Episode 993: Unpopular is unpopular

Zain 0:01

This is a strategist episode 993. My name is Zain Velji with me as always Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, we

Zain 0:09

we are back from our road trip.

Zain 0:12

We are back. What

Carter 0:12

What a road trip it was. Oh,

Zain 0:14

Oh, what a road trip it was indeed.

Zain 0:16

Carter live show Edmonton Maharaja Banquet Hall. Thank you to the fine folks at the Maharaja. I have to say they

Zain 0:22

were the only ones to house us when everyone else said no and

Zain 0:26

and carter what a fun show it was 400 ish people i'd say i don't have no idea how many um you know all white people look the same to me so it was i just uh uh stopped counting after after 12 i think well

Carter 0:39

well as you know i got to work the door and uh there was about i i checked

Zain 0:44

checked each individual aggressively volunteered to work the door let's be clear we didn't need anyone at the door we actually

Corey 0:50

actually paid people to work the door but you kind of took that job from them well

Carter 0:54

well Well, I asked to pay. The venue was interesting.

Carter 0:58

We asked for certain things that didn't happen.

Carter 1:01

Like, for example, we asked for the bar to be open.

Carter 1:04

It happened, but very, very, very late. We asked for someone to be there to take tickets. They weren't there. So we all filled in. Well, I filled in. And Corey, you were expected to go behind the bar, and you didn't. So it was a little disappointing.

Zain 1:18

Speaking of expectations, I expected exactly what we got, and it was perfect. Perfect. I just want to say it was exactly what we deserved as three white guys wanting to do a podcast at a banquet hall. This is this is exactly the type of service we deserved. And we got Masterstroke by the Maharaja Banquet Hall. Thanks to them again. Yeah,

Corey 1:39

Yeah, well, let me tell you something. This is not the first time I've had to go to an event at the Maharaja Banquet Hall. And by starting 15 minutes late, we started earlier than any event has ever started at the Maharaja Banquet Hall. then

Carter 1:51

then why would you

Corey 1:52

you say that i

Zain 1:53

i don't know if you could say that cory i'm not sure if you're allowed to say that well hold on hold on what

Zain 1:58

what do we imply i meant i meant i meant your i meant your statement i'm

Zain 2:02

i'm i'm applying that as the brownest white guy on this podcast i am allowed to make that statement and you are not in

Carter 2:09

in fairness cory is the second brownest white guy on this broadcast so i

Carter 2:15

i hold the title of whitest thank

Zain 2:17

carter i really appreciate it because

Carter 2:19

in the northeast least i

Zain 2:20

i just want to say thanks to everyone in edmonton who came out fun group we did a strategist overtime you might be wondering if you are one of uh the folks listening to this podcast episode 993 where is this amazing recording well cory it is behind our patreon um it's

Zain 2:36

it's six dollars a month to sign up for patreon live show tickets were 30 it is already one-fifth the price if you're asking me that's a great deal the half-life on our content is yeah is

Corey 2:46

is is terrible it's 80% off 80% off days later that's a great point yeah way

Zain 2:52

way better than those idiots who showed up and paid $30 thank you to those idiots but way better so

Zain 2:58

so get that deal uh

Zain 2:59

uh carter anything else to add about the live show before

Zain 3:02

before we move on uh

Carter 3:03

uh there's already been requests to do another one um

Carter 3:06

cory's actually requested that we don't do another one for about six months his reasoning was carter enjoys them too much so uh that seems about right that seems right so we'll wait for six months or so although i'm told there's going to be a leadership so maybe we do a live show or two or three around the leadership cory

Corey 3:25

comments on our live show before we move on maybe

Corey 3:27

maybe we can become one of the official um debates during the ucp leadership contest what do you think carter

Zain 3:32

carter do you want to moderate a debate oh

Carter 3:34

oh my god do i want to moderate a debate can can, here's what we're going to do. You're the moderator and Corey and I will be the asshole in the audience who asked the questions, right?

Carter 3:44

right? Like the people who are completely have

Zain 3:46

have we just made an

Zain 3:47

official invite? Have we just

Zain 3:49

that this, this right now is the official invite for

Zain 3:53

strategist podcast, UCP leadership debate moderated by

Zain 3:57

the three of us. Yeah,

Carter 3:59

Well, mostly you, right.

Carter 4:00

right. You'll do most of the work, but danielle and brian we know you listen to the pod uh you're more than welcome i think that'll be it for leadership contenders we're losing them left right and center so well

Zain 4:11

well well let's let's start with our first segment our first segment revisionist history oh guys the articles are already being written the ink is being spilled the vulnerable emotional moments of what happened how it happened and frankly cory who's to blame is already being uh

Zain 4:30

uh charged in the media you

Zain 4:31

you You know, when we recorded the live show on Thursday evening, we still had the open-ended question. We had just solved one of the open-ended questions, i.e., will Jason Kenney stay on as leader? That seems

Zain 4:42

to be a yes. We also had another open-ended question. Will Jason Kenney run

Zain 4:45

run again in this race? Will he stay as leader? And then because of, as you'd mentioned on the show, Corey, because

Zain 4:53

because he wasn't taking on the title of interim leader, he could still run for leader again. We now know based on the premier's Saturday morning radio

Zain 5:02

radio show that he's not intending to run again. Corey, so much to talk about in terms of the premier mentioning on his radio show, A, he's not running again. B, he was certainly caught by surprise. C, already some of the UCP longstanding operatives talking about who's

Zain 5:21

who's to blame here. But let's go one by one. Talk to me about him not running again. What do you make of that on the heels of the live show and on the heels of his announcement the day before on that Wednesday?

Corey 5:31

Yeah, so not surprising. He's not going to run again. And I think we said as much at the show, the

Corey 5:37

the difference between what he could do as leader and interim leader existed.

Corey 5:42

And that was relevant. But if

Corey 5:44

he were going to run the smart move, the proper move would have been to step down as leader. And Jason Kenney himself called that out on his radio show. He said, yeah, if I was going to run, I wouldn't have asked to stay on as leader. And so that, you know, the universe makes sense in that context.

Corey 6:01

It would have been a very I mean, I don't know how much time you want me to spend on a thing that's not going to happen. But if he had run for

Corey 6:07

for leader of the UCP while being leader of the UCP, that would have settled truly

Corey 6:12

truly nothing because all of the accusations against him, you know, abusing power, using the levers in an inappropriate way. the things that were thrown at him after the 2019 leadership or uh you know 2018 uh 2017 leadership race would

Corey 6:26

would have all been brought out again so you know it's not as though he could have said

Corey 6:30

that's that cleared the air right he if that was his thinking he

Corey 6:34

he would have been better off to just stay on as leader and not resign and so um obviously

Corey 6:39

obviously um made the right call there carter

Zain 6:43

carter did he make the right call and let me ask you a follow-up question do you believe him to

Zain 6:47

to believe that he'll stay out as a candidate?

Carter 6:49

Oh, yeah, I absolutely believe he'd stay out as a candidate. I mean, to his point, if

Carter 6:53

if you're going to run in the leadership, you can't be the sitting premier, right? You know, it's just, it's too much pressure and people would lose their minds. I think it would actually backfire on Jason Kenney at this point.

Carter 7:07

You know, he has to make a choice and the choice that he's making seems to be very clear. He's going to be

Carter 7:13

be the interim or the premier, not interim.

Carter 7:16

until the leadership is done this

Carter 7:18

is not unheard of by the

Carter 7:20

mean ed stellmack stayed uh

Carter 7:22

uh ralph klein stayed uh

Carter 7:23

uh the only person in recent memory who didn't stay uh was allison redford and you know uh dave hancock stepped into her her

Carter 7:31

her seat you know i mean i

Carter 7:32

i watched brian jean stand out in front of the news cameras and say this is unheard of in parliamentary tradition and i'm like what

Carter 7:38

the fuck are you even talking about it's not even unheard of in the recent tradition of the of the the progressive conservative of the conservative government yeah

Corey 7:46

yeah i mean if your priors are just the last race you have a point but if you expand it at all it's

Corey 7:51

it's very it's been very common in alberta right uh and i mean you can go back further literally every pc

Corey 7:57

pc leader who stepped down stuck around until their replacement was chosen back to the pcs actually getting power in the first place in 1971 except for that one example with allison redford yeah

Zain 8:10

cory you know i called this segment revisionist history because we we see folks including the current premier trying to paint a picture of what happened um let's talk about how he says he received the news uh you know he got 51 or 51.4 to remind people 34 000 members voted on this um and i'll go into the other part of it which is you know how can i as premier have a mandate from over a million million people and and and you know just just north of 16 000 people can oust me because he talked about that but here's what he had to say when i was given the number by the party president i.e the number of of my vote share uh

Zain 8:50

uh about a half hour before i went on stage i was admittedly surprised because the number did not correspond to what i'd been hearing all

Zain 8:57

all around the province and i want to underline that last part

Zain 9:02

uh cory why do you think i'm underlining the last part of it i

Corey 9:05

i i mean i i i have no idea what your own personal reasons for it are i'll tell you that line stuck out to me too because if you actually believed that if you actually thought that you had more support province-wide than you got in this vote lest

Corey 9:19

lest we forget you actually won the vote and it would have absolutely negated what you said about clearly there's not enough support for me and we need to clear the air on this right if you believed that this was somehow not fully reflect in your support then

Corey 9:33

you just stay on as leader because you won and you're able to do that uh

Corey 9:36

uh but instead i think um uh

Corey 9:39

uh you know it's probably some combination of the public told the guy who was premier yeah yeah sure yeah you're you're a great guy jason which always happens people always lie to the leader yeah they

Corey 9:51

they lie doubly so when you're the premier and or his staff half misled them in ways big and small, which also happens a lot when you're the leader. Could have been a thing like, yeah, yeah, we went out and we did this poll and we found 60% amongst the members. Well, maybe they're withholding the

Corey 10:06

the idea that they told the members it was the premier calling, which would put your thumb on the scale. Maybe they withhold the fact that that only counts the people who didn't tell them to fuck right off on question number one before moving on to questions two, three, four, and five. So there's a lot of ways you can be misled within the stream of information that you You need to make good strategic decisions. And one of the things I'm really fascinated about is as this, I

Corey 10:32

I mean, we're already in full recrimination mode. I read an article where Alan Hallman was like his campaign team let him down. Well, maybe. I don't fucking know. But are we at that point already where we start throwing that shit around? Guess so.

