Episode 942: You have five seconds

Zain 0:02

This is a Strategist

Zain 0:03

Strategist episode. Zain, can I have a second more time on this? Give me a second. I've got less time than Corey on this entire show. You've got to respond to that. I've got to respond to that. Why

Carter 0:15

Why is it that you're favoring him? Why does the moderation suck?

Zain 0:24

It's good. I like that we all had the same joke to begin with.

Carter 0:30

it's good times we should do this all the time

Zain 0:34

corey i have five seconds for you go ahead carter

Zain 0:36

carter i've got five seconds for you please five seconds five seconds for you let me tell

Carter 0:39

tell you what the problem is there zane i don't five seconds five seconds so i'm

Carter 0:45

i'm not even gonna get to my answer before the five seconds is up cory

Zain 0:49

cory cory um is your mom at home yet five seconds for you

Zain 0:54

your what you put your bubba okay

Corey 0:56

can we just say can we just say that debate format was as messy as we we threatened as we warned we

Carter 1:02

we told them they did not listen and this is what happens you know it's not like we have experience with three egomaniacs all trying to talk at the same time let's

Zain 1:13

let's let's use that to our advantage and move it on to our first segment our first

Zain 1:17

first segment we should have all just watched tennis instead guys the u.s open is producing a finalist from canada uh but that is of course not what we wanted to watch we should have we should have just watched the replay even though we knew the result uh because we ended up with this cory let's break this thing down let's give some live hot take reaction to what was the english consortium debate and carter maybe i'll start here tell us the genesis uh you you may not remember but let's start why did we have this fucking format today and and where's the consortium debate come from because many people are complaining about two things number one the

Zain 1:57

the format of course like us and we'll get into it but number two the the conversation leading up to and i can i can bet even leading out of this is like why the fuck did we only have one of these things we spent 80 seconds on reconciliation we spent like five seconds on housing like what the fuck is going on here so carter do you have any history here that you can lay on us i

Carter 2:16

i don't have the history i do have some rationale i mean you know whenever you're involved in a campaign well the last thing you want to do is have all of your nights taken up by forums right and it doesn't matter if you're running for school trustee or if you're running for prime minister uh you or you don't run for prime minister you know what i mean um doesn't matter what the office is everybody wants you to attend a forum and and all

Carter 2:37

all of the parties are united in their in their disdain for the idea of saying no to the forum so they create a process uh

Carter 2:46

to enable themselves to um be you

Carter 2:50

know be constrained right they all want to be constrained no one wants to be facing a request from um mothers against drunk driving right because then no one wants to say no to mothers against drunk driving but this type of committee creating a commission or or creating a debate consortium which are two different things apparently gives you the ability to say well we're doing it through this group and that group then has the responsibility of producing it. It's not unusual to this country we see the debates being produced in the United States in the same fashion. So this is the way that debates are traditionally done and it is a get out of jail free card for the parties themselves. Even locally you'll see some parties that don't want to attend forums or debates debates um you know the conservatives are are rather uh famous

Carter 3:40

famous for it where they won't send their conservative candidates to the debates because they'd rather be out talking to calgarians or talking to canadians on the doors and uh you

Carter 3:49

you know i guess i get that because you know you wouldn't want this to be every night would you i mean this was painful enough back to back with french and english but it just gets worse and worse if we had to imagine that we'd be going going through a two-hour debate every week up until the election.

Zain 4:05

Corey, anything to add on format before I jump into what we saw tonight?

Corey 4:09

Just the history of it. In 2015, Stephen Harper's conservatives broke with the tradition of going to these debates that had been set up by media consortium, right? And as a result, after that election, there was a commission put on leaders' debates that started running these debates with almost an imprimatur of, This is the independent group that puts it together. It's got representation from different, I think, political backgrounds and chaired by somebody who is seen universally as nonpartisan, chaired by the former governor general in this case. And after the 2019 debate, there were a bunch of recommendations, most of which seem to have been terrible based on the end result that we got here. uh because while the 2019 debate was no walk in the park this was i described it on twitter as it was like the

Corey 4:59

the pachinko machine of debates it was just an assault on the senses the noises the sound you know the the visuals it was just it was so much going on there were so many characters it was like it was like a a fucking uh martin book you know the game of thrones it's like who's this person why are they here why are we why do we care about them we could have done with a

Carter 5:20

a couple more more beheadings though and

Corey 5:23

and jesus they each brought in a different flavor right rosemary barton was a lot more aggressive i think maybe perhaps the point of propriety and in a debate like this um evan solomon he uh he just sort of took over the whole thing i think i saw a look on sachi curl's face that says i'm gonna kick your ass after this evan um and then some of the others were just more here's my question okay you're the moderator sachi and go on it but But anyways, the whole thing was – like

Corey 5:51

like the fact that we can talk so much about these dynamics, that's bad because this is supposed to be about the leaders and their ideas, and it was a little messy. And

Zain 5:58

And they're supposed to almost be like background. You're not supposed to notice them in a sense, especially – well, maybe let's start there. Carter, let's start here with moderation. Well, we're going to break down the list. Are we going to – okay. We're

Carter 6:11

We're going to do this. You know what I want? We're going to do this because you don't get to control this. You don't get to control this, okay? This isn't about you. Who won the debate? who

Carter 6:20

won the debate we'll get

Zain 6:21

get to the candidates

Carter 6:21

candidates the people who watched who watched the tennis match of course it was given and

Zain 6:25

and it was given in the segment title we should have all watched tennis all of us even those of us who are undecided voters with the dials they would have had a better sense of what went on if they watched tennis uh carter let's talk about moderation what did you make of it and and why some people actually wasn't universally penned i have to say it was it was given some props online but carter where did where do you stand on moderation overall in terms of the main moderator as being a i

Zain 6:52

guess not a journalist but someone with clearly moderation experience of moderating debates and then having the political uh sort of uh leads of each of the networks kind of step in thereafter i

Carter 7:05

i think o2o won the debate i think that the point

Carter 7:14

Okay. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. Um, it's an impossible task to moderate these things. Right. And if you don't give them the tools, then they can't moderate. Let me give you an example.

Zain 7:24

Let me give you an example.

Carter 7:27

If you'll just let me finish. Let me give an example. The Oscars, you may be familiar with the Oscars, right? They give everybody a a chance to speak for about 30 seconds and then what happens the orchestra plays because people are assholes and they will speak for longer than their 30 seconds yeah but if they know they can get away with it let me finish let me finish just let me finish if they know they can

Zain 7:48

can get away with it i need to respond to that if they

Corey 7:51

they know they can if i got

Corey 7:54

this is he's had more time if

Zain 8:00

mr mr mr mr carter mr carter that's it's your time. Mr. Hogan, who won the debate? We'll go on that track for you. And then we'll come back, Mr. Carter, with your track. And then I'll bring a third guy on for no reason whatsoever.

