Episode 1025: Mandatory mail bag

Zain 0:01

This is a Strategist episode 1025. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, happy new year. It is time, Stephen Carter. I know you're excited for this because this is mandated. This is rules-based. This is something we have to do as part of our ongoing sponsorship in the new year. And here we are, Carter. It is the mandated annual annual patrons mailbag it's a it's a it's a it's a mouthful but we do it carter and we are here

Corey 0:32

yeah i mean with the and of course to to complicate things the patrons mailbag we then release to everybody yeah

Zain 0:39

yeah well it's to make them make them perhaps consider becoming a patron so that one of their fine questions can get asked next time cory it's it's

Corey 0:48

perfectly i feel there's a zero percent chance we're going to answer them appropriately enough that that's going to be the case yeah

Zain 0:53

yeah we probably will lose patrons but honestly at this point i'm fine with that

Carter 0:58

weren't we always yeah

Carter 1:00

yeah weren't we always losing our patrons don't

Zain 1:04

don't before we jump into this carter before we jump into the mailbag of questions that patrons have left for us uh happy new year steven thank

Carter 1:10

thank you very much would

Carter 1:11

would you like to publicly

Zain 1:12

publicly share as you do on the first episode of the new year your resolution for the year uh with the listeners well

Carter 1:18

well as always i have my number one resolution which is that cory be smarter um that that has been my resolution for about 15 years and each

Corey 1:28

each of those 15 years it comes true but

Carter 1:30

but it's just you know it's a big resolution for me uh the second resolution and i think i speak for most of the patrons is that one day you learn how to ask a question with less than 100 words but it's it's it's it's it's big it's it's difficult and then for myself because i'm not a you know i i have to uh because i don't know if you guys know this but i'm the old man on this podcast um probably people probably can't tell from our voices when they're just listening but i am much older than you two and heather well this is actually heather's new year resolution for me heather wants me to uh live forever so i have to lose weight and live healthier so already uh day two miserable absolutely fucking miserable so So, I have that going for me.

Carter 2:18

Okay. Oh, you guys wanted funny.

Zain 2:23

just... Corey just typed

Carter 2:24

typed into the WhatsApp

Zain 2:24

WhatsApp that he thought it would be funny. Listenable is all we were looking for. Something that would make me convince these... I

Zain 2:30

...fucking people to pay. Carter, that is not the content we need. We also hope you have a long and healthy life, Carter. Corey... I don't believe that. ...very somber note that we begin with. Corey... Thank you. Any New Year's resolutions for you that don't involve trying to elongate life?

Corey 2:50

No. If anything, I'm going to try to truncate it a little bit. That's fine. Specifically this part, listening to Stephen Carter talk about

Carter 2:58

about the things he wants to do. What?

Carter 3:01

Okay, good. We set you up.

Corey 3:01

up. We set you up, Carter. You

Carter 3:03

You know what? You give me no advance notice. You tell me nothing about what's going to go on in the show. I didn't even know that we were at— Welcome to the show,

Zain 3:08

Carter. Welcome to the show. Why do you think it takes me 10 minutes to ask a question? There's no advance notice, even for me. No idea where this thing is going, which is why today we have got the help of people much smarter than Stephen Carter. Yes, it's the patrons who have asked questions for our mailbag. Here's how it's going to work. We've got a bunch of questions. We're not going to get through all of them. However, we've got them in what, Corey, you'd call what? Comment format on a post that we've made on Patreon. So we're going to scroll through these comments. I'm going to start us off with the questions that I find interesting, and then I'll let let you jump in. Which question do you want to go with, Corey, Carter? You can jump in. We'll do a round, Robin, until

Zain 3:48

until we wear out the clock. So maybe about three hours or so until we wear out this clock or until Steven gets less entertaining, which if we were keeping that metric, we would be done the podcast by now. Really upset.

Zain 3:59

it on to our first segment. Our first segment, the mandated mailbag. Here we are, guys. Across the board, we've got questions from our listeners. And there's so many intriguing ones, so many deep dive opportunities, so many that are just trying to ask for clarification. But Carter, I want to start with this. And it's a question you've actually... It's actually a question right at the top of the list, but it's a question that I think is a softball that can really get you going, Stephen Carter, right? Because really get the blood pumping. Stephen Carter, there are so many political books in Canada. This person, Pat, wants to know what is your favorite, and I'm going to add a part to it, and why.

Zain 4:37

I know you've consumed a lot of the the political literature in this country. Some of it, you know, biographical, some of it autobiographical, some of it about the campaign life, some of it about the policy life. Tell me what your favorite political book is and why.

Carter 4:50

Well, I'd love it to be something new because, you know, I like to read and I read some books last year, but it's nothing new. It is in fact old and it's not a single book. It is a pair of books, although I may add in a couple of honorable mentions. Actually, I will. I'll add in an honorable mention. Primary Colors by anonymous who turned out to be joe klein um is one of the most entertaining reads you can have doesn't teach you specifically about canadian politics so i have to pull it away uh from this contest but there are two books both by steve steve pakin of tvo fame uh they are the life and um the dark side the life we've talked about these on the pod before i still think they're the the best books about canadian politics the life explains what it is like um why people are drawn into the arena of politics and it really shows how people can do the you know politics for the betterment of their society the betterment of each other i love that book and then there's the dark side and the dark side does a great job of outlining what happens to politicians after they're done because once politicians are done it is not a life of riches and it's not a life of of um you know high profile for some absolutely but for most they just go back to their lives that they had before and in fact are often dropped down um many levels uh because they are no longer the people that be you know people go to to ask for favors to ask for things in fact they become the forgotten uh the forgotten few uh which is why we see so many people trying to to hang on to a life of politics afterwards those two books anybody who's going to run any any person who's got someone someone in their life that's running, they need to read those two books. They are outstanding. Steve Bacon.

Zain 6:36

Corey, I know you have a tough time reading because most things come to you via osmosis or you make them up with a white man's confidence that we generally believe on this podcast. But should you consume a book on the politics, one might say, what would it be, Corey?

Corey 6:55

So there's a couple of books that I've enjoyed over the years on Canadian politics. To be honest, it's something I read more when I was younger, when it was kind of an abstract fascination. It was this distant thing. I thought it was this really like cool, glamorous thing, you know, in some way, shape or form. And then I

Corey 7:12

I worked in it and I learned better. But there's one book that kind of bridges both reality and kind of that outsider looking in really, really fascinating. It's a book from 1988. It's called Reign of Error. It's by Greg Weston. And it's all about John Turner's leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada,

Corey 7:31

from him being the golden boy who was supposed to come in and just, you know, dominate to, of course, getting trounced in the 84 election. And then the leadership review after that and through. It's good. It's got a lot of vignettes, shall we say. And I was just looking on Amazon.ca right now, you can get a new copy from $72 or a used one from $12. That sounds,

Zain 7:57

that's like, that's less than two flare airline flights, to be honest. So I'd go for it. I'd go for it. At least with that book, you can guarantee it's going to get there. Can

Carter 8:05

Can we do our least favorite, too?

Zain 8:08

Oh, Carter, who do you want to trash? I'm sorry. I forgot that there's an element to this podcast where you, for no reason, start trashing people and or institutions. So, Carter, who do you want to trash before I let Corey finish his thought?

Carter 8:20

Think Big by Preston Manning.

Carter 8:23

It's an insufferable book by an insufferable man.

Zain 8:28

Corey, did you have anything else to say on this topic?

Corey 8:32

No. No, I'm just impressed with myself that I actually thought of a book. So,

Zain 8:38

I'm going to give a few suggestions. No one asked me, but that's the nature of the show. Oh, hey, Zane, do you know how

Zain 8:43

Yo, just learned. And let me tell you something, Carter. Yeah. In true Zane Velgey form, I'm just going to copy what you guys said. So, the dark side, I'm joking. Two books that I think are really interesting. The first one, How to Win an Election, an ancient guide for modern politics by Cicero. it's really interesting tells you how much has not changed around persuasion organizing some of the core principles and the second one which i'm sure several people have heard of uh came out about five years ago now called victory lab by sasha eisenberg which talks about the deep dive into politics most practitioners have a decent sense of this but i would recommend his next book that he wrote i believe it's called the engagement which goes into a deep dive on um the the fight for gay marriage in the United States and the political tactics and strategies that were used to effectively, in a very short period of time, in the broader political sense, turn the tide of public opinion so quickly. So I would recommend, I guess those two or those three as my recommendations. Great

Carter 9:47

Great Canadian content there, bud.

Zain 9:49

They didn't say Canadian. They

Carter 9:50

They just want the knowledge. I'm looking at the question. Canadian politics. I'm looking at

Zain 9:55

at the question now and they said Canadian. You know what, Pat? I don't give a fuck, okay?

Zain 9:59

broadening your horizons, Pat. pat stopping so narrow

Carter 10:01

narrow-minded pat okay fuck you here's

Zain 10:03

here's what i want yeah fuck you pat that's right fuck you pat cory who are we going to say fuck you to next uh which which which fucking person do we want to uh take a question from i'm giving you the next uh next go at it well

Corey 10:16

well um there's there's a couple here that i think we can do in rapid order here uh one from omar asking does zane wish he was his sand manage can

Carter 10:25

you try and pronounce that again i'm not sure who no who you you meant no no

Zain 10:29

no that guy's a comedian i'm more i'm funnier than him let's keep going okay

Corey 10:34

okay uh can you ask a question in under 10 words he's got great hair though

Zain 10:38

though you know he the one of the things about him is that he's got great he's very handsome yeah and yeah

Zain 10:45

yeah i do want to be him it is true it is it is very true uh this question's all working out it's open up a wound so

Corey 10:51

so here here's one from ali which is is something that i think we brush past a lot and sometimes we'll even throw each other like uh no i think that's more tactics than strategy it's strategy versus tactic what's the difference oh that's so many confuse the two and who impressed you with their use of strategy in 2022 and who gets the award for most bumbling use of tactics that almost look like strategy oh

Zain 11:14

well cory i i feel like i mean not to say that i'm i'm guiding this show because the listers are in many ways but

Corey 11:20

but i feel like you are the host well

Zain 11:23

given that job up a long long time ago. And I think people have noticed. But Corey, I feel like your description, I have to say, of strategy and tactics and the difference between the two is actually one of the best I've heard. I'm not just pumping your tires. I think it's one of the best and clear-eyed I've heard in this broader sort of communications marketing realm. So do you want to try to give that a go? And then we can kind of get into what I think is the fun part of that question around who nailed it on strategy and who kind of failed it on tactics.

