Episode 1065: Toaster cake

Zain 0:03

This is The Strategist, episode 1065. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, there's absolutely no time. Stephen Carter, how long does

Zain 0:14

does Suella Braverman last, Carter? This is burning up the

Corey 0:18

By the time we post this,

Corey 0:20

be too late. It could be over. It could

Corey 0:22

be over. On the other

Corey 0:23

side of the pond. Follow-up question, Stephen. Sorry, follow-up question. Who is Suella Braverman? in

Carter 0:28

the uk government oh

Corey 0:31

shit okay you've got well i mean she might be fired by

Carter 0:34

by two different prime ministers in the same year okay

Corey 0:37

okay i told you that actually listen yeah you're

Carter 0:40

you're just taking credit for my information does not make you look smarter okay

Carter 0:44

okay it does not make you look smart all right i

Carter 0:47

very clearly studied this for seconds as you guys said we're talking about her and uh

Carter 0:54

now I know. She's also King's Counsel, as you know.

Zain 0:58

Pretty good. Carter, there's a reason I go to you on this one. She could be fired twice. Now...

Zain 1:05

What are you suggesting,

Zain 1:09

There's a reason I asked. I really wanted to ask you who she was, but now you've forced me to ask the follow-up question to you instead of Corey. Will she get fired? Will she get fired by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as Home secretary for taking a a private speeding course and breaking potential ethics laws um seems like ethics really don't uh matter anywhere i mean but i'm kind of it's

Carter 1:31

it's not like say for example you were running an election and someone was found to break the been breaking the election the the ethics laws right the conflict of interest it's not like that would matter right the people have the ultimate choice and the ultimate choice is obviously being ignored it's been ignored with uh with trump it's been ignored with you know in canada i will just skip over which politicians all of them and it's being ignored in the uk i don't think that she should be forced to step down first of all you know it's just not very nice to her to

Carter 2:01

to have that happen it's

Carter 2:03

it's not very nice that's

Zain 2:05

that's good thank you carter yeah that's

Corey 2:06

that's pretty good you

Zain 2:07

you have anything to say cory we our entire bit was planned around carter not knowing it us then i know mocking him about him not knowing it i had

Carter 2:14

to get that done kind of

Zain 2:16

kind of one quick

Carter 2:17

quick search and the first thing that came up was wikipedia and i gotta tell you that did not instill confidence

Zain 2:25

uh anything you guys want to talk about before before we jump into it yeah

Corey 2:28

yeah i got something that's been on my mind for the past couple of days here i'm a little upset about it okay go actually if i'm going to be totally candid here do

Corey 2:35

you put your toaster in the cupboard or do Or do you leave it on your counter?

Zain 2:41

Okay, so here's what happens. The bread goes in the fridge. And if the bread grows in a fridge, the bread needs a friend. So the toaster, also in the fridge. That's not a real answer. Do

Corey 2:54

Do you leave your toaster on the counter?

Zain 2:56

Toaster is a, okay, so toaster on the counter, I think, is a conditional sort of thing. Depends on your state and status in life. Do you have enough counter space? Is your toaster aligned

Zain 3:08

aesthetically with the rest of your kitchen? It's binary. Now, in my case, I

Zain 3:13

I have a lot of white backsplash and countertops. Don't make this about race. Black toaster, Stephen Carter.

Carter 3:20

Carter. Don't make this about race. Black

Zain 3:23

However, despite it being a black toaster, it

Zain 3:26

it stays out. It doesn't go in the cupboard. It is not being hidden. Yeah.

Corey 3:30

It's just so easy. The answer is toaster stays on the counter. Correct. We're aligned on this. Hot appliances stay on the counter. Okay, so there's

Zain 3:37

there's no debate. Same with the

Carter 3:40

Stays on the counter. That's why we got the one that folds up. Are we all

Zain 3:44

the same team here? Air fryer stays on the

Carter 3:47

the counter. The rice cooker, the rice maker, goes in the cupboard.