Corey 8:11

think O'Toole won the debate. And why is that? O'Toole won the debate because I thought that Annamie Paul did very, very well. I agree. I thought Jagmeet Singh did pretty well. And I think Aaron O'Toole was very strong and looked prime ministerial, which was his job. I wouldn't say that he necessarily got it on points. But But the person I didn't name on that list is Justin

Carter 8:34

Justin Trudeau. The thing with the moderation is the moderator doesn't have the ability to push up and down the volume controls and actually kill someone's microphone. Then it's never, ever going to work, right? Because ultimately, you have to be able to control the other person's actions for the moderation to actually be successful. OK,

Zain 8:51

OK, I need you to stop right there. I'm going to bring in Vane Zelji. He's a reporter with a different network, and he's going to ask you a series of questions. uh mr hogan uh you wear a hat usually while you record you also look like a dumb fuck when you record can you explain why you look like such a dumb fuck with that hat on that

Corey 9:10

was a little harsh that was really harsh i'm

Corey 9:15

i'm a 40 year old guy i'm a balding man of course i cover my head

Zain 9:20

i mean i'm sorry this is zane velchery my mom's

Corey 9:22

mom's not in a home yet yeah

Zain 9:27

that's right my this is zane velgey speaking my job is just to keep the time the other guy is going to ask you the questions i will just keep the time i used to ask the questions but now i keep the time and then later i will be asking the questions when someone else keeps the time but

Zain 9:43

ultimately the multi and that's someone else that's

Carter 9:46

that's someone else will never work right you need to have a person who's in charge because the multi-format moderator isn't ever going to function properly because okay

Corey 9:55

okay this was good now i think it's time for the free-for-all what's everyone think i

Zain 10:00

just want to say i think it was pretty interesting to watch because we still

Zain 10:13

okay have we have we said everything we've needed to say by what we've done thus far do we i think we've dug this hole deep but the show is yours I can't say no do it no but I here's the thing I

Zain 10:27

said everything we needed to say

Carter 10:35

Anna May Paul did well yeah

Zain 10:38

she did did Trudeau lose guys let's actually start here I've got to come on

Carter 10:43

no no no don't make us do this because the person who wins or loses isn't going to be known for 48 hours that's

Carter 10:48

48 hours from now we're going to be able to answer the question So,

Zain 10:51

but here's the thing, we still have 48 hours in an election that's only got 10 days left. So 48 hours is critical. So, you know, the conversation right now,

Zain 11:01

Carter, sure, you know, in all intents and purposes, we won't know, we won't know what issue, we don't know what worked, but Corey, you got your hand up, lay it on me. Well,

Corey 11:09

Well, I think that Carter's point is an important one because it's not so much the debate, and we've talked about this, but it's how the debate is packaged after the debate, what those clips are that come out of it, how people react to it in general, and the narratives that come from yokels like us who say, oh, I don't know, it wasn't enough for Trudeau, and then people start questioning his momentum or things like that. I can tell you who I thought had stronger performances and who's more likely to get those narratives coming out of it, but I will also confess that I often read these things wrong because I'm looking at them through an entirely different lens. In 2015 in Alberta, a debate that's notorious across the country where Jim Prentiss and Rachel Notley were arguing with each other and Jim Prentiss said, you

Corey 11:52

you know, math is difficult, right? The math is hard line. We know it is now, right?

Corey 11:57

We recorded right after that. It was episode 527. I remember. And I didn't even mention the

Corey 12:03

the Math is Hard line. I don't think either of you did either. No,

Corey 12:09

We're going to run the tape.

Corey 12:13

hear that silence, audience? No, you've lost the tape.

Carter 12:16

is part of the Chester vault, isn't it? Don't

Corey 12:19

Don't make me drop this episode on our feed.

Carter 12:22

Oh, no. Don't do it. That was a bad episode.

Carter 12:26

a bad episode. First of all, it was only 22 minutes long. You recall that.

Zain 12:30

I do recall that.

Carter 12:31

that. Yeah, it was 22 minutes long. Yeah.

Carter 12:34

We haven't gotten any close to that since.

Zain 12:37

I also remember, I'm now recalling what the episode was called, yes.

Zain 12:42

Corey, yes, no one mentioned that. Your point being that there could have been something today that resonated with who it was intended for, and we were not those people. That's

Zain 12:54

for you, what are you looking at in terms of package moments? Was there anything that stood out to you? Every party's doing their spin as we record right now. All the leaders are doing their scrum, saying what they thought about it. Was there anything from your perspective that any of the leaders could grab onto that you thought was packageable and useful for the point that they're trying to make in the next 48 to 72 hours?

Carter 13:19

So, I mean, I think that one of the the things that these things are for is if you can get one of those moments right and you and you package the moment you show your video to everybody i think that this format was so disastrous and maybe this is the point maybe this is what the parties ultimately want is a format that is so impossible to clip something from and actually make it your own right this was a gong show from the beginning uh that seemed to get worse as they got tired uh i think the last 25 30 minutes they They were exhausted, and it looked like it. And

Carter 13:52

And so I don't think that there is that clippable moment. And I also don't think there is that knockout

Carter 13:58

knockout punch that has come in a couple of debates. But I'll also tell you this. To Corey's point, we don't see the knockout punch. The knockout punch comes much later often, and we also will misremember the knockout punch. We will misremember the knockout punches. as uh uh you had a choice um mr turner uh that that particular line when you actually watch the videotape doesn't come across the same way as it does in the packaging or in the remembering so i

Carter 14:28

i i think that this is going to be really difficult to package from i think it was kind of a gong show i think that the best package piece uh over the last 48 hours actually came from trudeau chastising the rebel.

Carter 14:40

And that might be the best

Carter 14:41

best that any of the political parties can hope for.

Zain 14:47

I'll go back to the French debate in a second, Carter. I want to try to get Corey's opinion on this as well. If he saw anything from his strategist brain, I'm not asking you from your what's going to resonate with the public brain, but if you were helping one of these parties, did you see, oh, damn, like that Singh response on reconciliation on indigenous issues, Or a line by Trudeau or something by Annamie Paul that you'd say, I'm definitely turning this into, you know, a contender for debate moment as it, to Carter's point, as the malleable nature of it kind of solidifies over the next 48 hours.

Corey 15:22

You know, I think the sing line on reconciliation, you took a knee and then you took them to court, was better before he repeated it. Yeah, three or

Carter 15:31

or four times and now on Twitter too. That

Corey 15:33

That was unnecessary. But it was actually, I thought, a pretty good debate for canned lines. And even just attacks in general. O'Toole had a line about, hey,

Corey 15:43

hey, your ambitions are not matched by achievement, which I thought was a pretty good line. and an encapsulation about how many people feel about Trudeau with this almost performative element that is often criticized. You know, the very high-minded language and then the retreat. Last election under first-past-the-post, followed by Monsef up there with a formula pretending it's the most indecipherable thing ever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Proportional representation.

