality leading into this, what I'd say, consistent messaging by the Trump camp, even as early as this morning? planning, and now looking at other things like cities boarding up their main streets quite aggressively all across the country, especially in major urban centers, is the threat or perhaps even the worry of violence something that is higher or lower in your mind as you sit here on Sunday morning, two days before

Corey 19:03

before the election? I

Corey 19:04

I mean, much higher. Even in the past couple of days, since we did a podcast, You the People, and we talked You talked about this very situation.

Corey 19:12

feel like the powder

Corey 19:13

powder keg is just – it's getting drier and drier. I'm very worried that it's not going to take much of a spark to fire things off. And you talked about this major voting event, right? Perhaps more people voting when it's all said and done than ever in – well, almost certainly than ever in American history. country.

Corey 19:33

330 million people country.

Corey 19:35

I want you to think about how many polling places there are. I want you to think about how many different rub points there are, how many different frictions can exist. And what happens if there's one on the East Coast at 9am before you even wake up on the West Coast? And how is that going to roll across the country? And what could we potentially be looking at where all of a sudden, let's just play what I think is a not too crazy scenario here let's

Corey 19:57

let's say there's an altercation that gets physical at a polling place in pennsylvania swing state everybody thinks pennsylvania is where this is well not everybody but many people think this is where the election is likely to hinge well all of a sudden you wake up in mississippi and you see that and you start saying oh my god the democrats are trying to steal this election so you get your armed redneck buddies and you go to the polls and you stand outside them and all of a sudden uh in a black neighborhood and all of a sudden there is a more armed more more dangerous version of this conflict you wake up on the west coast and you see this you see all of a sudden maybe there was shooting at a at a polling place in mississippi not even a swing state but now we're talking about a much bigger level of violence and a much bigger anxiety or maybe arizona you

Corey 20:40

you know also in pacific time i half the year i can't remember what half the year we're on now um

Corey 20:48

are going armed on the other side maybe you're a democrat who you know There's a lot of weird Western Democrats who love their guns, right? And then you're going to the polls and you're going to defend them against what you think is this reactionary assault against democracy. And you've just created a number of flammable situations and it doesn't take a real stretch of imagination to have – if people are saying the other side is trying to steal, so I'm going to go there in force, even if they don't intend to use that force for you to imagine something going horribly awry, horribly

Corey 21:15

horribly awry. And that kind of chaos, I think, is the biggest threat that America has. You know, the notion of counting votes, I've

Corey 21:22

I've generally kind of calmed down on that in the sense that I

Corey 21:27

I don't know how the courts would move fast enough to stop the counts before we would have a general idea of who actually won, even in states like Pennsylvania, which start counting late.

Corey 21:36

It's just not very practical to me. You can – there is – in legislation, you must have your results approved by I think it's December something second this year, something along those lines. It's a long time. And even if you're still working on the last couple of, you know, the dregs of the keg there, you're going to have a pretty good indication. And if Biden wins by as much as it looks like Biden's going to win by in some of these areas, you're going to know Joe Biden won, right? The bigger risk for me is that the very running of the election gets called into question. Like there's violence at these polling places in swing states. And all of a sudden, people

Corey 22:07

people say this was not a fair election. You can't count on these results. And then what do these state legislatures do? Because you don't really have time to rerun the election.

Corey 22:17

What do you do? What is going to happen? And that to me is very alarming because right now we've seen this ratcheting up over the weekend. We've seen campaign buses be driven off the road. We've heard all of these tales about polling places being threatened by armed people roaming around. I mean this is what

Corey 22:36

what it looks like.

Corey 22:38

When we look on the news about some

Corey 22:41

some crazy-ass election that's happening in a part of the world we're not very familiar with, it's not happening everywhere. everywhere it's

Corey 22:47

it's happening in enough places that the whole thing is chaos and

Zain 22:51

and you know cory just to you know dovetail on that history has taught us that it's often a small perhaps even relatively insignificant seeming event that can be the spark towards sides crystallizing and hardening and and then creating this domino effect that you you know theoretically describe to us around you know west coast east coast non-swing state it just it could just be a single minor events that kickstarts this. And let's not be surprised, there will be people looking for that event, trying to unearth that event, trying to perhaps even manipulate it or find it or draw it out. Carter, are you, are Corey and I here being a little dramatic? Are we being over the top? Or are you perhaps on our same wavelength with how you're looking at this in terms of how you feel about the threat of violence on the morning after or the day, the night of?

Carter 23:44

Well, I think it's going to be much faster than the morning after. I mean, we are seeing it now. North Carolina police were pepper spraying protesters that were marching for voting rights. I mean, there was not any violence. They just started to pepper spray them. Texas, Corey mentioned the driving off the road of the bus and the swerving and hitting a staffer's car with their truck. This is already happening. It's happening quickly. I mean, Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha drove into Kenosha to protect law and order. This happens relatively quickly. And then you add in that there are state actors. I mean, there's a narrative that the state actor is interested in seeing Trump

Carter 24:30

Trump win. That's not actually the narrative.

Corey 24:32

Now, that's their second best choice.

Carter 24:34

The state actors that are playing in the U.S. election are playing for chaos. And chaos is now on the menu. you. So

Carter 24:41

So fake videos surfacing in the next 48 hours are highly likely. Those fake videos are designed to spur both sides into action. You know, it will not be one side. I mean, I worry about the right. I worry about the left. They are the same. They bring the same passions and the same fears and the same desire. And it's all going to start from a protection. It's not going to start from an aggression. It all starts from defense. But the problem is that defense, when you're well armed, very quickly becomes offense. That's why peaceful protest was so important and remains so important in democracies. Peaceful protest is the only way that protest actually works, because not peaceful protest, violent protest, immediately devolves into significant counteractions and and pushbacks. And that's what I'm fearful of in the next, let's

Carter 25:40

let's say, 72 hours, because I think that once

Carter 25:43

once it starts to, it's going to be very, very challenging, especially under the Trump administration until January the 20th, to start to put brakes

Carter 25:51

brakes on those actions.

Corey 25:53

Corey, jump on in.

Corey 25:54

Yeah, I would say this is a bigger possibility than we've ever seen in our lifetime in the United States. But this is not inevitable. America does not need to just fall apart on on tuesday and i i don't want to say that this is a foregone conclusion i will ask any protesters out there if you see an archduke go by in a motorcade do not try to kill them let's

Corey 26:15

let's just let this one play out let's not have this weird kindling uh just explode on us here there doesn't need to be a spark so let's

Corey 26:24

let's hope there's not a spark but if i was well listen i don't need to be an american to be very concerned about this i'm very concerned about this um we

Corey 26:32

we we seem to to see the tension ratcheting up which is to be expected coming towards an election but it was already at such a dangerous place that i don't quite know what to make of what's going to happen tuesday there are always always stories on election day about voting going wrong or ballots being missing or something like that always

Corey 26:53

but what's kept them in check before is a fundamental belief that these are one-offs and that the system as a whole is durable i don't know that people have have that confidence this time around.