Corey 3:53

Okay, well, I don't even think an air fryer is a real thing. Corey, talk to us about the

Corey 3:58

the genesis of this. What is the background? What are we missing here? This was a big discussion on the Discord. there were people who put their toasters every time they finish making toast apparently they take their toaster you know still hot from the toast you know and they put it with all the crumbs and they're putting it in the cupboard i

Zain 4:14

i may need to text my wife because i think she may have actually just just recently made this change for us and as you know i've been involved in something else so i do not know the current status and orientation of our small appliances but

Zain 4:29

i might actually have a different answer for you in a few minutes here because this is reminding me of a conversation that i was a part of that was a two-way conversation that became a one-way conversation where i may have consented cory to just that that our toaster putting the toaster in the cover potentially be hidden just stand by i'll tell you

Carter 4:45

you something cory if he's not successful in his little side project that he's doing right now my toaster is going in the bathtub yeah that's where where my toaster is gonna go that's

Corey 4:55

that's too dark that's too dark don't say that yeah listen come on man wasn't

Carter 5:01

wasn't it a funny joke it

Corey 5:06

was okay it's too dark it was it was a little dark we do dark

Carter 5:10

here it's what we do come on fun

Corey 5:14

there's a number there's a number you can call and it's 587-A0K-ZANE uh and that will give you the hope you need to get through whatever's coming

Corey 5:24

587 a0k zane that's out there for our listeners now here

Zain 5:28

here we go here we go live updates here i sent three text messages is our toaster text message number one now in the cupboard text message number two text message number three we are having a debate the answers no i left it out because i couldn't find anywhere to put it so there was an intention to put it there There was an intention to put it in the cupboard.

Carter 5:49

You dodged a bullet there. You didn't want to make it in there. Dodged a bullet. I

Corey 5:52

it's okay. It's okay. You know what? I think maybe the lack of cupboard space was a bit of a cover for the fact that she came to her senses and realized that the

Corey 6:02

the inefficiency of putting a toaster ... And then you're going to forget it exists, and you won't eat toast for days at a time, and then all of that bread just

Zain 6:10

just pile up on your account? I

Zain 6:10

I feel like culturally ... Corey,

Zain 6:12

you need to do the math here. i feel like culturally we're eating less toast i'm just gonna make that claim i feel like

Zain 6:20

like societally we're just eating less fucking toast less bagels less toast i just don't

Corey 6:26

don't know bagels so i think with that being said you included bagels you had me until you included bagels because i was going to suggest perhaps the number of toastables has still remained significant no

Zain 6:36

no i think we're on a net toastable basis by the way pop tarts used to be here now here for those who can't see me really

Carter 6:42

really really good hand crater

Zain 6:43

crater yeah yeah pop tarts have hit their

Zain 6:47

you you're saying this do

Zain 6:50

you're saying this with

Zain 6:52

episode of the joe rogan show

Zain 6:55

back to google shit and text his wife uh

Corey 7:02

this is what happens when we can't talk about all this good content

Zain 7:07

have so many things Why

Zain 7:08

you say them? What are they going to do, fire you at this stage? You

Corey 7:12

You know what? I will

Zain 7:13

will move on to our first segment. Our first segment is the cake baked. Yes, let's move it on from toastables to ovenables, Stephen Carter. This is a question I have, and this is, of course, applicable to the Alberta election, but this is a question I have for two of you, campaign strategists who've done this numerous times, who've put together campaigns that last many months. Corey, you, and I believe you may have said it on a previous episode, but you often say campaigns, you

Zain 7:40

you know, I'm paraphrasing, they're their own worst enemy in the final week, or they're the only

Zain 7:43

only ones that can fight themselves. But I

Zain 7:46

I also wanted to kind of explore another sort of avenue of that question, Carter. In Alberta, we've got the last, in

Corey 7:52

this case, seven days left. We're sitting here on long weekend Monday, so the election day is seven

