Episode 935: The Ides of August

Zain 0:02

This is A Strategist, episode 935. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, it's

Zain 0:11

it's kind of like we've been waiting a long time for them to call this election.

Corey 0:15

Yeah, it feels like we've turned a page, doesn't it? Calendar flipped. Big day. I can't really put my finger on it, but everything

Corey 0:21

seems different today. Everything

Zain 0:22

Everything seems a little bit different. That and I'm

Carter 0:24

I'm sweating in uncomfortable places. Well,

Zain 0:26

Well, I mean, Carter. Those are two things

Carter 0:28

things that make me feel. I'm sure

Zain 0:29

sure I'm sure that just comes with age.

Zain 0:31

Corey and I wouldn't know. We're spring chickens. We have no idea what that actually means or

Zain 0:37

or what comes with with being a man well into his 90s. um guys this is going to be uh of course an episode where we deep dive into day one of the launches but let me start here with the segment that i know everyone wants to discuss so i'm not going to belabor the point any longer let's move it on to our first segment our first segment 37 seconds in heaven guys prior to the election being called we had this this wonderful beautiful beautiful, chocolatey gem of a video. If you do not know what we are talking about, we don't want you as a listener. I don't think we want you as a listener. If this is your first time listening, turn it off. We don't want you. We don't want you if you don't know what we're talking about. Corey Hogan, for that person who did not obey my instruction and is still here, please tell them what I am talking about when I refer to what I now want to coin, 37 seconds in in heaven so

Corey 1:37

so on friday was it friday yeah i think it was friday but i think it was friday

Corey 1:43

conservative party of canada dropped a a video that was some sort of shit posting meme of uh charlie and the chocolate factory willie wonk in the chocolate factory the 1971 classic deeply relevant movie for the kids where uh uh justin trudeau was veruca salt having a bit of of a fit saying i want it i want it talking about a majority government um with all of the production values that you would expect with this and

Corey 2:09

and the cringe was strong and the internet was pretty uh

Corey 2:14

was pretty ruthless right off the bat um effectively just saying what

Corey 2:20

what the actual fuck is this uh you had candidates of the conservatives disavowing it sitting mps disavowing it former former premiers disavowing it, random

Corey 2:31

political gadflies in the conservative movement disavowing it. It was, it

Corey 2:35

was kind of roundly panned.

Corey 2:39

and it started this whole like soul bearing of if this is what Aaron O'Toole has got right now, is

Corey 2:45

is going to be quite the election campaign. But the video, if you haven't seen it, don't like I actually had trouble being on Twitter for Friday,

Corey 2:52

I kept seeing it in my feed, and just the clips of it were enough to make me have to go get gravel, settle in my stomach each time. But yeah,

Corey 3:02

I mean, it started a conversation. I suspect we're going to be picking up that conversation. Is that what you're looking for, Zane? You want any

Zain 3:08

I want all the details. Here's one detail I want, and I want it from Stephen Carter. Carter, did you hate this video, or was there a strategic bone or spine or quasi-spine behind it? Was this video a vertebrate or was it an invertebrate strategically?

Carter 3:28

I don't know. It was a massive shit on the floor. Is it an invertebrate? It feels like that's an invertebrate. I think it is. Let me just check. You ate,

Carter 3:36

I suppose. I suppose it does.

Carter 3:37

does. I suppose. Yeah.

Carter 3:38

Yeah. Okay. Because afterwards,

Carter 3:41

there was a bunch of people trying to rationalize it based on an article in The Guardian that says that these really crappy memes really appeal to boomers. This is a boomer meme, I think is what they called it. No, it's a piece of shit. It's a piece of shit.

Zain 4:00

Wait, are you saying a piece of shit and a boomer meme are not the same thing?

Carter 4:05

No, I think that there are boomer memes that are out there that are pretty horrific. You fucking would,

Carter 4:10

Yeah, you would. Gen X, my little friend. Gen X, and I'm proudly hanging on to it. um but you know you know i mean there

Carter 4:18

there are lots of things that i don't get that boomers share right and and they're usually emailed to me by my father uh and i and i look at them and i go i don't understand what this is um but it's emailed and it's it's a different different medium but this isn't that this is something that was designed for general like if this was supposed to be a boomer meme it would have gone out in an email it would not have gone out via twitter twitter uh the medium is the message is what we were told and uh in fact it is this is just a a juvenile undertaking by

Carter 4:51

by people who they're think they're being smart who they loved it in the war room i i tell you they loved it in the war room and this is where they should have listened to our last episode when i said they've been working on something in the in the in the war rooms that they should just throw away this was the video that they should have thrown away jump

Corey 5:10

jump it is not Not a campaign launch video. There's no way this was a campaign launch video. This was just something on a different stream that was about trying to elevate this issue, maybe playing with some of these concepts. Let's give the most modest charity to the organization here. I don't want to give a ton because it was obviously a breakdown of systems or oversight or more than likely both because there's no way.

Corey 5:33

way. The number of texts I got from professional political organizers advertisers in the past 72 hours, 48 hours, whatever it is saying, how

Corey 5:40

how does something like that get out? How

Corey 5:42

How does something like that get on the schedule? It was wild. But let's just say, let's unpack a bit the dumb ad theory, which The Guardian talked about and I want to expand on it. Do it, do it, do it. Which is when you're engaging with a piece of content like this, you're engaging good, you're engaging bad, you're still providing data back to people. And we've talked about this in different contexts. I think I've said, when you get those texts from political parties saying, hey, this is Erica from the CPC. Do you support the conservatives?

Corey 6:10

If you are, say, a liberal or a New Democrat and you don't, your reaction might be to just send back curse words. But that's useful data for them. That tells them that you are strongly opposed and they can use that both in their modeling, because they probably have other demographics about you and they can understand more about, you

Corey 6:26

you know, you're like other people and they can help inform their models through that. But

Corey 6:30

But also it tells them not to waste any time communicating with you, which allows them and more expensive media down the road to make strategic buys, right? So at the

Corey 6:38

the time, I said, you know, if you really want to screw with them, say, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you will get a bunch of phone calls from fundraisers and things like that. But that hurts them more than you say no, okay? Now, the dumb ad theory is this. You put an ad out like that, and if people love it, when

Corey 6:56

when it's epically stupid, what you know about them is they are super partisan for you. They

Corey 7:02

They will turn off

Corey 7:03

all common sense and they will just say, I support content like this. And that's useful for purposes of fundraising, for volunteering, you know, drawing all of those people in. And similarly, everybody who throws absolute hate on it allows you to build out your models like I just described. Now, problem

Corey 7:17

problem with that, when

Corey 7:20

your own side starts saying they hate it, it

Corey 7:23

it doesn't help your models. It breaks your models, right? If all of a sudden you've got Brad Wall on a hostile list because he fucking hated your video your model's not very good but the theory if you want to unpack it a bit more comes from the era of scammers not even telemarketers but outright scammers and that is that as much as we look at those emails from the nigerian prince or or any of the equivalent ones and we say that is so insane who would possibly fall for that that's the point they make the first step the most outlandish so they don't waste time down the road losing people down yeah right because if you you buy in at that crazy story, you'll accept anything, anything

Corey 7:59

anything that comes after that, right? Send me your credit card, send me your passport information. Sure, why the hell not? I just believed you were a Nigerian prince who cold emailed me, right?

Zain 8:09

I want to know who the equivalent ones are, but we'll explore that later. I'm curious where the equivalent ones are. But this is, you

Corey 8:15

you know, I guess my point would be, this is not exactly a tactic that we should be encouraging our political parties to undertake to begin with. But even if that is what they were were trying to do, it doesn't work if your own side turns against it. So even if that was your plan, it didn't work. Carter,

Zain 8:29

Carter, let's spell it out for a second. I know we want to get into lunch, but spell it out for me quickly. What was so shit about this video? Was it the message? Was it the meme? Was it the execution? Was it the fact that it looked like a jib jab video? What about it was like, if, for example, if the editing had been better, would you have liked it more? Or was it just the majority message? Tell me if it was all of the above or none of the above that That just made it such a crappy message for what I'd call a pre-launch video because it wasn't their launch.

Carter 8:59

Yeah, I mean, there's a line. In 1993, the Kim Campbell conservatives found the line when they went after Jean Chrétien's facial deformities. They went after that and, you know, does this man look like a leader? And all of a sudden that becomes the, you know, it was just over the line. This had over the line on it as well, but it also had this kind of inherent sexism. uh there was the underlying meme of it right you know justin trudeau i mean it was the opening segment right um justin trudeau is a whiny little girl that was the at the at the at the crux of the complaint at the crux of the criticism that was the point justin trudeau is a gendered negative and in today's

Carter 9:44

today's world gendered negative isn't something you should put into your into your uh into your ads. I mean, go

Carter 9:50

go after him if you need to go after him. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm the first one to say negative ads work. Why do we do negative ads? Cause negative ads work. But this was, this was a personal ad hominem attack that went after him on a gendered basis and the gendered nature of it moved the line. It had, had they started with the, you know, the fat boy, maybe Maybe this wouldn't have been

Corey 10:16

a big deal. Yeah, Augustus Gloop, if he had fallen into the river trying to catch the majority. It may not have been as big a deal. It may not have been a big deal. It would have still been dumb. Yeah.