Corey 11:54

yeah i mean now i'm afraid i'm going to give a different definition than what i gave last be consistent there's lots of definitions consistent strategy and tactics right and i tend to use the ones from the ghost framework of strategic planning which is goals objective strategy and tactics and strategies is generally at a high level how you approach your work and meet your objectives and tactics is at a detail level how you approach your work and and address your tactics so a strategy would be something like uh it is our strategy to always paint the opposition as tied to the federal ndp and

Corey 12:27

and a tactic would be okay uh they've opened their mouth so now i'm going to put a bunch of tweets out about it so that would be the the general

Corey 12:34

general difference between the two and the idea with strategy is is that it's you

Corey 12:39

you know it's always laddering up towards your objectives it allows you to stay on course it allows you to shorthand and quickly decide how how you're going to act. And so it should be broad enough to be used in a variety of circumstances. And a tactic is just a tactic. It's a one-off thing, but it's in service of a strategy or

Corey 12:56

or it's in service of meeting an objective directly. But that gets risky for reasons we probably don't need to go into.

Zain 13:05

Carter, Corey's definition is good. His examples are good. You, for the longest time, for longer than both of us, in a rare moment of of sincerity, have kind of held this position as campaign strategists. In fact, I'd argue you were one of the first in the country to kind of like do this job full time in like a real meaningful way, at least in the era of politics that Corey and I maybe have practiced in.

Zain 13:26

And you've been very clear that you're a strategist that you don't, but you've also jumped into the management, which has been a lot of tactics side. In your sort of framework of how you've operated as a practitioner, expand

Zain 13:37

expand on Corey's definition here and help the listeners listeners understand, you know, how you've kind of parsed these out, because there's a bit of a nuance to them. And often, even in our world, we have to kind of sometimes step back and be like, is that a strategy or a tactic in some ways? Yeah,

Carter 13:52

Yeah, I mean, I think that the big definer of a strategy versus an objective versus a tactic is the timeline of them, right? So the strategy is going to be in our world campaign long, right? So we do campaigns. So the strategies tend to be relatively short-lived uh the longest campaigns that we tend to see are about two years and those are the presidential campaigns or a leadership campaign so you would devise a series of strategies or a strategy that

Carter 14:19

that that encompasses that entire time frame and then like cory says what you want to see are tactics and and smaller objectives so the tactics will support the objectives um those tactics are going to be compared to the strategies all the time is this actually what we wanted. So one of the strategies might be to create a brand for

Carter 14:38

for the candidate that shows that they're approachable, or that they have knowledge, or that they are a specific type of person, then you would always make sure that every video you put out, make sure that they appear approachable, right? So the tactic of the video is then compared to the overarching strategy, did we make them look, you know, approachable? Or did we make them look knowledgeable? Or did Did we make them look like Pierre Palliev, which is neither approachable nor knowledgeable? So, I mean, each one of those things is a strategy that then governs the tactics. And, you know, for me, I've always thought, you

Carter 15:15

you know, for me, I have a difficult time actually articulating what the tactics necessarily need to look like, right? I'll say, you know, we should do, we should make sure that we've got a good solid ground game.

Carter 15:28

And then for me, in my head, it's over. well you know and then there's a group of people who are really good at tactics and they will come in and they will break that into 300

Carter 15:37

300 manageable steps to ensure that we've got eight people each night doing door knocking in a specific riding times 87 different ridings right

Carter 15:46

right so the ground like i've talked about the ground game for the ndp needs to be super duper strong in calgary if the the ndp is going to be victorious in in six months or

Carter 15:57

five months whatever it may be um so that means they have to have you know that's the strategy develop a strong ground game okay now all the tactics and the objectives that go underneath that strategy are going to be okay how we're going to make sure that calgary glenmore has got a strong ground game you know how are we making sure that elbows got a strong ground game you know each one of those ridings is going to have a specific set of tactics that will then enable them to meet their own objectives which in all all in turn support the strategy i

Carter 16:25

i went on a little bit there cory

Corey 16:27

cory you wanted to add anything on this yeah

Corey 16:29

yeah you know this is so fundamental actually to this whole fucking podcast maybe it's worth backing up right like so a goal is something that's vaguely defined it's maybe not even measurable maybe it is often in our line of work it's win an election that's our goal right

Corey 16:45

abide and turn that in then

Corey 16:47

then we turn that into though into something quantifiable to to

Corey 16:49

to win that election, we believe we need to have 20,000 voters on a list for election day. That becomes your objective. The strategies then become how you get those 20,000 people on a list, right? Just to give you an example from a local campaign. So it might be, we're going to have, you know, door knocking, we're going to emphasize door to door contact, or a strategy might be, we're going to emphasize the phones, or we're going to emphasize the internet, but those are strategies. And then the tactics underneath are the specific ways you do that. So say your strategy was you're going to, you're

Corey 17:17

you're going to get in front of as many voters as possible. That's your strategy. Well, then your tactics would be door knocking. And we're going to do that via getting our volunteer people out every day, calling these people making it happen. But the thing I want to underline here, I mean, that's in some ways just background is you

Corey 17:33

you don't need to define something as a strategy to have a strategy. What we talk about a lot in strategic circles is the idea of intended strategy versus unintended strategy, or deliberate strategy versus emergent strategy, if you're going to be more charitable and the and it's like whatever you do the sum of it and how you've acted could be defined as your strategy and what separates a good campaign from a bad campaign you know the whole ethos of this whole bloody show is if you're thoughtful about strategy you're going to have better outcomes right

Corey 18:02

right so we try to be deliberate about strategy we drop it if it's not working we want to be nimble we still want to be able to take those emergent strategies when and they happen. But ultimately, the idea is, we're

Corey 18:15

we're trying to get somewhere. And we're trying to define where we're getting. And we're trying to act intentionally towards getting towards that goal. So where, you know, more amateurish campaigns might end up is just saying, we want to win an election. And they just do a bunch of stuff. They just knock on a bunch of doors randomly.

Corey 18:29

But if you're being strategic, if you're being thoughtful, you're saying, okay, well, how can I best get to those 20,000 votes on that list?

Corey 18:36

And that's the nature of strategy.

Carter 18:37

strategy. I mean, I can use a given example. Like we're doing voter contact for Kent Hare in 2015 or whatever, whatever the federal election was. Don't even remember because it's a long time ago now. But we're doing voter contact and the

Carter 18:49

the idea came up, well, we should door knock in Chinatown.

Carter 18:53

you know, we said we're doing a voter contact campaign. We said that we would making sure that we went out and talked to as many people as possible. But the strategic choice, like when Corey talked about the numbers, you don't go to places that aren't going to vote for you. You go to the places that are most likely to vote for you. So that's a different operational choice than a strategic choice. The strategy is still higher. The operational piece comes in underneath it.

Zain 19:18

And, you know, in that example, Carter, your choice could have been, you know, your strategic choice could have been to say, we're actually going to run a persuasion campaign, that this is less about mobilization. We feel like our pathway has to be convincing at least a sliver of people that are currently either on the other side or inactive and persuade them to either vote or vote for us, right? And you could make that as a strategic choice, and everything you choose thereon after would tactically follow suit for that strategic choice you've

Corey 19:44

you've made. Yeah, so let me jump in there. Like, to win an election, you're going to need some number of votes. You're going to determine. It's all about math. And you may, you may, as part of your strategy, say, I'm

Corey 19:53

I'm going to try to play my two opponents off it. If it's a three-way race, try to keep them balanced, do the Doug Ford thing that can become part of your strategy, right? Never give somebody the role as main opponent, try to balance between it. You might be sitting there and saying, I need 20,000 votes. And I believe that everybody who's willing to vote for me right now sums up to 16,000. So I guess I better change 4,000 people's minds. That's going to be, you know, that's going to lead to certain strategic decisions as well. But the idea is this intentionality is the root of strategy. Now, there's a ton of different frameworks, though, and I don't want to suggest that there's only one. The idea is not that you call one thing a strategy and the other thing a tactic, and if you say otherwise, you're doing it wrong. Yes. It's that you're covering off all of these things as you go. Carter, finish this off.

Carter 20:37

Well, I just want to – there's a bunch of questions about what strategy the NDP need to use in Calgary to be successful. successful so i want to bounce off of this because david coletto's um surveys that he's been releasing over the last few weeks really point us in a direction and and we've talked about this in the podcast before and i know that my own data supports what david's got going and that is that there are reluctant ucp voters so people who have voted ucp in the past who are reluctant to vote ucp in the future and there are two strategies that you could try and use that cory and i could equally espouse. One strategy is to convert them to NDP voters. And a second strategy would be to ensure that they don't vote,

Carter 21:23

right? Because they don't want to vote for you, the NDP, and they don't really want to vote for the UCP. And the only example that we've seen of that is the 2012 Alberta election, which Stelmac ran against 12, I'm sorry, 2007, 2008, somewhere we're in there. Stelmac versus Taft. 2008.

Carter 21:41

we had the lowest turnout in provincial history because I would argue that Albertans didn't really want either of them to be premier.

Carter 21:49

Neither one of them stoked a fire. So for the NDP, you could choose either one of those two strategies, and each one of those strategies is then going to drive completely different objectives with completely different tactics, depending on which strategy we chose.