Zain 27:02

You know, I've used the term fractures when I was talking about the ballot box question, but it's fair to say that America has been fractured with the issues that we've seen, even in the last year, when we count everything from the start of the year to environment, to racial justice, to, you know, just this corruption and faith in our institutions. There will be a group of people, Carter, that want to see, and

Zain 27:24

and I don't even know how to phrase this appropriately, so I'll try to phrase it as clearly as I can, that feel like violence may need to be the answer in order to actually have the unearthing of the America that they want to see. And I feel like my fear, if I can say, is not just about this moment in time being used as a defense of our democratic institution as this one election, but people leaning into whatever other fracture points we have experienced over the last half decade, decade, in saying, fuck it, now's the time, if there ever is a time, let's lean in with our movement or our issue into this particular exercise. So if I can kind of editorialize my fear, it kind of sits there, but you wanted to jump in as well.

Carter 28:05

Well, I wanted to jump in. I mean, first of all, yeah, there are groups of people who've always thought that violence was the answer. And in fact, I mean, America's history is built upon violence being the answer to the oppression that came from Great Britain. I mean, that's a long time ago. And of course, there was the intervening Civil War. And one could argue that slavery may

Carter 28:26

may never have been addressed had it not been for the Civil War. Now, I'm not going to argue either side of that. I'll leave that to scholars. But bottom line, violence has its place in rectifying

Carter 28:38

rectifying wrongs. I'm not sure that today's the day, though.

Carter 28:41

I'm not sure that the wrongs that are facing the United States are such that violence needs to come into play. But I want to bring up one thing, and I was thinking about this as Corey was speaking. This threat of violence is

Carter 28:52

is most likely to hurt one side more than the other at this stage. If you're worried that there's going to be violence at polling stations, if you're worried that there's going to be violence on election day, you're not going to go to the polls. And the group, I mean, maybe the enthusiasm gap is so significant that the people who are going to the polls on that day are Republicans. But right now, virtually every poll that's asked the question, have you already voted or are you planning to vote, is showing that two-thirds of voters who've already voted, voted for Biden. And two-thirds of voters that are going to vote on Election Day are voting for Trump.

Carter 29:25

We're already seeing this. So if there is a reckoning, if there is a pushback and fewer people vote on Election Day, there's only one side that's going to get hurt. And that side is the Trump side. The second side, I guess, that does get hurt is if the early vote isn't counted, then

Carter 29:44

then we as viewers are going to have a very skewed idea of what actually is happening. I'm less

Carter 29:50

less concerned about that, just kind of looking at the data that I'm pulling forward. I think that most of the states that are most in play and most interesting are going to be giving us results that are mostly there on election night. Election night now may stretch to two o'clock in the morning mountain time, but we should have a pretty good sense, I think, on election night. Corey,

Zain 30:14

Corey, let's end with this, which is, you know, I was going to say, what should the campaigns, plural, be doing here? It seems like the Trump campaign, however, and more specifically, Donald Trump doesn't have any incentive or any, you know, muscle that is going to try to stop this violence. In fact, to the comment that you made about Texas yesterday, where the trucks with Trump flags were kind of barricading and surrounding a Biden campaign van, Trump retweeted that and said, I love Texas, right? Not signaling anything other than saying, yeah, fuck this, I love Texas. this. So maybe, and unfairly, the responsibility is squared on Biden's shoulder, the Biden campaign shoulders. Is there something they should be saying or doing with 48 hours to go? Is there something that they should be thinking about and maybe using some of their airtime and oxygen for in the next couple of days? Or what would you recommend? Or what would you suggest if you were on the inside of that team?

Corey 31:10

Yeah, well, part of Joe Biden's brand is, you know, bringing America back to its traditional values, I think this really is something where he needs to be speaking quite clearly to his supporters and that next to orbit out saying, you are going to be provoked, I need you to not rise to the occasion, as long as, you know, it takes two to tango, and they're going to act in in bad ways, they may even act in illegal ways. But we need this, we need to be at the end of the day able to say, we held ourselves to America's better values. And that's across Across America. And so you cannot take the bait. You cannot start the fight. And if they start the fight with you, you need to find a way to deescalate it as much as possible. And it's not a very comforting answer. And it's not a call that everybody is going to take. But if he can just, if

Corey 31:55

if he can keep that violence from spiraling out of control, it is to his advantage, I believe, just based on where the polls are now. Now, the fact that Donald Trump would say, I love Texas as they run a bus off the road is madness. But it does speak to a broader

Corey 32:08

broader illiberalism that is creeping, I think, with society as a whole, but certainly within conservative movements in places like the United States, Canada, frankly, and Western Europe.

Corey 32:20

And it's largely based on demography. This is not a blinding insight, but political scientists who

Corey 32:26

who study democracies will often tell you that it's

Corey 32:30

it's pretty easy to hold to those democratic ideals when you think that there's kind of a flip back that constantly happens. But if you believe you are moving solidly to the minority and you have to choose between, say, being a conservative or being democratic, a

Corey 32:43

a very large number of people will pick conservative over democratic. democratic and i'm not i'm not really picking on the conservatives if the demos were going the other way we would find the same phenomenon but this is a challenge right it's um you

Corey 32:55

you know it's really when the rubber hits the road you can talk a big game about a democracy but do you really care about democracy is this truly your highest ideal because if it is you've got to stop with this bullshit about trying to stop people from voting of of throwing out a hundred thousand ballots in texas of making it difficult to go to the polls in georgia that's not democrat democratic I mean, what we're seeing here is a kind

Corey 33:17

kind of a creeping of liberalism that should concern us all. And you are seeing it mirrored. I'm not saying it's equivalent, but you are seeing it mirrored on the left as well, where it's less about the process and more about the outcome.

Zain 33:30

Carter, I think you want to react to what Corey said there. So I'll let you do that first, but also answer my question. Should Biden be spending any of his airtime or oxygen talking about maybe potential violence?

Carter 33:39

No, I don't think he should be talking about violence, and I'm going to tell you why. I think that if the campaigns ratchet up the possibility that it could happen, I think it actually increases the probability that it's going to happen. I think that he should be running a final campaign that's focused on his messaging, not the process. That is one of the – one of the challenges is it's always hard to get media to cover campaign – like our campaigning

Carter 34:04

campaigning ideas and our issues. They always want to cover process. process this is the ultimate process story it's going to dominate but i think that biden and harris need to focus on you know let's get out and vote uh let's not raise this the temperature any higher than it is my view is that they're running a winning campaign continue the winning campaign for the last seven you know 48 hours get them through the election day and then be prepared to fight for every vote that has been cast and then when there's recounts don't make the mistake that was made in in florida bush v gore you

Carter 34:39

you know count every ballot if you lose if you lose then you lose but it's the counting of every single ballot that matters every single ballot and that's the way that that that elections should be run it should be reflective of the people every

