Episode 1062: Scarecrows and Lions

Annalise 0:01

Welcome to The Strategist, episode 1062. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil. With you, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan.

Carter 0:10

She's really getting better, hey? Like, she didn't even sound dead that time. That was really good. Have you guys

Corey 0:15

guys seen the polls in the Alberta election? Oh

Carter 0:17

Oh my god. I've been hanging on the polls. Like, you wouldn't even believe. Like, the polls have been the only thing I've been paying attention to. uh

Annalise 0:24

guys we're gonna get to the polls but not yet okay we're gonna talk about our weekends and then we're going to talk about some other stuff then we're going to talk

Corey 0:33

listen i know he wants to talk about polls more than australian football yeah

Carter 0:36

yeah i mean i'm i'm prepared to forego the usual talk about uh australian football guys just

Carter 0:44

talk about polls i

Carter 0:46

i i did spend a lot of time outside this weekend and

Annalise 0:49

and i think you look like you got some sun yeah well because

Carter 0:52

because i was outside and

Carter 0:53

and that's where the sun is

Annalise 0:57

no pasty way blends in with that wall i can hardly tell yeah yeah

Corey 1:00

yeah it's it's part of my natural indoor camouflage though to be fair like i don't i don't go outside i wouldn't you

Annalise 1:07

you should it was a nice weekend outside we were in let me tell you golden

Carter 1:11

golden bike riding it was fantastic

Corey 1:15

that's great that's really good we're

Corey 1:18

what's the what's the election look like and i'll tell you

Carter 1:19

you no one was talking about it i

Carter 1:21

i brought it up up at a couple different places no one gave a shit how'd

Corey 1:24

go over i mean i

Corey 1:28

guess uh that does sort of track for a few different yeah i mean i was talking to them they're not peering over the fence they're not saying like what's not

Carter 1:34

not at all they don't seem to give a shit and i i did say to them you know you guys should probably listen to the strategists you guys would would like that and they were like no no we don't we don't care just

Annalise 1:46

hard no yeah it was

Annalise 1:47

was pretty up Carter, I noticed you had an entire full-page column, and there was not one strategist plug in the column in the National Park. I noticed that, too, actually. In fairness,

Carter 1:57

fairness, I did not write that. Like,

Annalise 1:59

Like, it was long. I

Carter 2:00

I did not write

Annalise 2:00

write that. You were the only quote in, what was it, like a thousand words? Yeah, it was an interview. We

Carter 2:05

We talked about the strategist for 70 minutes. For eight minutes, I talked about this election, and she chose to comment and take the quotes from the eight minutes I talked about the election. That's the beauty.

Annalise 2:15

Shouldn't have talked about the election for eight minutes, less than that. Lesson

Corey 2:19

Stay on message. This is actually, stay

Corey 2:21

You open it up to those follow-up questions. Yeah, man. You got to watch out for that. Control

Carter 2:25

Control the narrative, Carter. I wasn't really quite sure what to do with the column. I was like, oh, look at that. I'm in the newspaper again. Usually that's not a good thing.

Corey 2:35

Speaking of, congratulations. You're also the subject of an award-winning column now, I see. 8,000 words. Oh, did it

Annalise 2:41

it win? Oh, yeah.

Annalise 2:43

I didn't know it won. It won for best

Carter 2:47

best spin by a star. subject uh

Carter 2:51

it's an unexpected victory uh

Annalise 2:56

when it's about you like do you get an award or only the journalist gets the award i think

Corey 3:01

oh i think just the journalist but i mean

Carter 3:03

mean i should get something maybe a thank you card yeah yeah

Corey 3:08

yeah a free subscription to the sprawl whatever man whatever maybe an autograph

Carter 3:11

autograph subscription to the sprawl cory oh

Corey 3:15

oh that's nice hey that's a great segue man so we are still uh doing our annual listener survey and we did tell you last time this is our once a year thing where we go out and we ask for information about you our listeners so we can tailor our um you know podcast to you we will be speaking an awful lot more about rolex watches and and boats now i think you're all really rich so rich

Corey 3:43

real yeah you know what you're a bunch of weird champagne socialists i don't get it and so

Carter 3:48

so smart like if you see how smart they are i'm actually almost intimidated a

Corey 3:53

a lot of degrees a

Corey 3:54

lot of degrees not you guys are not normal i guess that's the thing i would kind of underline here but but listen i know there was some confusion last time because zane zane

Corey 4:02

zane introduced the idea that you could go to brettandrews.ca to do this listener survey and you can you can still go to bretandrews.ca but he did a couple of confusing things he also said you could go to the bretandrews.ca to purchase a flight which which remains true but he spent a lot of time talking about bret andrews as though his name should be bret andrew no s and so i'm a little worried that might have affected oh

Corey 4:27

the response rates right so we have gone out and we have registered the bretandrew.ca unfortunately the bretandrew or bretandrew.ca without the the was

Corey 4:38

was already registered by an airline so uh you can go to the bretandrew.ca or bretandrews.ca to continue or complete this listeners i

Carter 4:48

i am so glad you cleaned that up because that was very confusing that's

Annalise 4:51

that's not and you

Annalise 4:52

you cleaned it up so

Annalise 4:54

and and everyone should definitely become a patreon so that their money can go towards you registering more websites that's not me i look definitely take it up with the airlines they

Carter 5:05

have demands on us okay

Annalise 5:07

okay so just to clarify where where can people do this very important survey that must be they can do

Corey 5:12

do this survey at

Corey 5:14

at brettandrews.ca they cannot do the survey at the brettandrews.ca but they can do the survey at the brettandrew.ca but perfect

Corey 5:25

they cannot do it at brettandrew.ca okay good

Annalise 5:27

good to know how is how is

Carter 5:30

we haven't heard from

Annalise 5:31

from him we haven't

Carter 5:32

haven't heard from him

Annalise 5:33

him you haven't heard he did do some stuff the big radio hour he

Corey 5:36

he did stick a couple of daggers in us a little bit earlier said said he thought we were more popular uh

Corey 5:41

uh you know just it was a dick i

Corey 5:45

i'm sorry brett we're only the most popular political podcast in the country i'm sorry we couldn't do more for you cory

Annalise 5:51

cory just to loop back what do people what could they win in if they do oh wait i think that was there i was

Corey 6:00

catch if you do this survey which you can do at brettandrews.ca but not the brettandrews.ca but you can do it the brettandrew.ca but not at brettandrew.ca you uh can win an autographed one year subscription to the strategist patreon it's

Corey 6:18

it's a big deal

Annalise 6:18

deal listen yeah it's a

Carter 6:19

a big i think i was talking to my mom you guys know mother's day big day big day for moms oh can we pause thanks

Annalise 6:26

thanks for wishing me a happy mother's day happy mother real nice anyways

Carter 6:30

anyways it's talking to my mom she did not understand the whole the survey thing so my parents have not done the survey so she

Carter 6:37

she couldn't remember brett andrew's name

Carter 6:41

we did not capture that data so

Corey 6:44

that's okay no data now now your parents can go to to thebrettandrew.ca so it's fine yeah

Carter 6:50

send them the link we'll take care of it okay

Annalise 6:53

okay guys let's uh let's move into our first segment our first segment is called two weeks in it's may 14th it's two weeks since writ drop eve we're two weeks into the campaign halfway through big deal to start give me your metaphors um you've been good on the metaphors when it comes to kind of where we are in the campaign what is the halfway point like when you're in a campaign like this stephen carter it's

Carter 7:17

it's like a polling roller coaster is what it is so you have a roller what polling roller coasters you go up and you go down and you're going through curves and stuff but you know how some the best roller coasters don't just have one up thing they have two up things that's what we're going through right now we're heading the second thing where it starts to lift you up i've been talking to a number of people involved in campaigns both on the ucp and the and the ndp side and they share only one characteristic and that characteristic is they're exhausted they do not have the adrenaline of the you know the geo tv push that's going to start next tuesday uh they they've run out of the adrenaline that was pushing them forward for the first two weeks of the campaign they are now just tired and everything they're doing is taking super human effort at this particular moment uh that will change after the debate and after the long weekend when they really start getting into you know we have to get the vote out this is how we win and there'll be lots of success success measures lots of failure measures as well but we'll ignore those as we always do um and so this will be you know they're they're they're tired they're in the middle of the roller the polling roller coaster and the polling roller coaster you know it's just exhausting cory

Annalise 8:33

cory what's your metaphor you

Corey 8:35

you know for me it is actually a bit like like

Corey 8:38

taking a flight across the pacific to hawaii right you know you know that the the most dangerous parts of the flight are the takeoff and landing the first week in the fourth week you you know this but that doesn't change the fact that there's something deeply unnerving about being over in the middle of the pacific as far away from land as possible here because if if something goes wrong in the middle of a campaign you don't have enough time to correct like you can't go back but

Corey 9:04

but you're you're not close enough to land, you know, so if things are going well, you've still got that anxiety where it's like, you know, anything could still happen at this particular moment here. So it's not actually as critical, but it feels more anxiety inducing in some senses, because you've now seen how people have reacted to those initial arguments you put forward.