Zain 22:05

I do want to cover off the other part to this question on strategic highlights of 2020 and in bumbling tactics, if you've got any on mine. But to Carter's point here, did you want to expand on that?

Corey 22:17

Well, yeah, it's an interesting one because I think everybody agrees. Like simply put, we shouldn't take it even as a given. The NDP strategy has to be to get votes in the city of Calgary. It has to be to win, what,

Corey 22:30

what, two thirds of the seats in Calgary, probably, right? Because you've basically got Edmonton, you're

Corey 22:37

not going to get too much in the rural areas of Alberta. And because of the way everything splits and the way ridings are built, it comes down to Calgary. So let's just say strategy level one is you've got to appreciate that Calgary

Corey 22:48

Calgary is the game. Calgary is where it all is. And I think that the NDP understand that. The NDP's campaign headquarters, I believe, is going to be in Calgary. And certainly, Rachel Notley has been down in Calgary perpetually

Corey 23:03

perpetually since the last election. There's an appreciation of that. But, you know, the next level really is is not just saying, OK, I need to be in Calgary. It's to it's

Corey 23:13

it's to acknowledge. OK, here's

Corey 23:15

here's how I'd put it.

Corey 23:18

In some ways, it's super simple.

Corey 23:20

You've got to understand who's movable and how to move them. And

Corey 23:23

And where I think political parties often – like they get to

Corey 23:27

to the edge of the promised land and then they can go no further is they know what their objective is and then they assume because they're good at politics, they know the strategy and the tactics innately. And they do the things that would resonate with them. But almost by definition, if you're doing a campaign where you've got to come to a different jurisdiction than the one you know well, you're winning in Edmonton, you're trying to win in Calgary, the things that win in Edmonton don't win in Calgary. If they did, you'd already have Calgary, right? Right. I can see Carter desperately wants to get in here, but I'm going to finish this thought. So you've got to know, you know, have a certain humility to it and say, what can we learn? Let's do polling. Let's understand the accessible voter universe, not just our voters, not just the voters who will never vote for us. In fact, neither of those groups matter at all right now. Who are the movable people? Who are those people? David Coletta was identifying as kind of the hesitant UCP voters or the people who voted Rachel Notley in 2015 or the people who maybe are new to the province and haven't really decided what their provincial alignment is at this point. whatever you do that as however you define that and you probably in your polling want to be able to define it in kind of concentric circles out and you know have a theory of that then

Corey 24:32

then you've got to make your campaign about them and changing their minds and doing the things that matter to them and using the communications tactics that hit them so for example if it turns out and i don't believe this would be the case but it's all 65 year old women maybe

Corey 24:47

maybe you're not going to do tiktok maybe

Corey 24:49

maybe you are right probably not uh if it is all 22 year old men first of all they don't really vote but let's say they did for a minute well then your tactics are going to skew away from newspapers but the point is you want to be led by data and you don't want to assume just because you are good somewhere else you've got to read on everything it's it's you've almost got to turn off the part of your brain that's instinctual and just be a robot about these things in some ways it's it's that simple. There's an art to it that's layered on top, but you've got to start with that foundational understanding

Corey 25:21

understanding of whose minds can be changed and how can they be changed. Carter, do you want to jump in on this?

Carter 25:27

Yeah. I mean, at some point we're going to have to close on this question, right? But Jonathan Haidt- Like

Corey 25:31

Like the question within

Carter 25:32

within the question? Yeah, that I did. This is all my fault. This is entirely my fault.

Carter 25:36

Jonathan Haidt wrote a book, he's a professor at New York University called The Righteous Mind. And in that book, he makes the case that people who have different value systems have very difficult times speaking to people of the other value system. He makes it very clear that the multiple value systems that we may all share are no better or no worse than the others. And I think that this is one of the problems that the NDP bring. The NDP brings in a really clear understanding of their own value system, but no understanding of how to communicate to people with different value systems and no no value placed on other people's values so they do not value when you differ in their opinion you they didn't they do not understand when you don't understand them and they want you to join not just if this is the same on the right wing as well this is the same with the wild rose and you and then the question that you were asking Zane is what have we seen the strategies that worked well I want to come back to it but bottom

Carter 26:32

bottom line Pierre Polly Evan and daniel smith understanding that they needed to talk to the far right both did that and now i'm waiting to see if they can implement the second part of their strategy which is to flip back to the middle because both of them lose to the right sorry

Carter 26:46

sorry i went a long way i

Zain 26:48

i want to give you i want to give you an opportunity to add some color on this but i'll maybe i'll just kind of add some color on your own point around what you're talking about with with the height um moral foundations theory so this is fantastic um sort of work out of uh nyu stern school moral foundations You can kind of look at the system that Haidt and other scholars have created to understand things like political language, how different types of political parties cater to different sort of moral norms, whether that be loyalty, authority, fairness, or more emotionally derived norms like care or harm or fairness and accountability and cheating. and how different political sides of the spectrum communicate with different types of language and how that language is actually more impactful than perhaps the left-wing or right-wing quote-unquote policies that they adopt. It's how you kind of case it in some of these moral sort of frameworks. Moralfoundations.org, I just wanted to add that color because I do find

Zain 27:49

fascinating in terms of a background and an approach to think about this more three-dimensionally than just a simple left-right. Corey, I'm going to go to that same question for you on the concept of expanding on what Carter said here, but also the strategy hits and misses, which you kind of discussed in the Holiday Spectacular, but maybe we can think of a few more ideas if there are any for Ali's

Corey 28:11

Ali's question. In some ways, you really gave me a launchpad for what I wanted to say here, Zane, which is that when we talk about what's going to move them, we don't just mean policies, right? Right. I think, for example, about a municipal issue, just to illustrate the idea that you should be able to to

Corey 28:30

zone higher on your property. Like you've got a house, a single family house. You want to build a duplex. Let's say that's the idea. Well, there's a there's a left wing argument for that. And, you know, there's I'm simplifying for the purpose of not spending all day talking about this, but it's the idea of we need more housing. Right. We need more affordability of housing. There is a right wing argument for that. No

Corey 28:49

city government should be able to tell me what I do with my property. It's the same basic

Corey 28:54

basic policy, but it's framed in two very different ways to speak to two very different groups of people. And I guess the point that I would make to wrap a bow on this, at least from my point of view, is that this is not a value judgment. This is not saying this is a failing of the NDP. I actually think that the Alberta NDP does a good job of trying to get out there.

Corey 29:12

But we need to appreciate that at

Corey 29:16

the moment we need them most, our instincts fail us, right? The minute we're talking to groups outside of our group, our instincts fail us. And we can be pretty cocksure in our approach right up until we fall fucking flat as a result of it. And so what politicians need to do is they need to appreciate their own speed limit, right? The car can only go so fast before it's going to careen off the road. And there is no shame in saying, well, that doesn't ring right to me, but fuck it, I'm not the audience. And that is something I think politicians have immense trouble doing.

Zain 29:50

there's a there's a i'll kind of end on this point before i move on from ali's question here and i think the floor comes back to me on this card yeah um because i suspect your question was the consolidation of several questions um have either of you heard about this the pizza burger sort of analogy before no

Zain 30:09

does that okay so there is i found it fascinating it was like a a democratic strategist talking about long-term movement building and they were saying that as As it relates to long-term movement building, the proclivities, as it were, for the left for the longest time, in order to try to make their ideas more palatable, was to dilute them, was to try to make them more centrist so that they'd be more acceptable, versus doing what Corey said, which is tell your version of the story with language and a story and a casing around it that is more compelling, that you don't have to sacrifice what you fundamentally and what your base wants by just trying to shift to the middle and add some water to the wine. And the example that they gave was that when you're looking to have dinner, and

Zain 30:52

and you're deciding between pizza and a burger, zero

Zain 30:55

zero times out of 100 is the answer a pizza burger, the middle option, right? The answer is generally pizza or burger, you can go either way. And there is something to be said about that storytelling exercise. Or a burger

Zain 31:09

pizza. Well, I mean, this is why you guys are white, and I have a much better palate than you, right? Yeah, of course. That I never choose the pizza burger, which I will not talk about Corey Hogan's long-term fast food list that I have gotten. Put a couple of French fries in there. Oh, God. So good. You're

Corey 31:26

Hogan. But the pizza burger

Zain 31:27

burger right now is interesting. And it speaks to exactly this around storytelling, right? When we zoom out, what's that story that you need to tell? Carter, the floor is back to me, and I'm going to give you a choice on this to both of you. Do you want a question that is more like this philosophically rooted? it? Or do you want a question that is more of a macro evergreen topic? Or do you want a question about the moment and the time? Because we can go either way with some of our patron questions here. I'm

Carter 31:53

I'm enjoying the philosophy stuff. The philosophy is something I think that we skip over so much. So I'm going to ask you, Zane, give me a philosophy question.

Zain 32:03

Oh, interesting. Okay, well, this one's a bit of philosophy and a bit of why this exists. And I think it's an interesting question. This one comes to us from Amanda. She's saying, I'm interested behind the strategy of party-affiliated pundits on media and doing podcasts and talk shows. Why and how does the media use them? What shows do they try to book? What makes a good partisan pundit? I think that's really interesting. I can answer some part of that question. I'll throw it to you. I know during the election, this is a problem that many of the the national networks have with me in particular is that they can't place me in terms of what jersey color to wear. Because during the election, I believe the major networks have to assign a red, a blue and an orange at minimum and have to report that back that they got the same amount of air time. So that, you know, mushy progressive label that I generally wear doesn't usually work. So there are times during our election cycle where there is a mandate. But I want to throw this over to you guys. It's less about me, more about you guys. Corey, what makes a good one? How and best to use them? And why do they exist? That's the core of Amanda's question. I want to get you started on this one.