Zain 10:23

Yeah. It may not

Corey 10:24

not have been a big deal.

Zain 10:24

deal. Right. So your advice, Carter, is not so much the mean choice from the perspective of a clip and trying to make it into a meme, so to speak, but the gendered perspective that came from it. Corey, I want you to jump in on this as well. Why was this so bad?

Corey 10:42

That's part of it. I think ultimately you don't need to search too much further than it was really pretty childish, pretty immature. It's the kind of attack you'd expect to see some

Corey 10:51

some freelancer on 4chan who supports the conservatives to pull together, not something that you would have come from the conservative party's main Twitter feed. And I think that's what took everybody so far back. The other thing is there was a time, maybe it was never really 100% as advertised, but the conservatives used to bill themselves as the serious party. party.

Corey 11:12

You know, we're the serious party. We're the adults in the room. You've got all of these people with their pie in the sky ideas. Well, who's going to pay for them, right?

Corey 11:19

Somebody's actually got to pay the bills at the end of the day. And this just undercuts like just a brand value of the conservatives of being somewhat serious. And now, obviously, you can look at conservative movement writ large, certainly in other jurisdictions. Donald Trump's a piece of shit. And he's brought a lot of that flavor into the Republican Party. It was already there to an an extent the uk conservatives the australian conservatives this is this is becoming more and more common in conservatives right they've kind of drifted from this serious party mantra but

Corey 11:49

in canada maybe we're just a little behind the trend maybe it's something more cultural where we just we don't like that as much but you had conservatives saying that's that's not right that's not cool and um and and because it was starting to get attacked even from their own side I it started a bit of a snowball. But really, I mean, truly, Zane, it was a bad idea executed poorly. Yeah,

Corey 12:11

I don't know how else to put it. I don't know that it would have been advisable under any circumstances. And I don't think that it was well constructed, even in that context. We've already given like kind of a different version of the same meme they could have done. But, but

Corey 12:27

but it just it was it was cringe. I'll use that word again. It was very cringy. It was tough to watch. And every time I saw it in my feed, I just, I raced past it after subjecting myself to it the first time.

Zain 12:41

either the campaign slogan what did you make of that video as a response and a contrast and do you feel like from your you know speculation

Zain 13:12

speculation perspective that that was a video that they just pulled ahead just to kind of draw that contrast after that giant fail by the conservatives

Carter 13:20

that may have been their their launch video i mean it it has all the makings of the launch video it it you know it may have been week two's uh you know advertising promotion um i don't know what their schedule was but we talked last on thursday about being able to pull things forward and push things back this to me whether it was pulled forward or whether it was planned was a perfect contrast opportunity and someone in the in the liberal war room said well let's not attack them let's put up our contrast on this and let's prove that we are the party that's that's ready to govern and if you make that into a central um if that became a central you

Carter 14:01

know voting question You do very well on that. Do you want the guys who made the the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory video or do you want the guys who made who have a vision for the country that have put you at the center of it? Because that's

Carter 14:13

that's a very good contrast for them. So again, I don't I don't know. I mean, it doesn't feel like a true launch video. It doesn't feel like it was much better, for example, than Amarjeet Sohi's video that he did when he launched for mayor of Edmonton. And

Carter 14:27

it wasn't, you know, like, it wasn't such a great video that I went, Oh, fuck, man, like that set the tone for the campaign. But it was a good video. And it was in the can. And they threw it out at the right time.

Zain 14:36

Corey, any thoughts on that liberal video, what I call the response video, and maybe that's exactly their strategy. They wanted it to be characterized as such as the response video. But any thoughts from you before we kind of move it on to launch day?

Corey 14:50

Yeah, I mean, it was either a happy coincidence or they opportunistically timed it there. But obviously, the contrast was noted by many. It's a one minute video. It screams television. I'll bet you they've got a 30 second cut of it somewhere as well. And you're going to see it on a TV screen or on a YouTube pre-roll coming soon. And why not get a little bit of extra earned media by pushing it out on that Saturday? Absolutely no harm. May have been planned for Saturday anyhow. That would be quite reasonable as well, given that they

Corey 15:19

they obviously know that he was going to the Governor General this morning. So whether

Corey 15:24

whether or not it was kind of a planned response, you got to give the, I

Corey 15:31

I guess, pre-round, not even round one to the liberals on that one, because it was certainly noted. Now, that

Corey 15:37

that said, it was a video that I

Corey 15:40

I had some qualms with. I don't know. It'll be interesting to see how it lands with the public as a whole. I think that in general, the weakest part of it was Justin Trudeau's voiceover, which to me didn't, I

Corey 15:51

I don't know. No, but we've had this conversation going back to 2015 at least, maybe 2014, where we've talked about Justin Trudeau and whether we kind of buy his sincerity and all of that when he gets into his breathless, I'm the prime minister mode.

Corey 16:05

We know it works for a lot of people. Maybe I'm not the intended audience. Maybe I'm just too much of a critic for those things. But I actually didn't think that his

Corey 16:13

his voiceover was standing on its own all that great, to be frank.

Carter 16:20

It's the regular terrible voiceover, but it was still a better video than what the other guys put out.

Zain 16:26

Yeah. And I think the timing of that. Yeah, exactly. Kind of proved it. All right. Let's move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, inoculating against the next 36 days. Guys, we have an election. We are in it. It happened. Here's what I want to do. I want to try to make this a little bit more organized than our free flowing conversations. conversations. I'm going to go with each of the party leaders, and I'm going to try to talk about optics, message, and strategy, pluses, minuses, where they need work from what you've seen in the first day. When I say optics, I mean, how did that first day look for you? Of course, Justin Trudeau has the incumbent advantage, being able to go from Rideau Cottage to Rideau Hall, being able to have that staged background that no one else can. But I want to compare it to everyone else on optics and what you saw there. I want to talk about message. Each of the leaders is trying to do what we've called multiple times, lodge a ballot box question into the mind of the electorate. I want to talk about that. And then I want to round it out to say, based on what you saw and what you heard, what are you kind of feeling about their strategy thus far? Are there holes in it? Is there weaknesses? Is there strengths? Is there swim lanes that they've have created for themselves that they should just now just bomb down i want to know what your your thoughts are and so let's try to do this in a bit of an organized way i know it'll still be utter chaos but you know stephen carter if you can try to follow the rules that would be nice uh for once let's start with justin trudeau carter and let me let me let me put optics and message together and and and i've got a few bullets under here that i want to hit on but give me your general sense of what you saw with justin trudeau uh and for those that didn't the the imagery was was Rito Cottage to Rito Hall with the family. Maybe comment on the optics there, and then we can get started on a little bit of the message. From your perspective, what do you think of Justin Trudeau,

Zain 18:20

specifically to optics? It's

Carter 18:23

I mean, the optics were exactly as expected, right? The, you know, going up and giving a, you know, with the family and bringing everybody together, and Sophie Trudeau trends on Twitter, because Sophie Trudeau trends on Twitter, and that's the way that the world works.

Carter 18:43

You know, there were some interesting Crocs apparently worn by Hadrian. You know, I don't know. The visuals were fine. The problem is the second that he gets to the microphone, and the thing that Corey and I had a problem with 10 days ago, that we kind of flagged that, man, we may not have the answer to why is this election being held?

Carter 19:01

held? What is the messaging of the first week?

Carter 19:05

We weren't the only ones, right? Right. Ten days ago, we had a trouble. We had trouble articulating it. And I would argue that that today the prime minister had trouble articulating it. And then he also had a little bit of a problem with a series of questions that I think were stupid. And a series of questions that I think are stupid are, will you resign if you don't attain the majority?

Carter 19:28

I'm going to, you know, like I don't understand. Like the first premise that was taught to me by Joe Clark many, many, many years ago is don't answer a hypothetical. why on earth i mean this is what this is the answer that i would have asked justin trudeau to have why are you asking me a hypothetical question that you know that i have to say you know like stupid answers to ask me a real question ask me about covet 19 ask me about economic recovery ask me about the climate crisis ask me about the forest fires in british columbia because that's what this fucking thing is about and if you don't understand it then get the fuck Walk out of the press gallery.

Zain 20:03

So, Carter, your strategy— I'm done with

Carter 20:05

with these—I'm done with bad reporters. I'm done with it. And the prime minister needs to stand up and be like his dad.

Zain 20:13

So your strategy—no, I like that. Listen, I love the fire, Carter. Sure. Good reception on the Stephen Carter fire. Yeah,

Corey 20:21

Yeah, absolutely. Just go for the jugular against the people who buy ink by the barrel. Absolutely. Keep going. the

Carter 20:29

people would hear it and see it and love it because it's about them again we spend too much time talking about the leaders and not enough time talking about the people and the media are part of the problem carter

Zain 20:41

carter i'll loop back to you on that uh your your strategy of the prime minister to uh treat uh reporters like political scientists um uh cory of optics tell me what you saw because Because I will get into message. And there's a few things under message that I found interesting, too. Carter's point was one of them. But we always talk about the staging of these things. I talked about the incumbent advantage that Trudeau had, obviously being prime minister, of being able to have that family walk in the official process and being first and being covered. What did you make of the optics? Carter, I think, gives it a pass. Carter, if I can paraphrase, and says it was expected. Was there anything interesting to you, Corey, about the optics that you saw today?