Corey 9:23

They are not at the moment of maximum paying attention, which happens in the last week, but here you are. And in this particular case, we're also just before the leaders debate. And And so, you know, that moment of anticipation and uneasy dread, I think, is doubly felt at this moment for the campaigns. It's

Annalise 9:41

It's a big week coming up with the debate on Thursday. Talk me through what the focus is sort of this week at that halfway point. And is the debate normally like

Annalise 9:51

like the standards that the debate is kind of this week about?

Corey 9:55

Yeah, I mean, I think maybe a couple of days earlier, usually. It feels a little late, but not a lot late. i don't

Carter 10:01

don't know tuesdays feel like it's more it's usually more of a tuesday thing but okay

Annalise 10:05

okay so a couple days it's

Carter 10:06

it's not that but

Annalise 10:08

yeah so what's what's focused kind of over the next few days knowing that there is a debate on thursday um

Carter 10:14

um you're probably walking through a number of drills uh where

Carter 10:18

where you're testing the lines that you have so one of the things that you want to do is you don't want to over you want you don't want to have too many lines right like you don't want to have a line for everything you know every situation because you're never going to be able to remember them all so what you want is you want four five six lines you can intersperse throughout the debate that are your winning lines and you are going to be tested by your team on how to bring those lines in because you should know your lines by now you should have everything in the can about what you're actually going to say and now you're just practicing to make sure that you know the the lines actually come out as they're scripted when when the opportunity arises. So there'll be tests where they will test the candidate to ensure they can get it out when the topic isn't the exact topic that the line was prepared for. And then there will be tests where they will try and get the candidate to do, you know, the line on the actual topic. So those types of tests are relatively common and relatively easy to do because you can

Carter 11:22

can do a test like that in a minute. What you don't want to be doing is too many rehearsals because you can over rehearse you know and you know it good dress bad show bad dress great show so you want to make sure that you you don't over over over rely on the actual dress rehearsals did

Carter 11:43

no one else get my theater right I

Annalise 11:45

I think you miss under I think you misunderstood my question but that's okay it wasn't super question was what's

Carter 11:52

what's happening with the debates in this this moment and

Annalise 11:54

and i told you

Annalise 11:55

no my question was and i'll just turn it to cory it's all good cory two two weeks in knowing that there is a debate this week overall what what is the focus not we weren't getting specifically into debate strategy we can in a second it's okay carter that's a little bit of me my

Carter 12:12

that question was fantastic just

Annalise 12:14

overall when you're on that airplane or that roller coaster like just walk walk those people who haven't been been on a campaign um before what two weeks in what's what are you focusing on yeah

Corey 12:28

yeah so the kind of the refinement is done you are starting to get those mid-campaign polls which i suspect we'll talk about in a minute um but you you you know what's working you know what's not you are kind of strapped in just as you are the plane's taken off the plane's on a course it's going to go where it's going to go at this point and that's what sort of leads to that feeling of dread it does feel a little bit like there's not an awful lot to do except execute at this particular moment because you don't even have those early pivots that you would otherwise have and so as a result you do what steven did and you tend to focus and latch on and hold on to these big moments where you really can still make a difference and those include things like what

Corey 13:08

what ads are we going to close out the campaign on how are we going to react to what they did in the first two weeks and should Should we consider that? And you ultimately, you'll do a little bit, but maybe not a ton. And how are we preparing for this debate? And political parties, political leaders put so much into the debate. And I guess with cause, because in 2015, we did see an election hinge somewhat on a debate. And it's not the only election where we've seen this. But yeah, you're looking for the things that matter that you can be impactful on, especially if you're in a central campaign function. and this is also the moment where people naturally maybe

Corey 13:44

maybe bob will make a bit of an appearance here because if things are going poorly that's where you start dealing with the second guessers and the geniuses who say if you just did this hail mary it would all turn around and all that is required is the one thing that i'm trying to convince you to do and everything is entirely different and that's rarely the case but you're also dealing with a little bit of that so

Annalise 14:04

so what's What's your message for Bob when you're dealing with that? What do you say to Bob?

Corey 14:09

Well, look, there are so many Bobs and they come when it's going good. They come when it's going bad. It's, hey, let's close this thing out with this one grand ad. I've come up with this brilliant ad. Or you just need to put this one newspaper column out and all of a sudden everybody will flock to you or just maybe an impassioned plea on Facebook and everyone will understand. I've been talking to people at the door and they say what Danielle Smith needs to do is simply say that the the wef lizard people took over her body for all of the comments you don't like right i mean like there's no shortage of bad ideas from bobs and i think they all kind of hinge on the same fundamental fallacy which is one action will change the campaign and

Corey 14:50

and so what you're trying to do is you're trying to bring them back to reality and saying hey listen you know we we we test on these things we do these things we can certainly test on if it's an interesting idea but But you've

Corey 15:02

you've got to remind them that this thing is not going to flip based on one good speech or bad speech, frankly, at this point.

Annalise 15:08

Carter, do you have anything to add or do you want a new specific?

Carter 15:11

specific? No, that's a good question. Detailed

Carter 15:13

question. I'm prepared to answer that question. You know what everybody's doing right now? Everybody in every campaign everywhere, including

Carter 15:18

including Bob's. Tell me. They're all walking around and they're testing their data.

Carter 15:23

So what they're trying to do is find anecdotal support. Oh,

Corey 15:26

Oh, you're so right.

Carter 15:27

Anecdotal. Yeah. So what do you hear? What do you hear?

Annalise 15:30

Tell us. Tell us what you mean by that. So it's like

Annalise 15:33

like the cowardly lion. You

Carter 15:34

It's like the cowardly lion from The Wizard of Oz going around going, what do you hear? What do you hear? Am I going to win? Am I going to lose? What do you hear? What do you hear? Our polling numbers. Our polling numbers are up. Our polling numbers are down. What do you hear? What do you hear? We're going to, you know, is someone going to bail us out? Someone going to bail us out? That is the entire campaign. Every campaign in

Carter 15:54

in Alberta right now has someone making telephone calls and sending texts saying, what do you hear?

Corey 16:03

have well it's true and and now it's not a coincidence that this happens around this time because you start getting other pieces of data the polls you start looking at the signs in a more concrete way it's less now about who got them up the fastest but who has the most right and so everybody is trying to align data and vibe and they're trying to see if vibe can trump data if the data is bad for them or if data can trump vibe if the vibe's bad or if they're feeling it really well in both cases they're looking almost for the other shoe to drop and so they're going out and saying yeah but what are we missing here and they're stress testing these things but this is when you hit the moment of maximum gossip in a campaign right everybody is trying to figure out what the fuck is going on and they will read every tea leaf including literal tea leaves you know like i went out for coffee and somebody nodded at me extra friendly because i I was wearing my NDP button, right?

Corey 16:55

Like, this is the kind of shit that happens at two weeks.

Carter 16:58

What about... He didn't do an impression, though. Carter Tye... He's got to do an impression.

Carter 17:02

Cowardly lion. Yeah, yeah. Come on. Come on, Corey.

Corey 17:07

I'm going to pass. I don't think he

Annalise 17:08

he can top yours,

Corey 17:08

yours, Carter. I'm going to pass for a lot of reasons. Cowardly lion would be good. Yeah, not top it. That's what it is. Yeah,

Annalise 17:12

Yeah, exactly. Carter, what about the timing with this May election? So, this weekend, Mother's Day, a lot of people spending time with family. and the next next weekend's a long weekend what impact do kind of holidays have on an election period um well

Carter 17:27

well i mean the thanksgiving long thanksgiving long weekend in october i have long held uh is why nenshi became the mayor everybody got together in family groups and they talked about uh you know nenshi uh have you heard of this nenshi guy have you heard of this nenshi guy and kids explained to parents and parents explained to grandparents who he was and why they were voting for him and things really fundamentally changed because all of a sudden now you've got momentum and momentum is the uh the only thing that really matters in politics besides uh money um so momentum comes in and uh you know every everything works out um and right now i suspect the mother's day didn't have the big the big push uh that that we would normally see on uh thanksgiving because Because, yes, we're all getting together, but it's

Carter 18:21

it's a lot more phone calls. It's a lot, you know, like because it's May, because it's outdoor time, which you and I do, Annalise, but Corey doesn't. But there's so many other things to do right now. And you're out doing them. You're out exploring. You're out doing stuff. You might go, you

