Episode 997: Picking a lane

Zain 0:01

This is a strategist episode 997. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always,

Corey 0:06

always, Corey Hogan. And of course, Stephen

Zain 0:10

Stephen Carter. Guys, what is going on? Stephen Carter, NBA finals. Let's get right into it. Celtics or Warriors? And Marcus Smart or Jason Tatum, if the Celtics do advance and win the NBA championship?

Carter 0:23

I got to be honest with you. I think that it's all about Steph Curry. The long ball is the best ball.

Zain 0:31

thank you carter um yeah

Zain 0:32

no avoiding the question sidestepping

Zain 0:35

your premise he rejected

Carter 0:36

your that's good let's

Carter 0:37

let's see this is this is what we're teaching our people we're

Carter 0:40

we're teaching our people here no

Corey 0:42

no i i appreciate it i think that that's smart cory

Zain 0:44

cory was there some room for improvement in that answer uh

Corey 0:46

well i mean he didn't answer so that's that's probably the thing i would point out yeah

Corey 0:52

was it so you actually have an opinion about smart martin versus tatum yeah

Carter 0:57

uh no i don't know what the hell you're talking about that's not

Carter 1:02

what you do but i was teaching people i was teaching i was teaching you i mean you could have just tatums obviously i mean i'm assuming we're talking about tater tots is that

Carter 1:10

that what we're talking about yeah

Corey 1:11

yeah i noticed they became tatums like a plural there with your answer so well

Corey 1:16

well that's good carter okay that's good uh cory

Zain 1:17

cory anything else we need to discuss up front i mean this is the precious moments of the podcast and we've wasted it on stephen carter and i i make that mistake i think i made it about i'm just gonna do the math here a 997 times i think this podcast has made that mistake to go to carter first i should be going to you first cory i mean hope springs eternal

Zain 1:37

with your general general knowledge of something uh

Corey 1:39

uh you know i don't know what are we going to talk about are we going to talk about how the stock market is is in a bit of a free fall we're going to talk about bitcoin what are we talking about tonight zane just

Zain 1:46

just any trivia to

Zain 1:47

to get the people excited

Zain 1:49

young street is the longest street in the world maybe someone

Corey 1:52

that and they can sit i'm not convinced that's true i hear people say that all of the time but i i feel like you're really stretching the definition of street to an extent because for example uh you know a lot of streets become highways how is 16th avenue and calgary not the longest street in the world because it becomes first or highway one so it goes across the country exactly

Corey 2:14

like let's let's be real Let's be real about Yonge Street. Let's be real.

Corey 2:20

51% of the fresh water

Zain 2:21

water supply in Canada. I don't know. I'm just giving people these stats, Corey.

Zain 2:26

Okay. That one, you got nothing? You got nothing to fight on, though? Do you want

Zain 2:30

want to hear something here?

Corey 2:31

You want to hear something interesting? What do you got for the people? Adjusted for inflation, the peak that the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit in 1929, it did not get back to until 1960 or

Corey 2:42

or for 30 years uh 1959 and

Corey 2:46

and then the peak that it hit in 1966 it did not get back to adjusted for inflation until 1996 so again 30 years so what i'm telling you is if you're losing money today you

Corey 2:56

you might not make it back for 30 years if things go really off the rails i want you to go to bed thinking about that tonight thinking about your you know children's resps thinking about your retirement thinking about all of the possibilities that lay in front of you unless you opted out of inflation and purchased bitcoin in which case so stratcoin

Zain 3:11

stratcoin which we're launching today will be available on the solana blockchain now let me tell you about carter uh just no no

Zain 3:19

it's an algo rand

Corey 3:19

rand one come on be serious

Zain 3:21

course let's move it on to our first segment we're going to talk about that guys but not first and foremost let's move it on to our first segment our first segment devin carter banner year i have a very very simple question because we, we have now seen a variety of different launch style events in the UCP leadership. Just today we saw Raj and Sonny flanked with banners of Raj and Sonny. Corey, you want to, you want to jump in on this? I

Corey 3:48

I guess I'm, I'm curious. We're opening with the launch of Raj and Sonny's campaign.

Corey 3:54

You know, there's the January 6th commission.

Corey 3:57

Yes, we're opening up on this. Yes. There's all of that mess in Toronto. There's the CPC leadership drama.

Corey 4:02

What's the mess in Toronto? The Yonge Street thing. The Pearson.

Corey 4:06

Pearson. The Yonge Street thing. Pearson. Yeah. There's drama in NDP constituency associations. I mean, the list doth go on here, and we're going to be talking about...

Carter 4:16

about Sony. Have you listened to the podcast? Sony. Have you been on the podcast for 967 or 70... How many episodes?

Carter 4:23

Is this your first day? So, here's the thing. Do

Zain 4:26

you literally... Do you have amnesia? Do you forget what the fuck Thursday was? was we did a whole episode that was so good on bill rock i've no now i've learned he's the lord mayor of amisk now that's different than the mayor of amisk but he says mayor so there's a controversy that bill rock down so what i want to focus

Corey 4:45

focus today on is how

Corey 4:47

how bill rock gets out

Zain 4:48

out of this gun yes it is i think on his twitter account he calls himself lord bear which

Zain 4:52

which we should resolve

Zain 4:54

because there's there's a bit of a crisis here that's stone

Corey 4:57

stone hard it's gonna go after that's I do

Zain 5:01

do want to talk about the Raj and Sonny launch event, Corey Hogan, because she launched today in a 13 minute speech outdoors with banners beside her. And then she later went to a what seemed like a several hundred person events where she launched her campaign on a stage with multiple banners of herself. Corey, I know you've been trying to make this go viral and meme worthy on the Internet. at. But the question I want to ask Stephen Carter is I don't want to poke fun at this. I want to actually ask Carter, is the launch event dead? Because we had Raj and Sonny do a launch event that many might characterize as a little bit underwhelming today from how it perhaps looked to us, right? We're not the membership acknowledge that. You had Lila here who launched on Ryan Jesperson's podcast and then with a couple of tweets, as far as I can tell, and I'm just going to head on to her Twitter account in a second. I don't see any sort of website. I don't see any sort of brand change i don't see any sort of like overnight let's flip the switch uh sort of thing so carter the question i have is we've discussed the elements of launch events we've actually never discussed the binary of are these events dead are they even necessary talk to me about that give me give me your hot take first and we'll jump into some of the reasons why yes or no i

Carter 6:18

i have done both the launch event and the non-launch yeah i know you launched a

Corey 6:23

a campaign on this podcast podcast

Carter 6:25

no i'm talking about something different that was you guys you guys were mean to me and you forced me into launching a podcast or not a podcast a campaign on this we also forced you

Zain 6:36

you to launching a podcast yes that is also yeah we

Carter 6:38

we did that too remember i was sitting in my office saying no i don't want to do it anyways the the point that i'm trying to get to here is

Zain 6:45

is that are you telling me that nearly a decade later you don't want some of this patreon money that you don't want to invest in a podcast and cash out like

Carter 6:52

like the smartest thing in the whole world was to give the check to Heather. That was unreal, Corey. Good call on your part. I was thinking, you know what? I could use that money for so many things. But when I gave that check to Heather, I'll tell you something. Everything was amazing. So I'm pretty happy with that. Let me continue on. I have done launch events and I have done non-launch events. In In fact, I just did a launch event last week in CERT. We had a group of people, some 600 people came to an event. There was a 10 or 11 minute speech.

Carter 7:29

The audience did all the things that the audience was supposed to do. I don't think it changed. It certainly won't change the outcome of the election. It was a fine

Carter 7:37

fine event. It was absolutely fine. It was as good as you're going to get in these things. And I just don't think it's going to have any real impact. and i think that raj and sani's event wasn't as good as you're going to get in those thing in these things and that's where you might actually have impact because it's not about if your event is good it's about what happens if your event doesn't work and sani's event i don't know how cory how long you made it into the video cory i i think i made it um three and a half minutes uh but i skipped ahead for much of the three and a half minutes so i'm not even sure how far I made it. So Mike, I think that you can do a good launch event. I'm just thinking that if you don't do a good launch event, it's going to haunt you. And I don't think Raj and Sonny did a particularly good launch event.

Zain 8:23

So Carter, is that your metric? Just so I understand your take here. Like if you're doing it, do

Zain 8:28

do it, like obviously like do it well, but how do you make the decision on whether to do it or not? That's what I'm trying to understand. Cause you said you've done both. So what was your, what was your metric to decide? Was it the candidate? Was it the the moment? Was it where you stood in the race? Like what was the strategic calculation based on we're going to go in with a launch event versus we're going to do perhaps the Lila here style? And Corey, I'll come to you in a second.