Carter 34:53

every ballot that was cast not did i win or did i lose um the people always win is the the the kind of the mantra of democracy. So put forward the commitment that every vote shall be counted and every state will ratify the right votes. So I'm excited by this opportunity to do it properly and set the tone properly, but I'm afraid that the desire to set the stage for the conflict that comes afterwards, whether that conflict is in the courts or on the streets, uh is is going to be overwhelming and and people will want to address that conflict cory

Zain 35:33

finish this off here yeah

Corey 35:34

yeah it's the most fundamental thing in a democracy we agree process is more important than results and i'm worried right now americans are not in that mindset let's

Zain 35:43

let's move it on to our next segment our next segment balls and strikes guys i want to talk about our home province we we zoom out from from uh from the united states and zoom in to alberta And I want to talk about some issues that we are seeing here in our province that probably have, and I'd say not only probably, definitely have ramifications, both in terms of strategy and policy across the country. And this is about cuts in health care. Corey, maybe I'll turn to you. If you can give our listeners who might not be from Alberta or maybe are from Alberta a basic summary of where Jason Kenney's most recent conversations with his government have been with health care cuts and then maybe leaning into perhaps what we saw with these wildcat strikes. Do you have enough context and background to maybe give

Zain 36:32

give to our listeners?

Corey 36:35

I think you've kind of loaded the question off the start. I wouldn't necessarily disagree with you, but the different sides would argue about whether these are cuts or not. But fundamentally, we

Corey 36:44

we have – the government of Alberta has gotten a report back, which they commissioned looking for savings within the healthcare system to then reinvest into care in different ways to deal with the growing demands on the healthcare system without investing more money into the healthcare system. system. What this report has suggested, among other things, is dramatic outsourcing of a lot of the functions that are within the healthcare system, but that are not specifically nurses or physicians. So this would be areas like reception, the cleaning of the hospitals, the laundry services that occur, many of which are already outsourced in Alberta. And long story short, this will result in significant job losses within Alberta Health Services. Yes, they would potentially be picked up again in the private sector. But by definition, if you're finding savings there, guess what, they're not paying the same, right? And or there's not as many.

Corey 37:37

So obviously, people who are in these ancillary services are concerned. They're very concerned about the fact that this is just happening. Because of the way collective bargaining goes, it's unlikely they would have been in a position to strike legally before these actions are just essentially set in stone and can't occur or and can be reversed, I should say. And so there was a wildcat strike in Alberta. Again, depending on where you stand, you might just call it an illegal job action in Alberta, where people walked off the job to protest these changes to the healthcare system, among all of the other changes roiling the healthcare system and all of the other fights within the healthcare system. They were unsurprisingly immediately ordered back to work by the lrb the labor relations board um and

Corey 38:22

and uh there's now much debate as to whether that was good tactics or bad tactics and i really look forward to unpacking this with carter who thinks it's bad tactics carter is wrong as always and i um i have a more nuanced view being the smarter of the two of us so is

Zain 38:39

is that good does that sort of summarize that's a great summary i i got both of you to do explaining in chief today which is great uh i don't have to do it carter can i

Carter 38:47

i jump jump in on the uh on the savings

Carter 38:49

savings yeah you set

Zain 38:50

set some context some additional context from from your sure one

Carter 38:53

one of the important pieces is that the the minister of health is saying that 11 000 jobs are going to be impacted um but they're going to save 600 million dollars a year so context is important right like if you're going to save 600 million dollars and 11 000 jobs are going to be impacted that's

Carter 39:09

that's 54 000 a job 54

Carter 39:12

54 000 how much are we paying these people i

Carter 39:14

mean i don't believe the Minister when he says that 11,000 people is going to create $600 million in savings. And this has been the problem with outsourcing from the beginning. We are told that there's going to be massive savings when we do an outsource. But when the actual outsourcing happens, we find that it doesn't save us that much money overall. And it doesn't matter if we're outsourcing lab services or if we're outsourcing cleaning

Carter 39:40

cleaning services, if we're outsourcing laundry services. resources uh the if you're going to outsource it and it's going to save money it's going to be more efficient it's going to be better for the population then i can get behind it but

Carter 39:52

but don't lie to me and i think that i'm being lied to uh in the context of this and i want to set that as one of the primary starting points because it does undermine everything else that comes from it carter

Corey 40:03

carter well look i think yeah yeah look the level of savings is almost never seen in outsourcing across businesses in this area never seen i don't think you'd be able to find an example where you get a report from like a pwc or a deloitte it gets implemented and that they find anywhere near the savings that were proposed it just does not happen because it's based on a faulty premise of universal efficiency and perfect implementation uh even if you know they're also perfect information going into it but uh you know carter don't be obtuse it's not just that it's not just the staff it's also the idea that there's often equipment that goes with it um you know everybody's got a bit of a multiplier effect on their employer beyond just their salary costs i look i don't think they're going to find anywhere near 600 million dollars a year doing this i don't think they're going to find a third of it doing this but um i

Corey 40:54

i also don't think they're implying it's all in salaries no

Carter 40:57

no but the problem is that they're not explaining how they're going to get there the

Carter 41:00

the 600 million is a made-up number we're

Carter 41:02

we're going to save 600 million dollars that's a made-up number it's

Carter 41:05

it's only going to impact 11,000 people that's a made up number the

Carter 41:08

the problem that I'm having is that the communications from Alberta Health and Wellness through the minister is so bad that I don't trust any of it I don't trust and that undermines a large portion of what's actually going to occur in the province of Alberta and that's one of the reasons I'm frustrated with the

Carter 41:29

with this action but I'll now hand it back over to Zane who will regain control of the podcast cats and take us where we need to go no

Zain 41:36

no this is good this is good i i know you guys have you know clearly domain expertise and contextual knowledge so this is helpful to put out on the table carter let's talk about strategy because that's the heart at the heart of this um tell us what you made of this wildcat strike strategy and and maybe we can describe it a bit right so these were strikes uh or cory said you know illegal job actions depending on how you look at it of of these individuals who, in targeted spots, started walking off the job on a particular morning, got covered by the media, you know, got covered by social media, certainly. What did you make of this strategy?