Corey 10:44

But I'm looking forward to seeing a little bit more behind the scenes to see where it

Corey 10:50

it all went wrong. Because we talked a long time about the premier has an advantage that us mere analysts and pundits and strategists from the side don't, which is all

Corey 11:01

all of the inputs that come to you through the party, through your campaign, which tell you where you should be. But they clearly led him astray.

Zain 11:08

Carter, you know, at the show in Edmonton, we talked about how

Zain 11:11

how this follows a story arc in some ways, doesn't it? And I think I was pushing you guys pretty hard, almost annoyed that why does it have to follow the story arc? If I'm a leadership candidate right now, why can't I just be like, fuck it, I'm running. This guy's dead. It doesn't matter. I'm running. But you guys said, you know, there's this warm blanket to stories we already know, to following a path that we're already familiar with. Corey asked the audience who watched Friends in the last little bit, very few people raised their hands. I gave them a better reference to ask. But

Zain 11:41

But Carter, you know, there is something to be said about the phase of the story arc that we're in right now.

Zain 11:47

and and what explain to me with your past experience what's the what's the if you were to headline this chapter that we're in right now he's announced he's not going to run he's doing a bit of revisionist history trying to contour uh trying to to rectify be maybe a little bit vulnerable i'm going to ask you the same question around the line but give me a sense more broadly if you zoom out what would you call this phase and what do you expect in the next weeks or months because you've seen this movie before so so tell folks who may have forgotten the plot of this movie what happens next in in this scene with our with our now has been protagonist this

Carter 12:19

this is the uh the redevelopment or recreation of the hero that we once knew right

Carter 12:24

right so the hero that existed at the beginning uh

Carter 12:26

uh fell into a trap that trap has ultimately consumed the hero but

Carter 12:31

but now the hero is resurrected in memory only because

Carter 12:34

because you can't resurrect the hero into

Carter 12:36

into the actual position so So the

Carter 12:38

the beginning of that happens now.

Carter 12:41

The premier will be, you

Carter 12:43

you know, giving credit for the good decisions and the bad decisions will slowly

Carter 12:48

slowly fade from memory,

Carter 12:49

assuming that he doesn't run into a nightmare in the next four to six months. I mean, depending

Carter 12:54

depending on how long the party decides to make this leadership. But

Carter 12:59

if he falls into a nightmare, then it's going to be, you

Carter 13:02

you know, hard to rebuild this hero narrative that he wants to rebuild. But if

Carter 13:07

if he doesn't, he'll be able to rebuild the hero narrative. I mean, people speak more fondly of Peter Lougheed after

Carter 13:15

after he'd left than they did while he was still there leaving. And

Carter 13:18

And that's the redevelopment structure. The giving over of the reins of control actually

Carter 13:23

actually becomes part of the narrative. You're giving it over, you're giving it back. Now, the same thing happened even with Klein. He was

Carter 13:34

unliked, I guess, at the end of his term. But

Carter 13:37

But now everybody misremembers Ralph Klein completely.

Carter 13:41

They misremember Ralph Klein and he's like, but

Carter 13:44

but you remember Ralph Klein? He did nothing wrong ever. Well, then why'd you give him 55% of the leadership review? Just didn't like him anymore? What's the deal? So there's a rebuilding of the hero narrative. Carter,

Zain 13:55

Carter, explain to me why

Zain 13:57

why it happened so quickly.

Zain 14:00

Like, you know, Kenny's dead, but he's already on the next chapter of trying to gel legacy. Does speed matter here from a communications perspective, from a strategy perspective? perspective like why is this happening so quickly to set the trajectory of something that won't be consumed by the public or perhaps even appreciated if i can say carter by the public for months if not years nature

Carter 14:26

nature abhors a vacuum right so if you're not putting forward your own narrative then the narrative is being created by someone else or

Carter 14:33

or by something else right and if you think that daniel smith and and brian jean aren't going to run against jason kenney um you're crazy as a referendum question

Zain 14:41

question for the leadership you mean in some ways

Carter 14:43

ways of course yeah

Carter 14:44

yeah i mean you you kind of have to run against you know the previous person we we ran against ed stelmack when allison redford ran in one um you know this this is part of the pathway you know sometimes you can run against the the previous leader and win sometimes you run against the previous leader and lose do you want brian gene to write your epitaph that

Carter 15:05

that doesn't make any sense to me so

Carter 15:07

so if you don't want want it to be Brian Jean writing it, then you best start writing it yourself. Uh,

Carter 15:12

Uh, you don't want the media to write it. The media stuff has been, you

Carter 15:15

you know, the last week has been what

Carter 15:17

what went wrong. Why is Jason? Can he suck?

Carter 15:20

That has been the

Carter 15:21

the last week of media.

Carter 15:23

Um, that's the media that comes immediately following, but

Carter 15:28

know, there'll be, you

Carter 15:29

you know, probably stories if he does his job properly in

Carter 15:33

in the next four to six weeks, they will start having stories about, you

Carter 15:37

know, Brian Jean and Danielle Smith will never be able to pull together this party the

Carter 15:42

the way that the way that Jason Kenney did, because we'll start to see fractures, you

Carter 15:47

you know, and whoever else is running will be all everybody's going to be on one side of this party, not, you

Carter 15:53

someone bringing together both sides of this party. Corey,

Zain 15:55

Corey, how would you describe the wet clay moment we're in right now? What would this phase in the movie or this scene in the movie be for you right now? What we're going to see and what we're starting to see over the course of this weekend and perhaps in the days and the week ahead?

Corey 16:10

Well, I don't actually agree with Stephen. I think that just time changes people's perceptions of leaders, even if they do nothing really to maintain their reputation. There are so many examples of leaders, especially in the United States, because, of course, presidencies end and they all end hard, right?

Corey 16:28

Where they leave a total heel and eight years later, you forget and they just get rebranded and redeveloped because time has this thing that you

Corey 16:37

know nostalgia is a powerful drug and people misremember times to the positive way more we think about politics

Corey 16:44

politics being a more noble pursuit when

Corey 16:46

when we were kids we think about the

Corey 16:47

the economy being better and more foundational when our parents were young right and and we ignore we

Corey 16:53

we ignore shit like the oil embargo in the 70s which totally roiled everything. We ignore Bill

Corey 17:02

jamming a cigar up carnal places on a fucking intern like this. Like we are not in you know, we are not in any kind of position to look back on these places positively here. So I think just time smooths a lot of this out. And, you know, Jason Kenney is a relatively young man. He's 53.

Corey 17:18

You know, before he's before it's all said and done on him, there's going to be a turn and people will just be like, Like, yeah, Jason Kenney, right? So they'll forget. They'll forget all of the things that drove us nuts and were real problems. That said, by still being there, he does have the opportunity to write his own obituary. And he has the opportunity to take advantage of the things that Stephen's saying and

Corey 17:36

and go out there and make the framing as positive for him as possible.

Corey 17:43

What's interesting is you're

Corey 17:45

you're going to have a couple of other players on the field who, as Stephen pointed out, will probably talk about the Jason Kenney era not being idyllic. idyllic and that's awkward when jason kenney is right there as well still

Corey 17:55

yeah i mean brian gene is going to run against jason kenney uh

Corey 17:59

because because that's who he is and that's what he'll do but

Corey 18:03

that is going to be an interesting one and i'm not sure it'll do brian gene any favors because at a certain point too i think a lot of the party will say he's

Corey 18:10

he's already dead brian enough

Zain 18:14

that there's no more sort of meat left on that on the boat find another lane find Find something that can win you voters in that sense or that can actually bring the party together. Do you feel like Brian Jean is close to being seen

Zain 18:25

seen as a disuniter in this race? That he might be going so hard on Kenny that if he doesn't change his tone quickly, that he could be seen as the candidate that was great at getting rid of Kenny but nothing else?