Carter 8:50

asked everybody on the team, how many people will come to the event?

Carter 8:53

And if the answer is less than 200, then we're not doing an event.

Carter 8:59

You know, we got 600 people in Surrey. That was a great event in terms of numbers. It exceeded people's expectations. That was the goal. And that's a good event. If you're going to have less than 600 people, then why are you doing the event? We've talked about it before. If you can't compete,

Carter 9:18

if you can't be the number one in that category, then change your tactic.

Carter 9:23

I think we can be the number one in the launch category. So we did a launch event. When

Carter 9:28

When we launched Nenshi, I knew knew that we couldn't be the number one in the category, right?

Carter 9:33

I knew that we would have others that would be able to draw more people. Rick McIver could snap his fingers and have a thousand people at an event. We were never going to be able to do that. So we didn't do an event. Lila here couldn't draw as many people, you know, a thousand people to an event. So she chose not to do one. I think that that's the right call. And I think that Raj and Sonny maybe should have thought a little bit more about what, what she could or couldn't do in terms of the overall impact of her, of her event cory

Corey 9:59

cory is the launch event dead no

Corey 10:01

no i mean steven started giving the answer i wanted to give here which is it goes back to your campaign your story your brand it depends on what you're trying to do and for many people the proper move is just not to try to play in that space i you know and when you say launch event steven was talking about a thousand people there that's not even what the sony event was the sony launch although there were follow-on events throughout the day subsequent this

Corey 10:26

really weird it was uh in front of the alberta legislature but with banners up so you know a bit of an aside here folks launch outdoors launch with banners don't launch with both right let's let's call that banner rule number one like you pick your backdrop right and you don't want to make it as messy and as cluttered as that second rule uh

Corey 10:46

have banners there have your candidate there don't have your candidate there there with in front of banners of your candidate has been a couple of times i'll confess in my own career where we've ended up there because that tends to be collateral you have around like the face on a banner that should never be the backdrop to the leader and one of the minor things that really blows my mind about the sunny event is that uh especially the later events of the day she'd be on a stage with four of these banners of her wearing the exact same suit that she was wearing standing at the lectern giving the speech she was giving there and that's that's distracting directing, if nothing else. So don't, don't do anything like that. But, um, when

Corey 11:23

when you decide whether you're going to do an event like this, or maybe just go on the radio, or maybe you are going to try to fill a room of a thousand people that really depends on what you're trying to say as a campaign, or it should, right? Like you shouldn't do these things just because in any kind of context, I mean, this is literally the purpose of this show, right? Strategy. Think about the context, the strategic context of these things here. And there's been successful non on launches one of my favorite was bernie sanders i think launching in maybe it was 2012 2016 uh his campaign where he literally just like walked across a field uh from the congress building he's like oh i'm running for president and that was his launch right uh

Corey 12:01

uh but then i've seen you know the the tease for a long time and thousands of people in the room and that can be very successful as well but

Corey 12:09

but bernie's brand is i give no fucks i'm bernie sanders i've been saying saying the same thing. And I don't care about this bullshit. And it played entirely to his brand. You're Barack Obama and you're doing a launch event.

Corey 12:20

You're supposed to be inspiring people, bringing people in. You bet your fucking ass you're going to have a lot of people at your launch event. So who are you trying to be?

Corey 12:28

That determines every action after that. You know, it's market position. Everything flows from market position.

Zain 12:34

Carter, can I add maybe a comment to what Corey said? It's almost like who you want to be,

Zain 12:41

it doesn't define you for the rest of the campaign does it like you know i i feel like there's perhaps a misnomer that if we don't have a high energy 800 person launch event we can't be a high energy campaign and what cory's describing here is that bernie sanders walks across the senate being like i got fucking shit to do but i'm running for president see you later yeah um that didn't mean that he didn't have energy or enthusiasm or momentum right like i think there's perhaps a lesson here to be learned but am i right and perhaps suggesting that from from your practitioner's perspective totally

Carter 13:11

totally i mean he's saying i am i have other things that are more important than this and that is his central and core message to his campaign so allowing himself that space actually allows him to define why is

Zain 13:24

is this like going

Carter 13:25

going on keep defining the uh the

Carter 13:27

the the overall positioning of his campaign structure that's ultimately what you're trying to do right we how many times have we talked about story how many times i mean like every single time we're on on the podcast i'm sure people get exhausted by it but we're always talking about story well this is the opening chapter yeah

Carter 13:44

lila here opened her chapter by saying i'm going to be available i'm going to answer your questions that's a that's

Carter 13:51

that's a great thing i think it's a little weird not to have a website not to be ready for all of those little brandy elements that need to be in place um you know jenny sims you know we had uh all these different kids were in the room we had That was our statement, right? We had all these families and we were focusing on the family or whatever the messaging structures were. But that focus on the individuals, the focus on the bigger picture becomes the message. And that's

Carter 14:22

that's ultimately what you're looking for is what is my message and how am I getting it out there? And I think that Raj and Sonny today, she launched as though she had a big time campaign. The four events was a big thing, right? Like being able to do four events in a single day. I mean, I was impressed by just the logistics piece. I just didn't need the launch in front. I think the problem with it was the launch in front of the legislature. I think if you take away that 13-minute speech and instead just go with, you know, Raj and insani is going to be across the province working hard for all of you i think it would have been a much stronger set of events where each each city or each place would have had their own media event instead of this kind of one singular media event at the start i

Carter 15:08

think that might have worked a bit better yeah

Corey 15:10

yeah i want to jump in on this in some ways this this talks to we talked about story uh brand and market position but capacity also plays a role in this and they may have rank logistical

Corey 15:22

capacity they may have bit off more than they could chew certainly i think it it is a sign the team is stretched a little thin when you have some of the like i got like a minute and a half into that video before i started just sort of skipping through and grabbing lines uh zane you asked if it was underwhelming impossible to say nobody has ever gotten through it all um even the people they are drifted into fugue states you could see it one of them was holding up the banner and kind of leaned out from behind and then leaned back it was yeah

Carter 15:50

almost like is it is it

Carter 15:51

it over can i

Carter 15:52

can i step out of here but

Corey 15:53

but my point here is you've got to be able to do it too so you may have the desire to fill a room with a thousand people 200 people was carter's number for for his municipal campaign there but if you had heard from the people you talked to steven and they said no we'll get a hundred people you

Corey 16:09

right so you've got to know the limits of your team the limits of your team to fill rooms the limits of your team to set up the the stage more generally uh and just manage that craft my

Corey 16:21

my sense is the sony campaign probably leaned really hard into making sure the rooms were full for all of the events and kind of forgot about some of the 101 stuff the stagecraft stuff because it was pretty grim i mean the video they launched even the way they set the camera on their own video everybody

Corey 16:37

everybody could see the feet you could see the x marks that were there for the supporting cast to stand on that they didn't stand on like the whole thing was just a comedy that was my favorite

Corey 16:47

was just wild um

Corey 16:49

um yeah but that you know that speaks to not enough time to rehearse not enough people thinking this thing through they didn't have the capacity to do it all you

Zain 16:57

you know carter there's an interest and you might not find this interesting or you might disagree but i'm curious to hear your take on this that that you know we've talked last episode where we talked about raj and sonny the memo that ken boson cool wrote for her which said you know you've got a viable pathway you don't have a lot lot of caucus support but that's a good thing because caucus support means you know a reflection of the past leadership not a reflection of you know future leadership you even saw it in her slogan today the forward slogan but

Zain 17:22

bold and innovative forward yeah

Carter 17:23

yeah which by the way is

Carter 17:25

is the same slogan as my campaign in british i saw that i saw that very forward yeah i'm pretty proud of we've now got to come

Zain 17:32

with a slogan either it's uh two two south asian women apples apples comparison we'll see where this goes carter with both campaigns very different context I think we'll know how we'll see where this goes. But here's the thing, you know, Carter, you've run a lot of come from behind campaigns or what we'd call like narrow path victory campaigns, right? Where you're the underdog. And I almost sense, you know, with with some campaigns, and I'm not accusing the Sony campaign of doing this, but if you know you're an underdog, that you have to almost overcompensate with your seriousness on day one, that you don't have any time to waste, that there's there can't be a slow burn to catch up to show viability because you've got to do it right away. Talk to me about that a bit, because it can backfire in certain cases. And I'm trying to extract this beyond the Sony launch today to maybe looking desperate in certain situations, maybe looking like you're in overreach, maybe looking like you're redlining on capacity, as Corey said. So Carter, talk to me about the strategy of a campaign that knows it's an underdog, that's trying to showcase viability, but feels like they don't have time to actually do a slow burn or make the case that they need to show seriousness on day one. Is there a misnomer here in strategies or a mistake you see often? Just your reflections on that. this