Corey 33:13

Partisan panels suck. They are so lame. They're so bad. Maybe let's just say there is a reason people do them. I have to imagine that the networks even know they suck. They have to because they watch network TV all day. They create network TV. They They look at what their competitors are doing.

Corey 33:30

Here's the challenge. If you are running one of those shows, and you've already talked about it in the context of an election, but it's true all of the time. Yeah.

Corey 33:36

The minute you have a pundit on there, and let's just imagine it's a pundit without a label, people are going to get mad and say, well, that person's just a progressive or just a conservative. Why do you only have conservatives? Why do you only have progressives? And so it becomes very easy for, you know, if you've got to put on hours and hours of programming of political commentary a day to say, well, we're just balancing. We just balance it. We find 1-1-1, 1-1-1, throw in a green every now and then, throw in a block east every now and then, call it a day. Super easy, right? And it's somewhat inoculative, and it allows you to say we're doing kind of a balanced scan of all of these issues. And so I think that's why they do it. I mean, I don't actually work for one of these organizations. It would be amazing to ask Kathleen Petty a little bit, you know, behind the scenes, tell us exactly what goes into the composition here. but um what makes a good uh partisan pundit actually

Corey 34:30

actually makes a bad partisan it's somebody who's willing to step away from the orthodoxy of the moment yeah

Corey 34:36

and live in the orthodoxy of their ideology right so if if their party is going offside of what makes practical sense they'll call bullshit on it that to me is a good partisan pundit but you know the parties don't like that so much right and then all of a sudden you run into the same problems like well i thought thought you were supposed to have balance on this panel, but your liberal was agreeing with the conservative.

Corey 34:57

Well, fucking good. Like every now and then that should happen, because we're not robots who just follow party lines. We should have our own opinions every now and then. But in my opinion, the willingness to have your own opinion rooted in a worldview, sure, but your own opinion is what makes a good partisan pundit.

Zain 35:15

Which is why Carter, you know, I'll let you have your take on this. I think some of the most, some

Zain 35:19

some of the pundits that I respect the most, that I love being on with the most are folks, not just because we find common ground, but because they've challenged their own sort of party quite often, whether it be an election or not. And I'm thinking of folks like Tim Powers and others that I know we've had an opportunity to, or Sean Spear, both conservatives who often disagree with modern conservatism. Ken Bozenkul being another one that I'm throwing out three conservatives who've kind of gone up against their party. But Cardinal, I'll pose the same question to you. Two, partisan

Zain 35:49

partisan pundits, their value, why, what makes a good one?

Carter 35:53

So their value to the party is that their talking points get out, right? So if you don't have a partisan pundit who gets your talking points out, then you've missed being a part of that cycle. And every day is a new cycle, every day is a new topic, and you want someone putting forward your views.

Carter 36:11

Corey's point about what makes a good partisan pundit in his mind is someone who speaks their mind. Of course, that removes them from some of the party experiences, what the party feels like. I would argue that the best pundit is someone who looks like they're expressing their own mind while putting forth the party line.

Corey 36:29

From the view. So I was doing it from the view of a viewer, you're doing

Carter 36:33

doing it from the view of the

Carter 36:34

What's the value to the party? The value to the party is talking points. The value to the party is reasonable people think the way that we think. So when we talk about Tim Powers, we're talking about a reasonable guy that everybody loves. Everybody loves Tim. He's saying that this is okay. It must be okay. Right? It must be okay. That's interesting.

Zain 36:55

interesting. You know, it's almost like if the party were to be, if the parties, and I kind of use this as a blanket statement, were to be more critical of themselves, their value should not necessarily be getting the talking points out, but lodging in the minds of the viewers, the sentiments, however it needs to be, that they care about, or the value systems that they care about, right? Which is that the talking points are just too literal and too linear versus, isn't it, the value systems? Would a political party, Carter, if you were working for the liberals and the war room in that morning at 9 a.m. sent an email out saying, this is what we want on the air, we'll let you figure out how to get there, Stephen Carter. Be witty, be funny, take a side door to it. Use your own words. Just make sure this sentiment is captured. Is that not better than repeat these talking points and make sure you get them in in the two minutes that you get of airtime on a 12 minute panel? Sure,

Carter 37:47

Sure, it's better. But it's like walking a tightrope. I mean, I've walked that tightrope. You've walked that tightrope. You know what it's like to be on the air and having to get messages across. I never cared about messages because I was like you. I was in the middle. I was the conservative liberal. And, you know, Evan put me on because he always knew i'd stir up shit um since evan left i haven't been on by the

Zain 38:11

i won't share that should i share the story or not oh

Carter 38:13

oh share the story go ahead go ahead i don't even know the story i don't think so i

Zain 38:16

i went i went to go see our friend evan in new york a couple weeks ago because as you know he's left yeah

Zain 38:21

so i was in new york i saw evan catching up and he mentioned that the only time that his political panel which i do on a weekly basis and you filled in for me one week the only time there was any shit was where one guy from alberta showed up and started sniping at tom all care for no reason and i

Carter 38:40

i remember i was like so i

Carter 38:42

i had to put him in his place not my fault tom should be smarter oh

Zain 38:48

carter why why and he said you know that's the only time it actually got the only time it was entertaining he's like yes it was carter cory jump in on this on carter's point like the the the pundit who's able to use their own words or or kind of provide their own sense of perspective but still get the point across is that the hope here and i guess the broader question i want to ask expanding on here yeah expand the broader question effectiveness like is this are we just eating during your own like you know are we just in our own bullshit here that it actually matters that on a political panel where people who are already watching this are already hyper-partisans, that you have someone to repeat your talking points per se? Like, does it actually matter, Corey?

Corey 39:35

It doesn't matter. Let me return to that. Okay. I think that one of the things that I completely agree with Stephen on is that if you're going to be a pundit and a partisan pundit, you should feel like you're not a partisan pundit, right? It's that sense of reasonableness that you were talking about a minute ago there, Zane, where it's like, well, you know, normally I would agree with my friend here but i think in this case you know you want to get there in a way that seems organic uh so that people say oh that's a thoughtful way to do it no that doesn't seem like talking points that seems like a thoughtful person giving thoughtful commentary i i absolutely agree with that i don't do they matter oh man i don't know like who watches political shows without a without a team like without a thought in their head about it it's like genuinely

Corey 40:19

i'm i don't know i feel in some ways like i'm sometimes that guy so i i guess they exist but it's sort of like being a fan of sports yeah there are fans of sports but most of the time you have a team yeah

Corey 40:31

right and so i just it's not like i'm gonna watch a basketball game and no no matter how badly the washington wizards do i'm still gonna be a wizards fan tomorrow so i don't know i mean that's a great question i wish does anyone have any research on this out there i'd love to in the universe

Zain 40:48

do people have their minds changed by by these shows no but corey's corey's analogy is very interesting carter is it sports like is it watching wrestling yeah

Zain 40:57

like just to see how your person did and be like fuck yeah like i'm so glad x person is on the panel for us because they're a really good cleanup hitter like are we are people viewing it that way like i have to be honest i don't watch a lot of these outside of the the rare times that i'm on but like most people watching they're not there for the insights right they're there to see how their team performed well

Carter 41:18

well especially within within the hyper engaged the hyper engaged does not change their mind especially who's watching

Zain 41:23

watching outside of the hyper engaged they

Carter 41:25

not and it's the same with twitter political twitter is not changing anybody's mind because everybody's already articulated their space and they are not undecided they are already decided they will not be changing their minds so the pundits on the shows are just putting out their points maybe they're trying to influence a media person maybe they're trying to influence something other than that or control a story or something like that. But most of the time, the stories aren't being controlled through these. It's just damage control. That's really all you're doing is just trying to make sure that shit doesn't get real. Because if shit gets real, you know, you the last thing you need is for this to be another story on the news, right? This is this is the worst case scenario for you is that something bad comes out of this thing. So,

Carter 42:10

So, you know, I mean, they're

Carter 42:12

they're stupid. And the way that we do the panels is stupid but everybody

Carter 42:18

everybody else is there you got to make sure you're there so that is the strategic advantage to the to these groups and they are completely risky because

Carter 42:27

because every time you put someone on carrying your banner they could fuck up right you could put someone on a talk show and they say danielle smith doesn't care about children because she doesn't have any children and boom that's your story for the next seven days and

Corey 42:41

and you know that's a real example you're plenty out there yeah no i got cory cory can i ask i just really assume that there's logic to this that's the other thing i would say you know there's there's just hurting by too many networks in canada and beyond where everybody does this and so at the end of the day a lot of this is driven by viewership so perhaps by casting such a wide net and having people that again

Corey 43:03

again like it's a sports team thing if we want to continue that analogy maybe more people tune in because i just otherwise don't a hundred percent get it but it's like the analogy about hot dog stands on a beach if if there are three hot dog stands in a beach you're going to find them in certain locations if there are two the

Corey 43:20

the most optimal place to find them is right next to each other in the middle and

Corey 43:24

so over time people

Corey 43:26

people end up at optimal setups to get optimal outcomes and i feel like the cable news networks seem to have done that it's it's inconceivable to me that if it were to work to to have totally nonpartisan panels, that somebody wouldn't have done it. Like, my sense is that it just doesn't work, right? It's why MSNBC is popular. It's why Fox News is popular. It's why the more neutral channels like CNN have had to pick a side even over time.

Zain 43:52

Yeah, it's an interesting. And of course, if there was more than two hot dog stands, Corey and Carter would still eat a pizza burger. Corey, I'm going to give you the opportunity to dive into our next question for us. So we've hit on a few distinct themes. We've talked about political books. I've expanded Pat's mind beyond Canada, so you're welcome, Pat. We've hit Ali's question on strategy and tactic. We've hit a lot of people's questions on the Alberta election and strategies there. We hit Amanda's question on political pundits. Corey, where are we going to next? Are we going to go more into this philosophical evergreen lane? Are we going to go more into the current affairs lane? The choice is entirely yours.