Corey 16:08

Annemie Paul had some great lines, and I thought that she did a good job of executing them early to take off some of the attacks, and when the attacks came, game that made them ultimately seem shitty right anime paul in

Corey 16:20

particular did a thing about i've had to overcome uh you know a lot of difficulties to get here and be on this stage and you could absolutely understand what she was alluding to there and then when trudeau followed it up less than a minute later saying i'm not taking caucus management lessons from you it's like he just came down as well he came off as an utter prick yeah in that particular moment and so i thought that But she deployed them to the most tactical advantage throughout it. She picked her points. She used silence. Like, her lines, I think, are more clippable in some ways. She didn't try to deliver her lines while people were talking over her, which I think is a mistake some of the others did, which is probably why Singh went back to his so many times. He's looking for the right bundling of it. Yeah.

Corey 17:00

And just overthinking it. And some of the lines are just really strong. Paul saying, I'm getting on my smartphone better than you're getting from the intelligence service, apparently, is just a great line, fantastic line. I don't think it's going to be enough to fundamentally change the situation for her, because people will say that she was good. But unless you happen to be in a riding where she or her candidates have a chance, you're still probably not going to move your vote to the green.

Corey 17:29

In terms of the last 20 minutes of the debate, which Carter talked about, and I want to talk about too. yeah start

Corey 17:35

seemed exhausted everyone just punchy just crazy all of them and I think that the format and this is the last I'll talk about the format I promise well I probably no

Carter 17:44

no you can't make that promise pretty quickly but

Corey 17:48

I think that lent that that was part of it I mean there's just so many balls you're having to juggle there's so much incoming is am I going to hear from random person and yeah

Corey 17:57

yeah I don't know uh Dartmouth am I going to hear from uh

Corey 18:00

uh all of a a sudden a reporter who's going to walk on stage what version of that reporter am i getting am i getting the interrogator am i getting the softball questions it was wildly variable and it was even variable from uh sachi i thought the first question when i first started i thought oh my god what a what a softball interview we're in for when she said like jagmeet singh you're incredibly popular and you know everything is great in your life and your policies are bold but

Corey 18:27

but why should we we believe you could do them. It's just like, how are you going to implement your awesomeness was basically the question.

Corey 18:33

But then she followed it up with a couple of daggers to the others. And I don't think that was showing favor. I think it was just how it happened to kind of roll out

Zain 18:39

out there. And she was

Corey 18:40

was really quite a, quite an aggressive moderator, I think in a good sense. And I think that her moderation was generally pretty

Corey 18:47

pretty strong. It was not that in the background moderation we've alluded to, right? It was the different version. It was the, it was the pugilist narrator, but it was a great version of that one.

Zain 18:58

Carter, I asked this question earlier in terms of did Trudeau lose? I'm not going to ask that again. Did he do the things he needed to do to

Zain 19:07

to meet expectations, at least in the moment today? day i

Carter 19:11

don't think so i think that you

Carter 19:14

know when you're the prime minister the premier or you know the mayor or whatever your

Carter 19:19

yeah your job is to survive um and arguably he survived um but

Carter 19:29

he he comes across in these things like he's either uh tremendously underprepared or tremendously overprepared and i can never tell the difference with him because oftentimes they look the same you know do i have too many lines to choose from do i i've memorized too many things i'm not sure which one i'm i'm supposed to use here can often look like uh you didn't prepare yeah you didn't prepare enough um and i think that he's probably over prepared i think that he is of you know i've

Carter 19:55

i've said before i'll say it again i don't think this is a you know the liberals are a team that actually knows how to campaign particularly well well. And I think that this is part of it. They also don't know how to prepare him for the body language and the construction of how he

Carter 20:13

he occupies space. And I find that particularly frustrating. I thought that O'Toole looked better in this space and looked more comfortable in this space. Singh, for sure, looked more comfortable in this space. And a lot of what we're picking up on isn't necessarily just the language that's being used, but the body language that's being is. And, you

Carter 20:31

know, I think that that comes down to, is

Carter 20:33

is this a debate team that really understands what debates are about?

Carter 20:37

And I think that the liberal debate team thinks that debates are about quips and lines, instead of being about presence and answers.

Zain 20:47

Corey, you're nodding your head, respond to that. And then let's quickly transition back to O'Toole in terms of the difference that we saw between the two, because there was a noticeable difference in And even the tenor of how they spoke and the cadence of their speech, which I think translated quite differently on stage, at least to me. But Corey, your reaction to Trudeau first, and then let's whip it back to O'Toole. I

Corey 21:10

I would agree. I would also say Trudeau had, in my opinion, by far the most uneven performance. His first two segments, he was so overwhelmed, right? He came out, like I said, with that haymaker against Paul. And then just everything about his voice seemed almost frantic. He looked almost a little bit sweaty at certain points, and it was in many ways contrasted to, like, by

Corey 21:30

by far the most crisp, immaculate suit and all of that. He just looked so put together from the neck down, and it just accentuated him looking not quite as comfortable, I think, from the neck up. And so first two segments, really, I thought he felt like he was under total assault, and he was acting like a man under total assault. He was strongest on the reconciliation section. And what Carter said really, I think, resonated with me, this notion of too many lines or too few lines. In general, I would say he really tried to overstuff his arguments. And that led to a lot of rapid speech, which I think led to that feeling of being overwhelmed that I'm talking about, which you really saw in sections one, two, and five, in my opinion. But

Corey 22:10

But everybody was so overwhelmed and so overstuffed in the last section as they tried to just do everything that they possibly could to get every argument in that

Corey 22:17

that they hadn't had an opportunity to do.

Zain 22:20

So, Corey, on the O'Toole front, you know what's interesting to me is I thought he would be at a strategic disadvantage. He was all the way at the end. He wasn't beside Trudeau. He wasn't really in the mix. I thought he'd kind of get forgotten. And sometimes it kind of felt like he did, like he wasn't in the heat of it in the middle. I think the positioning of the podiums helped Paul in a certain way, because even in the wide shots, you could kind of see her in the mix almost every single time, especially if it was on Singh or Trudeau. But O'Toole did seem to hold his own in a very different manner. He was at the end, but when they came to him, he wasn't really being attacked all that much. And what I really noticed was how he presented his arguments, which was significantly different than the way Trudeau presented his sort of platform arguments and lines.