Carter 18:46

is why we did the bill rock piece on on thursday night and a lot of people will have missed out on that because they're not patreon subscribers real sales this is an opportunity for everybody to subscribe to the podcast on patreon

Zain 18:58

patreon let me let me fill people in it was an hour of carter saying uh bill rock rock hard okay carter go back i'm gonna say it so you don't have to go ahead please thank

Carter 19:06

thank you anyways great episode greatest ever perhaps episode but when we were talking about him we were talking about how little time he had and how he had to move quickly he

Carter 19:17

he needed to become recognizable in a very short period of time obviously the raj and sonny team has taken the same look and said we have to move quickly we must be seen as and i would think that they're not actually competing with to be better than travis taves to have a larger launch than travis taves to have more mlas than travis taves or even smith or brian jean what she's trying to to do is get ahead of the

Carter 19:40

the the people that she thinks are going to roll up with her so

Carter 19:43

so you're going to have to have you know you're

Carter 19:46

you're you know the schultzes and the michelle

Carter 19:48

michelle rempel garners and the years you know they're all going to have to roll up into sonny's and sonny wants to get ahead of them in

Carter 19:56

in case they come in and uh they

Carter 19:58

they take her positioning cory

Zain 20:01

cory give me your thoughts on this the over

Zain 20:05

over-eagerness perhaps of a campaign to look viable on day one versus perhaps dealing with that viability question, that underdog status in a more slow burn perspective. We don't know the date of this leadership just yet, so we can't pinpoint it on this campaign, but just your general comments on how you've experienced that and maybe you've seen success or failure in that regard. Yeah.

Corey 20:25

Yeah. I mean, four events in one day, I think is what she was attempting to pull off here. and i guess in a most literal uh sense of it she did but that does speak to trying to do a bit of shock and awe saying serious candidate look at this filling rooms all over this province rah rah rah but that um again this goes back to capacity one of the things i was wondering as i watched it was who who's the audience for this because the audience of the minute and a half i watched off the top and by the way you're

Corey 20:53

you're not you know don't judge me too harshly because most people will not even watch a minute and a half of it right but it did seem that that was targeted towards an introduction of herself to albertans right a more general audience this is who i am uh i've always been you know my first job was in alberta then my second job then my third job then my fourth job then my fifth job quite a rundown of jobs with no specificity by the way may i say um

Corey 21:19

that uh that seemed targeted towards a general population

Corey 21:22

makes sense you're trying to do a media event right but then every subsequent event seemed to be and the wrap up of the day as a whole seemed to be saying

Corey 21:30

saying wow that's really impressive look at look at what she's managed to do in these random corners of the uh of the um of

Corey 21:38

province but then there was this comment about the um the

Corey 21:42

the uh i almost called it the sky mall the sky palace where um you know sonny took a round out of people for sitting in the in the sky palace right and that that was to a party audience at one of these events with many banners on the stage here. And that also seemed, I mean, maybe it was targeted towards base, maybe it was the public, but I

Corey 22:03

I guess my point would be, it was tough for me to sort of ascertain which, and I do wonder if they didn't have too many things going on for

Corey 22:08

for one day. I don't think that the other candidates have taken such an approach.

Zain 22:14

One of the things though, that I do also want

Corey 22:16

want to throw out there is in this UCP leadership, to

Corey 22:19

to my knowledge, someone will correct me if I'm wrong. I don't believe we've actually seen the big launch right like the launch with a lot of people

Corey 22:27

yeah everybody is around is sort of assessing they can't do it but somebody's going to assess they can and maybe that's brian jean maybe we're going to see that still maybe there's going to be 600 people in a room at some point and that will be interesting uh because if nobody does it that tells me something too something weird about the ucp race carter

Zain 22:46

carter round us out on that do you suspect that that big launch will will appear and do you sense will appear from a strategic point of view or someone will just say we got to do this as a checkbox on the strategy shower light or the campaign checklist so to speak i

Carter 23:00

think that the person who wants to appear to like they're in front might do a big race i mean i think that we've talked about how you don't actually want to be in front and on these uh preferential ballots um but i i'm sure that that won't to swayed uh the geniuses that that are running uh all the the leadership campaigns for the ucp um they'll someone will want to will will say someone's strategy team is going to say the only way you can win this is if you're in first place uh all the way and you went on the first ballot so let's show everybody exactly how strong you are brian or how strong you are and i guess that taves has already launched so we're not looking for him to do this but that that type That type of activity, that type of action is still viable. It's still something that could occur. I'm just not entirely sure that it's

Carter 23:45

it's going to happen. The speed with which all of this has to occur is ultimately the defining factor. How much time are you going to spend to do a launch event when the next day you have to get three media releases out or you have to plan the rest of your tour? I mean, this thing is going to I think everybody is counting on this thing happening so quickly that there's not going to be a lot of, you know, discussion about doing

Carter 24:10

doing any one particular thing to the to the fullness of the possibility. Keeping in mind that there's just a lot of stuff to do. I mean, you know how much there is to do in a campaign, Zane. You know, do you want to do everything on that campaign in

Carter 24:24

in the first like if this thing is over in two months, the campaign period, it's over in two months of selling memberships. and then it's only three weeks left to get you know to do the vote piece um i mean you have so much to do and that's one of the reasons that i think that the sonny launch again was was so interesting you

Carter 24:43

you know she clearly put a lot of effort into making sure that people remembered her on her first day and i don't although

Carter 24:48

although i don't think it hit i

Carter 24:50

i don't blame her for trying that i think that that was probably a pretty smart call it just didn't

Carter 24:56

didn't work the way that cory and i um um uh

Carter 24:59

uh you know would

Carter 25:01

would have preferred it to go we're

Zain 25:03

we're gonna leave that segment there move it on to our next segment our next segment crypto opting out of inflation by deflating in front of our eyes cory if the price goes down you're technically not you're it's not inflating cory it's working pure call poly ever has done it he has done it promise made promise

Zain 25:23

promise kept cory hogan how bad is is this for Pierre Pallieva, as crypto now takes another, I shouldn't say nosedive, but takes another significant battering. This, of course, after a significant dip earlier in the month. The reason we bring this up as it relates to the race, of course, Corey Hogan, because one Pierre Pallieva said earlier at a shawarma shop where he purchased his shawarma in crypto, if I'm not mistaken, or Bitcoin more specifically, that Bitcoin and by extension crypto was the way to opt out of inflation.

Zain 26:00

Corey, give me your initial thoughts on this. I know this is something you've been tracking. I know this is something you passionately like to bitch at us about in our WhatsApp group. Give me your take on what this is and then let's get into the politics of it and the broader politics of the conservative leadership race because I want to touch on a few things there. Yeah.

Corey 26:16

Yeah. So background that I think most Canadians will know at least a little bit about. When Pierre Polyev bought that shawarma, made those comments, Bitcoin was going for $59,000 Canadian. It today hit below $27,000 for a bit. It's now above $28,000 as of seconds ago, 9.32pm mountain time. I just took a bit of a scan on it. That's a pretty big drop. That's a more than 50% drop. And the suggestion that this is a way to opt out inflation was always a little nutty. I mean, if you invested in Bitcoin in 2013, you're still looking at annualized returns of like 100% still looks like a brilliant investment.

Corey 26:58

But man, it's been a ride along the way. And you've seen a lot of volatility. And if you purchased it, if you got on that roller coaster in the last two years, basically, you're not you're behind, you've lost money at And so that's also a bit of a challenge here. The idea that it would somehow, when you think about the challenge of inflation being, oh man, I can't buy as much today as I could yesterday, it

Corey 27:20

it was always insane to suggest people put money into a very volatile asset class in order to quote unquote opt out of inflation. But what Pierre Polyev might be facing is looking down the road like he bought

Corey 27:35

bought into the Dutch tulip craze, like there is a world where this currency goes even

Corey 27:39

even further down. And, you know, if let's just say Pierre for PM wins the leadership of his party, and then finds himself in a situation where he's facing off against the liberal leader, you know, Chrystia Freeland in 2024. 2024, this is going to get thrown back in his face a lot. Certainly, if you try to opt out of inflation this way, you've

Corey 28:01

you've lost a lot of money.