Corey 44:28

So Sam asks, will

Corey 44:31

will we ever see boring government again? Again, in an age where popularity, celebrity status, and yelling the loudest are clearly the winning formula to become elected, is there space for a get-the-job-done, boring government candidate? If so, how do they win in this climate?

Zain 44:45

Ooh, this is more of a macro question, not just one they mean. I suspect Sam might mean beyond Alberta, if

Zain 44:50

if I'm not mistaken

Corey 44:51

mistaken reading that question. Yeah.

Zain 44:53

Carter, Corey's asked it. Do you want to start giving a go at this and formulating a bit of a response?

Carter 45:00

of all i want to know who the guy who who the person is who was this person that that the one in the past um the

Carter 45:08

boring tell me tell me who the boring guy in the past was was mr

Corey 45:11

mr smith he went to washington because what i i saw it on

Carter 45:14

on tv i mean yes boring candidates can win right in fact you're probably way better off to be boring and i'll i'll pick on my friend cyril turton who is

Carter 45:24

Boring. I mean, lovely human being. Boring.

Corey 45:29

Why are you naming names? Why would you do that?

Carter 45:32

I meant to say a hypothetical MLA from North Alberta. Anyways, moving on. Sorry, Cyril. Can we bleep that out? Is there any way we can?

Carter 45:44

Nope, probably not. You know, the thing

Zain 45:44

thing with Hasan Minhaj is that he's just too animated. Okay, keep going, Carter. Thank

Carter 45:48

Thank you very much.

Carter 45:49

Bottom line, the leaders have to be personable.

Carter 45:54

they have to be relatable they have to be bigger than life and that pushes them into positions it pushes them into um controversy and uh sometimes controversy is not bad especially when you're a leader of a uh of a large party right controversy that that stokes up your primary members is fantastic if it gets people on your side excited then controversy is great um you know daniel Smith with the Sovereignty Act, you know, she wins over a huge group of people by saying we're getting screwed over by Ottawa. It's the same line that Lougheed had. It's the same line that Romano had. It's the same line that, you know, every single premier that's successful is bringing that line and she's just brought a new flavor. So the controversy is, I think, part of the requirement of being the party leader. The only one who I think is relatively boring is Justin Trudeau, but he makes up for that with the celebrity side. He's still a celebrity. Nahed Nenshi was a celebrity. These people become something bigger than themselves, and that's what we want in the leaders that we elect. So I guess I disagree with the premise of the question.

Zain 47:07

Very West Wing of you, Carter. Thank you.

Zain 47:09

But I guess, Corey, the heart of the question, and I'm just trying to find it right here, um seems to be like is there value

Zain 47:17

value and viability in a boring status quo good government approach that's how i read it from how you read it out loud yeah

Zain 47:27

yeah is that is that your reading of it and and if that's the case you know i'm curious to hear your answer but i just thought i'd inject my version of how i interpret parts of that question yeah

Corey 47:37

yeah you know the question was will we see boring government again yeah steven has kind of picked on the again i do think that there were more boring politicians in the past but you know it's all on a curve and obviously there's

Corey 47:50

there's like an overton window for almost political behavior too we've talked about this all of a sudden bill clinton's playing the saxophone on arsenio and that was considered unpresidential and smash cut to 2016 and we've got donald trump for crying out loud like things change there's no question about that But, you know, Bill Clinton was being compared to George H.W. Bush, who was perceived as boring to some people. So, you know, there were boring, quote unquote, politicians in the past. But they were kind of within

Corey 48:20

within the range accepted of behavior for people in those positions at the time. The real question is, how do you make boring interesting, in my opinion, right? I do think, ultimately, we need our politics, our policies to become more boring. We need to stop seesawing back and forth between extreme solutions or just absolutely obliterating the other side's policies when one side flips over and it goes into a new government. But how do you make that interesting? How do you make moderation interesting? I don't

Corey 48:53

don't know if I have an answer to that, but I think there are ways to be interesting while

Corey 48:57

while having a foundationally sound policy behind you. Maybe we just need politicians

Corey 49:02

politicians who are interested in different ways, you know, quirky, weird, right? Rather than somebody who is going to have an outrageous policy. If you could get somebody who comes, you know, and joins a crowd of 30,000, not because you are motivated by an extreme policy solution, but instead because, you know, maybe it's the Zelensky model. Maybe it's somebody who's funny and willing to call bullshit on corruption and, you know, randomness that occurs in politics to the point of absurdity.

Corey 49:30

know, it's not about, it's not about, it's

Corey 49:34

it's not about being boring. Boring is not coming back. You're going to have to capture people's interests. The

Corey 49:39

The question is how.

Carter 49:39

how. Joe T. Gondek did that. I mean, her policies weren't, you know, awe-inspiring or particularly interesting. But, you know, she dressed up for May the 4th. She went to Comic-Con. What else did she do? That stupid ride where they're all dressed up in different costumes. She wore the costumes to that. There was a degree of this is new, this is different, even though the ideas weren't necessarily new or different. They were just repackaged with this new person who was seen to be a little bit more exciting.

Zain 50:15

Yeah, interesting question on whether we will see Boring again. Stephen Carter, will we see you pick a question? Because

Zain 50:24

Because the time is yours to pick a question. We've got a lot of interesting themes still left on the board, but you seem to already have one in your mind, locked and loaded. Hit us with it. I have one for you,

Carter 50:32

you, Zane. I have one for you. And that question is, what's next for Jean Charest?

Zain 50:39

Ooh, you know. They wanted a

Carter 50:40

a three-hour special, but

Carter 50:41

but I'll let you go as long as you need to. What's next politically for Jean Charest, Zane? Go. Take us through it. It's

Zain 50:48

It's a great question.

Carter 50:50

It really is. So what ends up

Zain 50:51

yeah, no, in the new year, he takes his resume and he goes to the people of huawei and uh they they keep uh keep bringing them full-time staff carter yeah just off the off the

Zain 51:05

huawei ceo ceo sure a ceo of huawei all

Carter 51:08

all the money yeah

Carter 51:09

he's got all the money all the money yeah

Zain 51:11

like jean sure i'm not gonna i'm not gonna take a shit on him cory do you want to answer the jean sure question uh

Zain 51:17

uh nope okay perfect uh cory it's back Back to you. I'm going to skip my turn. In fact, Corey, I might actually give you a nudge. We've got two themes that are on the board that I think are interesting. You don't have to choose them. We've got a couple questions on, and I'm going to paraphrase, what the fuck is up with Jagmeet Singh? Oh,

Zain 51:33

I don't know what exactly, maybe my read on that is, I really don't see it in terms of why people are so pissed off, but you guys can jump on that. The other one is actually about at right-wing media. A couple of questions on the theme of the ecosystem created by Rebel and True North and the ongoing independent media on the right. How do you combat it? How do you talk about it? How do you address it? Do you ignore it?

Zain 51:57

Those are two themes that I still see on the board. You can go there,

Corey 52:00

there, you can go anywhere else because we've got a lot of different questions. Actually, one just caught my attention here, if you don't mind. Somebody asked us if we could do a three-hour show on what's next for Jean Charest.

Corey 52:09

That's a good one. And I'm wondering, And Stephen, if

Corey 52:11

if you have some thoughts. I

Carter 52:12

I do. I do have some thoughts on what John Charest should do. Wait, did we not just do that one? John Charest is a leader among men. And what John Charest needs to do is keep himself in that leadership position, I think, by publishing op-eds. Op-eds on topics that range from, is Tesla the only electric vehicle provider that matters? To, how is the electrical grid going to hold up when we all have electrical vehicles? I mean, he is a thought leader, and I'm looking forward to his thought leadership in

Carter 52:45

the future. That's a great point. I mean, they basically have unlimited electricity, green

Carter 52:50

green electricity in Quebec because of their hydro. At Huawei.

Zain 52:53

Huawei. Oh, sorry. Because

Carter 52:54

Because of their hydro.

Carter 52:55

God. Man, you're stepping all over me today. Wow,

Carter 53:01

I just thought we were converging

Carter 53:04

on the same point. What other topics, Zane, do you think that he could cover?

Zain 53:10

uh cory i'm gonna give you a real shot at this you want to jump on on another one here

Corey 53:16

here's one and it's a little more granular but i actually think i'm curious to hear steven's answer okay because i haven't answered this okay

Zain 53:25

definitely means steven does not just so we're ready

Corey 53:27

ready i'm making this up as from travis what are your three most important writings in the upcoming alberta election i know this is going to be like deep cut even for a lot of albertans but but

Corey 53:39

i think this is worth discussing calgary

Zain 53:41

give us a give us a framework why okay but go ahead yeah list your writings i don't want to interrupt you but i'm curious in terms of why calgary

Carter 53:48

calgary glenmore was won in 2015 by the ndp i think it was by 12 votes um it was close it was a it had a it had a judicial recount um it was not held by the ndp in in 2019. It is right on the cusp. The NDP have an excellent candidate. They have the opportunity, I think, to shift. And frankly, without that riding, well, on all three of these ridings, the NDP has a struggle to form government in 2023. So Calgary-Glenmore, number one. Calgary-Acadia Acadia is number two. It was probably on the hold list for the UCP. I think the UCP think that they can win Acadia. It is currently where Justice Minister Tyler Shandro is

Carter 54:42

representing. And Tyler has suffered a lot under the Kenney and Smith governments. He is the minister that brought, you know, that was the health minister during the pandemic. He was then shifted out of that. And now he is the minister that brought us the Sovereignty Act. He has been essentially

Carter 55:00

essentially kicked in the balls twice. And now he is going to have to try and carry this riding. And I'd be very interested to see if there is any personal payback for for Tyler Shandro in Calgary, Acadia, because if that goes to the NDP, it was won by the NDP in 2015. But 2023 is a much different time, different vote totals. They have to get 50 percent plus one basically to win.

Carter 55:29

And the third riding, I think that is interesting, is Fish Creek.