Carter 42:14

Well, I think it was hasty. It came out of nowhere. It was a wildcat strike. That's fine. Jesus Christ. You know what? The wildcat strike can occur with communications that happened beforehand. hand. The communications don't need to look like we're going to wildcat strike on Tuesday. The communications can look like these workers, these are the people who are going to be impacted. This is the services that they actually provide. This is who they are. Show me a communication strategy that builds empathy or some sort of connection between me as a human being and the people who are going to walk off the job. Do the wildcat strike. I'm fine with the wildcat strike but do the wildcat strike in a fashion that actually builds momentum for communication that doesn't just happen on a monday morning and is shut down by monday afternoon or monday monday night and by tuesday afternoon we're all talking about obama again uh sinking a three-point shot i guess that's i guess that's saturday but the point is that the action doesn't have any dramatic through line that carries it beyond the the day itself i'll

Carter 43:23

i'll let i'll let cory refute okay

Zain 43:25

okay carter can i summarize quickly did you feel like uh just so i can understand did you feel like there wasn't enough time defining the problem to the to the albertan that maybe isn't us who may know about some of these 600 million 11 000 stats and ramifications is that what you're trying to say that they didn't spend enough time telegraphing and defining the problem or adding human face to the problem? Is that fair

Carter 43:47

fair to say? We've talked about give a fuck factor on this podcast a thousand times, right? And the general popular, this is, the people who walked out on Monday have a very high give a fuck factor. The people who they were trying to communicate with, the people that they were trying to get on their side, have a much lower give a fuck factor. So communicate with us, give us a reason to care, give us a reason to understand what is at stake, and then do the job action. I mean, if it's a wildcat strike, and I don't believe for a second, uh that this was a uh an action that wasn't coordinated through the union um you know the union has declined has just said that this is uh this was outside of their control that's bullshit it never was outside of their control this is something that they've been working on as part of their strategy and their strategy sucked and all it did was hurt the people who walked off the job on monday when they could have had all of us caring a lot more if they'd done their homework work in advance and and gotten us into place where when the wildcat strikes occurred we were all bought in cory honest to god people should see the video of your head shaking because it it's like a bobble head it's not even like a real head your head is shaking so fast cory

Zain 44:55

cory tell us uh tell us why oh by the way hot hot take steven carter is back uh on on a sunday morning i'm so glad cory tell us why uh why carter's wrong because i suspect you're that's what you're gonna say madness

Corey 45:06

madness this is the hottest of hot takes carter you came out swinging you were wrong and you've just been trying to double down on your wrongness all week still this is this

Carter 45:14

this is the stupidest shit i have ever heard god now

Corey 45:19

you want to talk about this is defining the problem this is putting a spotlight on it the thing you are talking about they need to do in advance this is how they are doing it they knew of course they were going to be ordered back to work by the lrb they're not idiots everybody knows that the lrb is going to say hey you're not in a position for a legal strike, you've got to go back to work. And then they do that. And in the meantime, they've managed to own a media cycle where we are talking about, hey, look what's happening to these support workers. Hey, look at the lack of options they had there. This is absolutely elevating the conversation in that way. The other thing I would say, my friend, is you seem

Corey 45:53

seem to have no appreciation of what the goals actually are for something like this. There's kind of that first level goals about defining the problem, putting a spotlight on it. That's for public consumption. But you know what what this tells the government as well get

Corey 46:06

get the fuck out of here with this notion that you are going to just legislate labor peace in this province those rules will only support you so far we will come to the streets we will take action if we think we need to do it to protect the public sector of this province because there is a lot of chatter right now about what different options that the the province might have in manitoba there was legislation of of reduced wages for example well in a scenario like that technically you're not in a position to strike You have been legislated back into a position where you have a contract. The government does have that ability. What the unions are saying through these actions and the supporting of these actions through the union community, the labor community, I should say, is that's

Corey 46:45

that's not going to work. You're not going to be able to do that. So it's as much as anything a shot across the bow of government as well saying you better find your way back to the table, my friends, and we better find a way to make this work for all Albertans because you are not going to be able to bully and legislate aggressively and get exactly what you want here. The only way you get labor peace is if you come to a chord.

Corey 47:06

And that's not such a crazy notion.

Carter 47:08

Yeah, but this was a weak, it was a weak action. I mean, a much stronger action. This was weak. It was weak. It didn't have the, I mean, you're talking about the support from the other unions.

Carter 47:18

There was barely any support.

Carter 47:20

I mean, sure, they mouth support about it. Oh, yes, we support our brothers and sisters in the union. But there was not the strength of support that you're describing. I don't disagree with you. I agree with you. I'm in solid alignment that this is – but I just think that – You mean solidarity?

Zain 47:33

solidarity? You mean solidarity.

Carter 47:34

Solidarity. I'm carrying this –

Carter 47:38

But my problem is – Forever.

Carter 47:41

Okay. That's – do we have to pay rights now? What happens? I don't know. I'm pretty sure that one's

Zain 47:47

one's not copyrighted. This is not Despacito on Joe Biden's phone. I think we're fine. Carter, you're going down a train. Actually, maybe phrase it a little bit differently. What would you have done? You're trying to tell me what you haven't seen. Maybe try to phrase it as, okay, you had the throttle over this. What would you have done?

Carter 48:01

I think that I would have it be more coordinated. I think I would have it be – I think that the battle that needs to be fought isn't today. I am far more interested in the precommunications, setting the stage. Tell people what matters before you actually take the action. And that's the piece that I think the AUPE missed out on and that's what –

Corey 48:23

Carter, newsflash for you. This is the precommunication. You think this is as bad as it's going to get? It's going to get a lot fucking worse in this province. This is the pre-communication. I can't understand your

Corey 48:34

your logic train here. It's madness to me.

Carter 48:37

You willfully don't want to see my point.

Carter 48:41

You willfully don't want to see my point. Can I

Zain 48:42

I summarize? I think it's very simple. Carter feels like there should have been something ahead of this as pre-communications. Corey feels like this was step one. You guys are just at different places on where you kind of think this track is. I

Corey 48:54

I guess I'm just incredulous about him thinking that you are going to say, yeah, we're thinking about a wildcat strike.

Carter 49:01

No, I don't think you need to say you're thinking about a wildcat strike. I think you need to introduce me to the reason that this is important. By the time you just do a wildcat strike on a Monday, on a Monday morning, it just doesn't

Carter 49:15

doesn't really spark the interest of the general population. The only people who are really interested in it were the people who are always going to be interested. People who are tweeting at me on Monday were the labor movement and the far left groups, and that's fine if that's who you're talking to, but you weren't talking to everyday Albertans that day. Do you

Corey 49:36

you think Albertans think that the health care system is going well right now or facing a bit of chaos? Chaos.

Corey 49:42

Do you think they blame the unions or the government for that chaos?

Corey 49:47

You don't think this would maybe reinforce that sentiment with the general public? I

Carter 49:50

think it could have done a hell of a lot better.

Zain 49:53

So maybe we'll focus on this. Is the efficacy of wildcat strikes as pre-communications? Man, this is taking a much deeper dive than I thought. But

Zain 50:04

thinking that you guys disagree on that. Is that fair? Carter, you're thinking a wildcat strike can't be a first step. That's ultimately what you're trying to say.

Carter 50:14

I think that a wildcat strike should be a middle step. I think that the wildcat strike needs to see its way through and it needs to last longer. I mean, the problem, Corey articulated that everybody expected to be sent back to work that day. The Alberta Labor Relations Board wasn't going to take a very favorable line towards this. It's a wildcat strike.

Carter 50:37

Fine, that's good. Who's going to strike tomorrow? Who's going to strike the next day? Like having having a multiple week structure of strikes where the union understands the consequences and is prepared to pay them because there will be fines imposed. There would be back to work orders imposed. This is going to happen to Corey's point. This is going to happen. But have it coordinated. Have it so that it lasts more than a day. This is my fundamental problem with it. It lasted a day and it's gone. And now you've taken money out of these workers' pockets because they didn't work that day. And these aren't the people who can afford to not be working that day.