Zain 28:03

Carter, go ahead. I wanted to get your initial take on this, but I also wanted to remind our listeners that you for a long time, I'd say at least the last month, Carter, even prior to the second dip, have indicated that pure

Zain 28:19

pure polyamory has made a huge mistake here in that his competitors should find a person who's lost real fucking money on the crypto crash. I want to remind that, and I want to almost get you to either revise that or re-up that or give me a take on that, on what you think his competitors should do to take advantage of this. Because right now, we're in the middle of another bloodbath. Most people don't understand crypto, which is perhaps the cloud cover that Pierre has. They don't understand what it is. So what's the simple story here? Take this complicated currency, boil it down into a nugget for me, and give me something on a silver platter that you can hand over to Jean Charest or Patrick Brown tomorrow. Bake it a bit more from previous times we've discussed this, Carter. Well,

Carter 29:08

I think that the number one thing, I mean, the easiest thing to do, you don't have to do any research, you don't have to do any additional work, was you walk into that very same shawarma shop, and now you buy a shawarma using your good old Canadian cash. And it costs $8.75, or if we're in Calgary, $12.75. And that is the same price that you would have paid a month ago. If you were paying with Bitcoin, you now have to pay twice as much. It is twice as expensive because your Bitcoin dropped so substantially because all of this up and down and back and forth is difficult for people to track. But if you say to them, I am taking good old Canadian currency issued by the Bank of Canada, the Bank of Canada, you know, look, it's the signature of the president or the head of the Bank of Canada is right on this thing. The same person that Pierre

Carter 30:04

Pierre wants to fire. The Pierre wants to fire and it's stable currency. It's the same price for me today.

Carter 30:14

do one better. Yours is twice as high.

Carter 30:16

And then you'd do one better. How do you do better than that? You do

Corey 30:20

do it. You show me. Show me. Oh, I'll tell you what I would do. I would walk in there and I would offer to pay for the shawarma the same price in Bitcoin that Pierre Poliev did. And when they said, no, absolutely not. It's twice as much in bitcoin that

Corey 30:34

would be what i do uh because then you make it real then you can illustrate holy shit when you think about what we buy in terms of bitcoin inflation has been over 100 in just

Corey 30:45

just a couple of months here so maybe we shouldn't be listening to this guy when it comes to uh you know price financial advice let alone running the bank of canada which is something he aspires to do apparently by replacing the governor well

Zain 30:59

well is there more meat on the bone here than just making that that illustration like you've started to expand it around trust that this guy's bullshit like where else can this go where else can this go uh from here because this seems to be because pierre polyev seems to be hitting the mark on many other things yeah

Zain 31:16

membership sales will get into that right uh his airport video most recently um many people acknowledging that it was a solid

Corey 31:24

solid video that he made

Zain 31:25

made at least some popular yeah

Zain 31:28

yeah so like you know and for those who hadn't seen it he was in an area pearson airport clogged up puts has a mask on talks about what the trudeau government's failings are walk side side rips off the mask delivers a direct to camera looks like unscripted but like good work like top tier political sort of like oratory in that sense um so he's hitting a bunch of other strides is

Zain 31:48

is this kind of like the opening that you have cory or is this not enough of an opening i I mean,

Zain 31:54

crypto issue around trust, is this is this a legitimate opening or and how much time are you spending on it as a campaign to kind of drive a story and start a narrative thread here is my question from a strategic element from a Sharae or Brown campaign. You

Corey 32:07

You know, I don't know. We've said this in other contexts, but when you have these one off issues, you've got to keep in mind that it's a pretty rare circumstance where the one off issue becomes the issue. And usually you're using it as a proof point in a larger charge. Yes. I mean, this would be one against his judgment. So, you know, that makes an awful lot of sense. And it's something you can pull back. And it's so obvious. And it's not most of the time in politics, you're arguing in terms of opinion, right? Well, that's just your opinion that went better than it could have. We don't know. There's not another universe there. This is one of those rare opportunities where you can say, if I didn't take your advice, I would have this much money. If I did take your advice, I would have this much money. And that's obviously much more concrete than the gods often afford you in this game of politics, right? Right. So there's a lot of value there. But how

Corey 32:55

how many people have actually are going to change their mind in the Conservative Party membership about this? I suspect relatively few. What, between five and 10 percent of Canadians own cryptocurrencies. Let's say five percent own Bitcoin. Right. Which would be too high. But let's just say that's the case. Five

Corey 33:12

Five percent own Bitcoin. Let's say it's double the number in the Conservative Party because we do know that one of their candidates has been pushing it. That's still 10% of the members. Some of them will not change their minds. In fact, there's a ton of research that shows you make a dollar

Corey 33:27

dollar investment in something, even if it goes really badly, you tend to double down. You don't want to look foolish. You don't want to die that social death. So you say, oh no, it's coming back. It's still an inflation hedge. Look at it over the longterm. Look at it since 2015. Look at it just from 2017. You'd still be up. Nevermind you bought in March in this scenario. But there's narratives you can tell, lies you can tell yourself and And most people will do that. So

Corey 33:52

So let's say you change the mind of 1 in 10 or 2 in 10 there. Is that enough to win it?

Corey 33:59

I don't know. That really depends on how close all of these things are and campaigns are going to have to decide. But because at the end of the day, you're maybe talking about 2% of that membership. I

Corey 34:09

I sure wouldn't make your whole thing about his judgment on Bitcoin.

Corey 34:13

Can you make it about his judgment? Yeah, that's a little different, but you're going to need more proof points than just Bitcoin on that.

Zain 34:19

Carter, let me ask you a slightly different question then, and tell me if I'm right or wrong with this statement.

Zain 34:24

Justin Trudeau and the Liberals should start attacking Pierre Pallièvre now.

Corey 34:29

I think you're wrong. That he's leaving a lot of arguments

Zain 34:32

arguments available that his opponents might feel like they're not, to Corey's point, fruitful enough for the membership, but

Zain 34:40

but that we need to shine a light to them now. The statement is Justin Trudeau and the Liberals attack him now. Right or wrong, him, Carter?

Carter 34:48

I think it's wrong. And the reason I think it's wrong is that

Carter 34:52

you still don't know everything, right? You've got your own battles that you're fighting if you're Justin Trudeau. And fighting

Carter 34:59

fighting Pierre Polyev, there's

Carter 35:02

there's two outcomes. You fighting Pierre Polyev may ensure that he becomes the leader.

Carter 35:07

And that may be good or that might be bad for you. But you fighting Pierre Polyev also might ensure that he does not become the leader. And I think it is worse for you You know, you don't want to try and put your foot into this. Let the gods decide who's going to be the leader of the conservative party. And then once that person becomes the conservative party leader, that's when you start doing your job and tearing them down and making them who they are. Because you're not going to, you

Carter 35:35

don't want to be seen to be influencing the race because you don't know what the impact of your input is going to be. so

Carter 35:43

so leave them alone get ready put your op team on everything um they they can find the the crypto bros and the the folks that have lost their shirts on crypto um and go that direction you don't need you don't need to take him down now i just don't like inserting myself in a story that i don't belong into cory

Zain 36:04

cory i'm gonna i'm gonna keep trying to sell it on you and get your take right so justin Trudeau, minority government. Yes, he's got a deal. This may not apply to the membership, but we need to remind Canadians of it while they're living it, while they're seeing an issue like this, that suggesting that we as the liberals and me as a prime minister and our attack ads could actually tilt the outcome is overstating what we have a potential to do. Sure, it might be a media story, but we're going after the guy who's clearly got the memberships to win this thing on the first ballot?

Zain 36:35

Corey, same question to you. Justin Trudeau and the liberals should start attacking Pierre Polyev now. Agree or disagree?

Corey 36:41

I mean, I disagree. I think there's better ways to spend your time in this ambiguous space.

Corey 36:49

Maybe it's over. Maybe it's done. Maybe it's not. I would say the way Pierre Polyev is going after, for example, Patrick Brown makes me think that he doesn't think he's at 100% likelihood of winning. Maybe

Corey 36:59

Maybe he's being extra extra cautious and he thinks he's at 95 90 i don't know i will have a better sense of that when some of these numbers come out here but um you

Corey 37:09

you know very few things right now not just about who's going to win the cpc leadership but this election is not happening tomorrow maybe

Corey 37:19

maybe you can concoct a scenario where it happens in the fall if somehow the liberals lose the ndp support support. But you've got to keep in mind that

Corey 37:26

that the liberals would almost have to try to

Zain 37:29

to lose at this point, right?

Corey 37:30

right? Because there's ways they can narrow their ambitions, do things directly to the letter of the deal, make it very hard for the NDP to bring them down. If they were if the liberals felt they were really challenged in the polls. And if you think this election is not going to come until the say, let's say it's not coming until 24 or 25. Right?