Corey 23:04

Well, he really went for reasonable. He was obviously shooting for that. He was trying to shoot for not scary, prime ministerial, and he delivered a lot of lines that I think were well

Corey 23:13

well-constructed, better than they were clever. And again, this speaks to Carter's point about answering questions and creating a presence, right? And I think in particular about his one on childcare, and my wife will disagree vehemently, she did at the moment as we were watching the debate, but I thought his child cancer was stellar. Because in many ways, and I'm a parent of kids around that age, the

Corey 23:35

the liberal plan is such a no-brainer for a family

Corey 23:38

family like mine. It's thousands of dollars if it were to exist right now, but it won't exist right now. And that's what O'Toole really did a good job of kind of underlining. In five years, some people will have cases or places. This is a plan that gives you money now to deal with your child care concerns. And it struck me as a very interesting thing in terms of just simple demographics. You have a child who needs early learning child care for

Corey 24:05

for such a small amount of time in the grand scheme of things. And if this plan is not going to come for five years, if you have a kid, it's not going to help you. and if you don't yet like you have to be the master of all planners to be like in our master plan in two years we're going to have a kid and then that kid can benefit from this yeah this policy

Corey 24:21

who votes for something that far out in that much of a context so i thought it was a really good way to de-venom um the attacks that would come from the liberals otherwise on on uh that particular policy but it wasn't just that he did a good job of explaining the conservative positions and making them seem moderate on environment i thought the attacks on trudeau were particularly effective. That was the second section where I said that I thought Trudeau was really flailing because he was really under assault from a lot of people. But when he said, yeah, you're talking about bigger commitments, but you haven't met the commitments you had.

Corey 24:54

That's a half truth. Can we just say because the liberal plan right now, people do see as being able to hit these more ambitious targets. Not everybody, but many people do. But he's

Corey 25:04

he's not wrong that we haven't managed to hit these targets. We sign on for Kyoto, we don't meet it. We sign on for Paris, we don't meet it. And what O'Toole suggested was he was going to be the reasonable guy who's going to say what he's going to do and do what he's going to say. And it just, it's such a contrast to the image of Trudeau that the conservatives want to portray, which is one who just gives high-minded statements, but doesn't follow it up with action. And the understated nature of O'Toole's performance, I think, was very much in line with those images they're trying to present, not just of O'Toole, but also of the prime minister in contrast. You

Zain 25:36

You know, what he also had help with in making that argument was Jagmeet Singh, who represented that same argument that, you know, these are my words, but you're the victory lap prime minister. You take the victory lap before even winning the race or sometimes even running the race. And you saw some heated exchanges between Singh and Trudeau. And Carter, that's what I want to get to you with you is one of the things we brought up constantly throughout our election episodes is what we expect is going to happen with the red-orange switchers. Did tonight Can I change anything for you? Because one of the arguments that Trudeau brought up was the cynicism of progressives regarding, you know, his leadership, used reconciliation as one of them, the proof points of that, that like it's harmful and damaging and cynical to say we haven't done anything in that sense. Do you feel like after this debate, zooming

Zain 26:25

zooming out even a bit from what we've seen over the last couple of days, on the item of red-orange switchers, do you feel like this is going to be the same movie we've always seen? Or do you feel like there's something different in the water with Jagmeet Singh that he might actually keep and retain some of his votes by the strategies he's been deploying on stage and around over the last, let's say, three to five days?

Carter 26:47

Well, I think that what we saw with Singh is that he was the great hitter of the tree to shake off some of the leaves, right? And he was just trying to smack the tree as hard as he could to shake the leaves off the tree with the expectation that they would fall into his pile, right? And he was going to be able to gather more votes as a result. And I had to wonder if some of the attacks weren't effective. You know, they were effective for sure. but did they actually land the the leaves in the in the in the ndp pile or did they go over you know could they conceivably go to the old tool pile and this comes back to um how he was being used he was the pit bull and the attack dog now this is something that we're yet that we're relatively used to we've we've commented on the podcast how we didn't understand how the liberals were using freeland as an attack dog right because uh we felt that she was ill ill

Carter 27:39

ill cast in that that particular role well sing seemed to be cast in that role in the in the debate tonight and

Carter 27:45

and the beneficiary of it i'm not sure that he was actually the beneficiary you're talking about red orange shifts and i've been thinking an awful lot more about red blue shifts um you know will are

Carter 27:57

are there soft liberals that were hit by you know so trudeau was hit by sing

Carter 28:03

and then o'toole was able to pick them up with his his rather um steady reasonableness and And that's what I was left thinking in it. Of course, time will tell, you know, the daily tracking polls that we'll try and interpret tomorrow and the next day and the next day will tell a tale. But I

Carter 28:22

I do wonder if part of this is that the NDP's continual role problem, right? And it's something that I've talked about for a number of podcasts in a row where I maintain no one thinks of them as a government. So if you're not going to ever be thought of as a government, then don't behave like you're going to be government because this is what happens you become cast as the pit bull right and maybe if he was just the pit bull then we were expecting him to be the pit bull it would be better uh but it wasn't particularly good tonight even though his performance was super strong cory

Zain 28:53

cory same question to you around the the orange red shift from what you saw tonight and what you've seen over the last couple of days your thoughts well

Corey 29:00

well it clearly seemed designed to to To blunt that and talk about the benefits of the NDP over the liberals, I think – I

Corey 29:08

I mean, this was just my impression. Perhaps it's entirely wrong and somebody can sabermetrics me on it. But I really got the sense that Singh went after the prime minister two, three times as much as he ever went after O'Toole. And in fact, he was often the hype man for O'Toole's arguments to the point about thinking, yeah, you don't get it done. That's a great point. Yeah, you are a do-nothing prime minister. And so it feels a bit like Singh's taking a moonshot here. What he's trying to do is get ahead of the liberals and replace the liberals, supplant them, get all of that progressive vote, much like we saw in 2011. That's quite a swing. And whether it works or not, TBD. But it also meant that he wasn't trying to make O'Toole seem even scarier. So the strategy may have worked in two different ways. I have to say, and I really felt it today, Singh has, and I've thought this ever since the first time I ever met Jagmeet Singh, before he even was running for the leader, he has about 20% more bro energy than I can handle.