Zain 51:15

Corey, maybe I'll ask you a question that I asked Carter a little while ago, which is, what did you make of this strategy from not the sense of like, I think you agree with it from what I sense, but was there any room for improvement in terms of what you saw? Is this what you would have advised, perhaps, if you were on the inside? And I know neither of us, or none of us, I should say, have a clear sense of perhaps the overall comms plan or trajectory, But from knowing what we do with our knowledge, do you feel like this was something you would have recommended as your pre-coms or first step?

Corey 51:46

Well, Zane, I don't have perfect information as to either the calendar or the pressures that these different groups are facing. I do think it's a bit absurd that Stephen is talking about the sacrifice. You know, this is a noble sacrifice for the greater good, arguably. And it's pretty tough to say that they are just cynically – when you know they are not being made whole by anybody. It actually, I think, strengthens just how impactful and serious their actions were here. It was throwing a bucket of cold water on our faces. This entire province is going to be under

Corey 52:19

under negotiation, effectively, in the next year. The way that all of our collective bargaining agreements in the public sector were lined up, they all basically came up for renewal in 2020.

Corey 52:29

And active bargaining is beginning everywhere, including with AUPE Corps, with the government of Alberta. I think it might have even occurred this week. Maybe it's next week it starts. But the point of the matter is this

Corey 52:42

is a pretty big opening move. You are saying something pretty serious to government as these tables start opening in a big way. And when we talk about labor, we

Corey 52:51

we will often talk about lead tables, right? This is this notion that when there are many different agreements open, there are certain tables that when an agreement gets met there, that agreement gets mirrored across all sorts of other tables. and one of the lead tables is the aupe's uh negotiation with the government of alberta proper it does tend to set the support rates for a number of different unions and so i

Corey 53:14

i can say again not having perfect sense of either their calendar or strategy from the outside this makes an awful lot of sense you're going into bargaining with the government um yes i agree with steven i find it very suspicious the idea that this is a wildcat without any kind of coordination nation but what you were effectively saying is welcome to the table government of alberta enjoy that wildcat strike well let's let's start talking and there's an implied threat in everything that's going on from that point forward and it's also an implied it's

Corey 53:41

it's a threat that is in response to their implied threat about legislating because the government's been pretty clear like hey there's only so much money it's either coming through job losses or reductions and we reserve all of our rights right now so i don't think this is a crazy idea is

Zain 53:55

is it is it fair to say that it's a preview view of the muscle that AUPE or another union could kind of show as to the win behind their back from their membership? Is that a fair assessment?

Corey 54:06

Yeah, I think it is, Zane. And I think actually this was one of the big risks for the AUPE, which is what if nobody participates in this wildcat strike, right? Because the last thing you want to do is have an action like that and really be exposed as it not having popular support amongst the membership. So in a way, and this sounds a little perverse, but the AUPE got a break when the government released that report with the layoffs, the 11,000 jobs, because at that point, what do you got to lose? You are losing your job. So the threat of job action is, or sorry, a punishment against you, maybe even losing your job that you're going to lose anyways, is probably not as big of a deal. And obviously, there is solidarity and strength in numbers. And when enough people go out, that's protection for everybody. They'll try to pick off the union leaders, but it becomes impossible to take They take action against everybody. So they managed to get enough people to start the ball rolling with the fact that they're going to lose their jobs. They added onto it people who say, well, now I can stand with them because they can't damage us all. They can't fire us all. And this is serious. I think Alberta is in for a winter of discontent on the labor front. Carter,

Zain 55:13

Carter, I'm going to keep it in this segment, but move on to a cousin of the AUPE Wildcat Strikes, which is later this week, earlier this week, I guess I should say, but after the Wildcat Strikes, the Alberta Federation of Labour started a new campaign called Stand Up to Kenny, a three-part digital campaign where step one was to sign the pledge and show Jason Kenney you're serious. Step number two says, once enough Albertans have joined our movement, we'll publicly demand that the government negotiate with us to address our concerns. And step three was, if the government doesn't listen to our demands, we'll begin a series of one-day province-wide protests that could include work stoppages. I'm kind of curious to get your sense of, you know, on the heels of what we saw with the Wildcat strikes, what do you make of this strategy now coming from the AFL? It seems to be in line with, you know, with some of the things we've been talking about earlier. Do you feel like telegraphing, and I've used that word quite a bit, to the public that work stoppages and these sort of things could be part of the eventual outcome, but also list building? And as I see right now, close to about 15,000 people as of Sunday morning have signed this thing. What do you make of both the strategy and the tactics of what you're seeing from the AFL here?

Carter 56:24

I'm worried about the idea of telegraphing exactly what you're going to do, shutting down the province, doing those types of actions. I mean, we haven't seen that. We don't have that labor history here. We don't have the labor history of shutting down the province through some sort of action. I mean, I think that Klein faced the biggest labor uprising in our history in, what, 1996, 97, Corey? Is that close? Yeah, around

Carter 56:54

around there. You know, we don't have this long history of labor action that defines our province. So forecasting or projecting that this is going to happen is interesting. But if it doesn't, it

Carter 57:08

it just emboldens the government. So, again, I'm interested in the personal stories. I'm interested in understanding the issue. I'm not necessarily interested in join us now. And does anybody on this podcast think that 15,000 names is a lot of names? James? No,

Corey 57:22

No, actually, this is my big concern with this particular tactic, is it's a good way to show that you do not have a ton of strength if you don't have it, which again, I mean, this is a bit of a constant theme here where I worry that, you

Corey 57:34

you know, whenever unions do anything, the government is watching very closely to say like, okay, well, how many people showed up to that job action training seminar? How many people have signed up to that list? How many people who are tweeting at us are members of the public and not just members of the union executive. And I'm not really sure if the labor movement has fully internalized that and fully gotten just the sophistication on the government side. One of the things that is quite different from the 90s and quite different from the aughts is, or in even early 10s, is there's been a major centralization of labor efforts, not to the point where it's actually coordination between different employers. I want want to be clear about that but um you know there are there are centralized supports there are central groups that look at these things for the government this level of sophistication has increased dramatically in the past five years they're watching they're they're keeping track of where there are strength and where there are weaknesses and um i think it would be rather

Corey 58:33

rather foolish of the afl to continue to walk out there with their robe open shall we say and

Zain 58:39

and do and and And what I'm hearing you say, Corey, is that you feel like exposing the

Corey 58:44

the – I can see Gil McGowan's pecker right now. Like

Corey 58:47

Like I know exactly how big this movement is, and that's a problem for

Carter 58:53

AFL. It's not as big as he thinks it is.

Corey 58:56

But to that point – It's a little cold out right now, though.