Corey 21:21

Yeah, it was a B minus. the the opening argument we'll get to i'm sure we talk a lot about that incumbent advantage and how you have certain things but there's also an incumbent disadvantage

Corey 21:32

disadvantage or at least we'll call it an incumbent box which is if you're the prime minister and you're calling an election

Corey 21:37

it's going to it always looks the same yeah yeah it always involves you going to rito hall talking to the gg coming out having a conversation in front of of uh rito hall that's just how it is that's what it is and so it's tough to kind of knock the optics one way or the other because there's no choice to the optics if you're the prime minister that's that's just the way it is and in many ways it's more the next event that sort of determines how they're handling the optics on these things in terms of the stuff around it the walk with the family from a cottage that is very close i mean it's fine but it wasn't earth-shattering it was okay yeah

Corey 22:12

it's not the kind of thing that uh is going to lead the news it'll be very nice b-roll as people are establishing And so the prime minister walked over, blah, blah, blah. And he said the election was about X, and it goes into the media coverage. But I want to talk about that X a bit. sure the why now he

Corey 22:29

he can't really answer that question and we all know why he can't answer that question it's because the actual answer is he wants a majority but

Corey 22:36

but it's not it's not required to do the things that he wants to do i mean one of the funniest things about this particular election is um there's

Corey 22:48

can i possibly say about this he had everything that he needed in the minority parliament they were giving him everything he wanted everything he's asking for he already had. And so that sort of fell through in the messaging. And while I thought that his words were fine, and he said a nice tone in his speech, the minute it came to the questions, it all kind of fell apart for him, because he couldn't answer those questions. And he kept just trying to pivot back to, oh, this is really important. We're talking about the future of the country. But there was not like an obvious, so what? Why are we doing this? And I think I think that's not necessarily fatal, but of both Trudeau and O'Toole, there was something about their speeches where you looked at and you said, oh, that's going to be a problem. They better clean it up pretty quickly. And for Trudeau, it's that this is still the Seinfeld election.

Corey 23:35

It's an election about nothing. We don't know why we're having this election yet. And it is under the kind of cloud of a fourth wave of COVID, just to add.

Zain 23:44

Carter, what did you make of Trudeau's rationale? So Corey gave one part of it. Let me talk about the other part of it, which was he didn't really emphasize the fact that this was not about a parliament that had lost confidence. Of course, that's kind of what he had to probably say to the GG. But his phrasing was that we want to give Canadians, you, the opportunity to vote on the direction of the recovery. We've been through a pandemic. In 2019, when we got elected, no one gave us the mandate to do the shit we're about to do. And Canadians should be able to weigh in on what the next stage of this country looks like. What did you make of that response? I want to get Corey's reaction to it, too, but I'll go to you first, Carter. What did you make of that phrasing of turning it into Canadians, less so about the confidence of Parliament, more so we're making big decisions and we want you to weigh in on them just to make sure you've got the confidence in the direction we've outlined?

Carter 24:42

Yeah, but the problem was then that he didn't actually take it to what are those big decisions, right? I just listed off four of them in my critique at the media question. There

Carter 24:52

are major things that are happening. happening Stephen Harper has said that his government wouldn't be leaning in and spending what needs to be spent I mean if we're not talking about a recovery that from COVID at the same time we're talking about climate change then we're not having a real recovery you know the west is on fire the east is under a heat dome the Atlantic Canadians are terrified of what happens when the sea levels rise um the recovery isn't just about covid and the he he's he's just not strong enough frankly he's just not strong enough and and this is where you know you know his his uh

Carter 25:30

uh his opportunity is to to to lead his challenges that he seems to be afraid to lead and that shows in the answers to the questions um because stephen

Carter 25:41

stephen harper gave us a vision of conservatives reaction interaction Aaron O'Toole has yet to provide one. I need the will of the people to be behind my vision and my vision is going to include the following four things. And I'm sure that someone scripted them and said, don't get ahead of yourself. We're going to talk about this thing in week one. We're going to talk about this thing in week two. You know what? There's such a thing as called foreshadowing. You can answer the questions on your first day. So you come out of the gate strong. I'm a big believer in being strong early and then filling in the blanks afterwards and i

Carter 26:11

i just think this is his weakness this is he doesn't know strength and and it's betrayed by even just the way that he speaks cory

Zain 26:21

cory what did you make of his his rationale uh not the one about parliament uh not having confidence but the one about hey big decisions we need you to weigh in yeah

Corey 26:31

yeah it's a it's a reasonable one it's certainly a pretty good platitude hey this is a democracy the people should have their ability to speak on this matter But they've brought in so many things along the way. The budget introduced a number of these programs. Really, it seems like they're seeking a mandate to continue doing what they're doing the way they're doing it.

Corey 26:51

fact that we're in an election at all is not really based on any particular trigger. And I think Canadians inherently know that this is the election that inertia built. It's not an election that is occurring because of any major catalyst out there. And so while I think that for a lot of people, it will be sufficient to say, hey, democracy is good. Elections are good. Let's roll. And Trudeau got kind of cute with it at some points. He turned and he said, so do the other parties. Please explain why you don't think Canadians should have the choice. That

Zain 27:18

That was actually his closing line. That was his closing line of his speech as he ended.

Corey 27:23

I mean, good luck with that. It's just such a, you

Corey 27:28

you know, why ever not call an election? Why not just have one every six months for fucking ever? I mean, we're two years into a mandate. You know where they

Carter 27:39

they don't have elections, Corey?

Corey 27:43

Oh, that's fucking true. Yeah,

Carter 27:45

Yeah, we'll get there, I'm sure. And

Corey 27:46

And it's not very funny. No. It's not very funny what happened in Afghanistan today. You know,

Carter 27:49

know, but he's coming out of a cloud, and his strength is being threatened. I mean, I keep coming back to strength. it's being threatened on so many if you'll forgive the phrase so many different fronts we have military terminology in cam in in elections uh that's going to be a little tricky when we're dealing with the afghanistan situation well

Carter 28:09

talk about before we

Corey 28:10

we jump off it because i don't want to be just super negative and shitty about it because ultimately i think trudeau still managed to set the table today and do a fairly good job and did what he needed to do um there was the opportunity to talk about vaccination talk about the vaccine mandate That's obviously a wedge he's trying to use with Erin O'Toole. And ultimately, he is just riding so bloody high right now. If the criticism everyone has is you're being an opportunist, everybody wants to vote for you. That's why you called an election. I don't think that's actually the worst place in the world. We can talk about the base cynicism about it. We can talk about whether Canadians should reward this because in the long term, it's quite damaging if politicians are willing to yank our chains like this. But Trudeau had a fine day. He had a fine launch. It's not something that we're going to put in the history books as a greatest launch ever, but it was a fine launch. Carter,

Carter 28:59

Carter, jump in. Canadians have rewarded the provincial leaders that have done it, right? Canadians have rewarded the provincial leaders that have thrown down the writ. And it seems that Canadians don't have a problem with it. So I think that seeing

Carter 29:14

seeing what Canadians have done during the pandemic and some opportunist leaders that have taken advantage to try and and get themselves a a full uh

Carter 29:25

you can't blame trudeau can't

Carter 29:27

can't blame trudeau for trying and i do think that the you know again the weakness now of o'toole saying oh he's doing it just because people don't like me um yeah

Carter 29:36

yeah that's right buddy good luck

Corey 29:38

uh cory jump in yeah i mean are canadians gonna look at a prime minister saying parliament is dysfunctional and we're at a major moment and so i need a mandate and say i

Corey 29:49

i disagree probably not because i was actually describing stephen harper that's exactly what he said in 2008 as he pushed an election around the same time in his mandate so you

Corey 29:58

you know it pisses me off on kind of a philosophical level but i don't think that trudeau is going to be too hurt for it i

Zain 30:04

i agree with you guys i think the ballot box question of do i deserve a mandate while self-indulgent isn't horrible um when i say mandate i mean majority mandate. I think if you're the NDP and others, you're probably trying to say he doesn't deserve it. And more importantly, he doesn't fucking need it, because look at how effective we've been working with him, so to speak. But to that point that Carter made, that I know he made tongue-in-cheek in a drive-by fashion, if the questions today had buckets, there was three of them. Number one, Carter mentioned earlier, which was, hey, if you don't get your majority, are you going to resign? Number two was, why the fuck are we here? And number three was Afghanistan. And Corey, another election, you texted this to us earlier today, another election and another refugee crisis. We had one in 2015. And now we are clearly in the middle of one here. What do you make of this as the government goes into caretaker mode, that Justin Trudeau could have an escalating human rights and refugee crisis on his hands during the middle of his sprint election?