Zain 30:04

You said that, and I don't sense it. I feel like if I was on that stage, I'd say dude more than he does, which is zero. I think he's had to really restrain it, but where do you see the bro energy coming from? You know

Corey 30:15

know what? It's just – it is a lot of the tone and the words he uses, and maybe that's not fair because – but, you know, it's not like – he and I are the same age. It's not as though he's like, well, he's just a younger generation. I don't get him, right? Yeah. He always feels like he's one – this is my favorite Ben Folds 5 song away from doing a keg stand or offering to bench press somebody. And I don't know. I mean it's just like there's just a – there's a casualness to him which makes him so great in so many different situations and so lovable and just so approachable and accessible and all of those attributes you want for a leader. But when you have these moments that are supposed

Corey 30:50

supposed to be so gravita, like he stands out different and maybe that's not fair. is

Zain 30:56

is that is that a bad thing like i

Corey 30:58

i don't think it necessarily is

Corey 30:59

is i didn't say it was a bad thing i said it's too much for my tastes but i do think that uh it was a bad contrast why it was a stark contrast with the other leaders we

Carter 31:09

we cast our leaders differently right

Carter 31:11

right we cast leaders in the same fashion i mean trudeau has the same type of energy in a different format right when he comes across as the overly earnest uh romeo uh from romeo and juliet in my university theater theater days right you know you know that's such an image

Zain 31:31

image that's a rich tap

Zain 31:33

teacher to another from

Carter 31:34

from one yes um anyways

Carter 31:37

anyways my point being that i think that it does matter because we are not consciously reviewing

Carter 31:45

reviewing the words that are said we are not consciously listening to every word that is uttered and making the best possible right you know decision from a rational analysis analysis of these utterances. In fact, we're doing something very, very different. We're reaching snap judgment that

Carter 32:02

we then rationalize afterwards. And if you get an energy off of someone, if you get the bro energy, as Corey is describing it, it is very difficult to undo that brand positioning. I don't

Zain 32:15

don't know. Yeah, it's interesting that you think that. I get what you're saying. To me, it seems incredibly sincere. It doesn't matter if it's sincere.

Carter 32:23

sincere. you could be sincere it's still bad oh

Zain 32:26

oh i don't know if i agree with that well

Carter 32:28

well i don't mean

Zain 32:29

hey i've got one weird question for you before i move it on to to yesterday okay

Zain 32:35

well you had five seconds to answer it carter you've got five seconds uh yeah five seconds go ahead uh cory

Carter 32:39

cory had way more time in the last answer but have you

Zain 32:42

you ever seen anyone drop a curse word at a debate like out of like just

Zain 32:47

just being like out of frustration being like what the fuck man like you had your your opportunity to do this. I felt like Jagmeet Singh was like one deviation

Zain 32:55

deviation away from doing that today in one of those heated exchanges, especially related to taking indigenous kids to court. Like he was one beat away from like, what the fuck are you talking about, man? You did take. And I'm wondering how that would play. I'm just curious from your perspective. Like, is that authentic? Or do you feel like that would totally just be a invalidator

Zain 33:16

invalidator of someone's prime ministerial ambitions i

Carter 33:19

i don't know if it would be an invalidator but i do think that it goes to what is the energy what is the what is the brand that you're trying to create and and i'm not sure that that that

Carter 33:28

that that person gets cast in the uh prime

Carter 33:31

prime minister's role but then again you know trudeau fought brazo so how the fuck would i know what these people you know what we're looking for at any particular given time i

Zain 33:40

i i know there's no hard and fast rule here cory and this question just popped to my mind i'm curious if you've got a thought on it yeah

Corey 33:47

yeah well i i do agree with steven that there is a certain typecasting that people do and they think well what should my prime minister act like and um and that's part of what we talked about when i was talking about o'toole and right he

Corey 33:59

he seemed like he was trying to be central casting for a bland conservative prime minister of

Corey 34:04

a westminster system like

Zain 34:05

like stock video yeah

Corey 34:07

yeah stock video is the perfect example of that that. But I do want to stress that some of the really truly transformational leaders throughout history are the ones who say, that's a dumb mold. And I'm going to do something that doesn't look presidential or prime ministerial. And

Corey 34:21

they'll do things like they'll go on Arsenio Hall and play the saxophone. Or they'll do talk shows. And I'm talking about Bill Clinton in both of these cases. Or they will all of a sudden go and do a whistle-stop tour on a train, which politicians didn't do before. And somebody made the decision at one point to just campaign for the first time for the job too yeah

Corey 34:39

sometimes you got to break the mold to make the new mold and i'm not knocking him i i am sincerely not he he provided a different contrast with the prime minister and he comes off as genuine yeah

Corey 34:50

and and so i think one of you said the prime minister has a bro energy too but it's a little bit different his bro energy to me is more like the guy who's like dude would you pay me 50 to eat this coaster and then weep to you

Corey 35:04

later about how important It is to treat everybody with respect, right? And quote you some poetry he learned earlier that day. Sings is more like, he's a good dude, and you'd like to hang out with him. And, you know, he'd be a really fun guy. And he wouldn't mind if he had some sort of like goofy bullshit, like things that were not necessarily very cool about him. He's like, Oh, I just love this, you know, Britney song or something, right? And so I really like the guy. The question is, is

Corey 35:34

is that going to play? And I guess we'll find out. But I did like that there was a contrast. It's too much for my tastes, but

Corey 35:41

but I could see it being very appealing.

Zain 35:44

Carter, let's zoom out. Last couple of days, let's talk about some of the wins each of the two frontrunners have had. You talked about the rebel media, smackdown, takedown, whatever. I'm sure many folks have heard it already in the scrum yesterday after French debate. You had that plus what seemed to be the line of the night for Trudeau yesterday in the French debate where he told Blanchet that he does not have a monopoly over Quebec. For O'Toole, he had a couple of wins tonight. night uh you know consensus is still gelling so i can't say we're there in consensus just yet but seemed to have a good night at least didn't get attacked or had the sharp elbows that many thought he would get tonight at the very least and then of course he also gets the tacit but not so tacit endorsement of the most popular premier in the country in lego um so carter zooming out of tonight looking at the two front runners give me stock of the race who's uh who's doing better right now after the debate behind them with some of the the wind behind their back with some of the items i've mentioned i may have missed a few but i think those are the major ones of the last at least 42 to 70 48 to 72 hours well

Carter 36:51

well i mean i think that there's no question that uh o'toole is in a much better spot than trudeau um in

Carter 37:00

fact i was thinking about this today you know you're watching we're watching the ppc growth and it's you know whether it's seven points or 11 points it's really irrelevant it's not two it's not within the margin of error of zero um that's a significant shift and imagine where o'toole would be if bernier wasn't taking eight

Carter 37:19

eight percent right if if if if o'toole had been able to hold on to um the far right in the same fashion that he's held on to the center of the uh of uh the canadian electorate and this would be a very big shift shift um so you know as much as the left loves to talk about vote split costing them um it you know true oh tools inability to hold on to the far right wing uh may cost him quite a bit because had he been able to hold the right and the center of the conservative movement together he would be unstoppable against trudeau right now um he hasn't been able to uh because it looks like if you move to the center you know in today's environment moving to the center does cost you the right because it's very polarized and very, very fraught with things like the anti-vax movement and things like that and Trump-isms.