Carter 18:39

he'll make the pivot.

Carter 18:41

Oh, go ahead, Corey. I think

Corey 18:43

think he'll make the pivot, but that is the risk. I mean, if he just starts talking about all

Corey 18:47

all of these things, it will just feel like sour grapes. He's got to try to.

Corey 18:52

And I don't know that he'll be successful because I think the people around Jason Kenney just hate him too much after this last bit. But I think he will probably attempt in his language to discuss that

Corey 19:01

that was then we've got to look forward. Here's what I would do as leader. Maybe a bit of soft contrast with how Jason Kenney approached. But I don't think he's going to.

Corey 19:10

Well, let me put it this way. it would be an insane mistake to just run against jason kenney for the next uh however many months this is carter

Carter 19:20

yeah i'm going oh i'm going after cory so now i get to say how cory's 75 wrong um and the 75 wrong is around natural brand position so natural brand position for brian jean is the leader of the wild rose party uh that's where he was in in 2015 when Do

Carter 19:37

you think people still see him

Zain 19:38

him that way, Carter? I

Carter 19:39

I think that they do for sure. And I think that he's very comfortable in that position. This United Conservative Party makes him uncomfortable because

Carter 19:46

because the United Conservative Party holds a lot of conservatives that aren't his type of conservatives. They are not his people.

Carter 19:54

And that's, I think, the real weakness that he has. And I think that people will see that

Carter 19:58

that the decisions that he is making fit

Carter 20:01

fit into this category of, you

Carter 20:04

you know, who am I speaking to? It's like Pierre Polyev is very comfortable speaking to his people, but

Carter 20:09

but less comfortable speaking to people outside of his group.

Carter 20:13

And I think that that's going to be the problem for Brian Jean. And

Carter 20:16

And I think that it's just too enticing of a target to

Carter 20:19

to not attack Jason Kenney. I

Carter 20:21

I agree with Corey. The 25% that he's right is that Brian Jean should not attack Jason Kenney. But let's

Carter 20:29

let's go back. Rewind the tape for the last three months. What were we telling Brian Jean? Keep your head down. don't get in this leadership race stop doing what you're doing right stop declaring that you're the next you know that you're running for the leadership this is giving

Carter 20:44

giving us a comparison to jason kenney and that's the comparison that's the weakness uh the jerry that brian jean's going to bring to this leadership cory

Zain 20:53

cory i want to stick it with carter for a second to close the loop on that line that jason kenney gave which was about him being surprised carter 30 minutes before going on on stage that he heard a lot more

Zain 21:05

different things a lot more positive reception to his leadership and his candidacy walk me through that from a strategist's eye like did his team let him down here is that a simple quip put out by by someone also trying to paint a version of history like what what do you think is the likeliest scenario here we've talked often cory's mentioned even on this show about leaders being lied to but add

Zain 21:27

add some texture for me you've been in this position? What do you think happened here? And you think he was generally caught off guard?

Carter 21:33

Well, of course he was caught off guard. He chose which data to believe, right?

Carter 21:37

right? So when you're choosing between two sets of data, you

Carter 21:39

you know, which one am I going to believe? There's a very real chance you're going to choose the wrong thing. And more likely, the

Carter 21:45

the data that you have and the data that you're, you know, the two data sources are blended.

Carter 21:51

So we were seeing polls that saw saw members of the progressive or the United Conservative Party saying to

Carter 21:57

to the 60th, 70th percentile, we

Carter 22:00

we don't want Jason Kenney here. And

Carter 22:02

And then it dropped down to 50th percentile, 55, 60%. But

Carter 22:06

But it was, you know, we don't want Jason Kenney was always winning, right?

Carter 22:09

right? I don't remember a poll that had Jason Kenney actually winning this

Carter 22:13

this leadership outcome. So those publicly available pieces of data that we saw said,

Carter 22:18

said, this is a problem. The

Carter 22:20

The privately available pieces of data that his team saw said, this is bigger. You're right. We're going to win. Everything's going to be fine.

Carter 22:28

Of the two pieces of data, the piece that was the most correct was he's going to win.

Carter 22:34

He did not lose. So the public polls were off by a fairly significant factor. So for

Carter 22:39

for Alan Hallman, who I think is an idiot to say this aloud to news reporters, just shows that he wasn't in the game and doesn't play, especially when it comes to these types of things. Because overall, the

Carter 22:51

the publicly available data showed

Carter 22:54

showed that he was less likely to win. And

Carter 22:57

And therefore, my assumption would be his team overperformed, not underperformed.

Zain 23:03

That's interesting. Corey, do you want to react to that before I move on to a final section around what Kenny said? And then I do want to move on to other candidates and future strategy and all that sort of stuff. But react to what Carter said here.

Corey 23:14

Yeah, it's a great point. One of the things that I think we've got to ask ourselves is what what reasonably did Jason Kenney think he was going to get?

Corey 23:21

And if that was even, let's

Corey 23:24

let's just say it was 57%. Let's say they thought they were going to get 57%, which would mean they win by 14 points, 57-43. That's a thumping, right?

Corey 23:34

only really about five, six points off. Like that's a polling margin of error, especially when you're looking at a group that small, that's that difficult to look at there. And so there's a lot of reason to believe that maybe this machine was actually working a little bit better than perhaps even we've been suggesting

Corey 23:51

suggesting or giving credit to as we move along here. Because the reality is when

Corey 23:56

you look at these numbers and you say, yeah, I believe it's going to be 57% and it comes in at 52%. In

Corey 24:02

In anything except politics, that's pretty fucking solid, right? If you were pulling on brand affinity, if you were looking into attitudes on issue X, Y, or Z, that's

Corey 24:14

that's a good indicator. And by the way, still

Corey 24:17

still on the right side of the 50-50 line, right? So you have accurately predicted that more people are with you than against you. You just inaccurately

Corey 24:24

inaccurately predicted the extent, which matters in politics, and it certainly matters in a leadership review. you. So recriminations

Corey 24:31

recriminations are probably a little much, a little extreme, I think, for the Alan Hallmans of the world to start saying how badly the team let him down, because maybe

Corey 24:39

maybe not quite what Stephen was saying, but my read could very easily be this.

Corey 24:43

The public we knew was massively against Jason Kenney. Polling of party members is always a little dodgy, but the polling that did exist of self-identified conservatives, strongly

Corey 24:52

strongly against Jason Kenney. And Jason Kenney won the leadership.

Corey 24:56

You throw in a couple of other identifying factors like 15,000 people were going to show up in Red Deer, and we all assumed that meant he was in massive trouble.

Corey 25:03

Well, he did manage to kind of pull it out, didn't he?

Corey 25:06

Just not to the degree that he thought was necessary in order to hold on to the leadership, especially when you had all of these various recriminations around the number of memberships purchased on relatively few credit cards.

Zain 25:18

Carter, tell me what Kenny was trying to do with this line. In the future, we're going to have to consider these these things how you get an electoral mandate of over a million votes but 16 000 people can essentially upend your

Zain 25:31

what do you think he's trying to do and do you think it was a strategically sound strategy

Zain 25:36

communications tactic or message i should say uh

Zain 25:40

uh to put out there to

Zain 25:42

to maybe cast some doubt perhaps in in in the minds of those that will now be reading

Zain 25:48

reading the obituaries in the what happened columns what do you think carter from a strategy i

Carter 25:53

I don't think it's necessarily to cast any doubt or anything like that. I think it's just a real question of what the hell are we doing?

Carter 26:01

We've moved to grassroots democracy. You

Zain 26:03

You think it's actually genuine. You're giving them the credit that you think it was a genuine question about democracy, not like a framing

Zain 26:09

framing or something to kind of help with the revisionist history of his candidacy and his time as leader. Peter.

Carter 26:17

The four last conservative premiers in the province of Alberta have been undone by their membership in caucuses and not undone by the voters, or

Carter 26:27

or they've not seen a full term.

Carter 26:30

Jim Prentice is the only one that faced the electorate and lost. And

Carter 26:34

And I think that we have given far too much responsibility to the members of a party and to the caucuses of a party and not enough responsibility to the general population.

Carter 26:44

in Great Britain, it's

Carter 26:46

it's always the caucus. The caucus always holds the key and they can pull and terminate a leadership relatively quickly. And I think that in general terms, that's still the situation here. But I don't think that Jason Kenney would have lost if this was a straight up caucus vote. I think too many people would have said, you know, this is a guy who got us here and this is the guy who I'm going to ride at least for for one more election. He knows how to campaign. He's my guy. We

Carter 27:13

We never got to that because instead it was a process to go to a membership. And the membership is a,

Carter 27:22

it's a perversion of democracy, not because it isn't fair, you know, like not because their own processes aren't fair, but because there's such a small subset of the overall population. I

Carter 27:34

I don't think we should have leadership reviews after you win an election.

Carter 27:38

I just don't think it's the proper way of doing things.

Carter 27:41

There's only two possible outcomes. The one outcome is that everybody says this is the best thing since sliced bread. And the other outcome is they tell you to go fuck yourself. You should have a leadership review after you lose an election.