Carter 18:37

you know, for a bike ride or whatever. But there's all the things you're out doing. And those out things take away from the time that you're with your parents or with your mother. And next weekend, no one spends together. you

Annalise 18:48

you can also go outside in october what what's

Annalise 18:52

you can go outside in october

Carter 18:56

feels weird um i don't believe that's true i think that that's the shoulder season where you clean your house that's what i was told so

Annalise 19:04

so you you really know honestly here you really think that i

Annalise 19:09

i mean obviously mother's day is different than thanksgiving but i don't know a lot of people were spending time in person yeah

Carter 19:16

family i don't know we'll find out afterwards maybe

Annalise 19:19

doing things outside i don't think

Carter 19:20

think they were talking with their

Carter 19:22

their politics in the same way that they do in october now we could be wrong or i could be wrong they may have talked about politics all the time and if they did i don't think it's particularly good for um for our friend daniel smith because they you know the tone and tenor of the conversation is more likely to be negative for the uh for the ucp but i just don't think that this this election doesn't seem to have that feel to me maybe i'm wrong maybe i'm in the minority but it just doesn't feel like this is the election where everybody's getting together and discussing it with uh with their parents uh families children all the assorted hangers on that came over to my house and ate dinner today you

Annalise 20:02

you think they're just hanging out outside they're not having conversation it's

Carter 20:05

it's just a different holiday it's a different holiday okay you you don't have the the same culture of everybody getting together for thanksgiving uh as you know at mother's day you just don't have that same culture cory

Annalise 20:18

cory is carter right here well

Corey 20:20

well he's for sure right obviously thanksgiving is one of the big holidays and the big thing about thanksgiving is that it brings an extended family in the way that you just simply do not have on mother's day right and i do believe that mother's day has an awful lot more you know drop in drop out send text phone phone call with the kids, FaceTime, then Thanksgiving. And it doesn't hit that level. But there is a bit of an interesting one-two punch of these holidays. And you've already alluded to it because next weekend is May long. And that's a different kind of holiday too. That's a holiday where you tend to get together with friends. Maybe you go camping, you're outdoors, right? You're at the bar, you're celebrating, you're enjoying yourself with peer groups. And again, again, not maybe the same bringing together people who have different worldviews at the extent that Thanksgiving is. But the combination of Mother's Day plus May long, I think does start to approximate like these two weeks are

Corey 21:16

are a bit of a hinge moment in aggregate, right? Like they are a time when people get together. And I still wouldn't put them up there with Christmas or Thanksgiving or Easter even. But

Corey 21:25

But I do still think they matter. And I get the sense that But the campaigns know they matter, too, because of the way they're treating the weekends. And they're not relenting on the weekends, right? And they're trying to make sure that there's still deep conversations to be had about wild things that they can throw at the other candidates as they move along here. here so may

Corey 21:46

may long post debate at this moment could

Corey 21:49

could be an interesting one we just don't have enough experience i think with with may long being a week before the election or at least you know you

Corey 21:58

know i can think of quite a few elections where you know it's been in there but never quite so close and never quite such a hinge moment okay

Annalise 22:06

okay uh who do you think won this past week

Carter 22:13

first or do you want me to well

Corey 22:14

well sure i mean so this is the second week i think you have to say it it's

Corey 22:19

it's not so much who won it's who lost right and by extension it means the ndp won because once again daniel smith and the ucp lost like we started last week the

Corey 22:30

the podcast that we did this time 168 hours ago talking about oh and now there's the wildfires and daniel smith has a chance to be a premier and all that and in the very last segment i i hadn't seen it you dropped this oh and by the way she compared all albertans to nazis and and you know and that that kind of set the tenor for the week she was on the defense the entire week she was dealing with those charges she was dealing with videos coming out of her wanting to pry or like sell off hospitals there was newdorf the deputy premier making comments that seemed to support that and say you should have to pay to go to emergency like from days ago not even from years ago and even years ago seems pretty close and most of what i think about this week is really again just danielle smith having to react to the things that danielle smith said less than 24 months ago speaking

Annalise 23:23

speaking which i i've been very offline this weekend did did something else drop today that she said recently yeah

Annalise 23:33

you talk to me about that like i mean totally sincerely here i've not been uh online much at all this weekend yeah

Corey 23:38

yeah so there was the there was um another

Corey 23:41

another video from september from

Corey 23:44

from september like we're not even talking like she like

Annalise 23:46

like a month before she was premier that's

Corey 23:53

effectively and i'm paraphrasing here and And I encourage people to just go look at the video because I only saw it once. It's not like I've even done a bunch of deep analysis here, but effectively saying, yeah,

Corey 24:03

yeah, like police who are implementing these public health orders, maybe they should be held accountable for that, too. Yeah. And so I think that in combination with comments made about, well,

Corey 24:15

well, let's put it this way. That makes perfect sense if you believe that this

Corey 24:18

this is as bad as Nazism,

Corey 24:22

the same logic applies here, right? And, but what I would say is it makes it a lot harder to say that those comments about, you

Corey 24:30

you know, the 75% of Albertans getting vaccinated are the same 75% who would have supported Hitler. It makes it really hard to say that those are isolated comments. comments

Carter 24:39

yeah i mean i think that what's really interesting about this is not just the you know the topics obviously having police officers locked up and comparing the entire population to hitler as well as musing openly about charging people for going to emergency rooms and selling private selling hospitals hey these topics aren't great but it's the frequency that they're happening with too like cory and i were kind of picking on him a little bit about you know you know them being the ndp hey hold back a little bit hold back because you know people are barely getting a chance to digest each one of these these these issues before we go on to the next issue and this is

Carter 25:16

again we are drowning in danielle smith issues and i'm and i'm you know the the the smart

Carter 25:23

smart move is to say well of course it doesn't matter right it doesn't matter how often these things happen what matters is that they're happening and now they're going to own that negativity as you know people will have this negative impression about smith but the other side of that particular coin is if you can't digest what's happening if you're barely paying attention you just know that there's a bunch of shit going on you don't necessarily attribute that to the right person right it might be attributed to a candidate it might be attributed to the deputy premier it might be attributed to you know someone else um and that means that the full impact is not felt as you you know, Danielle Smith, you know, finds her way through, frankly, probably the worst political two weeks for any campaign I can remember.

Corey 26:09

You know, the other thing, Stephen, is I truly believe a chain of attacks like this is only as good as its weakest link. And if there is an attack that some people think like, well, that's kind of bullshit, or I know it is, or I know that was taken out of context,

Corey 26:21

or, yeah, that's not particularly good. It does start to call into to question all of the other attacks and what i find interesting here because i actually don't believe that's what's happening yeah

Corey 26:30

like i like these are all pretty significant pretty meaty things that it's hard to say we're taken out of context hard to say um that are being torqued by the ndp in any way shape or form so i guess if they're all going to be quote unquote this good of attacks i i don't know i mean there's still a concern that steven said about they're just of spinning they're not digesting they don't remember they've just got weird vibes but their weird vibes might still just be super negative we're

Corey 26:59

we're in those doldrums though we're in the middle of the campaign makes me wonder i

Corey 27:04

have to imagine they're holding something back for closer to the end here and

Corey 27:08

and i just i'm dying to know what it is in this particular moment can

Annalise 27:10

can we talk about that pace because like i'm someone who's very tuned in and as i say i've been offline for a couple days then i've missed something and even the selling off of hospitals we haven't the three of us haven't talked about that we recorded it on

Annalise 27:22

tuesday i think it happened on wednesday or thursday it's now sunday like is is the pace for the average person is

Annalise 27:28

is that does it speak to this larger narrative of she's risky and she's unpredictable and we can't trust her or is it just like well some of these things aren't that bad because they just keep happening like expand on that yeah

Corey 27:41

yeah well i do wonder if they're desensitizing

Corey 27:44

desensitizing yeah on the large so many of them yeah

Corey 27:50

I guess I was, to Stephen, I was pretty critical. I don't know if I said it on the pod, but I was pretty critical saying, my God, like the Danielle Smith Nazi comparison thing is big and it's only been two days with that. How are we on to the next thing? Because this next thing is big too, this idea that you want to sell hospitals. Why wouldn't you have let that like breathe a day or two before you go forward?

Corey 28:12

And I was pretty critical about that. I became less critical when, you know, Neufeld's comments came out immediately after, right?