Carter 55:33

Again, the UCP think they can. Fish Creek?

Zain 55:35

The UCP. Calgary as well. Well, just so people are clear, Calgary Fisheries.

Carter 55:38

Fisheries. Listen, nothing exists outside of Calgary. Banff, Kananaskis is probably going to go to the NDP. Lethbridge East and West go to the NDP. There's one NDP riding in Lesser Slave Lake that probably can be one. It's currently UCP. That's it for outside of Calgary. Everything else needs to be one in Calgary. So when you're looking at three ridings that need to actually flip, and if they flip, because because the other thing is do you get 44 seats or do you get 50 seats and if you get 50 seats your government is just that much more stable you get 44 one person's crosses to be an independent and you're fucked so this is a this is a really to me it's really simple you got to win way more than expected in calgary and that's why acadia and fish creek are certainly interesting and you You have to get to at least the base, which means that Fish Creek or that Calgary Glenmore comes into play a little bit more.

Carter 56:38

Does that answer your question, Zane? Was that actually your question, Zane, because you're working on that campaign and you wanted to know? It's not

Zain 56:44

not my question. I

Zain 56:46

think I like your answers. I just wanted to check. I like your answers. I'm curious if there's any similarities in Corey's response, because you're locked

Zain 56:53

locked and loaded with

Corey 56:54

Glenmore and Acadia were both on my list as well. What

Zain 56:57

What was your third?

Corey 56:59

was not Fish Creek. I mean, Fish Creek is an interesting one because it is a bit of an aberration after all of the madness we've had in politics over the next bit. And it might be a very important seat simply because it looks like it's going to be such a tight election based on the current state of polling. So it might be a very material seat, but

Corey 57:18

but I don't know if it's a bellwether seat, if that makes any sense. i think glenmore and acadia they're bellwether seats uh

Corey 57:25

uh you know you already the third one on my list you took off you convinced me otherwise it was lesser slave lake oh

Carter 57:31

oh okay and lesser

Corey 57:31

lesser sleep yeah and the reason why it was on my list is not just because it seems like almost you know as likely to be the tipping point riding but it also suggests perhaps a certain effectiveness in uh the rural area outside

Corey 57:46

outside of edmonton not in the donut but like the next level out which

Corey 57:50

which was instrumental for the ndp victory and well

Corey 57:53

well not instrumental they would have won without it but in 2015 that was a source of seats too and so if they can win in a riding like lesser slave lake i

Corey 58:01

i don't know it it maybe doesn't put a lot of things on the board but it means the ucp are going to be pinned down in some interesting ways in some interesting ridings yeah

Carter 58:09

yeah it's just so isolated you know in that isolation

Corey 58:13

talked me out of it like i said in your answer okay

Zain 58:16

all right i'm gonna take back the reins here oh thank god there's a two the two themes on jigsaw right wing ecosystem still on the board a really interesting suggestion by ty a new version of fuck mary kill called promote elect barry uh very easy ty uh promote me elect cory so he's off the show and barry stephen carter obviously um i haven't read the rest of the question but i suspect that's what he's asking yeah i actually love that suggestion ty i'm gonna actually use it on a future episode episode, so thank you for that suggestion. Carter, we've got questions on going back to your Surrey episode. Remember we did your

Carter 58:47

your Surrey debrief for the pod? Oh, we did Surrey. Yeah, that was good.

Zain 58:50

individual, Brandon, is wondering about momentum campaigns versus traditional voter ID campaigns. What are the tactical differences? So this one gets us back into a broader evergreen philosophical question.

Zain 59:01

The choice is yours, Carter. Do you want to go on Jagmeet? Do you want to go to Right Wing Ecosystem? Do you want to go on momentum versus traditional ID campaigns? Do you want to go somewhere else with what we have on the board? Jeez,

Zain 59:11

And I'm going to time us out in the next 20 minutes. That's what I'm going to say. We got 20 minutes left. Yeah,

Carter 59:16

Yeah, I mean, I think the way to go is to ask what Jean

Carter 59:20

Jean Charest's next move is. Because it's ultimately, you

Carter 59:26

know, that's far more important. I like that. It's a good question.

Zain 59:31

do you want to take a shot at this one?

Corey 59:33

Yeah, sure. You know, so Jean Charest needs to pick himself off the mat. It obviously didn't go the way that he wanted it to go. But we still need a Jean Charest in Canada. We

Corey 59:43

We need somebody to be a reasonable, pragmatic voice of conservatism. That doesn't mean he needs to be running like a rear vanguard campaign against

Corey 59:50

against Pierre Poliev. But it means he needs to be somebody who is speaking to a progressive conservatism that seems to have fallen very much out of favor. In some ways, this ties back to Sam's question, right? How do you get politics boring again? You get boring people to stay in politics. And Jean Charest, you

Corey 1:00:08

you could be our guy. He's not even boring. He's an interesting guy, but you know, on the curve of modern times, he, uh, he doesn't seem to necessarily have, have that kind of pugilism in him. And so I think people like him should stay involved. So as much as it might be embarrassing, humiliating, just

Corey 1:00:25

just an absolute like clown car that he would even consider being involved. He should stay involved. That's, that's what I think. really well put yeah no

Corey 1:00:33

no i mean and and

Zain 1:00:34

and in my like from my perspective he's got like the five things that you need to be able to lead as a conservative right you got the the

Zain 1:00:41

the the the experience yeah you've

Zain 1:00:43

you've got the wisdom the leadership capability the thoughtfulness and then the fifth one is 5g and he's got 5g because carter

Zain 1:00:51

carter that's a huawei joke that's a very

Corey 1:00:52

very long walk to a huawei joke yeah you're welcome i totally forgot about i forgot about huawei yeah can you that was That's really interesting.

Carter 1:00:58

interesting. Maybe he won't stick around in politics. Who knows?

Corey 1:01:01

Carter. And maybe he'll get a job making a lot of money at Huawei. Maybe.

Carter 1:01:06

Sounds like Zane's got a pretty much mapped out plan. That's an interesting idea.

Zain 1:01:10

No, listen, it's what I do, and it's how I do it. Carter, Carter, we've got a lot of choices on the board. And, of course, I should mention that this episode is, of course, brought to you by Flair Airlines. Flair Airlines is not looking so bad right now.

Zain 1:01:29

yeah that's good they'd

Corey 1:01:30

they'd never so for people listening to this a year later no idea the airlines all did bad in the next bit yeah last

Zain 1:01:36

last bit yeah yeah so bad that they had to get

Zain 1:01:39

bob craft to help fly people to quebec you hear about

Corey 1:01:44

the other airline amazing

Zain 1:01:44

amazing that the other airline had to get the

Zain 1:01:47

the new england's patriots jet to fly people back to quebec i'm not even joking that's pretty cool it's a real new story yeah yeah that's great they actually Did it stop in Florida for

Zain 1:01:58

Not only that, but after the massage, everyone got an oversized hoodie.

Zain 1:02:04

Carter, what was that referring to? Bill

Zain 1:02:08

Fucking useless. Okay, whatever. One fact, baby. Nicely done, Carter. Carter, where are we going? Where are we going? What do you want to talk about?

Carter 1:02:16

I think we could probably keep going in the philosophical. Let's do the Surrey thing.

Zain 1:02:20

You want to talk about momentum versus traditional voter ID questions? Yeah, because

Carter 1:02:24

because I think that there's something fundamentally happening with voter identification campaigns. And I think that, you

Carter 1:02:29

you know, we can talk a little bit about it. And the only way to talk about

Zain 1:02:32

about it is to

Carter 1:02:33

to understand why we do like, what is it when we say we're going to do a voter identification campaign? And a voter identification campaign usually means going out and finding the people who have voted for you in the past and make or are planning to vote for you in the future, and then actually getting that vote out to the polls. That to me is the standard definition of a voter identification campaign. We use telephones, we use texts, we use emails, all

Carter 1:02:58

all those things. I think we're really used, you

Carter 1:03:02

know, Sharae's campaign tried to use a voter identification campaign, but ultimately they were doing a momentum campaign that failed. And a momentum campaign is much different because the momentum campaign is trying to find people who are not necessarily talking to political operatives. They're the ones who don't answer the door when the doorbell rings, and it's either the Church of Latter-day Saints or whoever's ringing their doorbell, or the political people. And so they don't answer the phones, they don't answer the texts, they don't answer the doors,

Carter 1:03:42

those people hear from others. So the way that the momentum campaign works is that old, what was it, Clairol campaign? I don't even remember. You tell two friends and they tell two friends and they tell two friends and you're getting momentum because you're being talked about outside of the traditional circle. And the best example I can come up with is Nahed Nenshi. In Nahed Nenshi's campaign in 2010, it was a textbook momentum campaign where his name meant more than voter identification. We had, I think, less than 6,000 people identified as voting for Nenshi, but we had 140,000 people ultimately cast their ballot for him. So that is the standard of a momentum campaign versus

Carter 1:04:29

versus the standard of a voter identification campaign. Now, why do I think there's problems in voter identification campaigns? People aren't answering the telephones. People aren't answering the doors. People don't answer their texts. If you can't talk to people and do the one-on-one contact from the campaign to

Carter 1:04:46

to the voter, then the voter identification campaign fails.