Corey 37:48

Let's just say that's the case that we're

Zain 37:50

we're going to be looking at here you

Corey 37:51

don't know uh i don't think there's ever actually been a three-year period in bitcoin's existence for example where it is worth less at the end of that three years than the start of that three years there's been ups and downs yes but the broad overall trajectory is up and so your argument about uh

Corey 38:09

uh him saying you should invest in bitcoin and you saying that was a very stupid thing could then end up thrown back in your face if Bitcoin's all of a sudden at $120,000 a Bitcoin, right?

Zain 38:20

How about more generally, Corey? How about attacking him more generally on other issues that he's brought up on his firing of the Governor of Bank of Canada, any of those things? Let's move

Corey 38:27

move it beyond the crypto. Again, I mean, I

Corey 38:29

I use it as an illustration, but the overall point remains. For all you know, the Governor of the Bank of Canada is going to be found in

Corey 38:36

in a very compromising position tomorrow,

Corey 38:38

which is not to say that you hold your fire until the very last minute. it but

Corey 38:43

but given the ambiguity of the race given the the overall context that they find themselves in

Corey 38:50

there are better ways to spend your time there are ways you can shore up and and almost yeah get the ground ready for these attacks without making these attacks and then you go absolute shock and awe when you think it's in your interest that's when maybe

Corey 39:03

maybe here's the way i'll put it i know carter wants to get in here you

Corey 39:06

you didn't see stephen harper start

Corey 39:08

start beating the hell out of Ignatiev and or

Corey 39:12

or or Dion Ignatiev was the front runner in the 2006 race but they waited right they waited until there was uh somebody because that's when Canadians will be paying the most attention and that's when your attempts to define will mean the most.

Zain 39:26

Carter you're the head of the Liberal Party the PM books a conference call tomorrow saying fuck this I've held on for too long I'm in I have COVID now I'm sitting at home I'm looking at this idiot Pierre Polyever he's going to win it. I want to go after him now. Carter, as the head of the Liberal Party, you can't just say no. You have to say no, but we can do this instead. Here's what I suggest instead. What is your persuasive strategy? What is your persuasive set of tactics to say, we're not going to do that, Mr. Prime Minister. We're not going to do that, Katie Telford. We're not going to do that, but here's what we are going to do. What would your message to them be on a conference call tomorrow, Carter?

Carter 40:04

There are two mistakes that we make in politics. One is to misassess the risks that we're about to undertake. And the second is to misunderstand the timing for the actions that we should be taking.

Carter 40:16

A lot of people try and win an election at the end when they should have tried to win the election in June, right? Or, you know, the action or the timing needs to be laid out so that it actually makes sense within the narrative arc. Then you need to understand what the risks are. And my case, and I think the case that Corey is building, is that there is a risk now. There will be less of a risk later. Right. And when you when you kind of progress through this, when Pierre Polyev wins and you now know that you are facing him and you now know that the Bank of Canada governor has miraculously survived the scandal that that that Corey cast him in seconds ago. go.

Carter 40:57

When you start to see those things come to be, then you know that you've got much more solid ground to stand on. But when there's so many unknowns, like what's going to happen with Bitcoin in the next two years, three years? We

Carter 41:11

We don't know. Well, should we define our opposition on that then at this particular moment in time? Well, the answer has to be no. So if you want

Carter 41:22

want to define him if you wanted to to get

Carter 41:26

get ready to define you know it's about preparation because

Carter 41:30

because the other thing that the other problem with this is that it won't be sustained you brought this up earlier saying when i was kind of going after my little attack line how do you sustain that what happens next what's the next piece right so i can do a really nice attack on him in the in the in in the denier shop, but what happens the next day, right? In a perfect world, you should do an attack on them in the denier shop. You should find the, uh, the person who lost, you know, you know, $60 investing in, uh, in,

Carter 42:01

in, in crypto, um, $60 of the hard earned money of the strategist podcast. Um, and you know, that, that person goes on, on, on the air and says, this is money I couldn't afford to lose. I did it because Pierre told me it was going to, it was going to protect me and my family. And now I feel so, you know, abandoned. I feel like I'm

Carter 42:21

I'm alone. And then the other, and then the next day I'm going to talk about how much money Pierre Pelliev has lost himself. Right. Because we know that he, in his, you know, in his, uh, whatever they're called disclosures has indicated that he had a fairly substantial holding in, uh, in Bitcoin. So, you know, or in, in crypto, I don't know specifically which, which one of the crypto. Well,

Corey 42:45

Well, I think it's Bitcoin, but we don't know the amount, right? Because they're not recording the

Carter 42:49

But we could start to play out a longer game. This guy, you know, he's losing his own money. He's losing your money. He's losing the, you know, he's making it harder for the denier shop. So what

Carter 43:00

what we need is

Carter 43:02

is grown up, mature leadership that can sustain itself. This is just not the time to

Carter 43:07

to be running off and starting to attack just so you can attack.

Zain 43:12

Corey, you know, the team at the PMO hears what Carter has to say. And then they say, you know, one thing, Corey, since you're on the call too, that we found interesting is Carter talked about timing. He said, you know, some people wait too long. Other people go too early. What we see right now is a case to hobble him right away. Why

Zain 43:31

Why not? You know, he's fighting a different fight. We can go unopposed, hobble him right away, make him not viable from the get. It pays dividends two years down the road. six months down the road, whenever we have an election, Corey, why the hell not? I hear what Carter's saying. Why not hobble him now?

Corey 43:48

Yeah. Uh, you know, and there's, it's

Corey 43:51

it's a 60, 40 business. Maybe that is the right move if everything breaks your way. Um, but one of the things you're always trying to do is, is maintain a range of options, particularly when you're so far out from when you perceive the election to be.

Corey 44:03

Oh, sometimes you got a strike. You can't just dance your army around in the field. And I apologize for all the war metaphors, but literally campaign. I mean, this is where it comes

Corey 44:13

When it comes to that strike, if the prime minister was hell bent on doing it, I would probably steal some advice from Ali Elwell here on our YouTube chat for this very episode as we're talking here. You don't have to put your whole army into it. So maybe throw some people into it who are not necessarily

Corey 44:31

seen as speaking for the leader or that you can have a bit of deniability if they move forward. So, you know, put a backbench MP or two on it was the suggestion that that seems like it's better than going full in with the apparatus of the Liberal Party that the Liberal president, Stephen

Corey 44:45

Stephen Carter, apparently would be throwing in.

Corey 44:49

There's logic there because you can deny it down the road or you can say, well, he's speaking for himself or herself rather than suggesting that it was the position of the party.

Corey 44:57

But to go in as the party, to go in as the prime minister on these things at this time is is dangerous. us.

Corey 45:05

it's all about risk benefit. And you might gamble and

Corey 45:10

Doesn't mean it was the smart strategic choice.

Zain 45:13

Carter, let's talk about the Conservative Party membership. So last time we discussed this, we took the numbers as they were. I asked you guys whether there was any incentive in lying about it. Corey said, no, these numbers are going to come out in a couple of days. Carter said, fuck yeah, I would lie about it. Well, turns out accusations about lying are are literally what have fueled the conservative leadership race for the last, what, seven days, 10 days? Each campaign pointing their fingers at the other. Jenny Byrne saying Patrick Brown is a liar seven times on television in a five-minute interview. Also releasing a video, a senior advisor to Pierre Pallièbe for clarity. Jenny Byrne is releasing a video about Patrick Brown will say anything. How did he buy this multimillion dollar house? Some suggesting that's Pierre being Pierre. Their campaign scorched earth. Others suggesting, oh, is this campaign actually behind? It is now a little bit panicked about the situation. So we're seeing a very, very interesting dynamic play up, Carter, regarding the memberships. Also, strategists from each of the campaigns saying we're going to challenge other parties' memberships on eligibility. What do you make of the current state of affairs, Carter? And what do you make of this? Let's start start with the membership challenges, that eligibility is going to be challenged on thousands and thousands of rival party members. Is this a common process within the leaderships of campaigns that you've run? And do you feel like it will be on overdrive here as we have all this haze about what's real and what's not so real in this leadership race?