Corey 31:07

Well, it obviously can play into this election in a lot of ways, and I sincerely hope it does. I sincerely hope as a country we talk about the fact that we've been in Afghanistan for 20 years, and we have absolutely nothing to show for it except for more misery in Afghanistan, as we have seen evidenced, you know, tearful social

Corey 31:22

social media videos from women in Afghanistan who are now facing a Taliban government, people posting pictures of translators they worked with when they were out there as armed forces. They're dead now. And this is not like a hypothetical. It's like, no, they are literally dead. We have now heard they are dead. This is a disaster of the highest caliber. And I think that the

Corey 31:41

the war in Afghanistan in some ways gets tied in with the war in Iraq. And we just tend to think of them as George W. Bush's bad wars. you know the war in afghanistan like

Corey 31:51

like the taliban are some bad fucking guys right yeah let's not put too fine a point on this they uh they blow up monuments they they violate every woman's right you can think of they were a hotbed for terrorism when they controlled the state of afghanistan before and here we are in 2021 sort of back where we were in in 2001 and there's going to be be consequences for that long term. And we

Corey 32:16

we left a lot of people behind who bought into a vision of what Afghanistan could be that is no longer there. And the Prime Minister owes those people something, absolutely

Corey 32:24

absolutely owes them something. This is not America's failure alone. This was Canada's biggest military intervention since the Korean War, and we need to do more. And one of the things that left me kind of just salty all fucking morning, if we're talking about it now, is that that we have a prime minister calling an opportunistic election as one of the most disastrous human rights catastrophes you can imagine is occurring on the other side of the planet, one we have been directly involved with for 20 years. For 20 years.

Corey 32:51

And we're hearing stories of hundreds of people not being evacuated that were promised to be evacuated. We're seeing the horrible pictures coming out of this all.

Corey 32:59

And we're sitting here and we're talking about, I don't even fucking know what. Because at the end of the day, I don't believe there is a reason for this election.

Corey 33:08

And yet here we are. Here we are. Well, you have the United Kingdom calling back their parliament to deal with this crisis. Well, you have serious countries everywhere thinking, how do we manage through this horrible disaster? And

Corey 33:19

And we have our prime minister going to the governor general for an opportunistic election.

Corey 33:23

And ultimately, he's probably going to win. But it pisses me off right now. It pisses me off today. That's for sure. Stephen

Zain 33:28

Stephen Carter, I'm going to go on that same thread Corey was just talking about. If you were advising justin trudeau um into this weekend would you have told him to you

Zain 33:38

know push the brakes on this on this election which was is afghanistan serious enough i hate to make this crass and political strategy but from a political strategy level was is this enough that for you to have recommended to this prime minister don't go for it you're

Carter 33:54

you're an asshole making me do this question I

Carter 33:57

ask in seriousness let me do it let me do it here we go I share Corey's anger I share the disgust with which the pictures are flooding out and I can't imagine the terror that the people of Afghanistan are feeling and I can't imagine how it feels to have hope and then to have that hope pulled out from under you

Carter 34:22

all of that is real

Carter 34:24

all of that is real i would love this to be an election issue i would love this to be an election issue for the next 35 days i am experienced enough to

Carter 34:35

to expect that it will not be an issue our

Carter 34:38

our collective ability to pay attention to this kind of shit is short and the fact that it is happening to people around the world who are not like us will dictate that we will not respond the way we need to respond How do I know this? Because we never have.

Carter 34:57

Right. We've had troops on the ground watching. You know, Romeo Dallaire watched as Rwandan troops were massacring other Rwandans. And we stood and we watched. Because why? Because they weren't like us. And these people aren't like us. And we'll be disappointed in the social media mafia will be out and we'll take our three days of sins. but then the next cpc video will land and it will be uh some sort of you know mocked up version of die hard and uh and

Carter 35:30

and we'll hopefully hopefully the volleyball we'll lose focus

Corey 35:33

focus yeah we'll lose focus the

Corey 35:35

the volleyball scene and die hard oh is that you get die hard and talk you got confused oh i did i did get confused oh

Zain 35:41

oh my god it's

Carter 35:43

i see both of them were outdone by the volleyball ball scene in dave that's

Zain 35:46

that's an excellent volleyball seed that shirtless kevin klein 37

Zain 35:52

uh the 37 shot rally anyway incredible

Corey 35:55

um yeah well look i mean unfortunately part of what makes me angry and frustrated is he's right right this

Zain 36:01

this is not an issue

Corey 36:03

issue that is going to um is going to to move votes and uh

Corey 36:09

uh i think that's that's unfortunate um but like steven i've been around for many elections And I know these things have a short shelf life. I would

Corey 36:18

would really like it if, as a country, we talked about this and what our duty is as a country. And certainly I hope we take in more

Corey 36:25

more than our quote-unquote share of refugees coming from Afghanistan and do what we can to keep them safe and get them out of there.

Corey 36:32

do I think that this is going to change the course of the election? No, it didn't even change the start of the election. So I don't believe it will change the course of the election. Guys,

Zain 36:39

Guys, round this out for me because I want to try to complete this off for Trudeau. So strategy, what do you see thus far? What do you like? What needs course correction? Corey, you've already told us what you think needs course correction on message. Clean up the rationale for the election, especially in the midst of a refugee crisis that's on our hands and especially the rationale. No,

Corey 37:00

No, that's not actually what I think. I'm not entirely sure that's what I think he needs to clean up.

Zain 37:04

up. Oh, okay, interesting. I think he

Corey 37:05

to stop talking about it. Okay,

Zain 37:06

Okay, so stop talking about why we're here. He's got to turn the page on it, I suppose, right?

Corey 37:10

right? right? Where I think that Stephen was spot on was talking about the reasons, like the four big ideas. But those four big ideas, I wouldn't pitch as that's the reason for the election. I think at this point, you just got to turn to it and say, these are the four things I want to talk to you about. And this is the choice between myself and Aaron O'Toole. You don't want to sit there continually justifying why you decided to go to the polls two years early. That's not particularly helpful. But it was pretty clear that he didn't have great answers for that. What

Corey 37:38

What I am surprised is that he didn't have a great pivot from that right

Carter 37:44

why why you're not surprised why

Zain 37:45

why you're not surprised because

Carter 37:46

because the same people have been advising him for six years and those people um continue like they haven't made any changes he's not gotten stronger um in campaigning uh this is going to be a very interesting campaign because the first campaign he won under different different circumstances. He was the bright young face that came in and took out a stale incumbent government. Corey has made the point on many of these podcasts that we have to watch. Well, Corey and you, Zane, as well. We have to watch out for O'Toole because people have written him off when there may be some inherent strengths there. Now, fortunately,

Carter 38:28

fortunately, the CPC doesn't seem to believe that there are any inherent strengths there and therefore they're just tearing down Trudeau. But I think

Carter 38:39

this is going... Elections matter. How many times have we said this? Elections matter.

Carter 38:44

This one could result in a very different outcome than Trudeau thinks it's going to happen. And we'll see how it goes. Maybe the reason that Mark Carney didn't run an Edmonton center is he thinks that it'd be better to be coming from outside of the potential caucus if things go horribly wrong. Well,

Zain 39:00

Well, I mean, I don't know. I'm not. That's that's, of course, if he doesn't become premier of Manitoba. Carter, round this out for me. From your perspective, I'm going to almost phrase it slightly differently. You're doing an evening strategy roundup with the prime minister. You're his advisor. What's the headline of day one that you're giving him? What were your strengths, sir? Where are your weaknesses? What do we need to course correct on? Give me give me some top line thoughts that you'd be given the prime minister on launch day. you

Carter 39:25

you remain excellent at the photo op you

Carter 39:27

you remain weak at the questioning and

Carter 39:29

and uh we need to we need to make up our minds and decide that this election either matters or it doesn't and

Carter 39:37

and if it doesn't matter then that's fine we're we're going to run on um you know getting a majority mandate because we believe that that's what canadians want they trust us more than they trust those other guys and that's fine we can run that election but if you want to run an election that you say it is that it is about the recovery, then you need to start having better answers.

Zain 39:58

Corey, let's jump to Aaron O'Toole. Let's start with the optics. And if you want to jump in a little bit to message, you can too. But the optics, obviously fundamentally different. I like your point about the Prime Minister having maybe incumbent advantage, sure, but also the incumbent box. Aaron O'Toole didn't have a box, but he still chose a form of a box, so to speak, a virtual speech on a blue background with the party slogan or the campaign slogan, securing the future behind him. What did you make of the optics that O'Toole chose for what I'd not just call his launch, but I think it'd be safe to say was, you know, the start of his introduction to Canadians?

Corey 40:36

Well, he was in a different box, wasn't he? If your entire critique right off the top is that this is not a safe time to have an election, we're in COVID-19, you can't have a giant group group of people behind you and the kind of the standard rah-rah rally.

Corey 40:53

imagery that was so well established by the American campaign and Joe Biden, and you know how he had those things on a daily basis with Kamala Harris at the Delaware headquarters? I think in some ways, he was almost hearkening back to that. Intentionally or not, it's the model that's been set and it's the model that he was following for a COVID election. He effectively said, this is a COVID election. That's what he wanted to do on day one. Whether he continues that, I'm doubtful. I have a hard time believing he's going to be in his headquarters there the entire bloody time. But so that was his intention. And it tied to that message of the day. It tied to him saying, hey, look, this is really important. Now, one of the interesting things, and I didn't talk about it with the liberals, but the liberals and the conservatives have the opposite problem. And right now, Aaron O'Toole is the one who's being hit on it, right? Which is, hey,

Corey 41:38

hey, liberals, if this is a situation serious enough to require mandatory vaccines, vaccines, why are we having an election?

Corey 41:46

Hey, Aaron O'Toole, if this is a situation that's serious enough not to have an election, why don't we have mandatory vaccines? Right?