Zain 58:59

that point, Corey, how about this concept of – to what Carter was addressing, laying out your steps, saying that signing up is step one, you know, from a tactic and strategy perspective, you know, being with us to help demand the government listen to our concerns, and then maybe protesting and job action is step three. What do you kind of make of, because we've talked about, you know, in our past lives and in our current comms lives, this ladder of engagement, usually it's something that we keep internal when we kind of want to drive our supporters through different rungs of a ladder to expose it so publicly. I'm kind of curious from your comms brain what you kind of think of that uh

Corey 59:38

uh from a strategic perspective i completely agree and and this is something i wanted to bring up when you tell people this is step one this is step two this is step three you're basically asking them to sign up for step three now yeah

Corey 59:48

and uh when we talk about a sales funnel you don't go you

Corey 59:51

you don't go to audi.ca and put your name on an email list about a new car coming out and it's if if it says and once you do this you will be hounded by a salesperson to purchase this car forever right like you you've You've got to kind of moderate

Corey 1:00:03

moderate people into these actions. And rather than saying, I'm taking a vague, I'm ready pledge, and then you are with us in all of our demands, which we have not described, and we're going to have all of these job actions. I can't understand why it wasn't a bit more along the lines of, we

Corey 1:00:17

we know there's strength in numbers. We also know that this government can be pretty vindictive. And so we are going to be building a group of people who feel generally this way, just

Corey 1:00:25

just so we can, you know, you make it more internal. Like, I'm not going to try to create a comp strategy on the spot here. But I think there were ways you could have done it that would have made people feel more comfortable about taking the pledge.

Corey 1:00:37

Like, I will tell you, like, I'm on this page right now. I'm looking at it. If I sign this, is

Corey 1:00:43

is my name going to the government? I don't know. Am I going to be on a big list of people who are mad? Maybe I don't want to do that. Like, I don't actually know what I'm signing up for.

Corey 1:00:52

makes me less likely to sign up. Why would I sign up in that ambiguous environment? And

Carter 1:00:55

And there are consequences in Alberta to being on these lists, right? Right. Like there are questions there. This is not necessarily a vindictive government, but we people keep tabs on which side are you on and you don't want your this this sign up doesn't make make it feel like it's

Carter 1:01:14

it's reasonable. It's not a reasonable ask. I think that Corey's exactly right. They're jumping to step three before they've even started step four or step one. And that that's a mistake. That's a mistake. And it's going to to haunt them. I I'm, I'm very frustrated because, you know, this

Carter 1:01:32

this is important, right?

Carter 1:01:33

right? Like the other way of looking at this is that this is really important. First of all, we have a 16% unemployment rate in Alberta. This is not dissimilar for the rest of the country, except it's, it's marginally worse. I think everywhere except, uh, it's worse than everywhere except Newfoundland. So what are we doing here? And adding more people to the unemployment rolls, reducing people's salaries. This isn't the time your restaurant's going to get screwed. rude if we start reducing salaries, because people aren't going to be able to afford to go out to eat. You know, this is, this

Carter 1:02:04

this is the challenge of the COVID plus the oil and gas downturns that are happening simultaneously in this market. And we should be nervous. We should be asking for more from our government. But we

Carter 1:02:16

we should be also asking for more from those who are opposing this government.

Corey 1:02:21

Look, a government that got 55% of the vote is not going to be scared by a group of 0.3 percent of the population um that's that's just the reality of it even if that is something that could be leveraged to greater effect than obviously people who just showed up and cast a ballot which is not the highest level of engagement it

Corey 1:02:40

is so vague as to be pretty close to that low level of engagement and um and if you're jason kenney if you're the conservative cabinet the ucp cabinet you're

Corey 1:02:48

you're going to say i've got the silent majority with me those are not the kind of numbers that rattle the government they're just not so

Zain 1:02:54

so cory propose an alternative to me Maybe we'll close off this segment here, right? If you're maybe not even advising the AFL, but if you're trying to mobilize a group of people, maybe on the heels of perhaps what you'd call some momentum and free media from the Wildcat strikes, from this ongoing battle that you know you're going to be in, how do you engage, let me put it this way, non-union everyday Alberta folks to kind of join your side, right? Right. This seems to be the ever the ever present nut to crack, which is, you know, of course, your membership, you know, if you're lucky, are engaged. But this is about building that second concentric circle, which it seems like this campaign, to its credit, is trying to do and trying to explicitly say this is for all Albertans. But, you know, what would you be kind of thinking of as as a proposed alternative to to really help and buffet the labor movement with that second tier of Albertans?

Corey 1:03:47

Yeah, and I want to be really clear. I'm speaking metaphorically in this next bit here. But they need to understand the psychology of an insurgency, right? What makes somebody want to join one? What makes somebody nervous about joining one? What do you do with people who are frustrated but maybe not in a position where they can voice that frustration more broadly? You've got to get back to some of these fundamentals of how you build a movement when that movement is under pretty steady attack, right? Right. This is the government, as I mentioned, has a pretty large majority and they're going to be comfortably in the seat until 2023 at the very least. You can't be just putting out lists of numbers like that. You can't you can't you've got to remember. And again, I'm speaking metaphorically here. This is not a war, but you've got to remember that all warfare is based on on kind of deception and you've got to have a certain you can't make it so easy for the government to measure exactly how effective all of your strategies are, Because you need to have the latitude where you can try a ton of things, fail silently on two-thirds of them, and the one-third that are really working, ramp those things up in a big way. But if the government sees exactly what's working and what's not for you, they know exactly where to apply counter resources. That's not a very difficult thing to do if you're sitting there in the government. So be smart, I guess is what I'm saying. Be smart about it and think tactically about this. You've got to stop doing this kind of – it's

Corey 1:05:05

it's not just that you're throwing everything against the wall. it's that you're doing it in a glass apartment. Everybody can see everything that you're doing. And even though you may ultimately have the components to have a successful campaign here because the province is really, it's pretty charged up right now and it's pretty frustrated with a lot of actions that they are attributing to the government. Fair or not, that's just the reality of the situation. You could have something here.

Corey 1:05:33

but you're not going to be able to deliver on it if you continue to do it the way you're doing it. Carter, same

Zain 1:05:37

same question to you. What would you propose as a prospective alternative to try to build that group?

Carter 1:05:44

Well, I think that I

Carter 1:05:45

I would start on, first of all, I think that Corey's exactly right. You know, you've got to make this deceptive. You've got to make it look larger than it is. We've seen several campaigns that have been very successful in this. You know, the anti-campaign against, I

Carter 1:05:59

can't remember which bill it was, but some of the homophobic stuff that Jim Prentice put in place. It was Bill 10, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, Bill 10. You know, those coordinated

Carter 1:06:07

coordinated actions were far more successful because, in fact, they brought people on side in a more

Carter 1:06:14

more clandestine fashion. And when they went public, they had a size that was pretty impressive. And it happened very, very quickly, in part because I think people could see themselves in the action. Right now, one of the challenges that I would push back to the AFL is, are you actually showing how I fit into the action as a non-union member? How are you showing that even a union member is fitting into the action? Because that's one of the pieces is never

Carter 1:06:39

never underestimate the selfishness of, you know, how selfish the audience is. And that's what you have to break through. And that's what I'm not seeing from this. It demands a selflessness from the audience that I just don't think is prevalent. And maybe we could argue about whether or not it should be. I don't care what should be. I'm in the business of what is. And so we are selfish. We aren't that engaged yet. We could be. We're right on the verge of it because we've got a lot of anger. And that anger can be harnessed.