Carter 46:41

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot at stake. And when there's a lot at stake, people break the rules and other people will kind of, you know try and find a different way to achieve their ends and so yeah i mean the

Carter 46:54

the the objective or the the exercise of challenging people's memberships is entirely predictable because if you have a way of taking a significant number of memberships out of play then

Carter 47:06

then it's the same as getting votes for yourself right you're now in a much stronger position than you would have been if you just allowed it to all unfold naturally so you you and there's very little cost to doing it It's happening literally behind a closed door. So you go out and you say, well, this member is not a real member. Well, who the hell even knows? No one even knows. There's no cost to you as a campaign. So you're better off to challenge those as much as possible. as possible. Now, the party has a role in this as well, because the party doesn't want to disallow every candidate or every membership. So they're going to fight for the members that they see are real. A lot of campaigns or a lot of parties will make sure that the unreal or the not real candidates or memberships that are sold are pulled from circulation. But it's still tricky tricky to make sure that everything gets out that needs to be out. So my, my experience with this is that a

Carter 48:06

a sizable number will be pulled, but it's not going to be, you

Carter 48:10

you know, if, if the numbers of projections are correct and I, and Corey and I will debate that all day long, let's just go with 600,000 just for now. It certainly isn't going to be 6,000 memberships or 60,000 memberships that are pulled.

Carter 48:23

It will be a few thousand here or there, and it might be enough to make a the difference. But all I see, you brought this up in your preamble. All I see when I'm listening and watching this is Pierre Polyev's team panicking because they know they don't have everything that they need in

Carter 48:40

in order to be the strong candidates that they want to be seen as.

Zain 48:43

Corey, I need you to interpret that question too. Is it panic in your mind from team Pierre Polyev or is it the same scorched earth? We just hate you and we don't give a flying fuck. We're We're going to go negative at every turn, as they did on day one of their campaign to to to to Patrick Brown. What do you think it is and what is your interpretation? Because there is conventional wisdom about when to go negative. And so does this kind of break a rule? Does this form with convention with you? What are you thinking?

Corey 49:12

Yeah, you nailed it. This is very much in his nature. On the very first day of the campaign, they came out. They went for the jugular. They they went totally ham on

Corey 49:22

on these people. yeah as they entered the race on on charrette on brown whoever was there they were they were willing to stick a knife in them so

Corey 49:29

so it's not as though it breaks type um

Corey 49:33

but if this is just them being them i think they've they've so clearly identified what their achilles heel will be because this is crazy behavior this is self-destructive behavior if you are going to be leader of this party and you're confident of that because let's be clear you are if you're the poliev campaign you have said a couple of things here you have said the membership was with you at the start you have sold the most memberships by far and that you're going to win this thing and if you believe all three of those things to be true right then it is in your interest now to act as leader and not as candidate and if you are acting as leader what you want to do is make sure the party hangs together and if you start a really acrimonious fight with patrick brown and jean and you drive out all of the moderates in the conservative party that

Corey 50:19

that weakens you i mean you might not be philosophically where they are ideologically it might not be your cup of tea to have to hang out with the jean cherries of the world you will never make government if you if

Corey 50:30

if you are so right-wing that conservatives do not feel like they can join your party right

Corey 50:34

right so it's in your interest to keep the party together if you believe your leader so something here is is not

Corey 50:42

meshing for me right either it is not nearly as much of a runaway as the polyev campaign says or

Corey 50:50

they are so fundamentally flawed as people you

Corey 50:53

i'm not gonna say organizers that that they just can't help themselves and they're you know to call somebody a liar seven times in five minutes when

Corey 51:03

the 150 000 members there's a lot of fucking members and you want to burn all of these people i mean it's crazy to me so what that

Zain 51:08

that is that is what i find interesting here is is the strategy carter is like the the conventional strategy versus what the pier campaign is doing here right the conventional strategy would say you almost want to preemptively build goodwill because this guy clearly is a mover you may want him in the circle he can clearly sell in the gta so fuck

Zain 51:27

fuck these fucking somewhere so you you know this campaign whatever it happens federally the election is one in three regions this guy seems to be a fucking magician and at least one of them perhaps, or at least a few of these communities.

Zain 51:39

And then what they're doing is just saying, go fuck yourself to the point where Patrick Brown says, if Pierre Polievre is the leader, I'm not running for him and I may go back to municipal politics. So Carter, tell me what do you think is going on here from a strategy perspective? Do you feel like it's just a byproduct of raw panic? Or do you feel like this is strategic alienation to purge for purity, uh which is the the sub goal or 1a goal of the pure polyam campaign i

Carter 52:08

think that you're you're trying to um make

Carter 52:12

make something that's not strategic strategic i think that this is just who jenny byrne is

Zain 52:17

is you're not going

Carter 52:18

going to give any

Zain 52:19

any credit that there's no there's no strategic end here even

Carter 52:21

even even i'm going to give to these people

Carter 52:23

i these people these people no let me let me let me make an argument political operative let me let me make an argument this person who goes after the wrong type of politics. No, I'm not doing this. She's not good. Pierre Polyev is a fucking asshole. Everything that comes out of his mouth is a half-truth at best. And now we're surprised that they're standing up there and saying, you're a liar. No, you're a liar. No, you're a liar. No, you're a liar. You're a liar. This is fucking bullshit politics done by bullshit people. And if they win, it is the end of the Conservative Party as we know it.

Carter 52:56

I'm okay. I mean, I don't have anything to say.

Zain 52:58

No, that's good. That's good. in court you wanted to jump in here i i

Corey 53:00

i was going to retort to carter but go ahead i mean the i mean look am

Corey 53:05

am i comfortable with where the conservative party is going no but

Corey 53:08

but they have sold a lot of memberships they're obviously capturing uh something there and if i want to be charitable let's apply the principle of charity here and say let's just say all of these things are true that i was just incredulous about let's just say they do believe they're going to win maybe

Corey 53:22

maybe they believe their strength is in that that purity of conviction and that i look

Corey 53:28

look i don't i don't like it and i'm not saying it's a good strategy but i'm just i'm trying to figure out why in the world they would be doing this and that's it's not there there

Carter 53:36

is no there is no explanation that that is logical or strategic let

Zain 53:41

let me let me try here's the other thing here's the other thing no no no

Carter 53:44

carter no let me

Carter 53:46

me finish my other thing then you throw one at me okay

Carter 53:48

okay here's the other thing they have The only reason to go after Patrick Brown is they've determined that he's actually in second place, right?

Carter 53:56

right? Because if he's in third place and you go after Patrick Brown, then you are ultimately committing an act of lunacy because

Carter 54:02

because his voters will fall off and they will remember this. They will never, ever, ever transfer their vote to Pierre Polyev because

Carter 54:11

because they went after him. So if they miscalculated even by one vote, keeping in mind that Jim Prentice beat Scott got pricing by two votes in 2004 and was able to continue up the ladder. You know, like this is how these things fall apart. When you only, when you go after these people and you're wrong, you're the stupidest fucker on the planet. And this is where I'm looking at. This is someone who's done these campaigns before and saying, man, there is like literally no logical reason to behave like this. Ergo, they must be illogical.

Zain 54:44

Corey, how about I put this to you and

Corey 54:46

and see, can I, Can I test this out for size

Corey 54:48

I mean, Carter makes a compelling case. Let me just say right off the bat that this is that this is just pure

Corey 54:55

and no logic in it.

Corey 54:56

it. This is just

Zain 54:57

just what they do. This

Corey 54:58

This is who they are. Again, if I want to stretch for something, maybe they think they can bump him into second and maybe they think the Brown votes will fall off or

Corey 55:06

or sorry, the Sharae votes will fall off and there will not be enough to maybe Brown votes will go to Sharae, but Sharae votes won't go to Brown. I guess is what I'm saying. Maybe they've made that calculation. Maybe they think it's close. that seems unlikely given nobody has the final membership list

Zain 55:20

try this out for size Corey maybe Pierre Pauly Everett and team are alienating Patrick Brown telling him to go fuck himself at this stage in the leadership because

Zain 55:31

they found another path to victory they

Zain 55:33

they don't need the conventional moderate in the GTA in the lower mainland I'm going to put this out for size Abacus Data had some interesting perspectives this this past week, on the path, and it wasn't specifically about Peirce's path, but the amount of Canadians who believe fringe views around Bill Gates and microchips that are being used to track around all these other questions and conspiracy theories, that

Zain 56:02

that plus some of the populism, let me say this, conspiracy plus populism could be a coalition.

Zain 56:09

Is there any merit to what you're thinking? thinking because i'm trying to i'm trying to actually gen these are not stupid people this is where i disagree with carter like if they were stupid people they wouldn't be able to sell people they wouldn't be able to sell 300,000 members is what i'm

Zain 56:23

but let's not discard what they're trying to do i'm actually trying to discern what they're trying to do and one thing i want to talk about is a do they do we feel like there's another path for them because one of the the ongoing media conversations and pundit conversations we're seeing is that how the hell will they pivot how the hell after they win this leadership or peel polyev moderate himself carter and i see no reason that this guy will because i perhaps think that he's maybe thinking there's another path so cory maybe react to this here well

Corey 56:50

well look i think you're taking the right approach it's it's a mistake to assume that your opponents are just acting in a foolish fashion because the worst case scenario if you sort of talk it through and you you come up with something and you're like well that doesn't seem very compelling you've maybe wasted a few minutes But the best case scenario is you've avoided being led down a dark alley and bludgeoned to death because you don't see the strategy coming. You think about the Democrats in 2016, you think about how the Rust Belt, they didn't see coming, right?