Carter 27:53

I think that the Joe Clark leadership review was probably the right thing for the Progressive

Carter 27:58

Progressive Conservative Party of Canada back

Carter 28:00

in the 1980s, because he'd lost, right?

Carter 28:04

right? Is he the guy to take us to the next level when he's lost? I don't think that Jason Kenney can, you know, when you look back at what Jason Kenney has achieved, like him or loathe him, this

Carter 28:14

this is not the way to dispense of a leader.

Zain 28:18

Corey, I need your reaction to this. I'm curious. I may have skipped a step with Carter saying, was a good strategy. Maybe explain to me from your terms, what do you think the strategy was was with that particular framing that Kenny put out there. Million votes in 2019, 16,000 people upended me.

Corey 28:34

Yeah, so he's very proud of his electoral mandate. And it was the largest number of people who had voted for a government in Alberta history to that point, because the population keeps growing, right? So let's just sort of foundationally put it there. It's not as though there was anything particularly over the top about that, especially when you compare it to some of Ralph Klein's wins in terms of percents. But

Corey 28:55

But in terms of what he said, I'm really of two minds, right? It definitely to me seems like it's in some ways trying

Corey 29:02

trying to rehabilitate his

Corey 29:05

performance and thinking about him and his reputation and his legacy. And this goes back to my, if

Corey 29:10

if you truly believe that, Jason Kenney, that

Corey 29:13

that you had that population of the province of Alberta and you had the voters for conservatives more generally, well

Corey 29:19

why not stick around? Because you got enough votes to technically stick around. And it sounds like you're saying you have enough votes to spiritually stick around. Why

Corey 29:26

Why fucking leave them?

Corey 29:27

Right. So I think that there's there's a little bit of self-serving there. But the two minds. Right. One is he's not wrong. There is an asymmetry here. And we've talked about this. And that asymmetry is it

Corey 29:40

it has been ignored largely out of norms, not because of any kind of need to do it, which is you elect a leader one way and

Corey 29:48

and you depose a leader a different way. And

Corey 29:50

And that's something we need to reconcile. And that's not about the million voters out there, but that is about the fact that

Corey 29:55

that a leadership election looks very different than a leadership review. Even a leadership review constructed in this fashion, right?

Corey 30:02

But he's wrong, because ultimately, he

Corey 30:06

he can say these things, but they're very different times. In 2019, he

Corey 30:10

he was relatively popular. His party is who got the votes, not him personally. his uh you

Corey 30:16

you know his approval ratings were never that high in the province of alberta

Corey 30:20

and when you got to present day he was really unpopular right so what's the alternative you're suggesting here is it really just to ride it out and get and crushed in a general election there's got to be some sort of mechanism for a political party to say no you know what we want to do something different for

Corey 30:36

for the next election and

Corey 30:37

and what's the better alternative you talk about but 16,000 voters up ending this, that's a huge chunk of the membership. That's way more than the 500 delegates who would normally be choosing a leader's fate. And that's way more than the 32 caucus members that would, if we had the, you know, if we had the British system. So doesn't

Corey 30:53

doesn't this actually create the most advantageous, biggest pool, the thing closest to that million voters you're talking about without

Corey 30:58

without being that million voters. So I

Corey 31:01

don't know. I mean, when you get right down to it, he's not saying it because he's

Corey 31:05

he's not wrong, but he's, Yeah, but he's not right either. I guess that's what I would say.

Zain 31:11

Carter, did you want to respond to that last point by Corey in regards to comparing other mechanisms for changing course as a party? We can leave it as a deeper dive, but I want to give you an opportunity to respond to that because it was directly against your point around leadership reviews. views?

Carter 31:28

Well, motivation is totally different. I mean, he, you know, Corey says, well, it's 32 people who would have had his leadership aspiration in their hands. Yeah.

Carter 31:35

Yeah. Okay. But those 32 people are, are democratically representative of

Carter 31:40

of the, of the population because they are the democratically elected representatives

Carter 31:44

representatives in the, in, in the, in

Carter 31:46

in the legislature. Those

Carter 31:47

Those people also have a disproportionate

Carter 31:49

disproportionate amount of skin in the game, right?

Carter 31:52

right? You don't just go and turf the the leader. I mean, look at Boris Johnson. By all measures, the guy should be turfed at this stage. But those people who are sitting in his caucus haven't decided to let him go yet because

Carter 32:06

because they still haven't been able to weigh what's in their best interest.

Carter 32:10

what is in their best interest is in the party's best interest.

Carter 32:13

Parties are, especially grassroots parties like the conservatives, they don't necessarily know what's in their best interest. I would argue that that both the NDP changed their leaders too infrequently and the conservatives changed their leaders too frequently because

Carter 32:29

because they are both beholden to reactionary groups that are reacting in different ways. So I would just simply say, you

Carter 32:36

know, there is a certain strength to having the caucus hold the trigger.

Carter 32:41

These are the same people, by the way, that

Carter 32:43

that also have the ability to

Carter 32:45

to unelect him by forcing an election, right?

Carter 32:49

right? There is a tremendous amount of power within in that group so why not just double down on the power that they already have and say to them listen you don't want this guy vote him out or go to an election but the the going to the general membership is shit no

Corey 33:04

no i mean i i fundamentally disagree that the caucus knows what's in the party's best interests when you're in the government maybe at least they hold a blueprint to government if it's a majority government if we all get re-elected we're government again so So that anxiety, like you've basically defined, this is the coalition that will run forward forever. And the more broadband the caucus, the more that's true. But if the caucus is narrow in interest, you're kind of doomed, right? Especially if that caucus perhaps has decided that they were elected because of their intentions and their political views and not those of the party, which we all know is what people are actually voting on here. And it's easy to kind of look at the extreme example the other way to illustrate the problem with what Stephen's talked about there. Imagine you're in opposition and you only have a caucus of 10, and

Corey 33:49

and that caucus of 10 is entirely from the city of Edmonton, right?

Corey 33:54

if they are going to be self-interested and they're going to do what's right for them to get reelected, that

Corey 33:58

that party will never get outside of the city of Edmonton. Somebody needs to think about these things more broadly, which is why you want to put a party lens on the leader. If your intention is to actually fight for

Corey 34:08

for government, you've got to have representation in the areas across

Corey 34:12

across the province that allow you to fight for government. So, yeah, maybe the caucus is OK if you've got a super broad based caucus and they're all thinking about these things in

Corey 34:21

in terms of like altruism. But the reality is, if

Corey 34:25

if you're trying to get to the next step, you've got to invite voices in that represent those areas in the next step or else you're fucked. You're just fucked. So you can't leave it just to the caucus, especially if you're in opposition.

Corey 34:37

Carter, going to the membership

Carter 34:38

is worse. You're playing this game where, you know,

Corey 34:42

doesn't need to be.

Corey 34:44

imagine a situation where it was caucus members plus past candidates, or if it was weighted by riding, so every riding got 100 votes, or it was weighted by ridings in some sort of crazy fashion, so it was like the next ridings most likely to flip based on the previous elections results. results there are a lot of systems you could pull out here but i think the idea of leaving it to the people who are already elected often under the delusion that they were elected because of who they are and not who their party is is

Corey 35:13

is a mistake i mean this is exactly what i'm talking about when we start talking about you

Corey 35:17

you know giving the past this veneer and pretending it was so much better than it is because that system's pretty fucked too carter

Zain 35:26

cabinet minister puts puts out a statement this evening saying, ultimately, I'm

Zain 35:30

I'm not running for leader, and frankly, I'm not running for re-election.

Zain 35:35

This is an individual that was rumored by many to be perhaps one of the contenders for the UCP leadership.

Zain 35:43

Your thoughts on Schweitzer saying he's not running for the party, he's not running for leader? And maybe I'll double barrel the question, Carter, because why not?

Zain 35:52

You think this is step one of something else, something bigger, another candidate he might be getting behind? what do you think and uh what do you think it means for the party if

Carter 36:00

if he's getting behind another i'll start with the second half first if he's if he's getting behind another candidate he doesn't mention that he's that he's not running in the next election his power comes from you

Zain 36:11

doesn't he shouldn't mention if like strategically that would be a mistake strategically

Carter 36:14

strategically it'd be a huge mistake if he's going to be getting behind someone what he does is he he says i'm going to you know i

Carter 36:20

i i'm not seeking the leadership but

Carter 36:23

but i'm looking forward to someone with the following six attributes who

Carter 36:26

who will be seeking the leadership or should be seeking the leadership. And

Carter 36:31

And I would be more than willing to support their leadership.

Carter 36:34

I'm dissatisfied with the leadership contenders that we've got to this point.

Carter 36:38

But instead he said, the fuck out of here. So good

Carter 36:42

good luck with your party as you guys continue on. And

Carter 36:45

And I think that that was an interesting choice, obviously, because he is rumored

Carter 36:52

rumored to be someone who could participate at the top

Carter 36:56

top end of a leadership.