Corey 41:53

Right? And so he

Corey 41:55

he struggled with that question a bit, to be sure. Although I think in some ways, perhaps he got a little bit too much abuse on it because his position was not a wild one. It was you get a vaccine or you take a daily COVID test. I mean, he's hardly saying, you know, live free, go do do whatever the hell you want, right? He's just taking a stance that is slightly less than Justin Trudeau, but much more than what the government of Canada was contemplating, and much more than any provincial government has contemplated before yesterday,

Corey 42:27

the day before, right?

Corey 42:28

right? But it does speak to a fundamental problem he has, which is everybody is ready just to call him out as being a stumble fuck just from day one. And you saw that in a lot of the meta-analysis about him. He's in an interesting situation because canadians really don't know him i was struck by a poll uh andrew ends for lege he was talking about he says data shows probably close to 50 of canadians couldn't name who the leader of the conservative party was interesting for two reasons one is that's obviously a big chunk of people that he can then introduce himself to and create a positive impression with so he's got to be very careful in those first steps we talked about that last Well, on Thursday, I guess. The

Corey 43:07

The other part is, you'll

Corey 43:09

you'll note that that's a higher, what's left is actually more

Corey 43:13

more people say they don't like him than know him.

Corey 43:17

so that's noteworthy too, because it does suggest to me that's maybe not so durable. And if he can get himself out of that, he may have an opportunity there. But there's no question, it

Corey 43:26

it was a little bit of a rough ride at the start. And a lot of it had to do with the vaccination question and mandatory vaccines. It does seem to be a pretty good wedge for Justin Trudeau for the reasons we've talked about on this pod.

Corey 43:38

It's very popular. Mandatory vaccines are very popular with Canadians, and Erin O'Toole has an interesting position.

Corey 43:44

It's one that's not unreasonable. It's one that says, hey, in a liberal democracy, just because the majority want to do something doesn't mean we impose it on the minority. We have, you know, the right to life, liberty, and the security of person. And that means we can't force medical treatment upon you. And so here's a version of that that actually satisfies that, that says, okay, if you don't want to get this vaccine, we are still protected as a public service or as airline

Corey 44:08

travelers or anything like that. But

Corey 44:11

But that's tough. Canadians aren't in the mood for it right now. And so Aaron O'Toole finds himself in an interesting position for conservatives. There's conservatives you usually think of as having the really blunt, overly simple messaging. He's got the nuanced messaging on vaccines, and he doesn't quite know what to do with it, and the media doesn't know what to do with him. And

Zain 44:28

And how to handle him. Carter, of course, you are the OG of disliking things you don't know. I'm curious to hear what—I

Zain 44:38

don't know why I said that.

Zain 44:39

No, it's good. I like it. You're welcome. It fit my

Zain 44:44

It's good. Carter, what did you make of the optics? Start with what you saw, the blue screen, the virtual launch to obviously punctuate, highlight, emphasize the point that we are in a COVID election, so I'm going to act like we're – and behave. I shouldn't say act with a negative connotation, so I'm going to behave as if we are in said COVID election. What did you make of those optics? And inherently, there's a question there about strategy, so jump into that too. What did you make about inherently with the optics related to the strategy of Aaron O'Toole owning COVID election, given all Corey said about nuance, of course?

Carter 45:22

Listen, this he could it could have been brilliant. It could have been brilliant. He could have said, you know, this is a COVID election. I'm going to make the right choice, the safe choice. I don't believe in in running this election when it's when it's not safe, but it's contradictory to everything he stands for. he stands for opening up of businesses he stands for uh you know he was at the stampede for god's sake you know he's been behaving like like this isn't a thing that he needs to worry about his provincial premiers the ones that are in charge in manitoba ontario and alberta and saskatchewan are the ones that are kind of the outliers in terms of the reopening strategies and reopening opening structures although ford is is is not moving very quickly uh compared to alberta and then um he's

Carter 46:13

he's put himself in a box hasn't he he's

Carter 46:15

he's put himself in an unbelievable box because things aren't going to get better in the next 35 days in the next 35 days does anybody have a model that says you know what this is probably going to be over in six days and then uh aaron o'toole can emerge from his tomb um he has basically said this is a really bad idea and i'm not going to to participate but

Carter 46:36

he's going to be out there tomorrow well he's going to be out on the on the hustings here's

Zain 46:40

crazy ridiculous here's a crazy idea what if he just stays in the

Zain 46:46

the virtual setting for 35 days is that absolutely crazy like i understand people do not know who the hell this guy is but like if he does that and sticks with it is there is there like a strategic lane there there steven sure

Carter 46:59

sure there is if he if he was pro vaccination if he was pro you know like he he would have to be a totally different person right

Carter 47:07

this doesn't fit his brand is what you're

Zain 47:08

you're saying yeah it

Carter 47:10

it's totally just incongruent with who he is as a leader and who his party is and you can't just bounce around on an idea here's

Carter 47:20

here's the question if

Zain 47:20

if this was something that

Carter 47:21

that he believed he couldn't have done it can i

Zain 47:23

i push back on it can

Zain 47:24

can i push back on that do people really don't know who he really is so is this not an opportunity for him to kind of take that lane i'm not saying it's a good idea but i'm just trying to push back no

Corey 47:33

no no no jumping jumping jory jumping no fucking stupidest idea i've heard since sliced bread in the refrigerator that

Corey 47:40

that is not what this election is about if

Corey 47:43

if you are talking about the direness of covid and you're talking about the risks of covid and you're aaron o'toole you're in the liberal party of canada's fucking box you're We know you are the leader who is least trusted to deal with the COVID issue. So why would you constantly remind people of COVID? He did what we thought he would do, which is he started the campaign by saying we shouldn't be having this right now because of COVID. And then he pivoted to other messages, other parts of his message, because he wants to put those chips on there. If things go bad, he wants to be able to point people back to it and say, I told you so. But he does not want to spend the next 35 days talking about COVID-19 and looking like he's hiding from COVID-19. The parallel, of course, again, is Joe Biden. That

Corey 48:22

That was a very different situation. Donald Trump had fucked that up eight ways from Sunday. And so, of course, that contrast didn't look so bad for Joe Biden. But we're in a different situation here. People trusted Joe Biden to deal with COVID-19. People don't trust Aaron O'Toole to deal with COVID-19. They trust him to deal with the economy, with inflation, with the things that he was talking about in his opening speech. And that's what he wants to get people talking about. Whether he'll be successful, it's

Corey 48:45

it's a big lift. It's

Corey 48:47

big lift and it's unlikely,

Zain 48:48

unlikely, but that is what he wants. You're saying this was a day one hedge. Get it on the record that I'm the guy once again telling you fuckers that this shit is real. Here's me in a virtual setting. And then I'm going to go out, do my thing, try to compete in my box. If you were advising O'Toole, would you have suggested that? Suppose he said, Corey, I want to ensure that I hedge correctly. Would you have suggested a day one virtual launch for him? Because to me, the optics overrode even the pivot message today, because the first thing I go to is, O'Toole was in front of a blue screen. Why was O'Toole in front of a blue screen? Because he wanted to make that message. Is this what you would have recommended to Aaron O'Toole should he have been your boss heading into this day one?

Corey 49:29

Yeah, look, I don't mind it. I'm not sure I would have recommended it, frankly. I think that I probably would have done something that was outdoors, looked socially distant, allowed you to have the same thing, but maybe a different energy and a different vibe. But

Corey 49:42

by sort of establishing that as his headquarters, he does have the opportunity to run all sorts of events from there. And there is an opportunity maybe to get greater bandwidth than the prime minister does by filling your calendar when you are not in the air and when you are not at these events with a bunch of things that are essentially digital and allow you to have reach. The American campaign was very interesting. It taught us that there are some things that work better remotely, and there are ways that you can make your

Corey 50:06

leader available to more people. doesn't mean it's always optimal but with certain groups certainly with volunteers it's a great way for them to feel more connected and if there's a reasonable justification for why Aaron O'Toole's on a screen and not in person that's great because it means you've saved yourself a flight so I you know I I don't I it's not what I would have recommended per se but I don't hate it I think it's it's reasonable enough um but ultimately you can just see what a rough ride the guy is getting and he's gonna have to work hard to change the uh change the conversation here and a lot of of the rough rides of his own making and his party's own making. I'm not giving him a pass here. It's a big lift. Yeah. Carter,

Zain 50:43

you know, I want to, as we talked about the buckets of questions that Trudeau was getting, Afghanistan, are you going to resign if this is the majority you don't get? In addition to why the hell are we here? O'Toole was getting some tough questions. He was being grilled. Corey's nuance on COVID was one of the lanes. Adding to that nuance was was staff being vaccinated. So if you wanted to be around O'Toole, you had to get a vaccine. Of course, people being very quick to point out the irony in that is related to the fact that that was not O'Toole's policy for his candidates, for the general public, so to speak, or for the federal workers. What do you make of O'Toole being boxed in on vaccines? Do you feel like what he's his responses and the lane he's picked is strategic or do you feel like once again i hate to keep using this term he's he's kind of squared into a position that he's now going to have to spend time to try to get out of i

Carter 51:40

think he's in a really really putting himself in a tough spot um you

Carter 51:44

you know of course it's the only thing that makes sense when you're about to embark on a 36-day campaign is to have everybody vaccinated if you could be vaccinated against the common cold when you're about to embark on a on a campaign and you're all going to be on the same plane and in the same buses, in the same... You would vaccinate yourself against everything because anything you get, the leader's going to get. And we've seen it in virtually every campaign. The leaders get sick because, you know, a bug goes around. The bug this time is COVID, and of course it makes sense. But it's hypocritical because the protection that you want is not a protection that you're willing to ask for for Canadians. So it's a bit of a problem. I'll be honest, both campaigns underwhelmed me today. I'm not super stoked with Aaron O'Toole's launch. I don't think it's a good idea for him to be playing in the basement. I don't think it's a great idea for Justin Trudeau to be so weak on issues. I think that the overarching challenges

Carter 52:46

challenges that both of these campaigns face is going to be very difficult for them to attain if both of them suck. fuck.