Corey 28:20

right? Because then it was, okay, well, those are out there. Those just happened. Maybe you're trying to kind of get them all in and do this healthcare hit while it's still relevant while you still think you can use it and say this just happened. Maybe. But now here we are again, just a couple of days later on yet another attack. And I do, I do wonder a bit about the pace, although it seems to be working too, if you believe the polls. So, hard

Annalise 28:47

hard to say. I got to talk about those. But Carter, just to back up a sec, because I know you want to talk about this is just how the her comments

Annalise 28:53

comments comparing the Nazis to comparing Nazis to vaccinated, and then not wearing a poppy stuff that all of that, how that's been interpreted by the different the different tribes. I know you've got some thoughts here. Well,

Carter 29:07

Well, I think it's really interesting because the Nazi comment, you know, we all grabbed onto, right? And certainly by point of view of the right wing, we're all lefty commie punks, right? I used to be a progressive conservative, you know, I got a progressive conservative premier elected. uh but nonetheless they think of me as a lefty now and maybe i am because my reaction was that whole you know i don't think you should compare people to nazis call me crazy but i think that that was a big big deal but the right has grabbed on to the poppy thing the poppy thing i think it's a really interesting like we've talked about um uh the uh oh

Carter 29:48

oh come on cory uh jonathan height and his book yeah

Carter 29:52

the righteous mind the righteous mind a number of times and this is one of those continuum type of things right like where are we on our value set and how do those values differ for people who have different values and different approaches to things because we will see the same sentence and we will respond differently to it and that's one of the core uh pieces that if you don't if you want to understand politics you have to understand that people with different values will respond to the same stimuli differently so we are literally watching the right wing say fuck you on poppies danielle we're okay with the nazi stuff actually they're not saying we're okay with the nazi stuff it just isn't getting their their their

Carter 30:34

their backs up the way that not supporting veterans which is a core value of a lot of the right wing that

Carter 30:42

really stings and i think And I think that that has so much more value than some of the other pieces that the NDP, or I shouldn't even say the NDP, that the media and others have dug up on this election. It's been fascinating.

Annalise 30:58

Corey, do you have anything to add there?

Corey 31:01

you know i haven't really dug into it enough to to validate or refute what steven's just said here in terms of how different groups are approaching it i do think that overall what makes that particular comment by danielle smith so absolutely damning is that it's like an insult wrapped in an insult wrapped in another insult and there are a lot of ways you can be offended by that particular comment and you don't need to look at it from just one world view there are ways you can interpret it that can ignore entire components of it and still be offended by it, as Stephen has sort of described here. And that's part of why I think that one should have been left to breathe a little

Corey 31:40

more before the NDP went on to the next attack, because it's just so significant. Although it's not a way, like even this weekend, there were some weird fights over it. There were some boards on social media the NDP put up about literally taking Danielle Smith quoting saying that she wouldn't wear a poppy. Then for whatever reason, Rob Anderson quote tweeted it don't know why he's amplifying his opponent's attack and says like oh this is disgusting and then got jumped on by a million other quote tweeters because he's got his replies off which is neither here nor there sometimes i think that's a sensible approach but uh but it's still in the conversation i guess it just seems like people are trying really hard to put other things in the conversation and i don't know i don't know if you need five really bad things when you have one absolutely damning thing and it probably it could have just been left to be universally reviled for a little bit longer before going on to some of these things that actually get back into the space of ideology like how much privatization do you want in health care

Corey 32:38

you tolerate that's not a question that everyone is going to see as a universal bad thing now i personally support public health care there are a lot of people who don't and frankly there

Corey 32:50

there are far far more people opposed to Nazis than private health care. So I think that even if it's still a loser for Smith, it's losing on more stable ground than what she was fighting on before. Before

Annalise 33:02

Before we talk about polls, let's just talk about that timing thing a little. Because let's say you're a campaign and you know that she said these things about hospitals

Annalise 33:10

hospitals and you want to wait for it to come out, you know, a week before the end of the campaign. but someone else is putting it like how how much control do you have if other people if media start calling because they're saying hey we're seeing this video like do you carter you're smiling what are you what are your thoughts if you

Corey 33:29

you know his thoughts are the media found it because they wanted them to find yeah i

Carter 33:33

i mean the media don't find a lot of stuff the media finds stuff that we give them and that is generally on our schedules now lake of fire was not something that the media found uh or that that we gave them they they found that on their own work someone in manitoba gave it to him blake robert gave it to them and uh that became you know lake of fire and and that that was a different situation but in

Carter 33:56

in this particular case i suspect that almost everything that's happening is is being gifted to the media keep in mind i mean the media doesn't have a lot of resources right like and they don't have the ability to sit there there and watch uh every minute of of tape that danielle smith has produced over the last few years you know who has that kind of time ndp ndp war room every you know they're up late at night watching everything that she's ever said uh to anybody and they're dissecting it and pulling it apart and getting it ready and then when it comes time they release it and i don't know for 100 certain that they did everything this week but i bet you they did more than they didn't

Annalise 34:38

okay let's talk about the polls cory you've been itching for the past half hour to talk about these polls saturday polls

Corey 34:45

polls don't matter too much yeah

Carter 34:46

yeah polls are pretty useless i mean i'm

Annalise 34:48

i'm not even sure why

Carter 34:49

why we talk about them a new

Annalise 34:50

new poll came out from abacus that shows the ndp ahead of the ucp um their previous poll in april had the two parties virtually tied so i've got actually some questions from our audience guys i asked our audience on discord for some questions and people had questions

Carter 35:06

about this you know if we're talking about the audience this is just

Annalise 35:11

can't before i care about them carter okay i care about them and i care about what they want to know um

Annalise 35:16

um before we get into kind of what they want to ask about this just early thoughts on on this abacus poll from either of you yeah

Corey 35:26

yeah well so it has the ndp up eight which is obviously a significant swing well and it provided a bunch of different ways to look at it right likely voters decided voters blah blah blah all the way here but let's just say it had the ndp up a fair bit and it uh also showed that these uh reluctant uc peers or however they were framed steven you'll remember probably a little

Carter 35:48

little bit better yeah

Corey 35:51

were breaking towards the ndp and there were fewer undecideds and it seemed that people were ultimately throwing their lot and with the ndps they took stock of the two parties here is this the case is this not the case you know one of the things that abacus has going for them is they do get to be the first one out the gate on this this

Corey 36:08

this mid-campaign polling blitz that you generally see around here we talked about this i think last episode but you can anticipate around this time you start seeing the first polls and they're largely constructed to come in advance of the leaders debate and then we'll see the polls that come post leaders debate and then the final week polls which i guess are They're one and the same in this particular moment. But yeah, one of the things that immediately happens is it drives narratives. It becomes reinforcing of anybody who thinks that the NDP is, you know, the vibes are good, I guess you could say. And

Corey 36:41

And it will no doubt spur a thousand Bobs to have a thousand conversations with the UCP campaign headquarters.

Annalise 36:49

Carter, your thoughts? us yeah

Carter 36:50

yeah i mean bob right now in the ucp side is picking up the phone and calling you know central and saying oh my god send help you know we were we were 51st and now we're like 47th gotta oh my god we could be lost we're in here's what we need we need more money we need more people we need more everything why was my why were my signs late this is why i'm down by so much um we aren't talking enough about education education is what we're getting killed on and so that's the bob side on the uh the ucp side on the ndp side the bobs are all calling and saying um you know

Carter 37:29

we're not seeing this now we're not seeing that we're six points up what the fuck is going on i'm running this campaign you know we're supposed to be you know 538

Carter 37:38

538 and or not 538 338 has us up by four points jesus my numbers aren't matching that what am i doing wrong what do i need to do better i'm panicked because all of my data does not add up to this to this new projection that fournier's put out that doesn't make any sense anyways because he's just fucking guessing um but

Carter 38:00

you know all of those people are scared to death because they're not necessarily seeing that which is happening and that's why we're getting all of those you know vibe checks as cory's describing them or panicked what do you know phone calls as i'm describing them with a lot more theater and a lot more impact i think um but you know that

Annalise 38:20

that your bob voice sounds a little too similar to your lion voice i know

Carter 38:25

know i'm upset about it yeah upset about it i'm gonna work on it spread

Carter 38:28

spread them out we'll do better come on we'll

Carter 38:31

we'll do better uh you

Corey 38:32

you know there's another call though that's happening which is the people who are maybe not the campaigns that the ndp would be inclined to resource because they're like the next step out yeah

Corey 38:43

and they're now calling and saying i got a chance you got to give me the money if you give me the money if you give me the support we can do it we can get there and that's tough because there is going to be a pressure to try to almost spread yourself too thin at this point when you start seeing the potential of victory in more seats than you need in more different places and um look there's worse worst problems in the world to have but it's a problem that the ndp essential campaign will probably be having the

Corey 39:07

desire of people to to be in the race because somebody has declared they might be in the race and

Carter 39:13

and to be clear on how to deal with it you go with the 47 that you were trying to get if you were if you're the ndp and you're trying to get 47 to 49 you don't look at 50 to 55 you go and you get 47 to 49 and if 50 to 55 come along you're golden but you got to lock down because you don't have a history of ground game you don't have a history of geo tv you don't have the history of winning in a head-to-head battle and that's what this is right now a head-to-head battle this