Carter 36:59

And he's also seen to be on the other side of Brian Jean and Danielle Smith. And him not being there does leave a giant hole for

Carter 37:09

for someone to fill. I

Carter 37:11

I don't think it will be someone necessarily new or that we haven't mentioned before. We've mentioned Travis

Carter 37:16

Travis Taze, we've mentioned Rajan

Carter 37:19

Rajan Sani, and we've mentioned Rebecca Schultz. I'm not sure that anybody outside of those three is considering this, unless, yeah, I think that those are the only other three.

Zain 37:31

Corey, what did you make of that Schweitzer announcement today?

Corey 37:34

Well, you're going to start seeing more of them. You're going to have people, I'm sure, that are going to have to put up or shut up. I'm sure there was conversation at Cabinet just based on Jason Kenney's remarks that if you want to stay in Cabinet, you need to not run for leader.

Corey 37:48

And so there will be declarations that people are not running for leader. Right.

Corey 37:51

Right. That's just that's inevitable. That's going to be happening. And then beyond all of that, this

Zain 37:56

this one added, he's also not running again. I think. Yeah.

Corey 38:00

Yeah. Because it starts to then almost demand those next questions. Right. Right. So are you sticking around? Are you not? And people are going to have to start thinking about what their future is. So expect more like that, especially now that Doug Schweitzer has almost set the precedent that in announcing your leadership ambitions, you

Corey 38:19

you also might be announcing your intentions for the next election.

Corey 38:22

It's a tough one, too, right? Like, because what are your choices that you can say? I'm going to stick around. I'm very proud. I'm going to be a cabinet minister. I look forward to supporting whoever the next leader is.

Corey 38:31

You might not believe that. Like, if you think there's a chance Brian Jean is going to be the next leader, you

Corey 38:36

you might just be like, fuck it. I'm not taking that risk. I'm not going to risk that I have to sit there in Brian Jean's cabinet. And I can't say, well,

Corey 38:44

well, we'll see how this leadership race goes. Or if I do, all of a sudden, I'm creating all sorts of other challenges for myself. So, hey,

Zain 38:50

hey, Carter, what's the does the statement change for someone who doesn't know yet?

Zain 38:55

What's the don't know yet statement? If a mic is put in front of your face, if you're being

Zain 39:00

being asked by the media, even some of the names rumored to us today, what

Zain 39:03

what do you expect their statements to look like in the next 72 hours?

Zain 39:07

Especially if they're forced with the I don't I don't actually know.

Carter 39:11

Yeah, I mean, it's it's the it's a standard holding position type of phrase, right? You know, it'd be an honor to run. John, I'm very excited that people are thinking about me. Obviously, I would have to keep meeting with the people that I serve, right? The most important thing to me are

Carter 39:28

are the 78,000 people that I serve in Northeast Calgary, and I'm going to make sure that they see this as something that I should be doing. If they do, you know, I'll have an announcement soon. This isn't going to be a long-term process, but as of today, I'm unable to throw my hat into the particular ring.

Carter 39:48

you know, something boring like that. Like, um,

Carter 39:51

um, no one is going to say, you

Carter 39:53

you know, I'm looking at the field and the field is so fucking weak. I may as well throw my hat in because any idiot could win, uh, which is how I look at the field. So, you know, I mean, it's, it's going to be fascinating, but I do think that the two camps problem is really the thing that's going to drive, uh,

Carter 40:11

the challenges for people, because if you're not seen as someone who can bring together both camps, then

Carter 40:15

then you're running to be the rump, the leader of the rump.

Zain 40:19

Corey, do you think that's a ballot box question here, bringing together two camps? Or do you think it parallels what we see on the federal side, which is purity, ideological

Zain 40:28

purity, shifting perhaps ideological purity, but purity nonetheless? What do you kind of see as the question? Yeah,

Corey 40:35

Yeah, I think that'll be the unspoken question, right? Everybody is going to almost almost pretend that they take unity for granted.

Corey 40:41

We all agree that we have to stay united to beat the NDP, right? Rah, rah, you know, general applause in any kind of area that they're going to do it. They're all going to say that, but

Corey 40:50

but that is going to be on people's mind. And it's going to be seen, I think, more as a negative, like this

Corey 40:54

this party cannot stay united under Brian Jean. This party cannot stay united under, I

Corey 41:00

I don't know, Jason

Corey 41:02

Jason Nixon. That's what's likely, right? You're you're probably going to have a situation where it's seen more as a negative and less as a, I am the person who can keep it united.

Corey 41:11

And they're not going to want to be making a big show of that. That'll be more of the whisper campaign because they themselves will not want to be accused of fomenting dissent and fomenting the idea that the UCP will be anything but you.

Corey 41:23

So it's going to be an interesting leadership race. They're all going to be, you know, it's like so many other leadership races. It'll be a lot of subtext. And I think that the subtext here is going to be significant.

Zain 41:35

Carter, talk to me about cabinet endorsements. How important are they going to be? We've talked about them holistically in the past and their level of import depending on the race. Look at this one. With this caucus, with what Corey just mentioned about the U, with the subtext underneath the iceberg about what's written, how important will it be to have cabinet

Zain 41:58

cabinet endorsements? And let me expand it even broader, caucus endorsements. How important do you think that's going to be for

Zain 42:03

for this particular race that the UCP find themselves in in the coming months?

Carter 42:10

think they'll be important if you're bringing together, you know, like Searle

Carter 42:14

Searle Turton and Drew Barnes. Right. Like if you're able to bring together two of the the

Carter 42:19

the poles of the, you

Carter 42:22

you know, of the movement, the

Carter 42:23

the left, the right, the right, the left, then then you're being able to show that you can bring together these large groups. But

Carter 42:31

if all you're doing is you're taking six

Carter 42:34

six MLAs from Calgary and those are your endorser group,

Carter 42:37

I think it's going to be a bit of a challenge. So

Carter 42:39

So I think that's

Carter 42:41

that's where the difficulty lies is how do you actually find

Carter 42:45

find a way to signal to both groups, I am the leader who can bring you together. And I think that caucus endorsements and also, you know, kind of like conservative

Carter 42:57

conservative star endorsements are going to be pretty important.

Zain 43:01

Corey, what's your take on this? The importance of what caucus, cabinet, reflexive credibility by conservatives?

Corey 43:11

Well, in any leadership race, we start counting endorsements, right? Right. And they'll also be the endorsements from past MLAs, party presidents, and everybody is going to want to show that they've got a broad base of support. I think it would be very problematic for Brian Jean if he only had the people who supported him last time, for example, or only people who were former Wild Rose MLAs. So expect to see a big show in his particular case of anybody who was perceived as closer to Jason Kenney who might say, you know, Brian Jean's the guy who can get us there. This is this is this is who we need to move us forward. He's always been X, Y, Z. I don't know. Whatever it is. The

Corey 43:46

The endorsement game, though, matters

Corey 43:48

matters less, generally speaking. It's kind of like a qualifying

Corey 43:52

qualifying point in some cases, but I guess I would say not even. I mean, I think back to the leadership

Corey 43:59

leadership race you ran for

Corey 44:01

for Alison Redford, Stephen, and you had the endorsement of, what, one MLA at

Carter 44:05

at the time? One MLA who lost his nomination race.

Corey 44:08

Yeah, a fucking popular superstar there. It'll

Corey 44:11

It'll be a little different. It was foreshadowing,

Zain 44:12

foreshadowing, Corey, just so you know. Yeah,

Corey 44:14

Yeah, well, there's an argument that that's the case because she never had the caucus and then she never had the caucus, right?

Corey 44:21

this time it might be a little different because of the desire, like I said, that shadow argument about

Corey 44:27

about can we stay united as a party? And if it doesn't look like you have any of the MLAs, that

Corey 44:31

that might really speak against you. So it might matter more this time than it has in the past couple of rounds. But the

Corey 44:38

the reality is you

Corey 44:41

can win without any of these, you know, MLA supporting you and you can lose

Corey 44:47

lose with all of them supporting you. So it's not everything, that's for sure.

Zain 44:52

Carter, final question for you, and it's a strategy one, as we look into this race going in the weeks and the months ahead.

Zain 45:02

win this race, Carter?

Zain 45:04

Is it a bygone

Zain 45:06

bygone era? Is it possible for someone who proudly Weldley has worn the light blue PC jersey to say, I

Zain 45:14

I want to unite this party. Kenney had never really worn that jersey, right? He'd kind of worn the federal conservative one, came in as a further right candidate, arguably has been even further out flying to the right now with the Wild Rosers.

Zain 45:27

Carter, can a progressive conservative win? And if so, sketch

Zain 45:30

sketch out the plan for me. How do they win with

Zain 45:33

with this existing base? And I think part of the answer is selling more memberships, of course. But first

Zain 45:39

first answer first, binary question, can they win and what does it look like?

Carter 45:43

Yeah, I think that a progressive conservative could

Carter 45:46

could win. And the path that I would see going there is

Carter 45:50

is actually a number of candidates running.