Carter 38:13

But basically, I think that O'Toole is probably in a much stronger spot. And I think the other thing is that they're running on a runway, right? Yeah. You know, we talked just a couple of days. It feels like a couple of days ago we were talking about, well, in the next 12 days, we'll want them to do this. And then the 12 days after that, we'll want them to do that. and you're down to 10 you don't have you have a play left you have a play left so you better make sure that it works because um after you call the play after the debate that's it so the the meeting that's happening right now in liberal hq better be a fucking good one cory

Zain 38:50

cory carter's absolutely right on timeline i'm going to ask you the same question in a different way um to me the legault No endorsement. The blast zone on that seems significant for O'Toole's gains in Quebec. Where do you kind of stack the leaders up based on what you've seen over the last 48 hours and some of their big and small wins that they've had?

Corey 39:10

I didn't watch the French language debate. I just caught the commentary about it. Obviously, the big moments that popped through were the idea of Trudeau fighting and saying, hey, I'm a Quebecer too. You don't have a monopoly on Quebec. Quebec.

Corey 39:25

I do wonder, though, Zane, if that didn't in some ways antagonize the premier of Quebec and maybe make the statement today a little more forceful. Because like, oh, no, you don't speak for Quebec, Justin Trudeau. I speak for Quebec. And it's the kind of thing that petty people get petty about. And I could easily see, even if it was always planned that he would make a statement a bit like this, that the statement may have been a bit more forceful as a result of Justin Trudeau's caping for Quebec and the idea that he too can champion Quebec values.

Zain 39:54

And the timing, of course, right? Like, just, yeah.

Corey 39:57

The other thing is, the other big moment was, of course, that rebel media moment. Yeah.

Corey 40:03

And this was, of course, rebel media wanted to go and be accredited for the debate. They were not.

Corey 40:10

They appealed. They got a court injunction. They got invited to it.

Corey 40:13

The people who denied them were the press gallery. It was not the Trudeau liberals or the government of Canada. But the

Corey 40:20

the question – like the shallowest, dumbest question from Rebel Media was basically, don't you feel bad that you were wrong and here we are, right? Yeah. And let's talk about the strategy of that. Let's detour the strategy of that for

Zain 40:33

On Rebel Media's part.

Corey 40:34

They could not have done more of a favor to Justin Trudeau. So Justin Trudeau walks up to this ball, this big fat softball that's sitting on the tee and just goes pop. And

Corey 40:44

And there it is over the fence because he just beats the utter fucking shit out of them. Starting with, well, first of all, that wasn't my decision, idiots. But you're a bunch of garbage. I don't even want to call you journalists. You own a lot of the discord in this country right now. My word's not his, but I just truncated a minute of a rant into that. Just absolutely wiped the floor with them. And by the way, I've been very critical of how sometimes he delivers it in a phony seeming sense. He seemed sincere. He seemed seething, but in control. It was a really good moment for him. Now, if the rebel media yokels had even just gone out there and said, I've got a legitimate question for you, if Trudeau had done the exact same thing, the rebel could have at least said, like, he just didn't want to answer the question. He's an asshole. He avoids questions. He just puts the attack back on journalists. But by not even going to the trouble of asking something substantive, they set themselves up to be the biggest wrestling heels of all time. And they got thrown to the fucking mat for it. And it was pretty cool to see. It

Zain 41:44

It was ironic because, you know, many have accused Trudeau for having this election as a referendum on his awesomeness. And their question to him was a referendum on their awesomeness in some ways. Good point. So it was there was a bit of meta, you know, irony to that. But Carter, I need to ask you guys this from a strategist perspective as we close this out. Right. We're going to record again on Sunday. The world will change certainly by then, because by Sunday we'll be, what, at that point, I guess, by that night, seven days away, right? And like advanced voting will be. So give me the strategy perspective, Carter. You said it has to be a fucking kick-ass meeting tonight in Liberal HQ. Let's start teasing out that a bit more. What does that meeting need to include from what you've seen? You can't use the data of how tonight landed. You've got to feel, but you don't really have a read. But you've got to make some decisions if you have a read in campaigns. That's how it works. works what are some of the the items that are on the agenda for tonight uh in in liberal hq cory i'll tell you up there on after in conservative hq for the same conversation but carter get us started what does that kick-ass meeting tonight need to look like what

Carter 42:51

what negatives do we have how do we unroll the negatives where are our strengths what are we protecting do

Zain 42:56

time can i can i interrupt you do we have time to land digest and have soak time for negative i

Carter 43:01

i think so especially if it's regional um

Carter 43:03

um if you can if you can find a regional nightmare i mean you you've already uncorked your candidate attacks but if you can if your polling is indicating that you've got um that alberta is particularly concerned about jobs and they are you know the conservative the conservative plan is is not seen as positive like it's it's a time for dan arnold the the the pollster, the the numbers guru to to really shine and say, I've got these four wedges in these four different areas. We need to take all of them. We need to break them apart and we need to go after them. And then it's partly the tour guys saying, OK, now, where

Carter 43:42

where are we going to put the prime minister? When are we going to put the prime minister there? What other surrogates have we got? Are we going to free up Chrystia Freeland to to travel to Alberta? You know, are those five

Carter 43:53

five seats still in play that we talked about at the beginning of the campaign who's going to go and win them uh is mark carney available who you know like what what's what's tricks and and do you have available to you and you've got to make sure that the last 10 days are just absolutely bulletproof um every time the prime minister is landing he's getting uh the response that he needs and every time you're put you're running an ad it too is landing uh people are seeing it and going yeah Yeah, I hadn't thought of it that way because

Carter 44:24

because you don't get any second chances now. This best be your best work. And based on what we've seen from the first 26 days, I don't have a lot of confidence.

Zain 44:33

Carter, I'm going to ask you some follow-up questions. What are you doing with guns? Are you wedging

Carter 44:39

I think you have to. I think that you have to wedge, especially in Quebec, where you just took a near fatal blow, potentially. Potentially. So you best you best go after guns and you best remind Quebecers that the the provincial government hasn't necessarily been there to protect you. It's always been the feds. I would think that that that might be your best play without necessarily stirring up too much, too much controversy that you are not able to get away from.

Zain 45:11

Carter, what are you doing with Rebel Media Clip? It was clearly a takedown, probably the best moment, clippable moment the PM has had the entire election. What are you doing with it? Just blasting it on social or is there something else you can do? yeah

Carter 45:23

yeah i think you're blasting it on social as much as you can and then you're finding out who it actually works with interesting

Carter 45:28

interesting you know does it work with i

Carter 45:31

i mean i i just think that you're going to need to to

Carter 45:34

to put in place a very strong media strategy and if that thing actually works with let's say women 55 to 65 then you put that on the on high rotation but you

Carter 45:44

you don't have time to experiment anymore everything needs to be test everything needs to be known before you put it up so if that wasn't tested if it hasn't tested well if you're not seeing positive response

Carter 45:56

then pull it down it doesn't do

Zain 45:58

do you have do you have time do you have time to test or is this all gut right now carter you're

Carter 46:02

you're in the field still probably for another good couple of weeks so you may as well cory

Zain 46:07

cory i i you're you're you're shaking your head vigorously on the rebel stuff so pick up on that and then i'll get into the tool stuff in a second but actually before you even get into a tool so i've got another one for you but you start with this yeah

Corey 46:18

yeah rebel media isn't on the ballot. There's no sense in driving this up. Leadership is, my

Corey 46:23

It makes you feel good. Leadership is

Carter 46:24

is on the ballot. Is

Carter 46:26

Is that the ballot question? Listen, you've got to keep

Corey 46:27

team engaged. Is that

Carter 46:28

that forward not backward?