Carter 52:54

But ironically, no one's going to overtake them. So one of these bad campaigns is likely to win.

Zain 53:00

Corey, let's talk about staff vaccinations for O'Toole. What was your take on that? Adding to the multi-layered cake that is O'Toole's stance on COVID?

Corey 53:11

Well, yeah, again, it is that nuanced thing, right? It is that multi-layered cake, because there are lots of things governments can't do that private orgs can. Lots, lots of things that we let political parties do, We would never let governments do. The rules are different for the broader public service and all of the considerations that come in there, not least of which are the Charter of Rights and Freedoms considerations. But you can kind of set all of them aside because there's actually a very practical reason why everybody in his campaign around him needs to be vaccinated. And that is if you are not in some provinces, there are quarantine requirements. And how do you run a federal campaign if you can't do that? So, you

Corey 53:45

you know, very reasonable reason

Corey 53:47

reason to do that. Reasonable reason, right? But it, again, it's just, it's the kind of thing that you've got to explain it. And what do we say?

Corey 53:56

Carter, fill in the blank when you're explaining. There you go.

Corey 54:00

And this is the challenge that Aaron O'Toole has that is not unique in conservative history, but it's pretty rare, right?

Corey 54:06

right? To have the conservative, the one saying like, well, you got to consider X, Y, and Z, and not just beating on the shit with a Frank Luntz style, just simple, simple message. Yeah,

Zain 54:15

Yeah, very, very easy to digest thesis statement. Okay, let's round it out. Corey, same version of a question I asked you earlier, but you are now doing your nightly roundup with O'Toole. You're, of course, working for him. Carter, you're doing the same. I'll ask the same question to you. What's your strategy roundup for O'Toole on day one, on launch day? What did he do well? What did he not? What do we kind of need to consider to recalibrate after day one? And where do we see holes or where do we see opportunity?

Corey 54:43

Yeah, that would be a tough conversation with the boss if Aaron O'Toole was my boss, right? Because a part of it would be like part of me just thinks like, well, you're kind of fucked, right? Like this is this is a tough box to be in. You got to get you've got to stop talking about this as soon as possible. But on the other hand, it is it is obviously something he's being hit with, right? Right. Yes. You

Corey 55:02

You know, you've got a tension in your campaign and it's like I said, it's the opposite of the tension in the liberal campaign. But you're being hit with it for a bunch of reasons. It's your problem. It's not Justin Trudeau's problem. And so you've got to very quickly find a very clear way that you can describe your policy positions in a way that doesn't take you four sentences to do it when it comes to vaccines. vaccines and given the the mood and the attitude around vaccines uh maybe it's something as simple as saying uh it's it's a vax mandatory vaccine or test right like just just super simple like that like justin trudeau wants just mandatory vaccine i'm saying vaccine or test and then maybe pointing people to some of the situations that they can't really argue with like you know there are there

Corey 55:49

there There are people who, for medical reasons, can't

Corey 55:51

get a vaccine. There are people who, maybe Quakers, you

Corey 55:56

you know, pick a religious group that people think, like, oh, the Quakers, right? Like, it's like they're not inclined to get vaccines. And as a democracy, we need to make sure we're encompassing and considering for all of those things, too. But again, as little time as possible, and you've just got to find a really tight sound bite on why your position is actually just as good and very reasonable. But move on, right? You've got to find a way to pivot off this vaccine issue much faster than you have if today is any indication here, because that central tension will otherwise drown you. And you are not helping it if you're talking about COVID-19 and the risks of COVID-19. So you've had your fun.

Corey 56:31

You've talked about COVID-19. You've talked about the risks of having this election at this moment.

Corey 56:36

Never again, because that's going to drag you back into that dark alley of, well, if it's such a big fucking deal, why don't you mandate vaccines? And your answer, as we've seen today, is not landing with Canadians. audience.

Zain 56:47

Carter, same thing to you. Corey finishes 15-minute Zoom call with Aaron O'Toole because everything's virtual because COVID. You are then having your Zoom call with Aaron O'Toole. What are you telling him after day one? Boss, here's my strategic take, your ups, your downs, your holes that you have in your strategy, your opportunities that you may have.

Carter 57:09

I told you not to be in the damn bunker and now it's played poorly. Now tomorrow we're going to of have to be out on the campaign trail and we're gonna need a reason i

Carter 57:18

think that that's that's the biggest problem i also would probably have a word with him about not calling on true north as the first uh first question for his press conference oh yeah yeah that

Carter 57:27

that was um you

Carter 57:28

you know like make it at least a uh look like you can take a question from a legitimate media i'll tell

Corey 57:34

tell you what that probably antagonized the media more than if justin trudeau had shit down their throats about the questions that we're asking that really pissed off the media yeah

Carter 57:44

yeah that was it was a you know there's not a legitimate news outlet like so why you know true north the rebel post-millennial like these aren't legitimate news outlets they're propaganda machines um that's

Carter 57:57

that's fine propaganda seems to be in vogue these days um but don't don't fall don't fall into that trap would be my my my advice to him and i think that that everything

Carter 58:08

everything else just kind of falls on you know what what is your messaging box um let us get to where we can win this election and and where we can win this election does not feel like it's covet um it does not feel like uh you know it's hiding in the basement so maybe we should come up with something that we can actually win on which in my mind is probably economics.

Carter 58:33

Let's go with economics. Corey,

Zain 58:34

Corey, your suggestion to O'Toole was maybe outside, socially distanced, an event that could have more space. Well, that's exactly the advice Jagmeet Singh took because that was the optics of his launch today. It was outdoors in an urban center. He was surrounded by his wife, party supporters, socially distanced with masks in the background. ground. Tell me what you made of the optics of Jagmeet Singh's launch today. And will you also get into some of the messaging that he hit on? What was your take when you saw Jagmeet Singh jump into this campaign this morning?

Corey 59:09

Well, so A, I thought it was really on brand. That's exactly what you would want for an NDP launch, urban, but also outdoor, respectful of the risk of COVID. And because, you know, I just have to say one more thing on the last. Part of the problem with the bunker yesterday is he's going to have to explain the lack of bunker tomorrow yeah right

Corey 59:25

and so it's just another time you're going to be talking about covid uh jagmeet singh doesn't have that problem jagmeet singh by doing what he did allows him to just kind of hit the ground running on some things i

Corey 59:36

think he had the best launch i think this is part of the the the i don't actually necessarily think it is preordained what stephen carter said that either the liberals or the ndp are gonna be on top i mean almost certainly almost certainly Nobody misunderstand me. 99 times out of 100, probably. But I'll talk about why in a minute. But when

Corey 59:58

when we talk about the launch specifically, I

Corey 1:00:01

I thought he had some of the best phrasings as to why this was a bad election. I thought he had some of the best reasons why he would be a good person to, you know, send more MPs back for. And in a way, it's

Corey 1:00:17

it's kind of like a rock, paper, scissors thing where his rock, Justin

Corey 1:00:20

Justin Trudeau has no paper for it, right? He's only got scissors because Justin Trudeau is worried about the conservatives out there. He doesn't really have great counter messaging for the NDP. And that didn't really play out today, but I think the seeds were planted where I'm very curious to see how Justin Trudeau is going to manage Jagmeet Singh and the NDP because a lot of the things that he is saying about you can't trust the conservatives, this is about the vision, this is about the future of this country, blah, blah, blah, that

Corey 1:00:45

messaging will not work on the NDP or the NDP supporters. And that is a fascinating place to be in. Because if I were Singh, if I were the NDP, I would have in the can, and maybe they do, an ad that basically says, almost

Corey 1:01:01

almost like, you know, the man in the high castle. Do you ever see that on Amazon Prime? Brian. You know, this parallel universe,

Corey 1:01:08

parallel universe where the Nazis won the war. I'm not drawing that parallel. But there's

Corey 1:01:14

there's a parallel universe where Justin Trudeau had a majority government for the past 18 months. And you can point to a lot of things that are different, a lot

Corey 1:01:21

lot of things that are worse for the average Canadian. And Jagmeet Singh can say reasonably, do you want to give him a majority? Because

Corey 1:01:28

Because every time it was up to him, if it wasn't me there kind holding over the balance of power here, things wouldn't have gone so well. Ask yourself what would have happened to Serb. Ask yourself. And so this,

Corey 1:01:39

this, to me, is one of the fascinating things about this campaign.