Zain 1:04:51

And Carter, I'm sure that has implications on your spend on a campaign as well, whether you're spending on conversion-based digital mediums to try to get emails on a list or you're spending to create what you'd call mythology or brand or story with reach and frequency. So I suspect that one of the other sort of differences, whether implicit or to Corey's earlier point on strategy, whether you, you know, back yourself into it or deliberate about it is where you're putting your money in terms of any sort of advertising as well. Well,

Carter 1:05:22

Well, this is really where I mean, one of the hardest parts about working in the in this game right now is just trying to find a list with people's names on it. You know, who are you speaking to? I mean, there's a voter list in the provincial elections, but in municipal elections, the voter lists have been pulled. So you can't even do a voter identification game in the municipal. municipal. But if you're running a counselor campaign, certainly you can. You just go and door knock the 42,000 houses in your neighborhood and, you know, in that area that you're responding to. That is the epitome of a voter identification. So how much money you have will change how you spend it. You know, you can get people talking through the use of mass media and you can also get you know people talking through you know smaller activities smaller tactics we always used to target moms at the back in playgrounds moms in playgrounds I've always thought is one of the most important areas that you can go to to get people talking about your campaign you know for years and years we always kind of made it out that the women were gossiping or in those say they're talking about important issues and they are those important issues are then then being decided amongst the group together. And that group can include men, it can include women, but the group at a school playground is demographically aligned, they are psychographically aligned, and they are geographically aligned, and they will therefore change their minds collectively. And I'll throw it over to young Mr. Hogan, who seems to have more to say. Corey, let's get you from the parking lot. What do you think, Corey?

Corey 1:07:03

Well, first of all, it was a commercial for Fabergé Organics was the name of the shampoo.

Carter 1:07:06

shampoo. Thank you very much.

Corey 1:07:06

Heather Locklear was in it. Yeah. Second of all, one

Corey 1:07:10

one of the things that I think needs to be underlined here is that, well, for a campaign like Mare, you may be put in a position where you're having to choose one or the other based on resource constraints. When you talk about a provincial campaign, when you talk about a federal campaign, they do both or they attempt to do both. Right. So we often talk about this in terms of air war and ground war. Right. So they are going to try to run that mass media campaign from Central. They're going to have the leaders tour. They're going to be trying to get on the news each night. They're going to be purchasing advertising. And that is one version. That is trying to build the momentum campaign. And you can see that happen. I mean, Rachel Notley did that in 2015 here in Alberta.

Corey 1:07:47

Justin Trudeau did that also in 2015, I suppose, federally. It happens all the time, right? Somebody comes, they catch a wave, and all of a sudden they're there. But

Corey 1:07:56

But they marry it with strong ground game. And the 2015 Liberals, I think, are the example here because that was still a party and an institution despite being in third for good chunks of that. And they had credible candidates on the ground. They had strong campaigns on the ground. They were raising a lot of money. And they went out and they identified their voters and they polled their voters on Election Day. So they did land and air. and

Corey 1:08:20

and and so these two things can be complementary as well and often in the context of parliamentary elections they are intentionally complementary and they are built in both senses knowing that the other side's going to have to pick up some of the slack nicely

Zain 1:08:35

nicely done cory any direction you want to go to next or do you want to just let me pick because there's a lot of stuff on the board that i want to get to in our final what i'm going to call 10 minutes before over 100 lightning round

Corey 1:08:47

yeah um for sure but just don't go back to that jean charret one again yeah

Zain 1:08:52

yeah it's starting to get old that's actually a really fucking really good question i mean i'm starting to think about what that guy's going to do going in the in the future carter any any ideas listen

Carter 1:09:01

listen i'm just uh i'm pretty upset about him um only being able to make a lot of money instead of a crazy amount of money i feel bad it's crazy it

Zain 1:09:09

feels like we've asked this question before cory i'm going to talk to you about this let's end on a federal note let's end on a perhaps speculative note. Let's talk about the question that is being asked here. I'm going to find the name of the individual, but I'm going to ask you the spirit of the question, and I'll refine it once I find it.

Zain 1:09:26

Justin Trudeau, is he best positioned to take on Pierre Polyev heading into the next election? Let's assume supply and confidence agreement lasts. We'll address the questions on Jagmeet Singh and right-wing media in a future episode. Trust me, I'll bake those in, but I want to talk about this. Is he the right or best leader to keep the reins? I'll find the question here in a second, but get started on your thoughts on this against Pierre Polyev, because it's starting to gel at least a bit in terms of what the leadership slate looks like, Trudeau versus Polyev versus Singh versus May, in terms of the next election.

Corey 1:10:04

Really interesting. When you rattle off those names, that the leaders, at least national leaders not looking at the bq but even the bq like they're all veterans except poly f right this is not their first campaign for any of them so been a while since we've had such a returning cast i think um hmm

Corey 1:10:25

is he the right guy no he's not i'll just be simple and plain about that and uh which is not to say he wasn't the right guy for the moment in 2015 but it's like they they say in the movie dave you stay long enough and you become the villain yeah

Corey 1:10:39

and i think what justin trudeau's got at this point is just far too much baggage and let's be super clear about this in both 2019 and in 2021 he

Corey 1:10:50

lost the popular vote he barely won and yes the liberals can pat themselves on the back for the brilliance of their data analytics and the way they assigned resources and the way they marshaled things exactly where they needed to be but

Corey 1:11:02

but let's cut the bullshit. Fewer people voted for the liberals than voted for the conservatives. And this situation is not going to get better with a leader who has a stronger hold on his party, a leader who is a much better communicator. I'm talking about Pierre Polyev right now. And frankly, a prime minister who has continued to wear out his welcome.

Corey 1:11:20

And you know, I'm not knocking what the guy did. The liberals, I've said this, and I think Ibbotson wrote a column about this just a couple of days ago. It's been the most consequential prime minister of my lifetime there's no disputing that in my opinion but but

Corey 1:11:37

here we are right

Corey 1:11:39

and you got to know when your curtain call is coming and for him if

Corey 1:11:43

if he tries to run the same playbook even if he tries to run a modified playbook i just don't believe he's the guy who's going to be able to beat pierre polyev at this point which is why i would take an even money bet that pierre polyev is going to be the next prime minister so

Corey 1:11:57

so if he's not the right guy what has to happen here well rather than the party going through a bunch of turmoil in terms of coming to

Corey 1:12:04

to that realization slowly, I think Justin Trudeau needs to take a walk in the snow. He needs to go like his father did and determine that it's time to resign. And unlike his father, he should stay resigned. But the fact that Joe Clark is not prime minister will probably help with that. And we

Corey 1:12:22

we need to have new leadership at the Liberal Party if there's going to be a competitive Liberal Party that has a chance at governing now i don't think trudeau is going to get wiped out i don't think necessarily

Corey 1:12:34

necessarily that the conservatives are even guaranteed to beat the combination of trudeau uh and sing but

Corey 1:12:41

but his days as governing of governing are over and and at this point you need to be thinking about what's what's the best way to maintain both the party and maintain kind of that progressive canada that you have built over the past seven years uh and he should be thinking about legacy in terms of that not just his personal legacy, but the legacy of the things that he's created.

Zain 1:13:03

Carter, this was Marsha's question. The spirit of it is, are there hypothetical leaders better than JT? Corey answers whether he's the right guy. Carter, I'm going to ask that same question to you and maybe start the expansion pack is, who would be better in your mind? And then Patrick chimes in on this as well to say, are there contenders? And if they are contenders that are better suited, what should their course of action be right now? Corey's kind of given a bit of you know what direction trudeau should head in if he doesn't go in that direction if you're a contender for this what what should you be doing as

Zain 1:13:35

as the new york now arrives to start thinking about your leadership ambitions for the liberal party if justin trudeau doesn't step aside well

Carter 1:13:43

well i mean keep

Carter 1:13:45

keep your attention high if you are someone who wants to be seen and wants to be seen as a potential leadership candidate keep your you know um what is it champagne that has has been everywhere over the last little while there was an article in the paper about it yesterday um all over twitter uh you know you've got we've talked about christia freeland um keeping her profile high there's others uh joe lee there's a lot of people who could be the liberal leader are they better i

Carter 1:14:11

don't know what does better mean better doesn't mean anything better to us only means can they win the election that is all better means to us we're here talking about electoral politics trying to get someone elected and jason or jason justin trudeau is

Carter 1:14:29

is going to probably

Carter 1:14:30

probably lose to pierre paliev if he stays on and

Carter 1:14:34

and that indicates that he needs to leave and it doesn't matter it doesn't matter if the person who's next is objectively better or worse the fact that they are new is why why did old coke change to new coke because they wanted did they get more people to buy their bad example maybe might

Carter 1:14:54

be the best example yeah

Carter 1:14:56

um okay good to know i've screwed that up but realistically you change just for change sake the party's still the party the brand's still the brand the people are still the people but you have to have a change in order to give people a reason to vote for you and cory's point about the fact that the last two elections he hasn't won a majority of votes tells us everything we need to know about who he is he's never going to win the majority of votes that is not in the cards for him next if he chooses to stay is there a strategy that can keep him in the in the prime ministership probably will

Carter 1:15:33

will it need to be implemented perfectly absolutely and that's where i also have problems because this

Carter 1:15:41

this the the campaigns that they ran the last two campaigns were simply not good enough so how they're going to do it what they look like in the future that's someone else's problem but right now um the easiest way to fix this is that the leader takes the walk in the snow the second easiest way to fix this is to have a better group of campaigners

Zain 1:16:06

for me the expansion on on this question that that that you know patrick chimes into to and and that marcia asks is is it

Zain 1:16:16

it possible to reinvent a leader without them going away and coming back like is real and

Zain 1:16:24

how viable and possible is a reinvention maybe we leave it on this note because what i think both of you agree on is that this version of trudeau the one we've had for the last sorry how many years seven years seven plus years now leading on to eight um

Zain 1:16:38

um has evolved in certain ways but it's been the same guy is

Zain 1:16:42

is reinvention here possible cory

Corey 1:16:46

yeah sure of course always um i'm i'm sort of struggling to think of a leader that did

Corey 1:16:52

did that um i guess christy clark immediately comes to mind as somebody who who re-found her footing right

Corey 1:17:00

right re-found her swagger and was able to govern a little more forcefully there

Corey 1:17:04

there are others though Often those leaders who are struggling, though, are struggling because they lack the full support of their party. And there are more tools to find ways to reassert your control over the party. What we're talking about here is a little different. It's talking about reinventing yourself in the public eye and doing that without going away. Can I ask you where this question comes from for me?