Corey 46:29

backward? Is that forward not backward?

Carter 46:31

backward? Right now, we're in the midst of treading water.

Corey 46:38

This is a distraction from your campaign and your campaign narratives. I agree that it is a great moment for Trudeau as a leader, but it's leading on something that I think most Canadians won't give too many dams about this is very much an elite issue and in fact it has the opportunity to backfire because if you aren't familiar with rebel media you might just be like wow this guy is really aggressive against this clearly legitimate because they're accredited media outlet that he doesn't like right yeah yeah so that's good you just you got to be careful if it tests well is the caveat that stephen carter put on it that's a hell of a caveat because if it it tests well justin trudeau should go and just like provide a haymaker to aaron o'toole's face i mean anything if it tests well you should contemplate i suppose uh within the bounds of laws and ethics but uh but

Corey 47:26

but i don't know i just don't get the sense that it would be a particularly good use of energy um

Zain 47:31

um cory before you jump into o'toole to both of you i'll start with you cory um 10 days out do

Zain 47:38

do you guys think that if there was some big oppo story on any side but i'll go go with either side as the two frontrunners against one of the leaders i'm talking like comparable to a black face brown face that would have come out by now is that fair to say

Zain 47:55

do you think someone might be holding it back well if

Corey 47:57

if you hold it back if you hold it back

Corey 48:00

and it's just you're not going to get as much opportunity with it people are already starting to vote vote as it's going on tomorrow yeah well

Corey 48:08

well and and mail-in ballots are a thing yeah they are real and and so if you are holding it back you're risking it have less effect so you're making the calculation that you you hold your fire you drop it at the last moment and that will that will just create a narrative and it's too late for them to then rebound from yeah

Corey 48:25

right that's a really risky strategy and it can work uh but we've also seen it backfire pretty spectacularly i think in particular about and maybe the timing i'm being a little bit cute with here but you remember jack latin massage parlor i do yeah right didn't

Corey 48:39

didn't work didn't fucking work and it just reeked of desperation hunter

Zain 48:43

hunter biden laptop yeah

Corey 48:45

yeah hunter biden laptop's another great example at a certain point you hold that back and um and and you risk it being seen so transparently as a cynical ploy because why wouldn't you talk about it sooner if you had it and you wanted to talk about it so So, you know, my read of it, for what it's worth, is the Liberals now, it's

Corey 49:04

it's not all hope is lost for the Liberals by any means. I wouldn't want anybody to think I'm saying anything like that. But they've launched their campaign, they've dropped their oppo, they've released their platform, and they've had their debate. Like, the Lego blocks are, by and large, all poured out on the table here. And whatever you construct, you construct at this point. But unless mom comes home with something you didn't expect, this awesome new set, and isn't it great that you didn't put her in a home yet, because maybe she will.

Corey 49:29

Unless that happens, this

Corey 49:32

this is what you got. And if you got anything more, there's a chance that it's just too late to work into your designs.

Zain 49:38

Yeah, that's a fair point. Carter, on Oppo, you feel like big Oppo pieces are already out there right now based on your previous experience, timing, cadence, absorption time needed from the general public?

Carter 49:50

I think I might have held something back in an area that we would be weak in. like i may have held something like a channel changer uh

Carter 49:56

from the oppo binder that we we may need to to deploy after a week

Carter 50:00

week or debate but it's not going to be channel changer nationwide it's not going to be something that's going to be super duper effective it's

Corey 50:08

it's not going to be your best stuff right you

Carter 50:09

you know i mean you held

Corey 50:10

held back your best stuff i don't know i'm

Carter 50:12

i'm looking at some of the polling numbers out of atlantic canada and if i had something that was decent in atlantic canada i'd be throwing that against the wall right now um but that's that's about it like

Carter 50:24

yeah quebec i think is probably going to be okay i don't i'm not sure that the intervention by the premier is going to work but um

Carter 50:31

um atlanta canada is a shit show right now and you can't have that not if you're going to maintain government cory

Zain 50:36

cory let's go to you on o2 let's say they have a meeting tonight similar type of meeting you know while he may have had the wind behind his back after tonight and the Legault performance. It's not entirely smooth sailing. His momentum that he had, that he came out of the gates, seems to be halted a bit. So one of the liberal wedges, especially around guns and their expansion around it, seems to be paying some dividends. What does the Timo Thule meeting look like tonight going forward? Carter laid out some, you know, elements for his. What is your meeting looking like tonight if you're the one setting the agenda for it?

Corey 51:10

Well, it's very similar to what I said about the pieces on the table. okay here we go what is our best argument going forward one of the interesting things about the

Corey 51:17

the last week of the campaign and i've said this before and i'll say it again in the last week a campaign runs against itself it's

Corey 51:23

it's when discipline breaks down it's when people start to panic the challenges just in general start to consume you your people are tired and uh and bad stuff happens so you are pulling the troops together and you're saying okay that was a good debate let's find the clippables let's see how they're working with various groups let's get the focus focus groups spinned up. Let's make sure we control the agenda after the debate. So we're seen as having won the debate. What we generally talk about is spinning the debate. And so let's just get out there and let's amplify voices that said we did a good job. And let's try to bring other voices in that perhaps can

Corey 51:58

can drown out the ones who say we did a bad job.

Corey 52:01

That's part of your debate recovery. Even if you've succeeded, you want to make sure you're managing the debate afterwards there. And then it really is about putting your best arguments forward. What is is your best framing of this? This is your final pitch. This is your closing, your summation to the general public over the next week saying, this is why you want to vote for me. Now, one of the interesting things for the conservatives here is next week, Tuesday, September 14th, there is one more thing. You know, this is the old Steve Jobs. One more thing. And that's that the Indian in the Cabinet, the Jody Wilson-Raybould book gets dropped.

Zain 52:36

Oh, yes, of course. And we might It might seem chapters, right? Well,

Corey 52:39

Well, there's a reason her name came up so bloody much right

Corey 52:43

right now. I mean, it was almost pre-sales that was doing it. Every leader mentioned her besides Trudeau. And I think you can largely expect that that will be a narrative that will be thrown in his face. Now, if you're O'Toole, you're probably not wanting to get too, too involved in that. I didn't think that the reconciliation section was O'Toole's strongest. It was definitely a lot of word salad. valid. But I think it's an opportunity for your opponent to take some damage. So while he's dealing with that, you go talk to everybody. You give them your final positive argument for why an O'Toole government is not scary, is in fact necessary, and

Corey 53:21

and should be worthy of your vote.