Carter 45:53

You can't just have one progressive

Carter 45:56

progressive conservative candidate against Drew Barnes, you know, Danielle Smith and Brian Jean. That

Carter 46:03

That won't work. In

Carter 46:04

In fact, if the progressive conservatives were going to defeat Jason Kenney, there

Carter 46:08

there needed to be Sander Janssen running against Richard Starkey, running against or whatever his name was. Was that his name? Richard Starkey. Let's go with that. And and, you

Carter 46:18

know, someone from Edmonton, you

Carter 46:20

you needed a rural, you needed a Calgary, you needed a an

Carter 46:23

an Edmonton so that you

Carter 46:25

you could collapse all the votes together.

Carter 46:27

That is the trick is you have to collapse the votes together. So you

Carter 46:31

you need you need your Patrick Brown. Right.

Carter 46:34

Right. If you're Jean Charest executing this example right now,

Carter 46:38

Jean Charest hopes to win the

Carter 46:40

the Conservative Party of Canada's leadership. Well, how does he get there?

Carter 46:45

He only gets there if

Carter 46:46

if the if the moderate conservatives, if there's the three that are running all

Carter 46:50

all fold to him and

Carter 46:52

and that, you know, that ultimately the person who's in third place has to be that moderate conservative. So that's what we need to see from the

Carter 47:02

the candidates. And the loss of Doug Schweitzer is a big blow to the progressive conservative side winning.

Zain 47:11

Corey, you're smiling. Give me your take. What are you thinking? I

Corey 47:14

I mean, Stephen's basically arguing for kamikaze candidates, which kills me. It's very funny.

Corey 47:20

Well, describe Patrick Brown. It's not a

Carter 47:22

a kamikaze candidate if you have a chance to win yourself. well

Carter 47:29

know just going after the other guy isn't being a candidate it's being a pundit uh

Corey 47:36

uh look round us out on this i'm not entirely convinced that uh i think it helps i there's a reality that it's easier to organize in smaller groups up to the first level and by having many progressive candidates you can almost tailor your progressive conservative message so maybe you have one that's more about maybe you have a candidate who's really big on social programs and reinvesting in education. And another one that's really big on reinvesting in post

Corey 47:59

post-secondaries. And another one that's really big about the

Corey 48:02

the environmental cause and making sure that there are conservatives who are supporting a carbon price in some way, shape or form. And then you have another Red Tory who's actually going to be kind of politically a little bit closer to where everybody is on the right, maybe is from rural Alberta. But they just in general perceive the need for a progressive income tax. They don't want to do a flat income tax. But But anyways, they cover a

Corey 48:25

a lot of bets, and it's pretty easy to see as the ballot roll-up goes that some of these people, since

Corey 48:30

since they got the ballot anyways, they would have never purchased the membership for candidate

Corey 48:34

candidate X, but they got it for candidate Y, and candidate X is kind of close. Well, then they're going to vote for candidate X, and so that can really support the kind of roll-up that Stephen Carter is talking about. The alternative is almost this clash of civilizations within the party that says, I am the standard bearer of a more moderate conservatism. the

Corey 48:52

real danger of that is

Corey 48:54

is uh that is the kind of candidacy that can split the party so in some ways it's not for me is

Corey 48:59

is that the only way you can win because i don't believe having multiple progressive conservative pcs is how the pcs must secure victory it's

Corey 49:08

it's what makes it least likely that this party's going to crack in two and if you've got a bunch of candidates and the coalitions are clear from a distance but up close get a little bit murky and maybe uh

Corey 49:18

uh one of them's a a good friend with brian gene is not attacking them but it's more likely their votes are going to go to let's

Corey 49:23

let's say doug schweitzer was still in the race well

Corey 49:27

that might be a way that you can win and still hold the party together so the more candidates i think the better for the ucp on this one uh

Corey 49:34

uh because it makes it less likely that you're going to have heads up brian gene versus let's just say jason nixon let's

Zain 49:42

let's leave that segment there moving on to our next segment our next segment the election going nowhere carter presented by not our sponsor i just want to let you know that while we've been having incredibly exciting times here in alberta ontario

Zain 49:56

ontario has not changed carter no one watched their debate their debate was tragic and boring nonetheless the polls are are pretty much stuck in the mud uh it seems like doug ford who probably needs somewhere in the range of 34%, 35% perhaps to get a majority.

Zain 50:16

Seems to be there.

Zain 50:19

you've been following Ontario a bit.

Zain 50:21

Rather than going through the deep dive of the back and the forth and the blows left and right, let's skip all that. Let's save people that because there really isn't much.

Zain 50:31

Unless I'm asking you for, what

Zain 50:33

what are any strategy lessons to take out of Ontario to export out of this race that you've seen we talked about one i think when we covered ontario in regards to how do you use covid as an attack and we talked about how to package that and pattern it anything

Corey 50:47

anything else you're seeing here mechanically strategically messaging

Zain 50:50

messaging wise um whether it's about how the races are being run the messages they're being run about anything at all that you want to highlight as a strategy message that or strategy uh

Zain 51:02

nugget that could be highlighted for another race or as as a rule, to consider, follow, or frankly, ignore?

Carter 51:09

Well, I think the big thing is it is super important to elect a leader that is likable within the population that you're trying to serve. You know, Corey

Carter 51:19

Corey has gone on kind of at length about how much he dislikes, you

Carter 51:24

you know, certain candidates. Yeah, you know, these aren't great candidates. You know, Andrea Horvath has been in her role for

Carter 51:33

for over a decade. I mean, how is she supposed to tell us how new and able

Carter 51:39

she is to serve when she's been there and rejected for

Carter 51:43

for this many times? I mean, this is one of the situations where the membership should have stood up and said, no, this isn't good enough for us. We expect something better. um

Carter 51:52

and del duca is just he's

Carter 51:55

he's just you know i remember back uh when ed

Carter 52:00

ed stellmach was running for the conservative party or the alberta progressive conservative uh party and uh

Carter 52:06

uh kevin taft was running for the liberal the

Carter 52:09

the alberta liberal party and

Carter 52:11

and everybody thought this was going to be a breakthrough election for the liberals because

Carter 52:16

stellmach you know progressive Progressive conservatives, you know, he was the surprise winner. It was all supposed to be dinning. They had the hangover from from from Klein. This is going to be a bad election for the progressive conservatives. And then all of a sudden no

Carter 52:32

It turned out that no one wanted to vote for Kevin Taft either. They

Carter 52:35

They didn't want to vote for Kevin Taft. They didn't want to vote for Ed Stelmack. We

Carter 52:39

We have one of the lowest voter turnouts ever.

Carter 52:42

And, you know, Stelmack was was able to walk away with a victory. And

Carter 52:45

And I think that that's kind of the election that we're seeing right now. Yeah, sure. I think there's a lot of people who look at Ford

Carter 52:51

Ford and say, oh, this isn't the leader that I would choose. But I

Carter 52:57

I don't like these other guys either. So I may not vote or I may not. I mean, I think that that's the number for me that I'm going to be looking at. How many people just chose not to vote rather than to vote for the people that we have got

Carter 53:10

got running for these various positions.

Zain 53:14

Corey, squeeze out a strategy lesson or a piece of strategy or anything you've seen to ignore or discard something that could be extracted

Zain 53:23

extracted and would be noteworthy for us, our audience and for practitioners. What do you think? Anything?

Corey 53:28

Yeah. So, I mean, I guess if I don't want to call it yet because June 2nd hasn't happened and who the hell knows what kind of turn this election will happen.

Corey 53:35

And I want to talk about

Zain 53:36

about that next, but that's good. You mentioned If the

Corey 53:38

the next week occurs like the last three weeks, and there is very little interest and very little movement, then I think it'll be a good time to remind people of that most standard of all lessons, which is oppositions

Corey 53:50

oppositions aren't elected, governments are defeated. And

Corey 53:53

And it seems to be a general attitude in Ontario of I don't know, I don't care.

Corey 53:58

You know, I don't love a lot of things. I don't hate a lot of things. Let's just do it all again in four years. I don't I don't have a big dog in this fight. And Stephen's talked a bit about how that can often manifest in lower turnout, but not even necessarily. Sometimes you just show up and you say, you know, and you just you toss the one out there.

Corey 54:17

Suspecting you were going to ask a bit about Ontario today, I did throw out on Twitter. I basically like, you know, spin me, pitch me. What's the thing that's happened in the Ontario election? And I think in general, ambivalence

Corey 54:28

ambivalence came through stronger than most any answer. But generally speaking, it's yeah, the opposition never, never found, never

Corey 54:36

never found traction in the mud. And I think that's fundamentally what I believe. Neither of the oppositions gave a reason to vote against the government. And the government seemed, well,

Corey 54:46

well, by no means inspiring and awesome, which is good

Corey 54:49

good enough. off and like i said we got a week to go crazy

Corey 54:52

crazy shit can happen crazy shit has happened in final weeks of the election it's

Corey 54:55

it's not as though this is an insurmountable gap but

Corey 54:58

but the last three weeks being so quiet and the debate changing so little i

Corey 55:04

mean that's got to be playing into the the ford strategy the

Corey 55:08

the other thing is

Zain 55:09

is oh go ahead sometimes the

Corey 55:12

you know we talk a lot about

Corey 55:14

you got to be careful you lose leads and and sometimes the the play is not to sit on your lead, but actually to get out there and continue to define your story.