Corey 57:18

right? Just as a very ready example here. And so it's worth saying, does Polyev know something we don't? Is he acting in a fashion because he believes he can make up the losses he will get from, you know, moderate, you

Corey 57:32

you know, we'd almost call them Rockefeller Republicans in the United States, but the conservatives,

Corey 57:36

conservatives, does he think he can make that up by yanking people out of the liberal coalition and the New Democrat coalition who just feel that,

Corey 57:44

that, you know, there is something to his gatekeeper commentary

Corey 57:47

commentary and that there is a broader conspiracy?

Corey 57:52

conspiracy? conspiracy although i don't think polyev would use these words to sort of keep you down like the you know the deck is stacked against you there's a lot of people who think the deck's stacked against them news fucking flash it kind of is right yeah you're born rich you're probably gonna die rich you're born poor you're probably gonna die poor um and so that is a weakness a hollowness in the system that somebody a you know a a

Corey 58:15

could could take advantage of and i think pierre polyev has shown he's got a ability to speak to a lot of different groups We've talked about this in the terms of his ability to code shift. I

Zain 58:25

I think that's all true, Zane.

Corey 58:28

But I do think that when you're in a parliamentary system like we are, there is a fundamental reality that you need to field candidates and win in a broadly distributed sense. And

Corey 58:37

I have a hard time, like it's not like America where you win a whole province, right? You get X

Corey 58:44

X percent, you get all the electoral votes. And so it becomes a little trickier if

Corey 58:49

if you've got this massive base of support in rural Ontario and Alberta and Saskatchewan to

Corey 58:55

to win. win you know the math just doesn't work at a certain point 25 of the seats are in quebec for

Corey 59:00

for crying out loud ontario or toronto is you know approaching

Corey 59:04

approaching greater toronto is approaching six million people i mean this is only a country of 38 million people you can't write these areas off and you can't blow up your party to such an extent that even

Corey 59:15

even if you think you could be competitive there all of a sudden you're running against a rump party that's getting 20 of the vote our system will crush you if that happens we've seen what happens to conservatives when when that happens. So I find it a little hard to believe it's the strategy, but it's definitely something worth watching and keeping an eye on.

Corey 59:34

Carter, are you- What is this theory in conservative

Carter 59:36

Yeah, there's this theory in conservative circles that a lot of conservatives don't vote for conservatives because we're not conservative enough, right?

Carter 59:43

right? Because we haven't gotten to the extremes enough, right?

Carter 59:46

right? And I can see that argument kind of holding true when you're starting to look at what's happening in the United States, Right. Look at how conservative everything is in the United States. And conservatives have never, you know, well, I shouldn't say never been as popular, but they certainly are nearing the height of their own popularity. They, you know, and they've and they've got control of things. Look at how good the conservative movement is in the United States right now. They've got control. They are they are in charge. Even when there's a Democratic president, they are still calling the shots. That's the height of conservatism. So if we could just show how conservative we are, and maybe Pierre Polyev fits into that category, but that's

Carter 1:00:29

that's not Canada. That's not how it works here. Corey's made very good points about math at the end of the day it is winning the number of seats that gives you a majority or minority government. The conservative movement has gotten the most votes in the last two elections and they have lost. They do not have their votes in the right places to actually make this work. If they want to get the votes in the right places then they're going to need to shift the way that they're thinking and Pierre Polyev is is shifting the way that he's thinking in exactly the wrong direction.

Zain 1:01:05

Carter, let me ask you one final wrap-up question on this segment. Do you feel like there's going to be...

Zain 1:01:11

Let's say he wins. Let's make that case because I want to go a little bit further down. What

Zain 1:01:18

What does the moderating effect look like? If it is all purity here, you think they're just going to crash into a wall and not win and not look at the math? math like they're going to look at the math at some point and and figure out how to stitch their coalition together or make that attempt so

Zain 1:01:33

so from your perspective okay so the question i that's my question to you when do

Zain 1:01:38

do you think when do you think they do that and what does it look like you

Carter 1:01:42

you start stitching your coalition together the moment that you think you're going to win

Carter 1:01:47

this is the this is the work this is the work that that allison redford did the day The day that we won, we start calling everybody. We never attacked Gary Maher's people because we didn't want his people to run away from us. We

Carter 1:02:00

We attacked some of his ideas. We went after him a little bit on private health care. We didn't attack his people.

Carter 1:02:05

We didn't call him a lying liar. you know like we didn't we didn't

Carter 1:02:12

didn't do that because to do that would have caused an

Carter 1:02:16

an inability for us to start to to stitch the party back together now ultimately we were unsuccessful in stitching the party back together because you know why leaderships are divisive you

Carter 1:02:26

you don't want to be any more divisive the play the time to stitch the party back together is now right

Carter 1:02:32

right if you especially if you think you're going to win if you think you're not going to win then you know saddle up to Leslyn Lewis. Get her voters to come to you. Be nice. Don't be throwing fucking grenades at this stage. This is just the wrong time to be throwing grenades into the audience.

Zain 1:02:49

I'm going to leave that segment there. Moving on to our final segment, Corey, our over, under, and our lightning round. Corey, overrated or underrated? I want to start with you. We usually start with Stephen Carter, but I gave him the last word. I need to start with you, Corey. Overrated or underrated? The January 6th select committee choosing to hire the former Former news producer, news director of ABC News to put together kind of theatrical, never-before-seen footage, boring footage from the documentarian who was traveling with the Proud Boys, kind of putting together these, can I call them set pieces? These digitally consumable, but like shock and awe style set pieces, mini documentaries from a political theater and making the case and getting people to care about this standpoint, overrated or underrated in your mind what you've seen thus far? And I know we've only done, I think, one or two of the six that we're going to see thus far. But your thoughts on that?

Corey 1:03:43

Well, unfortunately, I think it's overrated. I think it's overrated because you watch ABC News if you feel one way and you watch Fox News if you feel another way. And I don't mean literally ABC News here, Zayn, but I mean... Yeah, yeah. The mainstream

Corey 1:04:02

whatever they call it. had during the um you had during the prime time january 6th opening act here fox

Corey 1:04:09

fox news run without commercials this is a commercial enterprise that ran without commercials so there was no reason to ever change the channel and risk seeing january 6th carried on one of these other networks right

Corey 1:04:21

and tucker carlson just sort of went off he went off on all sorts of things but he didn't mention a lot of very salient facts didn't mention bill barr's uh views of the world didn't mention Ivanka Trump saying

Corey 1:04:31

saying that it was clear that she agreed with the billboard. Yeah, not those words. But, you know, in some ways, I think the very act of hiring somebody who's designed to kind of titillate or make the news more compelling will turn off that set or will just become another proof point thrown back at them, which is not to say that it was like a bad idea, even. And maybe on the margins, it can do some good. Maybe I've just become too cynical here. here but i'll tell you zane for most of my life i never thought of the u.s border as like anything more than a line that added 30 minutes to a trip it hardly seemed like a separate country canadians make such a big show of but we're canadians we're not americans we we add the letter u to neighbor we're so fucking different but thanks to mass culture let's be real and the u.s has always

Corey 1:05:17

always seemed less foreign to me than parts of our own nation right i

Corey 1:05:21

definitely feel more like i've I've stepped into a different world when I go to Quebec,

Corey 1:05:26

Nova Scotia, right? And I spent the first nine years of my life in Nova Scotia. These feel like different places. Americans are our friends. They're our family. And that's not a metaphor. My mother is literally a South Carolinian here. And it's just, it's so wild to me to see these last couple of decades, and in particular this last decade, and how they've fallen off the rails. And I'm hopeful people will turn it around. i'm hopeful something will make this fever break but

Corey 1:05:54

don't know even that's a lie like i'm not hopeful i'm not hopeful like this is just this is nuts what's happening down there and i i just don't know that anything that even approaches business as usual is going to change this up so i

Zain 1:06:07

i don't know what to say i

Zain 1:06:08

i don't want to get too intense but i need to follow up with cory this why are you not hopeful well that that it does change like i you you kind of stopped because

Corey 1:06:16

a year ago tried to have a coup and

Corey 1:06:20

joe biden is is like got a higher disapproval rating than him because the economy's bad like what actually fucking matters to these people i have seen sincere tweets of people saying why do you care about this ivanka trump thing the stock market's down what the fuck do you care about america like this is this is so frustrating to watch and these high-minded ideals you know the the pursuit of a more perfect union for most Most of my life, I thought, yeah, there's dark spots in America. But, you know, generally they are bending towards justice here. I don't feel that anymore. Does anybody think America is on a good path right now?