Zain 53:25

We're going to leave that segment there, move it on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, we're going to do it, even though it's a debate special. And I ask you straight up, first question, overrated, underrated, the French and English language consortium debates. On the main, on the whole, the cumulative aggregator score, overrated or underrated?

Carter 53:47

Underrated because everybody hated them so much they can't be that meaningless. So there must be some reason for it. That

Zain 53:55

That was a very interesting pretzel of logic that you arrived through, Corey. Overrated, underrated, the two consortium debates.

Corey 54:02

think Carter makes a good argument because they are so broadly panned at this point that you actually have to say, hold on, we did still learn a lot of stuff and this could potentially change the election.

Carter 54:12

election. There still could be a big outcome, yeah.

Carter 54:14

In driving – Because I think they've talked –

Zain 54:19

Five seconds. Five seconds. Five seconds to each of you. You go first. So here's the problem is I think both of you didn't listen to the third part of Ethan's question or the fifth part of Ethan's question. So while you may have gotten the first part, I missed the fifth part. They should have just been like, yeah, listen, we'll take the first part. He'll take the second part. Yeah, we just

Corey 54:38

just divided it up. It's the division of labor. Here's the thing.

Corey 54:41

Kill this leaders debate commission. I mean, either that or so dramatically overhaul it because this is what happens when you don't have a singular vision driving something. You get this. You get a camel. You get a horse by committee. And this was a horse by committee. This was a bunch of people going, ping, pow. Let's make sure we get all of these voices in. boom let's make sure that we can get some canadians in there too hey why don't we mix up the format and so you know what we'll have the one-on-ones and we'll have the three-way debates and then we'll have the open sessions and then we'll have the conversations you know one thing i fuck i didn't understand holy fuck

Zain 55:15

didn't understand was the time holy fuck zane i under i'm blowing

Carter 55:18

blowing what he's trying to say is he's trying to say holy fuck zane i'm

Zain 55:22

i'm just trying to say let me let me try to say something can i try to say something can i please try to say something think you've had more time than all of us all of

Zain 55:30

well we wouldn't know because there's no timer keeping track

Zain 55:33

by the way what the fuck was up with that timer because it's not like like if you got less time there was like a cash payout to you blanchette at the end like he was like referring to it he's like as everyone can see i've gotten four minutes less and i now need to say nothing but i'm gonna take the time to say it uh it was very weird i agree with you cory uh on on the debate commission cory i'm gonna stick with you for our next one the rebel media clip for justin trudeau overrated underrated overrated

Corey 55:59

was it was you know what i really liked it because it really knocked down rebel media who i actually i agree with a lot of the criticism that the prime minister put out there but

Corey 56:08

but i you know did it make me more likely to vote liberal i don't i don't really think so i liked it it was a put down that

Zain 56:16

whatever carter overrated underrated rebel media clip for justin trudeau underrated

Carter 56:19

underrated it energizes the base the base is everything right Right now, you've got to get your GOTV teams moving, and this is one of the things that will move them.

Zain 56:27

Carter, the Legault endorsement for O'Toole, overrated, underrated?

Carter 56:30

Overrated provincial premiers in federal politics have less impact than one would imagine.

Zain 56:36

Oh, interesting. I did not think you'd go there. Corey, same question. Overrated, underrated, Legault endorsement?

Corey 56:41

Absolutely underrated. It was a palate cleanser after a French-language debate that wasn't great for O'Toole, and his French has gotten, it's been noted by many commentators, shakier over the course This is something that happened to Dion over the course of his leadership, too, with English, right? And I can tell you, I saw it pretty close up in a lot of contexts. When people start trashing your language abilities, you lose confidence. And so much of being able to speak is confidence, right? That's where you get the fluency from. And the fluency was broken for O'Toole last night. That was really clear. And by

Corey 57:17

by Legault coming out, the defender of Quebec, this not-quite-sovereignist, believes strongly in Quebec, saying, no, this guy would be easier to work with, I think he propped him up. He was against the ropes on those things. He was risking his seats in Quebec. And I don't think those seats that he was in play with are at risk, after the Legault comments.

Zain 57:38

Corey, I'm going to stick with you for our next one. One final thing we're probably going to expect in this week is late-game validators for every party. Celebrities, pop culture folks, people in media culture saying, I'm with Trudeau, I'm with whatever. Overrated, underrated, late-game validators to kind of convince you as part of a GOTV exercise.

Zain 58:00

Carter, same question to you. Late-game validators, final week?

Carter 58:03

Overrated, unless it's Ryan Reynolds.

Zain 58:06

else carter jwr book release later next week as cory mentioned overrated underrated in your mind uh

Carter 58:12

uh i'd like to use my crystal ball in this situation and it says

Zain 58:19

cory same question to you yeah

Corey 58:21

yeah i don't know i don't know what it says but i would guess it's probably overrated because there's so much hype around it it would be hard to imagine that That it's like some big salacious revelation didn't leak out or get teased out in the publishing process.

Zain 58:36

Corey, as we record right now, it is pretty much the 10th of September, 10 days towards Election Day. And who would you be right now? Which one of the federal party leaders would you want to be right now, 10 days before Election Day on September 20th?

Corey 58:54

Tonight, I would want to be Annamie Paul. She must be elated. She has just put her detractors in their place. That Green Party board must feel like a bunch of dumbasses, and I'm sure people around them are saying, well, you guys seem like a bunch of dumbasses, because she seemed pretty great.

Corey 59:11

She was really, really good up there. But ultimately, that might be worth a couple of green seats, and it's not going to fundamentally change the universe here, or at least I suspect it will not. Ultimately, this was O'Toole's night, not because it was the most sparkling performance, but because it wasn't the performance Justin Trudeau needed. O'Toole was already leading in most of the polls, and the people who were most likely to siphon votes from Justin Trudeau did very well. No.

Zain 59:38

Carter, same question to you. Who would you be tonight

Zain 59:41

tonight slash Friday morning, the 10th of September? Can

Carter 59:44

Can I be all the leaders like Corey did, or do I have to pick one?

Zain 59:48

You can be all the leaders, but if you'd be all the leaders, you have to be all the moderators. Then I

Carter 59:53

I will go back to Aaron O'Toole, who is now meeting. Your

Zain 59:58

Your time is up? Your

Carter 1:00:00

I just need 30. Can I get five more seconds? You can get five seconds.

Carter 1:00:04

Aaron O'Toole is already meeting with his transition team.

Zain 1:00:07

Okay. Thank you so much, Mr. Carter. Thank you so much, Mr. Carter. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hogan. We're going to have to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 942 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velgey. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we will see you next time.

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