Corey 39:40

this does become part of the strategy and it's dependent on your resources you do want to put in a bit of a buffer but i think to steven's point you don't want to be foolish about it you don't want to spread yourself too thin you don't want to lose two elections by 100 instead of winning one by five right

Annalise 39:56

sure so from the discord um is this where the ndp wants to be right now or is it too early and they're referring to the new poll that shows them with momentum this

Corey 40:07

this this is like the most i hate this forever question yeah yeah yeah

Corey 40:12

yeah you go for it first you

Carter 40:13

you don't get to choose you take what you get when you get it and then you have to maximize that which you're given so if you get a poll that shows that you're up um you know the tuesday before the election i mean for us with the ninji campaign we were up by uh we were tied i believe on the tuesday before the election and we knew that that meant that we won because there was no time for them to catch up and we had the momentum um this is a little early for that type of declaration but shit what you know here are your choices you can be danielle smith or you can be rachel notley pick your poison everybody

Carter 40:47

everybody chooses being rachel notley right now no one's saying you know what danielle's really got a big chance to turn around yeah

Corey 40:53

yeah there's like really well positioned there's

Carter 40:55

there's like one election in history where the party that was trailing at this particular point uh turns it around and i'm not saying it was because of me but certainly i was there and you know cory was there too but he was on the other side but

Corey 41:08

but not there yeah

Carter 41:11

it's it's ridiculously hard and And to be frank, again, and I've said this a thousand times, we didn't win in 2012. Danielle Smith gave us the victory in 2012. And I think that right now, the idea that the NDP is going to give the victory to the UCP is

Carter 41:29

is really difficult to believe, just because they are running a very, very solid campaign. And it's created a story. It's created characters. Their advertising supports everything. everything, everything's tied in together. Everybody's singing from the same song sheet.

Carter 41:46

It just feels like it's in a really good spot at this particular moment. And

Carter 41:51

And now having said that, a week from now, we could be talking about how it all fell off, how the wheels fell off. So who knows?

Annalise 41:58

Okay. Yeah. Oh, go

Corey 42:00

Look, I think there's another reality here, which is that fear of where you might be and how that might change things matters more, the more dynamic the race is. And there's a couple of things this particular election that make the race less

Corey 42:14

less dynamic on a foundational level. The first is

Corey 42:18

this idea that you're going to peak too soon has to do with, okay, now all of a sudden the media is going to turn to you and what are they going to learn about you, right?

Corey 42:26

Well, what are they going to learn about Rachel Notley, the person who was premier for four fucking years, right? Like this is not an unknown commodity. So that risk is a little lower. You don't have this kind of ping-ponging randomness of what might come out of the woodwork about Rachel Notley that you would with another candidate who perhaps is quote-unquote peaking too early. That's a simple reality. And it's also why we don't tend to sweat it when the government is peaking too early, because you know the government. It's not a challenge. Peaking too early is something you say about a third party that comes out of nowhere, a second party that comes out of nowhere. It's not something that you generally have to worry about when it's a known commodity. Then the other thing when people worry about peaking too early is this idea that it will demotivate your base. Does anybody get get the sense that the ndp base is unmotivated right now yeah

Corey 43:11

mean holy shit i don't know i've been saying forever like oh the signs in my neighborhood are seven to one for the ndp to conservative i actually counted them today i walked with my kids down through the neighborhood we got some ice cream you went outside

Annalise 43:24

huge day i know stop presses right

Corey 43:27

right i was to count signs so it all kind of tracks here and it's 10 to 1 it's like like and i'm I'm not saying the vote will be 10 to 1. I'm saying they really want to have their signs up.

Corey 43:39

know, these people really want to be out there and motivated. So don't

Corey 43:42

don't think you have to worry about the people just shrugging it off and not being motivated. Don't think you have to worry about all of a sudden somebody learning that Rachel Notley is a human being and let's go through her back catalog. That's all happened. And so for those reasons, I just don't think it's as big of a concern these times. And to Stephen's point, who

Corey 43:59

who would you rather be right now? A hundred times out of a hundred, you're

Carter 44:02

you're going to pick Rachel

Corey 44:02

Rachel Notley's position in this one. and by the way i

Corey 44:06

would say that even if there wasn't the abacus poll at this particular moment which would put the race at like a 50 50 like an even flat split race

Corey 44:14

because it's just it's very clear who's got the enthusiasm who's

Corey 44:18

who's got the momentum and who's on defense here's

Annalise 44:21

here's another audience question how likely are shy uc peers just hiding their support and artificially inflating the ndp polling numbers so far oh

Carter 44:29

oh my god like where do they come up with this like Like, is this a dice roll that happens in Dungeons and Dragons or something?

Carter 44:40

No, here's what's happening. What could happen is shy UCPers are still declaring for UCP, but they won't go and do the vote. You have to ask yourself, what is the easy thing to do and what's the hard thing to do? So the easy thing to do to a pollster is to say, I am voting for the UCP. The hard thing to do is actually to go and vote for the UCP. So given that we have this group of reluctant UCP voters, they are more likely, in my opinion, to say, I'm going to vote for the UCP to

Carter 45:11

to a pollster than they are to actually get out to the polls. Because getting out to the polls means you have to commit, you have to take time out of your busy day, and you have to actually wind up voting for that crazy woman who's saying all these things that you don't agree with. um so i i think that it's the exact opposite from what is you know which isn't unheard of i mean given that they're so smart cory one would think that our audience would come up with better questions but you

Annalise 45:37

you know what don't worry carter because i've got a lot more questions for you okay okay good yeah i

Annalise 45:44

i don't know good

Corey 45:45

yeah like i actually think there's something maybe a little bit to that to at least watch and let's put it this way if you do that kind of classic okay what went wrong like if the ndp are doing their debrief on let's

Corey 45:58

let's just say june 30th and they're saying how did we lose that election we actually thought we were up by eight points at the midpoint right i think that somebody's saying the shy tory effect was was real and that election is a real possibility because it

Corey 46:12

has become a little socially unacceptable to support the ucp and as i was saying even in my last answer on a different question signs of 10 to 1 in my neighborhood my neighborhood's not actually going to go 10 to 1 you know for the uh for the ndp over the ucp and that does to me speak about a lack of enthusiasm maybe but also a certain social unacceptability in crescent heights in chay yeah

Annalise 46:34

yeah i was gonna say crescent heights east you really need to clarify that not all of crescent heights just

Annalise 46:39

just crescent heights east that no one calls chay but cory everyone calls

Corey 46:42

calls chay but you heard it everywhere because we all call it chay um it would be socially unacceptable to put up a conservative sign on a lot of streets in a lot of neighborhoods and um the uh that is going to maybe drive some of the sign behavior and if it can drive sign behavior i think you can imagine it could drive other behaviors as well now

Corey 47:04

to argue the other point there's

Corey 47:07

there's so much back and forth an argument and was the shytory effect real or was it just bad pollsters and by the way this phrase goes back to neil kinnick was supposed to win the uk election i think in 89 or something like that and he didn't right and

Corey 47:20

and instead uh the uh the conservatives were returned

Corey 47:25

there's a lot of argument as to whether there actually was a shy tory effect or whether it was just a polling miss which also

Corey 47:30

also happens and you know maybe there were selection biases and all of these other things but if there was one of the things you have to keep in mind about that particular moment is polling was done by humans at the time and it's much more likely that you're you're going to feel concerned about providing a socially unacceptable answer to a human than you are to say an online poll or ivr and if your theory is there's a potential shy tory effect i think you would see it more with live callers the janet brown pollsters of the world than you would with say the um uh with the abacuses of the world which use online samples and given that abacus is the one showing like the biggest as of right now you know ndp lead if

Corey 48:13

if there's you know if there's a shy tory effect you would expect janet brown's gonna all of a sudden have numbers that have the ndp up by 12 yeah

Carter 48:21

yeah but there isn't a shy tory effect but let's just go back to that it's not a thing and you know i mean this just isn't this isn't the way the world works in today's polling structures you know what what people are shy people who don't answer the freaking phone people who don't join a panel uh those people don't have anything to say and we're not hearing from them anymore so you know why is why is polling why is polling in such a dire state because the non-response ratio is huge and that non-response ratio actually matters so non-response ratio literally is uh the number of people who answer the telephone and complete the survey versus the number of people who don't and it used to be in the low you know like you know

Carter 49:06

couple hundred would do you know you'd make a couple hundred telephone calls you get and you get everybody would be responding now it's thousands of telephone calls to get enough you know 30 40 50 000 phone calls in order to get a sample so we're not seeing shy tories what we're seeing is people who are answering the phone aren't shy they're answering as though they as because they want to be heard and that's one of the reasons that polling can get so fucking wonky right now it's the people who answer it tend to have their own skew the