Zain 1:07:07

Corey, can I ask you one quick question? Maybe I said I was going to round it out with the last one, but I've got one more in my mind, which is the relationship that that labor has to the provincial NDP in this province. What did you make of former premier and current leader of the opposition, Rachel Notley's response? And how are you in terms of thinking of her strategy? Are you leaning into big labor movements? Are you trying to keep an arm's length? Like, I know this is generic advice, but we know this is going to ramp up. But how are you kind of perhaps if you're in the position to advise her, hypothetically, what would you be telling her in terms of, you know, labor and its movement versus your party right now trying to build second and third tier concentric circles of support?

Corey 1:07:46

Yeah, it's an interesting tension that is unique to the NDP, but it is also a source of great strength. And

Corey 1:07:52

And this is the connection to organized labor, formalized through the Constitution, in fact, where different unions have different representation rights. So this

Corey 1:08:04

this is a challenge.

Corey 1:08:07

The reality is, I think, that Albertans as a whole, because

Corey 1:08:11

because A, they are within North America, where there's been a general running down and dragging of unions for the past 30 years. Unions get accused of a lot of things. Nobody ever seems to remember the five-day work week and all of the things that allow us to work at our jobs safely. We're kind of hard fought at the bargaining table. These weren't given out of the goodness of people's hearts. But people do remember the wages and – or sorry, the wages that have put people out of business and the perpetual sense

Corey 1:08:42

sense of graft that sort of encircles any kind of large organization but really gets stuck to unions. So people, but then we're Albertans. And I think that there's a further kind of skepticism and cynicism about unions and organized labor. And I hear people say all the time things like, oh, yeah, but organized

Corey 1:08:59

organized labor has gone too far. And I, you know, I tend to challenge them like, hi, why? Why do you say that? What is the thing that has happened in organized labor that has made you particularly angry lately? It's more the myth of bad organized labor in this province. I think it's been dialed up even relative to North America. America.

Corey 1:09:19

makes it very difficult in the public to be standing right next to the AFL. I will also say, and I'm not trying to take a round out of Gil McGowan, although the second time I've mentioned him this pod, I don't think he's doing many favors here. I don't find him to be particularly

Corey 1:09:31

particularly attuned to the challenges

Corey 1:09:33

challenges that a mainstream politician would have in having a bit of a dance with organized labor. And I think he makes Rachel Notley's job a lot harder. And that is – that's something that Rachel Notley has to manage. But fundamentally, I think it's something to be managed. I think cutting the tie to organized labor would be a – short

Corey 1:09:52

short-sighted. I think it kind of falls into the category of cutting the ties to the federal NDP. You do these things at

Corey 1:09:58

at your peril because they're also what made you a player to begin with. In 2015, when the NDP came out of nowhere, they came out of nowhere on the strength of organization that was accessible to them throughout their coalition of workers across the country or across the – well, yeah, literally across the country but across the province. And the campaign staff and then the people who staffed the premier's office by and large were the cream of the crop of the NDP across Canada. And you're able to stand up a new government out of nowhere and a government that you should remember, surprisingly scandal free, right?

Corey 1:10:30

right? Almost no scandals I can think of from the not only NDP government, because they had that discipline built throughout their coalitions and their networks and the organization across the country. So don't throw the baby out with the bathwater here. You've got to manage this issue. Don't take the bait. I think that the UCP arguments about the

Corey 1:10:51

the NDP and AFL being so closely tied have only limited resonance. You should be mindful, though, that having the same treasurer in both organizations makes it an awful lot easier for them to make those ties. I'm not even saying that's a bad – might be the perfect treasurer for the job. But you've just got to be mindful that these

Corey 1:11:10

these ties are there. You don't need to make them understandable

Corey 1:11:13

understandable at that level for Albertans. So you think about some of those things. But, you know, I'm talking about futzing around the edges. I am not talking about a fundamental change of your relationship with labor.

Zain 1:11:24

Carter, do you agree? Do you agree that that's the right path for the provincial NDP if their aim is electoral success, which it should be in the next couple of years as they lead into 2023? 23?

Carter 1:11:35

Well, I mean, I think that Notley really walked the line on her support for the Wildcat strikes. I think that she supported the workers without necessarily supporting the tactic. And I think that that was the challenge that she was faced with.

Carter 1:11:48

know, organized labor in Alberta is a tricky thing to support sometimes, even members that are in it, you know, may not be feeling the love for the union. What I'd be very careful of if I was Gil McGowan is unintended unintended consequence. And that's where, you know, right now we don't have right to work legislation in Alberta yet.

Carter 1:12:09

yet. Those, you know, don't open the door for punitive action. And that's probably, you know, trying to achieve what you need to achieve without putting yourself in a negative situation.

Zain 1:12:19

We will leave that segment there and move it on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. Guys, or I should say, Stephen, are you ready?

Carter 1:12:26

I'm ready. Corey has always remained silent. Steven,

Zain 1:12:29

Steven, I'm going to you first because I appreciate that enthusiasm on a Sunday morning. On a scale of one to ten, tell me about the political damage that not adopting the COVID app, the federal COVID app, now means for the Kenney government. We're seeing case counts increase, new daily highs constantly. We had some bickering by one member of Jason Kenney's front bench calling it the Trudeau app. But at this moment, when public health is of utmost concern, how much political damage is this now causing to Jason Kenney and his government for not adopting and bringing in this federal COVID app?

Carter 1:13:02

Well, sadly, I think it's a negligible amount. I don't think that it's something that Albertans are looking at an app to solve the COVID problem. problem. You know, the first app that was put forward outside of Cori, maybe another 246,000 people downloaded it. And I believe that most of them like Cori have deleted the app. So we're in a place where we don't have a solution. And the app itself, as much as the Canadian version of the app is much better, it's not going to solve the problem. I think that most people don't think it's really that big of a deal. So while I think it's stupid that we haven't signed on to using the app. I don't think it's causing much in the way of political problems.

Zain 1:13:41

Corey, same question to you. The damage that this is doing politically to the Kenney government.