Corey 1:17:28

I might give you more

Zain 1:17:30

comes from the near universal praise that Trudeau got for his testimony in the Emergencies Act inquiry, where

Zain 1:17:38

where people were like, where the fuck is this guy?

Zain 1:17:40

Like, more of this guy. And it was almost like, to me, the question was open-ended, like, yeah, A, where the fuck is this guy? And wait, could they just introduce this guy? And that's where the spirit of the question comes for me, is that people have seen a version of what Trudeau might be like in closed-door scenarios, or what he might be like as he governs the country, and there's at least a constituency of people that see that as a breath of fresh air, or if not an improvement, or even, to Carter's point, maybe not an improvement, but something different, something that might be more in line with where people's head is at. So that's where the spirit of the question comes for me, Corey, which is that there at least is a version on the table, a different Justin Trudeau. And is that reinvention holistically possible? Yeah.

Corey 1:18:24

Yeah. Like I can imagine, let's paint a picture here,

Corey 1:18:29

And there's years to do this too. There are years for him to do this. So it's not as though you couldn't create a trajectory towards this. You couldn't do it overnight. But you can create a prime minister who is less performative, more serious, less breathless, more heft.

Corey 1:18:45

Hopefully his hair goes gray at exactly the right time. And he gives off the sense of being an elder statesman against Skippy, right? Against the bro that is Jagmeet Singh. and and that might be something that works that might be exactly what needs to match a moment where we're all so bloody weary you you present yourself less as the party of change and more as the party of stability and that's a pretty big pivot it's

Corey 1:19:12

it's a pretty big pivot for a guy who even last election ran on introducing a national child care program yeah right

Corey 1:19:18

right which is change but if over the next couple of years you almost say now

Corey 1:19:23

now we land the plane right we we've we there's always more work to be done the work is never done but now we land the plane we've we've got to make sure that you know our economy is in order our social programs are in order we're dealing with these things incrementally at this point and

Corey 1:19:40

and we don't need any dangerous experiments uh ideological experiments from either of the other two maybe

Corey 1:19:46

maybe there's a version where you can do that it

Corey 1:19:48

it doesn't seem impossible to me maybe

Corey 1:19:51

maybe i'm even talking myself into it being better than going out into you know places unknown because frankly swapping the leader doesn't often work either but i

Corey 1:20:00

i think you've got to be realistic about the limitations of that he's got a

Corey 1:20:05

a well defined brand at this point people think the things they think about justin trudeau and

Corey 1:20:10

and it's going to be very hard to change that very

Zain 1:20:14

carter would you welcome

Zain 1:20:16

welcome and take on and think that a reinvention of trudeau within still staying in the public eye not going away and coming back gray haired but like to cory's point literally and metaphorically gaining gray hairs during your time with the spotlight on you is that reinvention possible or are we just am i just talking bullshit here no

Carter 1:20:35

no of course it's possible um it's possible i can go through an entire podcast without making fun of someone that's possible is it probable probably not i'm probably gonna call you know and you know make cyril turton mad at me or you know call call someone an idiot. That's what I'm going to do. And

Zain 1:20:53

And sorry, what did you say about Searle, just so other people might be just tuning in? He's boring, Zane. He's just boring. Okay. Sure. Yeah.

Zain 1:21:01

Why are you doing this? And who had the worst book? Worst political book?

Carter 1:21:05

Preston Manning had the worst book. But that's... So anyways, my point is this.

Carter 1:21:11

Some people are just the person that they appear to be. Right? So if you're going to take Justin Trudeau... The thing with Justin Trudeau that always has driven me crazy is the thing that he appears to be is the is the high school drama teacher the the guy who always over emotes and always kind of reverts to the seriousness and when you saw that glimmer of hope in the testimony that he gave about the emergencies inquiry he emergencies act inquiry he looked and sounded different now can we make that his new persona i'd love to try i think that if you were able to make that his new persona And to join in a little bit of what Corey said, put in this idea that there is a new Canada that is just within our grasp. If only we had four more years, if only we had four more years, here are the five things that we could do. And those five things are going to make sure, you know, we've already done health care. We're already doing dental. We're already doing, you know, we're going to guarantee housing in

Carter 1:22:09

in this country. It is going to be a protected right. We're going to make sure that that happens. boom you know whatever it may be but he takes on those positions and um doesn't sound like a high school drama teacher gray

Carter 1:22:25

gray and and yeah i'd gray his hair you know like uh nancy cut his hair slowly over the first um campaign he you know it took months and it was and he wound up cutting it down, do the exact same thing. You know, take a few months and have his hair go gray. I think that we want a gray-haired prime minister. I think that that would be good. So go for it.

Carter 1:22:53

And if you heard my dog pushing on the door, my apologies.

Zain 1:22:58

Corey, talk to me about, finish us off on your final thoughts on what's kind of been extended on Marcia's question here to the Trudeau Reinvention Project.

Corey 1:23:09

Yeah, there is something to be said for his own fire for the job too. You know, we're talking about can he win and we're asked to sort of construct a path to victory and I guess I can do that. You know, I guess any of us can do that. We can just sort of draw it out.

Corey 1:23:22

But fundamentally, is there anything else he wants to do as prime minister, right? And if not, either go or turn that into a virtue. But you've got to, this takes us, loops us right back to strategy, right? What are your goals? What are your objectives? That will determine your strategy. That will determine your tactics. And I just don't have a good enough line of sight. In some ways, he feels somewhat spent from a policy point of view, but

Corey 1:23:49

but still trying to be the change guy. And I don't think that's something that's easily reconciled. Corey,

Zain 1:23:54

Corey, you make such a great point to finish us off here, because I don't know how many times you guys have been on a re-election campaign or a campaign or you're talking to friends that are on a re-election campaign, and you realize that despite the level of candidate quality, which is generally high, staff and leadership quality, which is generally high, that a lot of these campaigns miss out on the why we're doing this. the goals the objectives the strategy because it's like well fuck like re-election is up we've got to run again and the why of what we're looking to accomplish uh usually turns out to be an expansion pack of what we've already done uh more and better uh but you know and and and it's it's so fundamental and i think voters start to notice when you are starting to seek re-election just because not to tie in too many things from this episode just because it's the momentum thing to do too, because it's just like momentum pushes you to the next election. Okay, I guess we're running, and let's turn our eye to that, and okay, we're just going to tell them what we did and do more of it, versus actually saying, here's a clear-stated goal for Chapter 2. Here's a clear-stated goal for Chapter 3. Here's the story that we are now at this particular Act 1, Scene 3 of the story. We've got a five-part sort of story we're here to tell you. We're at Part 2 of that story, right? And giving

Zain 1:25:16

folks, maybe not even, and that's a little too cute, but giving folks a sense of the broader stage play you were putting on and how long this thing, at least in its current production, is going to showcase for people and what it's

Corey 1:25:28

it's going to show like.

Corey 1:25:30

Look, I think one of the things, there's a bunch of things that all crash together here. One is the unreasonable expectations of voters. Like, oh, you did that two years ago. What are you doing now? Just keep going. Let's keep moving, right? right the

Corey 1:25:41

other is that politicians like to act as though everything is finished and so often the situation you're talking about where somebody's like this is version two this is the upgrade in many ways is that landing of the plane i was talking about it's okay we did this but we really want to do this now like we want to entrench this we want to make sure it's done yeah we got a deal but we want a better deal with the doctors or yeah you know we we fixed health care a little but we got more to do but they've already declared victory on health care so they get into a weird box of their own making but it's a box they made because of the expectations of the public and you know in general i

Corey 1:26:17

don't know uh it's probably asking too much to say people should be more patient with government this is just no appetite for that but how

Corey 1:26:24

how many things really fundamentally change in three years you

Corey 1:26:27

you know these things do take time to become entrenched to show their full value and we just run on much shorter cycles than that we're

Zain 1:26:36

we're gonna leave that segment there They're our mandated mailbag. That segment, of course, Carter brought to us by our sponsor, Flair Airlines. Flair Airlines, wait, planes go to Mexico? We'll move it on to our final segment. Our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. And Stephen Carter, there's only one question to rule them all. There's only one question I want to ask you. Stephen Carter, it's not on a scale of 1 to 10. It's not overrated, underrated. It is a fill-in-the-blanks on what Jean Charest should do next. Stephen Carter, lay it on us.

Carter 1:27:05

Jean Charest should make so much money that he makes Pierre Polyev look like a pupper.

Zain 1:27:12

Corey Hogan, Jean Charest, we haven't discussed him yet. I know people have been itching at this. There's been a few questions

Corey 1:27:17

questions about him. Yeah,

Zain 1:27:19

haven't got to him. Jean Charest, what should he do next, Corey?

Corey 1:27:22

Jean Charest should just get out of politics. I know there's going to be people who say he

Corey 1:27:27

should stick around. He should still be the voice of that moderate conservatism. But the reality is, if you want moderate conservatism to flourish, you're going to need to find a new spokesperson. And John Charest right now has all this baggage. I mean, I was just reminded by someone the other day about his involvement with Huawei. Really? Really.

Carter 1:27:44

didn't even know that. People forget this

Corey 1:27:46

all the time. But yeah, he was involved with Huawei. And he's just not the right standard bearer for that. So listen, he's going to have a desire to stick around. He's going to have people saying to him things like, you're

Corey 1:27:57

you're the guy for this. We need voices like you around. We need standard bearers like this, but

Corey 1:28:03

but we just need them to step back because until that old guard, uh, you know, and they, and kind of the whiff of it goes away, there's

Corey 1:28:10

there's no chance for this kind of boring, moderate conservatism. That's

Zain 1:28:14

That's such a good, that's such a good take. I want to, uh, such a good take. I want to extradite it. We're going to leave that episode there. That's a wrap on episode 1025 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Belgey with me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

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