Corey 55:22

But only necessary if your opposition is defining you or attempting to in a way that has any kind of resonance. The

Corey 55:27

The Ford government, I guess the PCs is a better way to put it because we're during an election,

Corey 55:33

has just gone quiet and

Corey 55:35

and is just playing it safe. And that

Corey 55:38

that seems to be enough because the other two parties can't manage to get their hooks into them in any way.

Zain 55:45

Carter, I need to talk to you about what Corey's just mentioned one

Zain 55:48

one week to go we've talked about this previously on the pod right you read the tea leaves or read the room it's fourth and long Carter it's

Zain 55:56

it's fourth and long you got a week we've talked about soak time for for things if you go with something you have to go with it now Carter talk to me about the Hail Mary is

Zain 56:06

is there such a thing as a Hail Mary that a Del Duca or a Horvath or someone now needs to throw we've debated this at length around the the federal election. Is

Zain 56:16

Is the context here different, that

Zain 56:18

that now's the time, whether it's scorched earth negative, whether it's a piece of oppo, whether it's a proposal?

Zain 56:26

First, the binary, should they do it? And secondly, what sort of flavor or character do

Zain 56:30

do you think it should have

Zain 56:32

have to either break through in the progressive primary, they still seem to be fighting a bit, or

Zain 56:37

or strip down forward? What do you think on the Hail Mary with a week to go? So

Carter 56:41

the Hail Mary with the week to go is super hard to pull off. It is a you know, we had it happen for us with the the Lake of Fire. And it wasn't even the last week. It was the last the last 10 days. So this, you know, it started to burgle. We're about

Zain 56:58

about last 10 days or so, just to be clear.

Carter 57:01

You're in a lot of trouble when you're trying to pitch something in the last 10 days. And the truth of the matter is we'd pitched Lake of Fire-like stuff every

Carter 57:12

fucking day of the election. Like this was not something new. What happened was someone found this thing and it was, you

Carter 57:21

know, thrown out there by

Carter 57:23

by like a blogger, I think, because back in the day bloggers mattered. And, you know, that changed the race. This is not something that was done by a political party. So your hands are now tied. You're in the will of the gods segment of your election campaign. And that's a very, very challenging place to be because the electoral gods, you know, they don't tend to like to shake up elections in the last minute. it. Having said that, keep in mind, all hope is not lost. Most voters choose their candidate or

Carter 58:02

or they make their choice 72 hours to 72 seconds before they cast their ballot.

Carter 58:08

We know that statistically. The

Carter 58:10

The challenge with this type of thing is

Carter 58:12

is that they are more likely to lock in with

Carter 58:15

way that they were behaving before than to change their behavior in the future. and that's that probably favors doug ford more than anything um you know we're not in the prediction business uh if we were we'd have even more money in our bank account um but we aren't

Zain 58:31

aren't but you are carter right so go ahead later i

Carter 58:33

i mean but we are we are seeing something now where um

Carter 58:39

you know these something's gonna have to shift dramatically in the in the coming days and and And who knows? Maybe it will. But it's

Carter 58:47

it's not because of the Ontario Liberal Party and it's not because of the Ontario NDP. At this stage, if either one of them wins, it's because Doug Ford and his party screwed up, not because of something that the opposition parties do.

Zain 59:02

Corey, Carter says it's hard to execute. It's hard to land. It's hard to all

Zain 59:06

all that sort of stuff. stuff still

Zain 59:08

still worth the shot cory still worth doing it still worth throwing it on on fourth and 20 what other choice do you have you got you can punt it yeah

Corey 59:15

yeah what do you think

Zain 59:16

think they do well

Corey 59:17

well the thing about a hail mary is that it in some ways suggests it's like a sports game where it's binary you win or you lose but that's not really how politics works and in you're making the decision as to whether you're going to take a big swing like this you've got to know the

Corey 59:31

the bigger the swing uh the bigger the opportunity that you're going to stumble around fall on the ground and look like an absolute ass and perhaps cost yourself a

Corey 59:39

couple of seats as well so

Corey 59:42

those reasons it is usually better when the hail mary so to speak comes from from a third party or or from a little bit of distance from the campaign although voters aren't dumb and they can sniff when when something is totally totally out there but if

Corey 59:57

if there's a hail mary to come i sure hope that it was put into to motion a long time ago uh because as as stevens talked about in the 2012 provincial election uh there were i don't know there was a lot of spaghetti thrown at the wall and much of it did not stick at all i mean i remember an ad that

Corey 1:00:15

that was like anonymous yet super high production values carter maybe you want to comment maybe you don't being like i don't normally vote pc but i'm going to vote pc this time right

Corey 1:00:25

uh didn't really happen that

Carter 1:00:26

that would have been a good ad to produce i wish I wish I'd been involved in that.

Carter 1:00:32

would have been epic.

Corey 1:00:33

know, nothing really came of that. There were accusations about extremist views in the Wild Rose that were coming out for weeks, but none of them were really kind of sticking. And then all of a sudden in that last week, there were two. There was a Lake of Fire comment, which Stephen's talked about. And there was a CBC debate where Danielle Smith made a comment about climate change, which made her look very outside of the mainstream on that issue as well. And voters recoiled. You know, there was this recoiling from this position that they were at for most of the election.

Corey 1:01:02

So but, you know, these didn't happen out of nowhere. This was like variants

Corey 1:01:07

variants of the hit, you know, putting it out there in the public, sort of seeding some doubt, making people wonder, is this a thing? And

Corey 1:01:13

And then the moment that defined all of this that came through. So

Corey 1:01:16

So you don't just decide you don't wake up in the last week and say, OK, time to just go nuts. I mean, that's that's very dangerous for a campaign. campaign and

Corey 1:01:24

and um and if there's something to come it will probably build on things that people already feel or think out there and it will just crystallize the moment for voters we're

Zain 1:01:33

we're going to leave that segment there moving on to our final segment our over under at our lightning round steven carter it's all about you everything is about you this show is for you carter is

Carter 1:01:44

is it 10 o'clock already one

Zain 1:01:46

one sentence of advice to dougie ford heading into this final 10 days what would would you tell him if you were whispering in Doug Ford's ear for his final 10 days, seven to 10 days stretch,

Carter 1:02:00

The only one who's already

Zain 1:02:01

already had done that Carter.

Carter 1:02:02

Yeah. Yeah. The only one who's going to lose this as you stay away from, stay away from microphones.

Zain 1:02:07

Corey advice. Is that, is that, is that what you would parrot? Is that what you would say? Stay away, stay low key, stay underground. What's your one sentence of advice to Doug Ford, Corey? Yeah.

Corey 1:02:17

Yeah. Don't stay away. Don't stay low key because then people will talk about you staying away or staying low key. You want to do the absolute minimum that's required to still look like you're showing up for this thing. But no big announcements, no major commentary.

Corey 1:02:30

You definitely don't want to step in it by, you know, commenting

Corey 1:02:35

commenting about other people having COVID or anything like that. Just, you

Corey 1:02:39

know, steady as she goes for a week. No news is good news when you're leading in the polls.

Zain 1:02:44

Corey, I want to ask you about this. You know, the Ontario election, as we've we've talked about, hasn't produced a lot. But one thing it has produced is another chapter in how political leaders deal with Bozo eruptions, with candidates that have committed sins on social media in person in the past. I'll ask you again, as almost a reset from the federal election, overrated or underrated Bozo eruptions as you've seen them play out this election in Ontario?

Corey 1:03:08

Overrated. And I think every election they will be increasingly overrated because we are becoming We're becoming so numb to them because every election we're guaranteed a few at

Corey 1:03:17

at this point, right? One of the challenges with living so severely online as so many of us do is it creates quite a permanent record, a record that even those

Corey 1:03:26

those who are looking to scrub at different times don't do a great job. And imagine being not

Corey 1:03:31

not much younger than us. You're like, I thank God that there wasn't social media when I was in high school. Fuck, if I was sharing every thought in my head then to the world, God,

Corey 1:03:40

God, it was bad enough in 2006 when it came out, when I was in theory, you know,

Corey 1:03:44

know, a fully functioning adult. adult. Um,

Corey 1:03:47

but as it goes on and we get so used to it and there's just, there's going to be something for everyone and there's going to be embarrassing things for all people. Uh, it's just going to not have the punch that it used to have. And that's probably a good thing. I mean, there's a difference between something that somebody did last year. Uh,

Corey 1:04:03

Uh, that's a Bozo eruption, uh,

Corey 1:04:05

uh, and something that they did 10

Corey 1:04:07

10 years ago, but,

Corey 1:04:08

but, uh, we're not super calibrated on that right now. I hope a calibration will come.

Corey 1:04:13

But in a world where it's impossible to forget, we're going to have to figure out how to forgive.

Corey 1:04:19

And that's going to play into these things as we move forward.

Zain 1:04:23

You know, Carter, you may not have had social media when you were in high school, but you know what you do have?

Zain 1:04:27

Hundreds of hours of podcast audio where I'm sure you've said something that's

Zain 1:04:32

that's going to get us all canceled. Stephen Carter, overrated, underrated. We've seen a new chapter on Bozo eruptions. Where do they stand? are overrated or underrated in your mind, sir?