Corey 1:01:43

Justin Trudeau is so guns blazing on Aaron O'Toole, who I think is basically at a floor for the conservatives. His worst case scenario is probably where he is. And if he catches fire, he might end up being the prime minister.

Corey 1:01:55

Meanwhile, you've got Jagmeet Singh, who seems It seems to have as high of a ceiling as anybody in the race. And there are soft parallels with the 2015 Alberta election, and I don't want to overstate them because there's one major difference here. But one of the reasons why a few of us thought maybe the NDP might do something interesting in that election, even in advance of the election, is we

Corey 1:02:17

we saw from polling they had more accessible vote than anyone else. Everyone was bumping against their ceiling except the NDP. And you thought, well, if there's going to be movement, maybe there's movement that way. You saw very high approval ratings for Rachel Notley, and

Corey 1:02:28

and you see some of the same stuff here. The

Corey 1:02:31

The big difference, of course, is that the PCs in 2015 in Alberta weren't leading in a single poll. The liberals are dominating right now in the polls, so that's

Corey 1:02:42

that's different. But the NDP have a lot of that kindling that you would expect you'd need if you were going to catch fire.

Zain 1:02:50

Corey, let's keep a pin on the messaging because I want to get to that in a second. You said you appreciated some of the rationale and the lines that Jagmeet brought to the table. Carter, outdoor events, socially distant, urban setting, give it to me, top line on optics and message, and then let's dig down a bit more on the lane that Jagmeet Singh is trying to own in this election. But give me optics and top line message first.

Carter 1:03:15

I think that as long as this message is Justin Trudeau wants to grab power, wants a majority, he's totally missing the opportunity. You know, I mean, they announced, Jagmeet Singh and his wife announced that they're expecting their first child. It

Carter 1:03:29

feels very similar to Jack Layton's battling illness. And people may say, well, those are totally different. They're not. They're a public conversation that builds empathy, builds

Carter 1:03:41

builds connection. Those of us that have had children, those who are expecting children, everybody has an empathy and understanding of what they're going through and the opportunity and the excitement. And they want to share in that. um and there

Carter 1:03:55

there there's a personal story there that that ultimately i think powered the orange wave um from all those elections ago uh with with jack layton that could be harnessed but you're not gonna get there you fucking idiot if you keep just saying that justin trudeau wants a majority talk to me about something i care about honest to god you have a built-in opportunity and you You are just walking right fucking past it. You're like, Jesus, man. I'm done with politicians that don't know how to do politics. Done. Well, so I disagree.

Carter 1:04:30

Oh, great. I heard from Corey about why I'm right.

Corey 1:04:34

Because that message works for the NDP for all of the reasons I just said. You can establish that it absolutely does. You can establish that a liberal majority will give you less of the things you want if you're a progressive voter. So I don't have a big problem with that. Should he have been more specific on the specific policies? Yes, absolutely, Stephen. But there's time for that. And this message was a pretty nice bridge out from the COVID message. So I really think that for me, what was interesting about the NDP campaign today was the stage setting. Like I said, much

Corey 1:05:05

much stronger than the other two. I can see the chess pieces moving around with the NDP campaign in a way I simply cannot right now with the Liberals and the Conservatives. And

Zain 1:05:14

And Corey, just to be clear, that chess piece you see is that it's a victory lap on what was good, and it's now the additives to keep it more sustainable as part of Canadian social policy and culture going forward. Like one of the things he's introduced and is talking about as part of his key messaging was taxing the super rich. Right. And I'm sure that messaging and polling was very popular. We've talked about we've talked about that. We talked about everything you liked during the pandemic. We're the ones who bumped up the wage subsidy from a paltry percentage to what it was. We're the ones who did the rent assistance that was not specific to landlords, but those renting. Do you feel like that Jagmeet Singh's entire campaign can be waged on this sort of lane of saying what you like about them, we can do better and keep within the – you can't trust them to keep this going. You can trust us to keep it going or should he just lead into the fact that, fuck it, I am actually like a catalyst and I'm going for the minority position? Or does he try to own the lane of like we want to be government here? You see what I'm trying to say? Like there's a balance that they have to strike. I do. I absolutely

Corey 1:06:25

absolutely do. I do. And one of the things that I think is very interesting about the NDP position here, and look, I've

Corey 1:06:34

I've said this and I'll just restate it maybe in a different way. The Trudeau campaign right now seems designed to beat the conservatives. But

Corey 1:06:41

the messaging that the liberals are using, the NDP can draft on and arguably do better than on. And so that is the risk to the liberals right there. And I'm curious to see how Justin Trudeau manages that risk, how he turns to his leftward flank and says, but you don't want those guys. Give us credit for everything we did. We just did so awesome during this. But yeah, I mean, the things that they did during the pandemic, you don't want that. You want to give us a majority. I don't know.

Corey 1:07:07

He doesn't have paper, right? That's what I'm saying. He's got the

Corey 1:07:11

the wrong tool here. And Justin Trudeau,

Carter 1:07:12

Trudeau, I mean, the

Carter 1:07:13

the liberals, these issues of the pandemic response, no one really felt like it was the NDP that was driving the bus, right? The Liberals seemed to be fully in control, and the NDP, at every budget vote, at every vote along the way, when all of these ideas were coming along, were being dragged along by a more progressive government than the NDP themselves had even envisioned. And they were undercut by the progressiveness of the Trudeau Liberals. So I just don't think that I think that Singh, you

Carter 1:07:48

you know, doesn't have what Corey is suggesting in terms of being the glue that held together this coalition. I don't think he has that. I think he has something more powerful, which is a tool of empathy and a tool of understanding that he can be bringing to to build a wave, because that's how waves get built. when people believe and are emotionally connected to the candidate, it is a far more powerful wave than, oh, I believe in this issue with you. Oh, this issue is something I agree with.

Zain 1:08:18

Carter, take me down that road. Corey, I'll come back to you in a second. Carter, let's go down this road then, okay? So how does, and I wasn't expecting to do this, but okay, how does Jagmeet Singh use the new child as a tool of empathy to create a wave? I'm not going going to ask you to craft an entire strategy on this, but tell me what this looks like. How are you weaving this into policy discussions about an election that you're also saying shouldn't be here and shouldn't be happening?

Carter 1:08:46

I wouldn't be saying that this election shouldn't be happening. I would be saying that this is a time to choose the actual progressive government. This is a time to choose a government that's actually going to address climate change head on instead of always taking the back doors always taking a second option this is this is a time to be putting climate change we're going to be talking about covid recovery and the liberal government's going to be talking about covid recovery at a time when we should be talking about the climate change recovery um you know we're the only ones who've stood up against oil and gas we're the only ones who've stood up against uh against uh these issues and it's even more important now and i see it is even more important now because i'm bringing a child into this world a child that's going to to deal with the failures of this liberal government because they haven't done anything on climate change. The Western world has done nothing. Justin Trudeau is not going to the G7 and bringing the urgency that needs to be brought that my child is demanding.

Corey 1:09:42

Corey, do you want to respond

Carter 1:09:42

respond to that? It would take some work, but it's there.

Corey 1:09:45

It's fine. I don't actually think that I'm disagreeing with anything that Stephen said right there i i ultimately am more interested though in the the dynamics between the three parties and and how they interact with each other here because i i'll just you know at the risk of beating a dead horse here what do the liberals do if somehow during this campaign the ndp get in second yeah

Corey 1:10:09

what is the ndp what is the liberal message at that point based on everything we know about the liberal message to this day yeah

Zain 1:10:15

yeah yeah and they don't i really don't know and And that's a dangerous place. So let's talk about this. This last point before I kind of ask you guys on your strategy assessment. Carter mentioned something which was interesting, which was Jagmeet Singh's proof points. Corey, you called it paper, right? The proof points Jagmeet Singh has to say, I'm legitimately the one that kept this guy, i.e. Trudeau, in check, that ensured that the policies he enacted during the pandemic helped people and not just businesses. is. If both of you were working for Jagmeet Singh, Corey, let's start with you first. Does he need paper? Does he need proof? What does he need to showcase that I'm actually the one that got this stuff done for you? Or is this just about repeat, repeat, repeat, and just hope that it penetrates? Or what would you kind of suggest strategically to Team Singh, if you're on that team, around how we kind of make that real or ensure that it feels more real than perhaps just the words?

Corey 1:11:13

do, do two, do three, if you want, don't do an exhaustive list of things that people stop caring about by the time you get to item four, right? Say, CERB, rent subsidy, CERB, rent subsidy. I'm the people, we're the people who got those things. The liberals weren't interested in doing them. I think the NDP sometimes have a bad habit of throwing

Corey 1:11:32

throwing the kitchen sink out on lists like that. And just going down to like the eighth order one that not only does nobody give a shit about, but actually actively turns some people off. So find the ones that are insanely salient, insanely popular, and stick to them. And don't worry about the rest of the narrative. You've just got to stick it on the marquee programs where you've really shown your chops. Carter,

Carter 1:11:53

Carter, don't worry about proof.

Carter 1:11:55

Don't worry about proof. You don't have to prove anything. The voters believe what the voters will believe.