Zain 1:06:53

Carter, we should bring back you, the people. That's what this is reminding me of.

Zain 1:06:59

I ask you the same question? And use that as your jumping off point. Overrated or underrated, the theatrical production that the January 6th Select Committee is putting together for these hearings?

Carter 1:07:09

I think it's underrated. it. I think that finally we're seeing the Democrats actually start to fight back against the propaganda network. Why did Fox News have to go without commercials? Because for the first time, they knew that they were actually under threat by the communications from the other side. Because for so long, the liberal and the Democrats had decided that they were going to cede the ground. They weren't going to engage in the propaganda. They weren't going to use the sensational language. You know what? Good job. It almost resulted in a coup, a coup d'etat by by the president of the United States, who is now running again and

Carter 1:07:43

and is putting himself in place. He's actively in the open soliciting people who will not ratify elections of his opponent.

Carter 1:07:53

They've already determined the outcome of the election before two years. It's still two years till the election actually happens. And they've already decided that it's going to be stolen from Donald Trump. They're running to protect him. They're running to bring it all in. This is a significant problem. And at least this time, the Democrats said, you know what, we're

Carter 1:08:13

we're going to have to start playing it by a different game, by a different set of rules. And they brought in someone who can communicate. Now, is it going to work? I

Carter 1:08:21

I don't know. But it has a better chance of working when you're using the proper tools than it does when you're trying to fight this particular war with both hands tied behind your back and a gag in your mouth, which apparently is, you know, how the Democrats like to roll. all i don't know i don't know anything about these pizza gates somewhere it was good and then it got bad and then it fell off i don't know but cory

Carter 1:08:45

cory and i were i mean we've told the story before cory and i were in washington dc walking up and down the mall and we were having a conversation about the future of democracy and we saw democracy i saw democracy going this way cory and his youthful enthusiasm thought that the democracy was going to end in a different fashion we have have warned from the Youth of People podcast and from this podcast that the United States is on a path towards civil war. If at least the Democrats have the ability to start to put a mirror in front of people and show them how they've been tricked and how they've been fooled, maybe, maybe we can avoid that civil war. But as we continue right now, the probability that the election is going to be seen to be stolen by 50% of the population in the United States is extremely high. And I I don't care which side of 50% you're on, it's going to look stolen to you.

Carter 1:09:37

What happens when you do not believe in democracy anymore?

Carter 1:09:40

You know, and you happen to be the most heavily armed nation in the history of mankind. Not good things. So I'm pleased that they started to communicate this way. I don't have a lot of hope, but my hope was buoyed.

Zain 1:09:53

Carter, I'm going to stick with you for our next question. Overrated or underrated, the political hit the Trudeau government's taken because of the Pearson clog, the lineups at the airport? Do you feel like this is all temporary and overrated? Or do you feel like they've actually taken a real political hit here that could be sustained and make a real dent to their political fortunes or brand? Overrated, underrated, Stephen Carter?

Carter 1:10:18

I mean, it's overrated. There's a very small group of people who are actually traveling at at this stage anyways, those people will, uh, I mean, you're, you, you remember some of the bad trips, like, but at the end of the day, if you're, if you're traveling now, you're probably someone who travels quite a bit. And, uh, you know, you, you, the, the flights start to blend together. And in three months, four months, six months, uh, the long lineups will be a thing in the past.

Zain 1:10:44

Right. Overrated, underrated, the political hit, the liberals take on the Pearson Pearson clog, the lack of agents, the long wait times that people have had to pay. Of course, they're they're setting to announce the vaccine mandates. I'll talk about that in a second. But the political hit overrated or underrated in your mind, Corey?

Corey 1:10:59

I think overrated for the reasons that Stephen said. Also, if if you're flying right now, if you fly a lot, you

Corey 1:11:06

you probably don't think very fondly of Pearson to begin with. What a fucking dreadful

Corey 1:11:10

dreadful airport that has been for my entire adult life. You know, every now and then they'll do a big reno and say it's going to be better. It's never better. There's just something fundamentally broken. I do think that the government needs to, not just the federal government, but the provincial government and the municipal governments need to hold to account the GTAA and say, let's

Corey 1:11:29

let's get back to basics here, people. What the hell is going on? And if there are investments clearly articulated that are not just, you know, some sort of like vague, you need to support airports, but we need X million dollars for this, Y million dollars for that. The

Corey 1:11:43

The government should hear them out. it's important to have a big airport in your biggest city that can function but um let's

Corey 1:11:51

let's let's start with the airport itself because it is not lost on me that

Corey 1:11:57

that this isn't happening in calgary this isn't happening in vancouver this is not happening in montreal this is happening in toronto this is a pearson problem first and foremost so let's start there going

Zain 1:12:08

going i'm going to stick with you with for our next one are you in or out the federal government is set to announce tuesday i.e tomorrow, recording here on Monday evening, that they're going to end the COVID-19 vaccine mandates for domestic travels on planes and trains, as well as outbound international travel in or out from your perspective. And of course, with that political hat and that strategist hat on, what do you think? Well,

Corey 1:12:29

Well, I think I'm in because there wasn't really much choice. And if not now, when would probably be the question that the government is grappling with. We're going into of the summer. Respiratory diseases are generally more in check during summer months. And it seems like it would be harder to make this decision in the fall as respiratory diseases kick up. And it feels like it would be impossible to not make this decision for another six months, a year, just based on public attitudes and appetites out there. And

Corey 1:12:58

And when you throw in the fact that the United States has taken this approach as well, I don't really know that there was any latitude. obviously it's not something that's backed up per se by all of the public health data out there i mean people are still dying of covet 19 at a pretty serious clip here people but

Corey 1:13:15

but um but i you know you've got to have we live in a democracy and you've got to have political will and i don't think there was political will to maintain uh you know these requirements any further

Zain 1:13:26

carter the vaccine mandate is ending tomorrow according to the cbc news report are you in or out on this uh political move by the liberals um

Carter 1:13:35

um i did you know i've been traveling quite a bit and uh wearing my mask and proving my that i'm vaccinated and it does bring you a bit of confidence knowing that the people that you're sitting beside um are vaccinated and uh but the math you know at the end of the day cory's right this is not something that's going to be sustainable for the long term um unless we decided that we were going to change some of the ways that We think about our society and I'm

Carter 1:14:01

I'm not sure that we are prepared to go to the place where, you know, you you must be vaccinated if you're going to have all of the benefits and all of the the opportunities of our society. And I

Carter 1:14:13

I don't know if that's necessarily the right decision, but I just don't think that that's the decision that we're going to be able to make because, you know, that that's not the society in which we live.

Zain 1:14:22

Corey, final, Carter, I'm going to actually start with you on this final question. A scale of one to 10, how much trouble do you think Minister Marco Mendicino is in? Much speculation now that he may have misled Parliament on the implementation of the Federal Emergencies Act, suggesting that it was requested by the police, that not necessarily being confirmed. This inconsistency on a scale of one to 10, how much trouble do you think Minister Marco Mendicino is in, Stephen Carter? Carter?

Carter 1:14:47

He's in nine level of trouble if the prime minister's office wasn't involved. He's a two level of trouble if the prime minister's office was involved.

Corey 1:14:57

Corey, what do you think of that? How much trouble do you think Bendicino is in? I think he's in an 11 if the prime minister's office wasn't involved, but I think it's an eight even if the prime minister's office was. And if prime minister's office was, they're in an eight as well. This is not something that you can just say oh well shrug and move on uh people uh will rightly be furious if a government under false pretense calls declares an emergency and limits civil liberties even in the most modest of senses

Corey 1:15:27

cory do you think he keeps his job well

Corey 1:15:29

well again it sort of depends although um if

Corey 1:15:33

if uh if the reporting is correct if the police didn't ask for it all of those things uh they're going to need a fall guy so

Corey 1:15:40

uh i will say maybe i

Zain 1:15:43

carter it's prediction time does marco mendicino keep his job um

Zain 1:15:50

okay well we're gonna have marco mendicino as our minister forever then we'll leave it there that's a wrap on episode 997 of the strategists my name is zane velgey with me as always cory hogan stephen carter and we'll see you next time

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