Corey 1:13:46

I do continue to think it's not significant amounts of damage. I don't think it's quite as negligible as Carter thinks, but I don't think it's much worse than that. There are two reasons why the pressure, why my answer is modified from last time we talked about this. One is that Trudeau blaming Alberta for not being on the app does up the pressure. The other is christia freeland isolating

Corey 1:14:07

isolating because she got a notification on her covet app if that turns out to be something that was actually helpful it you know it becomes a very public example of this app

Corey 1:14:17

doing its job right and it is a very concrete sign of not doing enough for seemingly no reason the government's suggestion that it would be just too complex to move people from the alberta app is just it's like 800 flavors

Corey 1:14:30

flavors of laughable because you need to open the bloody app in order for it to work on an iphone so why not just have the app update so when you open it it says hey this app has been decommissioned go to the go to the federal app like the the idea that you need to do this to preserve the list is just a bloody joke and i don't think anybody's buying it at this point and i think it's embarrassing for for the province and i but i do think it's only public health experts who who are really fired up about it cory

Zain 1:14:58

cory i'm gonna stick with you because you use the word embarrassing from a scale to embarrassing to most embarrassing. How do you currently rank Steve Allen asking for a second extension or being granted a second extension on the anti-Alberta oil campaign report? To remind our listeners, this was a very explicit and loud thesis statement that our government put out there, that there is anti-Alberta oil funding, foreign funding being poured in to really push up against our most prime and celebrated resource. resource they've been trying to research this put documents together they've been fuddling around with terms of references and now they've been granted a second extension course cory from a scale of embarrassing to most embarrassing where does this fit on your radar uh

Corey 1:15:42

uh most embarrassing and more problematic for the government sets up potential future embarrassments because if this report comes in a day late and a dollar short it's not it's not going to look very good and at this this point, Alan has effectively said this report is going to come in a dollar short. He's no longer looking at the veracity of claims. So effectively, there could be people legitimately saying things like, hey, this is raising emissions, and that will show up in the report. It is designed entirely to just document money coming in from one side in a global conversation, then money's flowing in from both sides, make no mistakes. There are people from, you know, there are foreign companies putting money in alberta to say pro-oil industry messages but

Corey 1:16:25

but apparently we're only going to look at the interest groups on the other side putting money in to talk about the other side of the issue it's just going to document that it's not going to document whether or not they are correct and um like

Corey 1:16:36

like what is the point of this now what are we going to get out of this report i don't even know what we would action from this we're going to see things like greenpeace

Corey 1:16:44

greenpeace doesn't like the oil sands but

Corey 1:16:47

but it's okay because it's well listen it's totally legal for them not to like the oil said so like what the fuck is the point of all of this it's just embarrassing and we continue talking about it and it will be embarrassing when it comes out it's not a good look for a jurisdiction to essentially have documented a list of people who disagree with its stated policy it's

Corey 1:17:04

it's not illegal it's not illegal to be concerned about oil it's not illegal to want to move off oil some might say it's even sensible to start thinking about some of these topics so i'm

Corey 1:17:15

i'm just i don't

Corey 1:17:17

don't know well let's put it this way i'll be curious to see see how the war room spins this fucker cory

Zain 1:17:22

cory just a quick follow-up yes or no should they kill this in the dead in its tracks right now i

Corey 1:17:30

think they're in too deep i think they just need to get a report quietly as much as i the policy answer is yes the political answer is no it would be embarrassing carter

Zain 1:17:38

carter embarrassing the most embarrassing how much how much uh where where do you rank this this anti-oil sands report uh that uh that's

Zain 1:17:45

that's currently now it's on its second an extension.

Carter 1:17:48

It's very embarrassing. I think it's actually the third extension. I mean,

Carter 1:17:50

mean, I think that this is the third time that they've come back and said, I'm not going to get my homework done on time. And now they're going, I mean, I'm anticipating that they know it's a dud. It's not going to achieve what it needs to achieve. You can't kill it. So what you're going to do is you're going to bring in the report. I mean, we had a report done for us.

Carter 1:18:07

can't remember the topic. I remember who wrote it, but it was really horrible. And it cost us $200,000. So we put it, I think we released it in the middle of fucking nowhere um so you know i'm expecting the friday before christmas this thing gets put forward it gets it a little bit early and she puts it out and uh it's released to the public uh

Carter 1:18:25

uh when there's 10 days of no one giving a fuck about it and

Carter 1:18:30

it gets enough coverage that it never comes back in january that's what i'm thinking now because this thing is embarrassing and i'm particularly thinking it's embarrassing for steve allen uh who agreed to put his name on this and he's going to uh he's

Carter 1:18:44

he's going to forever wear this shit cory

Corey 1:18:46

cory you wanted to jump in yeah

Corey 1:18:47

yeah it is sunday november 1st at 11 24 a.m as we record i throw out a challenge to all of our listeners can you finish steve allen's homework before he can

Corey 1:18:59

let's go let's go internet fantastic

Zain 1:19:02

fantastic carter i'm going to stick with you on this one over under on seven the political benefit for our federal liberals for winning both of their by-elections uh these were both liberal held seats is there any political upside and if so give it to us on the over under of seven i'd

Carter 1:19:17

i'd like to remind you that uh in fact i was right both by-elections went to the liberals as i predicted and sometimes you guys choose not to bring back my predictions you guys seem to forget the predictions that i make are right Right, so I'm glad, Zane, that you've given me that.

Corey 1:19:31

To be fair, there's so few. I mean, we don't

Corey 1:19:35

don't have a big data set to go

Carter 1:19:37

go on all this

Carter 1:19:38

with. This is my moment. This is my moment. Let me have my moment.

Carter 1:19:41

I was right in the predictions.

Carter 1:19:44

The turnout was really low. If it had gone the other way, you could have made the case, you know, they're

Carter 1:19:49

they're sending a small message. They want us to do more, blah, blah, blah. And you would have just used the message to fit into whatever you want to say anyways. ways. But winning is better than losing. And I suspect that the Liberals are chalking this up as a solid A minus.

Zain 1:20:05

Corey, same question for you over on round seven, the political upside for the Liberals to reclaim their two seats in the in the by elections earlier this week.

Corey 1:20:14

mean, it was exactly what you would want. So it was positive for them. But I don't think it's like this great home run where they can just all go pat themselves on the back. It's just fine politics as usual. We we talked about last episode. Maybe this might change if it went really badly for them, their view of a fall election, a spring election. I don't think this would change their view at all. They won pretty handily when you kind of adjust for the fact they're by-elections. The real losers of this was the NDP. That's the big problem, or that's the party facing a big problem right now, not the Liberals.

Zain 1:20:47

Corey, I'm going to stick with you for our final question. It's a yes or no question. So I know you guys are going to fuck this up. What I know is that This is not going to be a yes or no question for you. But, Corey, on election night, on Monday – on Tuesday, I should say, do we have a winner, yes or no?

Corey 1:21:03

No, because you don't have a winner until everything's done. Like it's not just the counting. It's not just the results, but it's the idea that they need to be ratified by states. The electors need to get together. You need to support it. So in a truly pedantic sense, you will not have a winner on election night. But beyond that, I think the idea, even if on election night we say, oh, Joe Biden's got this, I

Corey 1:21:26

I suspect there will be moments of uncertainty and anxiety in the next couple of weeks, even if they seem like long shots, as fuckery begins.

Zain 1:21:36

Fuckery begins. Indeed. Carter, same question to you. Yes or no. Do you have a winner on election night?

Carter 1:21:41

No, because Trump won't concede.

Carter 1:21:43

And it's actually the concession that gives us the victor. So without a concession, there won't be a victor.

Zain 1:21:50

that's it. We'll leave it there. Safe voting to our friends in the United States. And that's a wrap on Episode 828 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

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