Carter 1:04:43

They're obviously overrated. I mean, they would have far more impact if they were rated appropriately because everybody picks up and does the story on them because they're super easy stories to do. And I think that this kind of falls to the feet of the media where the media, you

Carter 1:04:58

you know, the media have certain stories that they like to do because they're just easy. And this is one of them. Does it matter if this person had this view or said this thing on Twitter, just because someone's outraged does not mean that it matters. Um, especially when things are taken out of context. Uh, yeah, I mean, it's fair to say I've had my own fair share of interactions with people on Twitter. We've lost the fucking plot, you

Carter 1:05:23

you know, um, they,

Carter 1:05:25

they, you know, Ooh, I'm

Carter 1:05:27

I'm angry with you. So, you

Carter 1:05:31

you should should be, you know, you

Carter 1:05:33

you should change your position.

Carter 1:05:36

Right. And so, you know, these controversies don't have the legs that they once did. And, you know, they're also changing the same way that, you know, when Bill Clinton first admitted that he smoked pot but didn't inhale, it wasn't that much longer until, you know,

Carter 1:05:58

was saying that they'd smoked woke pot and did inhale. And now it's not disqualifying. Um, everybody at some point, every, at some points, every election is going to have, uh, someone who's got a naked picture that floated around online.

Zain 1:06:13

Corey, you want, you want to jump in on this?

Corey 1:06:15

Yeah. Uh, you know, unfortunately there's a darker side of this too, that I think we, we can't let go by. And that's that there's a certain brazenness to people who are, are feeling much more comfortable having truly abhorrent views out there, whether it be about race or gender. And I don't want to give these individuals a pass. But one of the things that now occurs is, is that so many of their supporters are saying, that's fine. I don't care. As long as I get my tax cut, as long as they stick it to the other guys, whatever the case may be.

Corey 1:06:43

And that's not great.

Corey 1:06:44

And so whatever system we come up with, we're going to have to find a way. And I don't mean like us as individuals, I mean, society wide, how we adjust to these things, how we digest suggest a meltdown in high school, getting high while naked at a lake versus race baiting six months ago. The calibration has to become more specific on that front. But one of the things that we are dealing with right now is

Corey 1:07:08

is that there's just so much out there. People are having trouble

Corey 1:07:11

divining what any of it means. And

Corey 1:07:13

And the effect of any bozo eruption is reduced as a result. Well,

Carter 1:07:17

Well, Corey, maybe you'll be able to help me with this. But I'm told that there's these things called thirst traps on TikTok. I'm unfamiliar with the term and haven't seen any of these videos. But this is a, you know, at some point, these things are going to come back and haunt people. And the fact that they've posted one, should it be disqualifying for public office? Should it be disqualifying for a job?

Carter 1:07:41

And, you know, these, you

Carter 1:07:44

you know, those views are being being

Carter 1:07:46

being disproportionately punished whereas views such as you know um you

Carter 1:07:53

know literal nazis are being swept under the table so hopefully we get this right um we see virtually no indication that we will uh

Carter 1:08:03

uh because we continue to be our

Carter 1:08:05

our our ever so wonderful

Carter 1:08:07

wonderful selves uh but at some point uh i'm hopeful that we're able to pull it all together carter

Zain 1:08:13

carter i'm going to stick with you for our next Next one, give Jason Kenney a letter grade on the first draft of his political obituary thus far. You

Zain 1:08:20

You saw it on that radio show. You've seen it dribble out through some proxies and some others. Carter,

Zain 1:08:27

put it all together. Give him a letter grade on the first draft of the obituary.

Carter 1:08:35

Probably a C minus. He's working with really bad material. um but at some point he will be remembered as the person who brought together the conservative movement in alberta if it falls apart right away it's going to be hard cory

Zain 1:08:47

cory give me a letter grade on the first draft on the obituary thus far i

Corey 1:08:52

i it's got to be a b or even a an a minus he has managed to to put out there um a story about a he won b

Corey 1:09:01

b he decided to leave anyways for the good of of the party c less we forget united the conservatives d has talked about all of the various things that they have gotten done and how he wants to continue to focus on that mandate and then e he's he's pitched uh you know uh i'm not going to get involved i'm looking forward to doing normal things he said he wants to read more books connect with friends get in shape study another language and finish his college degree that's a nice bucket list and he'll be be able to do that because he's got a pretty kick-ass pension from his time as a MP. So he's managed to paint a picture of somebody who's

Corey 1:09:39

who's taking it pretty well, left

Corey 1:09:40

left on a high.

Corey 1:09:42

I don't know. I can't really fault him. Now, if it all goes to hell and

Corey 1:09:47

and the party falls apart, none of this is going to matter. It's going to be seen just as a bad experiment. But if it manages to to hang together he's doing a pretty good job carter

Zain 1:09:56

carter you were you you were breathing as if you wanted to jump in well i was just going

Carter 1:10:00

going to say that i think i think that it lends itself to a bad experience experiment more than it lends itself to something that's going to be sustaining um these just you know the the conservative party of canada may be able to sustain itself but the the these two groups uh they don't live well together in the same room in alberta

Zain 1:10:23

Corey, final question for you. You know, much of the national media and the national conversation about Jason Kenney is still about what the hell went wrong. And one of the narratives that seems to have dominated is

Zain 1:10:35

that he lost because he wasn't conservative enough. So as we round out the podcast, give

Zain 1:10:40

give me your reaction or correct this for us. Do a public service,

Zain 1:10:44

service, because, Corey, we are a public service at the end of the day that

Zain 1:10:49

has a select number of people who pay us a minimum of six dollars a month. But other than that, we're a public service. OK, Jason,

Zain 1:10:55

Jason, Kenny lost because he wasn't conservative enough. Corey, your take.

Corey 1:10:59

Maybe because he started this runaway train, right? Which suggested that one of the reasons why the PCs failed was because they lacked a certain purity. Now, I mean, I think my view, my read of the PCs is a little bit different. They certainly lost any kind of principle, in my opinion, and drifted about. But it

Corey 1:11:19

it wasn't necessarily their lack of hardcore right wing values that cost them the election. because i mean albertans lest we forget in 2015 elected an ndp government and

Corey 1:11:29

and then the party you know the pcs ended up with uh well only 18 seats i think they came in second if i'm not mistaken there so it to me doesn't suggest that that albertans were saying not right wing enough they they're not right wing enough so i better go elect a new democratic government like that doesn't fucking hang that doesn't follow but he validated and he he gave legitimacy to the grievances of those who were in the wild rose camp, right?

Corey 1:11:55

The problem with the previous government is they weren't grassroots enough. They weren't true enough to their conservative values. I'm going to be different. Well, when you let the genie out of the bottle on that one, right?

Corey 1:12:05

Okay. All of a sudden, everything you do is, is it grassroots enough? And is it conservative enough? And Jason Kenney couldn't pass the purity test he himself set because governing's hard and governing requires you to do things like stay to the middle where the public is. And it requires you to do things like just make a fucking decision and not go back and talk to everybody all of the time about all of these things and it's really interesting and there's going to be a lot to dissect about the jason kenney days weeks years uh in in the coming months how's that for a turn of phrase but one of the things that i'm most interested to to sort of discuss is this this view of jason kenney hotly

Corey 1:12:43

hotly contested now of and

Corey 1:12:45

and jason kenney has suggested this himself that that perhaps he was too lenient of dissent,

Corey 1:12:51

So a lot of people scoffing at that. I 100% fucking agree. 100

Corey 1:12:54

100% agree. I think Jason Kenney was stuck in this weird place where he gave them just enough latitude to make his life miserable, but not enough that they would actually see him as a populist. So what

Corey 1:13:06

what do you do? But that's in part because of the situation he set up for himself.

Zain 1:13:11

Carter, Jason Kenney lost because he wasn't conservative enough. Is that an

Zain 1:13:15

an accurate portrayal? it

Zain 1:13:17

it clearly isn't a comprehensive one and i'm not saying that that has been uh put

Zain 1:13:21

put put out there as a comprehensive one but an accurate portrayal as we round out the show carter you've

Zain 1:13:25

you've got the final word no

Carter 1:13:27

no because it turns out that you need to do things that are popular with the electorate the decisions that he was making were decisions that were 80 supported by the electorate and he he sided with the 20 he was on the wrong side of a bunch of issues he was the one who pushed for the opening uh you know the best summer ever he was the one who pushed you know delayed mask mandates he's the one who stopped city you know cities from municipalities from having their own mask mandates this is a guy who did the unpopular over and over and over and over again and it turns out that when you do the unpopular over and over and over again you become unpopular this is not a a guy who who oh i went too far to the left a fucking you know please come on don't insult my intelligence do things that are popular and you become popular uh and and that is the first rule of a populist premier how do i know that what proof point do i have doug fucking ford did things that were popular even if they weren't right wing or left wing doesn't give a shit he just wants to to win because winning matters.

Zain 1:14:37

Corey, start the printing presses. Stephen Carter has minted another poster. We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 993 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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