Carter 49:37

the skew that they they have right now is they don't like the ucp that's the skew and that's going to be the story on june the 30th unless the uh ndb pooch it and it'll be the ndb pooching it not some shy tory in some let's let's

Carter 49:53

let's unpack that somewhere because

Corey 49:54

because it might be the same consequence for a totally different reason but what you said was

Corey 49:59

was shocking to me very very smart very smart you just do not engage if you're shy but uh we do know that or i think we would agree steven you and i

Corey 50:10

that there is a bit of an enthusiasm gap in the ndp's favor yeah

Corey 50:13

that might be showing up in polls too they might be more animated to give their opinion to get involved in a poll can

Annalise 50:18

can we can we talk about that though when it goes to your lawn sign point cory when you're saying like everyone's got ndp signs they're the ones to have like this is in calgary that we're talking about and this is is like wildly different than we've ever seen before i say that as someone who went and worked for the ndp in 2018 right like that was five years ago and people are like what are you doing and now you're like crescent high seas to every this is the sign to have like i think

Corey 50:43

jay it's how we roll in shape but

Annalise 50:45

things say can you just speak to no one calls it jay but just speak to the fact of like and

Annalise 50:52

and and i don't know if you guys want to intersperse it with like what you're hearing on the ground sort of thing but things are different are they not well

Corey 51:00

they feel really different um and when you go a little further afield when you go into some of the suburban communities where i don't think they've ever seen an orange sign or at least it was the one weird neighbor who refuses to give up the fight you're seeing sign wars you're seeing basically even splits in some of the farthest communities in the in the city communities that even in a scenario scenario where before this election began if i was going to say deep south calgary you're going to see almost as many ndp signs as ucp signs i'd say fuck off get out of here that's ridiculous that's just not going to happen i that doesn't mean again that doesn't mean that's how the vote splits are going to come down at the end of the day but there is a real intensity and the big difference and

Corey 51:42

and i said this on twitter but i think it's worth saying here too like people keep saying oh it's like 2015 it's not like 2015 you guys all forgot what 2015 was like i didn't forget because i was sitting there banging my head against this wall you couldn't convince people that the ndp were going to win the ndp led in every poll for the last two weeks of that election no one believed and you couldn't convince people that the ndp were going to win i was on a panel the day before the election with a pollster who i will not call out here because because i'm just not going to be that guy and susan you should call them out i'll

Carter 52:16

i'll call them out

Annalise 52:17

out isn't the rule you have to call them out whisper

Carter 52:20

whisper the name and i'll say

Corey 52:22

okay well i won't tell you which bruce it was but it was a bruce okay

Corey 52:25

and i was on a panel with him and his poll his

Corey 52:29

his poll showed the ndp up by like five or six or seven or i think it was ten even yeah right and he's like and then we were asked for our predictions on on this uh on this particular you

Corey 52:41

you know election what we thought was going to happen the next day and

Corey 52:44

and i you know susan elliott is a an old pc and she said oh i i think the pcs will squeeze it out pc minority or something like that i think that's what she said i said ndp majority and bruce said i

Corey 52:56

i think it's going to be a pc majority the

Corey 52:59

the guy who had in his own poll the ndp up by 10 and he's like well i just don't see where it's going to come from where are the seats and i said well everywhere if you're up by 10 you win everywhere and guess what happened yeah

Corey 53:11

spoiler alert i was right and bruce was wrong that's

Carter 53:14

so good for you to be right once in a while that is no

Carter 53:18

i'm so happy but

Corey 53:19

but i use this to illustrate two things first of all i'm a very smart human who saw that coming and nobody else did just

Carter 53:25

just like the second thing

Corey 53:26

thing is just like the audience but the second thing is you really had a hard time convincing people that the that the pcs were going to lose it seemed unfathomable i guess

Corey 53:35

guess the other thing is

Corey 53:37

that uh this is the very first election where people have known it's a close race and they're They're putting out those signs and it still feels like the NDP might have the advantage in the city.

Annalise 53:47

I drove through Turner Valley or does Turner Valley have a new name? Turner.

Annalise 53:52

Black Valley. I don't, whatever their new name is. Diamond Valley.

Annalise 53:55

Diamond Valley. They combined it.

Annalise 53:57

But I drove through there on the way to Sheep River. You would know this Carter to bike yesterday. Saw four bears. It was wonderful. But there was orange signs in Turner Valley and like several of them. I mean, it was crazy. see yeah

Annalise 54:13

yeah like several it

Carter 54:18

i'm scared to death now now i don't know what to do i mean this is this is a significant like momentum

Carter 54:27

momentum is the thing that we're trying to do this is actually what we're talking about here guys like so how

Annalise 54:32

how do you know we're talking about don't

Carter 54:35

don't worry i will i'm a white guy um don't worry there's you know this is this is how elections are won or lost it is momentum you either have it or you don't and what i taught you know i'm

Carter 54:46

i'm not sure we've talked about this in the past but we've talked about social networks ad nauseum right the group of people who are the backbone of society people who make sure that um you know the kids get the hockey practice that they are sitting in the hockey arena together they're making sure they're sliced oranges at the or at the at the soccer game those people are

Carter 55:05

are seeing this momentum and they are talking about it and when you're getting feedback from people who are former

Carter 55:10

former pcs former pc mlas former um conservatives when ken bosenkuhl who wrote the fucking uh firewall letter is

Carter 55:21

is saying hey danielle seems a bit extreme um that that's a big thing and there's a lot of permission being granted to right-wing alberta to either not vote for danielle or to um to stay home uh

Carter 55:37

uh you know or to vote even for the ndp a lot of permissions being given is

Annalise 55:41

is that i was gonna ask about that because like our uh our pal jeremy farkas was on um uh

Annalise 55:47

uh the radio on friday morning and what he said in that and i was getting

Annalise 55:51

getting my kid ready listening to it and i'm like man i gotta send this to conservative family the first three minutes i'm like everything farkas is saying i can say and it doesn't hit but farkas can say and it does hit and it was like going around twitter like crazy on friday do you think those people like your your farkas and your ken and these other people you're talking about carter are they going to vote ndp uh

Carter 56:15

uh what i'm told and i won't speak directly for for jeremy i won't speak directly for ken because i don't know their individual voting preferences But I do know is lots of people who I've spoken to from my conservative world are

Carter 56:28

are voting for the NDP and I can speak for myself. I'll be voting for the NDP. There's no way on God's green earth. You know, the choice is very simple sanity or insanity. And so and that has been the brand structure that has been created by the NDP. they are literally asking us do you want you know what will danielle do next that's their brand position that's their slogan that's the story that they've told us and everything is fitting into that brand structure okay

Annalise 56:59

let's leave it there and move on to our lightning round which is it's gonna be a long lightning round guys because our audience they have a lot of questions okay

Annalise 57:08

our audience has a lot of questions it's like they want to be engaged they want to have have a say they want their questions read what

Corey 57:16

they want has never actually why would we ever care but

Annalise 57:20

and they can also say

Annalise 57:22

say what they think in the listener survey which where can they access that again oh

Corey 57:27

oh yeah uh so you can go to thebrettandrew.ca yeah or you can go to brettandrews.ca but don't go to brettandrew.ca and don't go to the thebrettandrews.ca So

Annalise 57:41

So lots of options for their feedback there. But also

Corey 57:44

also some options not to use. Yeah, some things you

Annalise 57:46

you shouldn't do. Some not to do.

Annalise 57:47

they also can sign up for Patreon and get on our Discord and interact with, you two are on it all the time. I've

Carter 57:56

I've given up Twitter

Carter 57:58

And now I've got Discord. You

Annalise 58:00

You two are on it all the time. So they get access to you. They can submit questions. Maybe I'll ask them. It's a good deal for six bucks a month. You know, the thing

Corey 58:08

thing is We chat there if we feel like it, but if they ever described it as submitting to us a question, there's like a zero percent chance

Annalise 58:15

answer. No, but you guys are, it's a busy place. Lots of people have been joining, Carter. I will tell you. Lots and lots of people. This

Carter 58:21

This weekend, I typed out three or four, are you fucking kidding me responses, and I deleted them because I'm showing real growth. That's

Corey 58:28

That's nice of you. I'm

Carter 58:28

I'm showing real growth.

Corey 58:31

Do you think they were kidding you, though? You should have asked.

Carter 58:34

have figured that out. I mean, how fucking stupid are

Annalise 58:36

are you for the next words? That's going to last for your first week.