Zain 1:12:01

Let's end it on the strategy. Let's round it out. Carter, I'll start with you. evening chat with Jagmeet Singh. You're saying, okay, that was day one. I know you're going to talk to Corey in a bit. He's going to tell you he thinks you had probably the best launch of all three leaders. But here's what I think. Here's where I think the pluses were. Here's where I think the opportunities might lie. And here's where I think the holes might be. What are you telling Jagmeet Singh on day one, Stephen Carter?

Carter 1:12:28

You're in third place in a two-horse race.

Corey 1:12:34

You're such a dick.

Carter 1:12:37

He's in third place in a two-horse race, so you're going to need to pull some different things out. You're going to need to come up with stories that the media want to cover because right now, I just went through the Twitter feeds, looking at Singh NDP versus the CPC or the Liberals. The Liberals got a gajillion times more coverage. The CPC got a gajillion times more coverage. You know, Singh did well. Well, he got he got coverage. I remember when we were working with Joe Clark back in 2000 and we couldn't you know, we were fifth place in the news and we were sad. We were happy when we got to third place. If we could figure out a day where we could be in third place in the news cycle, then we were doing our job. And that's what the NDP needs to figure out is how are we going to get the second place in the news? How are we? Because if I can be second in the news, second in the Twitterverse, second on social media, then maybe I can be second in this election. And second in this election has a very high, you know, Corey said their ceiling is as high as anybody's. If he can get the second, then he can get the first. But he has to get the second and it has to happen in a hurry.

Zain 1:13:47

Corey, are you playing a good cop to Stephen's bad cop on on your evening strategy session with Jagmeet Singh?

Corey 1:13:55

Well, I think what I would say is you have many good things here, but you've got to pick the best good things. You've got to have a more focused message, perhaps, than we have seen from the NDP over the last bit. You've got to pick the things that matter. I also believe that

Corey 1:14:10

that there is kind of this social democratic disease of being too clever and too complex, and ultimately campaigns are fairly blunt.

Corey 1:14:17

What are your messages? Keep them simple. Keep in mind people are going to hear them many

Corey 1:14:21

many times before they start getting into their heads, particularly given that you do currently have less regular coverage than the two bigger parties have. So you've got to keep that in mind, and you've got to drive your messages accordingly. accordingly sings coverage was lesser in volume but it was more positive and there's an opportunity there but it's not it's

Corey 1:14:41

it's not a materialized one at this point he has goodwill and

Corey 1:14:44

and the more the the liberals and the conservatives build disgust with each other and throw

Corey 1:14:49

throw hypocrisy charges at each other and just essentially run each other into the mud the more people might start saying well what else is out there right i've

Corey 1:14:58

i've heard that both of these brands of cornflakes are poison what what else we got?

Corey 1:15:04

when people look, you've got to be ready and you've got to be tight on messages that work for them. So the other part of this is who is accessible to you and keep tracking that very carefully because that's likely to evolve as the campaign evolves. But don't just do a bunch of shit

Corey 1:15:18

shit that only works for your base. Don't do a bunch of shit that's never going to change the minds of people who oppose you. Find that sweet spot. I think you've got a lot of the ingredients here. I can see there's some good pieces on the board, as I've i've said but you've got to figure out your gambits carter

Zain 1:15:32

carter final thing um the greens or the block anything notable that you saw coming out from them on strategy optics or message before we round out launch day and uh and end with your favorite segment so i'll give you this opportunity and same with cory thereafter with the greens or the block you see anything you like you see anything you despise hate or want to comment on i

Carter 1:15:55

i didn't see a fucking thing cory

Corey 1:15:59

didn't see a lot from the greens i saw a little about the bq and blanche he had um i

Corey 1:16:04

i thought he had the best criticism of trudeau and that's a great place for the block to be in general if they're being good critics of the liberals that that that's about as good as it gets for the block right which was hey if the situation is serious enough to impose compulsory vaccination isn't it too dangerous to go on an election campaign and you know there were protests in quebec about vaccines vaccines, I think that there's, or

Corey 1:16:26

or vaccine mandates, I think that there's kind of this growing sentiment in Quebec that is somewhat mirroring the sentiment you've seen in France with big protests about this and is

Corey 1:16:35

appropriate infringement on liberty. I'll be curious to see how the bloc rides that wave, for sure, because there is ultimately more people who are supportive of these things than not. But, you

Corey 1:16:47

know, your job is to be a critic, to be a critic of the prime minister, to be a critic of federalism. He's showing that he's fairly good at that he's been around doing his own sort of tour um it's going to be tough for him to grow the seats the block had a stellar election last time but it's uh you know he may hold them pretty well we're

Zain 1:17:06

going to leave that segment there moving on to our final segment stephen carter we do it for you the over under the lightning round let's get this started stephen carter on a scale of one to ten aaron

Zain 1:17:17

aaron o'toole's virtual launch what are you giving him on a scale of one one to 10 D

Carter 1:17:23

D minus. It's not sustainable. He put himself in the wrong box.

Zain 1:17:27

Corey, same question to you. The O2 virtual launch. What are you giving it on a one to 10 shrug

Zain 1:17:33

shrug emoji. Indeed, Corey, I'm going to stick with you on this.

Zain 1:17:36

What did you make Corey on a scale of one to 10? They always start at one of these scales because they have to. That is the first number that exists on the Trudeau rationale for having an election on a one to 10 scale. What are you giving Justin Trudeau? the marks on the rationale that he came out with today on the election i

Corey 1:17:55

guess i give it a five it's fine it'll work for a lot of people it didn't really inspire me i think that ultimately this is you know it's just you know it's it's the same arguments harper had no eight i didn't think they were particularly compelling in 08 i don't find them particularly compelling right now in in 2021. And I am bemused,

Corey 1:18:18

bemused, I suppose, by the number of partisans who have flipped on both sides, you know, conservatives who now think it's just the most terrible thing, liberals who think it makes the most sense ever. And ultimately, I just, I sigh for society, how many people are like, well, of course, they're doing it. That's just politics. I mean, cynicism

Corey 1:18:36

cynicism runs deep in these times, that's for sure.

Zain 1:18:39

sure. Carter, Corey mentioned one of the P words, partisans and punditry. So So I'm not going to ask you overrated, underrated on punditry because we know what happens when I do that. Give me a score on 1 to 10 on the Trudeau rationale that he gave today at Rideau Hall for launching this campaign. What do you give him on that 1 to 10 scale?

Carter 1:18:57

I give him a pass. I mean, anything that angers the conservatives makes me happy on some level. So it was fine. It was a pass.

Zain 1:19:06

Carter, I'm going to stick with you on this one. Recent polls show that liberal support is declining heading into this election and to the start of it. Is that overrated or underrated in your mind, the polling that's coming out, that liberal support still in the lead, but tightening and declining overrated or underrated for you, Stephen Carter?

Carter 1:19:24

Overrated. It would matter, I suppose, if the election were held today, which is usually the question that they are asking. Polls move around with elections. It's one of the things that happens. Pundits and pollsters, political scientists, they'll try and figure something out around it. But right now, it doesn't matter at all. What matters is how strong the campaigns are and how much they're resonating with Canadians.

Zain 1:19:50

Corey, liberal support declining in the polls, overrated, underrated heading into this election?

Zain 1:19:54

Both, Zane. Thank you, Corey. It's overrated.

Corey 1:19:59

It's overrated because polls often tighten. It doesn't really mean too much. You see sort of almost a political regression towards the mean during an election, right? right? People gravitate

Corey 1:20:09

gravitate towards the parties they were going to vote for when push comes to shove, right? You know, maybe they were going to vote for a third party, but now that it's serious, now it's an election, they'll come in and that tightens up the polls. But on top of that, the parties triangulate, and they're doing their jobs, and they're looking for accessible voters, and they start to hoover them up. And then all of a sudden, you're in a situation where things are a little bit tighter. So overrated. Underrated, however, because that tightening, Well, it might just be baked into the nature of politics. It matters a lot. You may find yourself in a situation where all of a sudden the liberals aren't just not looking at a majority, but might very much be in doubt whether they win an election. So both.

Carter 1:20:47

God damn it. Take a position, Hogan.

Carter 1:20:52

I'm going to start the

Zain 1:20:53

the last question with you. You're Justin Trudeau. You're going to sleep. You're resting your head on your pillow in Rideau Cottage. Does he get to sleep? He's still prime minister, right? So he still gets Rideau Cottage, right? Is that not true? Yes,

Zain 1:21:05

prime minister. Okay, perfect.

Zain 1:21:06

I'm just making sure, just clarifying.

Zain 1:21:09

Rest his head on a pillow. What is his worry tonight? His one worry, Corey, after day one on this campaign, crystallize it for me, the one worry in Justin Trudeau's head tonight.

Corey 1:21:22

What if this all falls out? What if this hair just leaves my head?

Carter 1:21:27

What if he winds up looking like Stephen Carter? Yeah,

Zain 1:21:29

Yeah, Carter, some of these write themselves. That was one of them. Thank you, Corey. You're Justin Trudeau. You're one worry after day one. You've probably got several, but the top worry, I should say, for you, Justin Trudeau, on this first night of the election.

Carter 1:21:48

Am I putting enough breath behind each word, or should I put a little bit more?

Zain 1:21:53

I fucking hate you guys. Thank you, Shane,

Carter 1:21:56

for asking me. that vital question that I

Carter 1:22:03

I can answer in radio voice.

Zain 1:22:08

We'll leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 935 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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