Carter 58:38

week. yeah no it's not gonna be good yeah yeah

Corey 58:40

i just want a macro for that like just one button so yeah

Annalise 58:44

i've got like a whack of questions uh but so we're doing these answers so they're

Carter 58:48

they're gonna be so

Annalise 58:49

so do you want us to ask you questions about the answers do

Carter 58:52

do you want us

Annalise 58:53

us to ask you questions about how we should answer

Annalise 58:55

no like carter if it's like a yes so you don't want us to say yes you don't

Carter 59:00

don't want us so

Annalise 59:02

the first question there was actually a request to do an an entire episode about this but i've made it into a lightning round question so

Corey 59:09

so okay we can make it an episode still yeah we

Annalise 59:14

i've got nothing to do yeah you

Annalise 59:16

you had tons of time uh why do political leaders have to wear weird outfits during emergencies this this was in reference to uh um some of the outfits that daniel smith has been wearing i don't know if it's just daniel smith i think government uh uh leaders right now during the wildfires yeah

Corey 59:33

this is like a whole episode we could do you want

Carter 59:35

want me to take the first crack at this though cory you

Corey 59:38

you do the first 30 minutes okay so

Carter 59:40

so here's here's the answer um and i'll do it in relatively short form there are two primary reasons number one is that they may not have appropriate clothing at that particular time so by giving them and always having clothing for them they're not showing up like they're wearing a uh a suit when they shouldn't be or they're wearing a golf shirt when that you you'll You'll remember Stephen Harper's tragic press conference when he was wearing a golf shirt. It wasn't good. You don't want that to be the talk of the town when you're trying to update people on a fire situation. So you make sure that there's a costume, if you will, for that set aside because you don't, you know, you need to make sure that people are dressed appropriately. The second thing is, and I'm not sure that this applies necessarily at this particular it a juncture uh but it often does and that is that often the leaders are staying there sleeping there and are unable to change into uh their clothes they aren't sending people to get them clothes they are just taking the clothes that are there and wearing them so it is very very standard uh to have clothing for them to wear um and they you know it and it becomes something of a of a pride thing and i think that cory's got a little bit more info on that too or was that nenshi that talked about how everybody was giving him different clothes for different situations from the city departments because they wanted to have their department highlighted

Corey 1:01:08

yeah so steven is absolutely right let's let's start with why this started and that is that you as a premier are not always going to be equipped with tactical gear appropriate for the situation and you don't want to be going out in a three-piece suit or something like that when you've got to survey a wildfire go down to a flooded area you've got to dress appropriate to the situation and so you pick a couple of kind of staples like yeah throw on some jeans or whatnot some slacks and we'll give you the jacket you'll be ready for anything there that makes an awful lot of sense and that's why it started and that is by and large still why these these gears exist Right. Let's let's start there. I do think we have to acknowledge, though, that there has been a bit of a realization that because

Corey 1:01:55

because they represent somebody who's sleeping at the command center, because they represent somebody who's down there getting, you know, involved in the particular thing, overseeing it, talking to officials, getting their finger on the pulse, that that there is some advantage. there's some upside to wear in those particular pieces of gear too and even when i want to be really like super laudable so

Corey 1:02:17

so let's not make this about smith for a minute let's talk about vladimir zelensky okay

Corey 1:02:21

he does not need to wear military fatigues every day anymore we're long since the past where kiev is is going to be run over by russian tanks or that's that's an imminent real threat right but he does still because there's this expectation that he dressed like like he's somebody who's down in the trenches, that he's out there having conversations. Occasionally, it flares up into a thing like, how dare he not wear a suit to the U.S. Congress, but by and large, it represents a wartime leader doing wartime things, and his attire is basically, if we're going to call it, let's call a spade a spade, it's a costume, right? It's a costume that he's dressing up to reinforce the point that he wants to make.

Corey 1:02:57

I mentioned Zelensky because it's not an all bad thing, right? He's using that power to really make a point, to drive home the need for support from all of these various partners of his to say this is not business as usual and he's using the power of that costume to illustrate and emphasize that is not business as usual now when you zoom back here to a situation of floods of wildfires of all of that that's the that's the propaganda value in kind of the most neutral positive sense of it the premier is reminding us this is not business as usual we are in an emergency and i am reminding you through my my attire we are in an emergency so don't please all go back to normal don't all please just treat this like a normal government press conference there

Corey 1:03:37

there are people's lives at risk and we need to do something about it maybe

Corey 1:03:41

maybe carter i'm going to hand it to you for the third version

Carter 1:03:43

version yeah i mean the third piece and this is where the really the point really becomes important to annalise the third i don't have a third part annalise i'm really next question

Annalise 1:03:54

this one's for you Oh, thank you, Carter. Oh, Corey has a third point. We didn't even throw on the table this. Yeah,

Corey 1:03:58

third point is you

Corey 1:04:00

can also very cynically use it to look like you're doing something. Oh,

Corey 1:04:04

yeah. We've just got to sort of say that. And we have seen a lot of versions of that recently. And we've seen people really gear up that attire and make it a bit more marketing-wise than it has historically been. I think a lot of people were kind of chuckling about the premier of Alberta in big text. I actually don't think that's worth chuckling about. I think in those situations, clarity of command is really important. Clarity as to who's who is really important. You think that these people are people everybody should recognize. They're not. They're

Corey 1:04:30

They're absolutely not. People will say, hi, who are you? Don't have a clue who I'm talking to right now, especially when they're not in that suit that everybody recognizes. So it makes sense that they're premier. But you see now almost this branded attire. DeSantis famously did this in Florida. People now put it on. And it's not about trying to make people realize the situation is serious. It's about making people think you're serious. is

Corey 1:04:53

that's where i think it is worthy of our eye rolls but i don't think i don't see anything in alberta that's actually hit that point that's

Carter 1:05:00

where that was a really good long answer cory carter

Annalise 1:05:02

carter this one's for you it's lightning round this comes from um this actually comes from your big piece in the in the national post um it

Annalise 1:05:10

it was inspired by your interview in the national post is what they said the

Annalise 1:05:14

question is is it too late for notley to define and sell her story can she and how for

Carter 1:05:21

notley or for smith because notley is defined and is selling her story

Annalise 1:05:25

it says notley and i'm going to be honest with you i've not yet read your piece in the national post because instead of sending a link you sent a screenshot of a newspaper that was in you you couldn't even read the whole thing because it was cut off because it was so long just

Corey 1:05:40

just the most serious boomer energy from you there steven he said he sent like a picture of the newspaper to us all yeah it

Annalise 1:05:47

i did read it how old are you steven how old are you steven

Carter 1:05:50

came out in online version so it's not me it's the national post that's old okay national post doesn't know how picture

Annalise 1:05:59

picture of a newspaper which that

Carter 1:06:01

that was the only digital form it was in at that particular time that's

Corey 1:06:05

that's not a digital form so

Annalise 1:06:06

i i could be reading this question wrong here's

Annalise 1:06:10

here's the thing or no i don't think i think the question was you're not late for knowledge to find and sell their story i don't know what

Annalise 1:06:15

means because i haven't read in the column

Corey 1:06:16

column it suggests that you said that neither of them is doing a good job of setting their story okay

Carter 1:06:23

clear the record did

Corey 1:06:24

did you read your own no

Carter 1:06:25

no i fucking i why would i read my own stuff i send it to you guys if it's bad you'll tell me if it's good you'll make fun of me and i haven't read it

Annalise 1:06:33

it so there we go so

Carter 1:06:34

so i'm feeling pretty good right now no i mean i think that you know keep in mind this was a while ago we did the interview but how

Annalise 1:06:41

how long ago did you do it there was a lot of detail about where eight days

Annalise 1:06:44

it was emerged but not uh you

Carter 1:06:47

know it was a great interview it was fun it was fun donna was lovely and and uh a

Carter 1:06:53

a little nervous about it but it worked out well i think this is

Corey 1:06:56

is this is the texture i look for but

Carter 1:07:01

story as it is developing at this point isn't a very positive story about about uh rachel notley it doesn't need to be it is a very negative story about daniel smith and that's seems to be working so you

Carter 1:07:16

you know don't question what's working you know question only that with that which has failed and the

Carter 1:07:21

the ndp aren't failing so i think that the story wasn't as developed in the first days of their campaign and it's becoming far more developed as we move through and and the story isn't about them the

Carter 1:07:35

the story has almost nothing to do with them the story is almost everything to do with the uh with the ucp and danielle smith and this is something i'm very familiar with keep in mind the gondek story had almost nothing to do with gondek the

Carter 1:07:49

the gondek story had everything to do with with jason kenney and

Carter 1:07:52

and you know it's it's and it's been it's been a tough transition for gondek in my opinion to

Carter 1:07:58

to go from having jason kenney to define herself against to being expected to define herself on her own that's that's the downside of doing this type of you know this type of definition but um i think the ndp have done a very strong job of defining the other guys and that's that looks like it's going to be enough okay

Annalise 1:08:20

okay here's this here's a similar one and cory i'll give this to you again listener question it says are the ndp doing anything right or is their paper upswing just a result of smith's regrettable history i

Corey 1:08:30

mean that's to me that's such a funny question because it implies like the ndp are just a boat on this ocean and not that they're the ones making these waves like yeah

Corey 1:08:39

they they have they have constructed this view of danielle smith that we now capture as steven and i were saying earlier in this episode i

Corey 1:08:46

i would bet anything that every single one of those leaks maybe with the exception of one or two came

Corey 1:08:52

came from the ndp indirectly if not directly right like they are they are all over this and if you need any evidence of that just look at the 2019 campaign they were great at this too with jason kenney there was a hit a day on jason kenney they know how to do oppo the differences though are pretty severe between you being in government and you being in opposition and who the headline headliner is and frankly the

Corey 1:09:15

attacks against jason kenney a lot of them relied on you still being um you know rightfully mad i think but mad about things that were done decades ago these are things that daniel smith did as recently as i don't know last month or september of of last year or 24 months ago right so they feel a lot more recent and there's some reality there but like they've constructed this

Carter 1:09:38

this version of daniel smith it's

Corey 1:09:40

it's it seems to be working and it is a ballot question that is entirely hinged on daniel smith i

Corey 1:09:46

i would have said before the campaign and i probably did that that was maybe a little bit risky because if If Danielle Smith comes out seeming like the world's most reasonable person, well,

Corey 1:09:54

well, you've got a bit of a challenge, don't you, right? Like you put a lot of eggs in that particular basket. Or if the UCP had decided we are going to do the least leader-centric campaign ever, it is going to be about the UCP. We are going to elevate everybody basically except Danielle, make her seem like she's one among 20 leaders here. That might have helped them mitigate against these things too, but they didn't do that. They seem to have walked right into the trap that the NDP have set for them. and um the ndp have so much bloody ammunition from danielle smith that maybe it wouldn't have mattered if they were tactical geniuses anyhow because there's just so much

Corey 1:10:29

bad but but here we are i mean i i think that's um that's not charitable to suggest the ndp are just the benefactors of a random situation and it suggests that there's a a lack of agency by the ndp that is just not reflective like they have been so good at putting this stuff out and pouncing on it and defining daniel smith and putting daniel smith on the defensive you've got to give credit where credits do okay

Annalise 1:10:55

okay next one's for carter um i'm just going to modify it a little carter what's on your for you page on tiktok these days uh

Carter 1:11:02

uh today um i don't actually know i spent more time on discord than on tiktok although wow that's that's bold that's something

Annalise 1:11:11

something because you you used to not be on it at all and then i was on it and i cory and i were like hey the discord's hopping it's better than twitter and then now you're like you're like a discord yeah you're a

Corey 1:11:20

a convert yeah well

Carter 1:11:22

well i i did go on a james blunt uh singer songwriter type of thing there for a while um and that was interesting uh still got lots of taylor swift taylor swift is is in there a lot okay had a couple of um near misses with thirst traps uh but i think i was able to avoid them um very touch and go uh it's like hey what's this and then you go oh it's the thirst trap and you get out of it as quick as you can yeah

Corey 1:11:51

yeah you scroll quick man you

Carter 1:11:52

you gotta move fast you gotta move fast on us you gotta pretend like it's a commercial whoa that kind of that kind of speed that you're bringing to it um

Carter 1:11:59

um but that's about it right now uh okay

Annalise 1:12:04

have you learned how to change your name on discord no

Carter 1:12:07

no um it turns out that the way that i was told to change my name is not actually a way because carter

Annalise 1:12:12

carter that and then taking pictures of newspaper articles and sending it is like is that's literally the only thing i'm

Carter 1:12:21

i'm at it's really

Corey 1:12:24

yeah you know what i guarantee you in your basement somewhere you have a vcr with a blinking clock which is crazy because no one's had a vcr in 20 years but you're that guy i

Carter 1:12:32

i do not have a vcr are

Annalise 1:12:35

yeah i don't i haven't had cable for longer than

Carter 1:12:37

than you haven't had cable you smart ass next

Annalise 1:12:40

next question from a listener what do the ndp do about this line that notley's bosses are sing and trudeau do they just ignore it oh

Carter 1:12:48

oh god is it working yeah

Corey 1:12:50

yeah i mean it's does anybody believe it it's

Carter 1:12:53

it's not working let

Carter 1:12:55

let you know the last thing you want to do is like what rob rob

Carter 1:12:59

rob anderson did for for danielle's thing this weekend he amplified it the last thing you want to do is amplifier you know by by picking on something that actually may

Carter 1:13:09

may hurt i mean it doesn't hurt at all but just leave it on the sidelines there's absolutely no reason to pick at that scab okay

Annalise 1:13:16

okay next question how or what do the ndp see how

Annalise 1:13:20

how or what do the ndp do to keep the ucp from recovering momentum in the the last two weeks so

Carter 1:13:27

this is the full foot on the throat uh piece right so this is what we did uh to davison during the 2021 campaign

Carter 1:13:38

campaign for mayor what you want to do is you want to put your foot on the throat you just do not allow them to get air so every time that they're about to do a press conference you're doing a press conference every time that they're about to put something you do do oppo so fast that they can't even get their spin out there right you are you are literally everything they're doing you're countermanding immediately everything is happening at the fastest possible pace and you just have to keep your foot on their throat and that's that's the way i think of it is you know are they able to get oxygen if they're able to get oxygen then i don't have my foot on their throat i have to make sure that i've got my foot on their throat we're putting out our stuff every day and their stuff is getting fucking crushed the second they utter a word you cannot give them space to make their own to make their own weather system and uh i

Carter 1:14:32

i don't know have i got enough metaphors in there cory is that

Annalise 1:14:34

that i'm gonna say that's that's a new one i you you brought up the roller coaster at the beginning and you've never come back to it carter no

Carter 1:14:41

forgot i i even said it um so yeah

Annalise 1:14:44

so that didn't work show uh

Annalise 1:14:45

uh same question great show same question for you cory yeah

Corey 1:14:56

it's a big week right we've got the debate so you've obviously got to do well at the debate i suspect we'll talk about that on our patreon one in two days so i won't i won't spend a ton maybe i'll just foreshadow we're for sure going to talk about what they should do during the debate but you have a strong performance there you have people questioning um the overall state of the campaign and perhaps even daniel smith specifically going into the weekend and the long weekend and you've done your work for this week what i do think you need to do everything steven said but don't hold on to the throttle too tight and you've got to remember all of your overall well

Corey 1:15:31

well i'm going to say overall but then i'm going to talk about foundation your underlying foundational approaches here which is you want to have strong hits you don't want to put in a bunch bunch of weak hits with your strong hits in your service of keeping your foot

Corey 1:15:42

foot on their throat don't start doing things that are ridiculous and make people dismiss some of your other attacks don't do things that get sympathy or blowback just run a very smart very tight campaign and stay away from kind of the dumb goofy shit that you sometimes get when your opponent is on the run and then i'll also say like there's one abacus poll that shows them up eight right now it does generally feel

Corey 1:16:04

vibe correct as we were saying in calgary

Corey 1:16:07

like we you know let's not put everything into this one poll there could be polls tomorrow that show the ucp up three and we'd have to kind of live with that as it is but um yeah that's the other thing like don't start measuring the drapes do not start measuring the drapes well

Carter 1:16:21

well i just want to add one more thing about keeping your foot on the throat keep your foot on the same themes this is not the time to be introducing introducing new themes um foot on a throat means that the the the primary attack has worked now you have to just keep your foot on that particular piece you don't need to go out and reinvent wheels you need to hold this have

Carter 1:16:45

have i got enough no

Corey 1:16:47

it's all your metaphors man i love them are

Carter 1:16:49

are they are there isn't enough metaphors or do i i thought it was about

Corey 1:16:53

about to become a throttle that you want to continue pressing i

Carter 1:16:56

was going to do that but you it's uh it felt like it was too much too much okay

Carter 1:17:01

okay i'm done now thanks for you know what i mean thanks for interrupting guys joseph

Corey 1:17:05

joseph good point though i did like the point it is true like you don't want to say like well i got him here so i'm going to start doing a bunch of other stuff and that goes to kind of this notion that you don't just start pinging around and taking a bunch of crazy crazy risks you want to continue to be smart remember that in the last week a campaign runs against itself don't don't be their campaign exactly okay

Annalise 1:17:24

okay we're gonna leave it there guys that is a wrap on episode 1062 of the strategist my name is annalise clingbeil with you as always stephen carter and cory hogan

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