Zain 7:56

The question I really have, Carter, and I'm curious to get the most nuanced answer I can Ken, from you, is how much

Zain 8:04

much of the cake is currently baked. You and I were discussing this, right? You've been texting me all week and be like, fuck it, Zane. Why don't you just talk about the Alberta election? It's all done. You can't get you. You can't do anything. It's all over. So let's talk about that. I actually want to bring that text conversation live to the listeners because this is considered to be the most pivotal week in the campaign. It's the week where everyone starts voting. Advanced voting starts tomorrow for those of you in the province and out of the province, and then election day is next Monday. So to many and to the observers and to many in the media, the polls are tight. This is a week that everything that gets done. So let's talk about the cake being baked and how much is it baked. I want to see if you guys are on the same page here and what is or is not baked at this stage. Carter, give me your analysis first. Corey, I'll jump in to you with that same question. I

Carter 8:52

I mean, the answer is that it's not yet baked, but the ingredients are all mixed and you're now putting it in the oven. And what happens in in the oven is entirely anyone's guess right like um sometimes it comes out and it is entirely as predicted everybody knew the outcome going in and we slide the cake in and out comes the fully baked cake as expected you know it is a uh it's an angel food cake isn't that exciting we put you know everything worked out perfectly and other times you put it in and out comes a burnt piece of shit and uh you know that is that also could happen but the

Carter 9:29

the the person baking it the person preparing it like once you've put the ingredients together once everything has happened you put it into the oven and there is just not much left that you can do uh you have done all the mistakes that you have made were done in advance right all the good things that you did were done in advance and now all you're doing is sliding the prepared batter into the into the oven to bake your cake so my answer is yeah things can still change things can still turn out horribly or really really well but i don't think that you win or lose an election in the last five days um especially when you're starting your advanced polls and we're looking at potentially 50 of voters voting in the first four days i mean people

Carter 10:14

people are going to vote tomorrow big big swell of people tomorrow will be the busiest advance polls um right once those people are off the rolls i mean what's it going to be 15 of the total elections off the table tomorrow now we could argue those are your most dedicated supporters those are your least likely swing voters and i'm sure we'll get to that in a moment but the

Carter 10:33

the um the case often becomes not will i change my vote to the other person or the other party or a different party the question becomes do i care enough to to actually vote. So, you

Carter 10:45

you know, I think the cake is baked from your point of view. From the point of view of the election practitioners, they'll repackage their stuff, they'll do it one more time. You won't see a major policy announcement this week.

Carter 10:55

It'll look desperate, right?

Carter 10:57

right? It'll all be repackaging.

Zain 11:01

Corey, do you agree around Carter's analogy that the ingredients are there that very difficult to change those ingredients and you're just popping it in the oven and whatever comes out comes out as your end use product carter still giving a bit of um i guess optionality that there are some things that could change because of that um but do you largely agree that in the t minus and we're in the alberta context so of course that's the most relevant but i kind of talk about this as a more general practitioner rule about the final seven days no

Corey 11:32

no i i think that in the last seven days it's hard to make a better cake so i agree on that point but you can fuck it it up right you can open it up and pull it out and start messing with it start you know second guessing the ingredients you have there putting the cake in the toaster you could yeah you can you could turn the heat up too high you can turn the heat up too high and you can stop you can take it out too early and all of these things can really fuck up your cake and this is part of why i say in the last week campaigns run against themselves they start there there's no longer ingredients to mix and they're still in the kitchen and they want to do something and it's that doing something and it often leads to them fucking things up and it really is about you

Corey 12:12

know you were on a recipe you've put it in you have to follow the recipe through at this point don't

Corey 12:17

don't screw it up that

Corey 12:18

that is the name of the game in the last week and yes of course as we have now gotten into the 2020s here there's the reality that so many more of those votes are cast as of tomorrow there will be what what do we think 15

Corey 12:31

the province might have voted carter said yeah it's a real possibility And we've

Zain 12:34

we've seen in other provinces

Zain 12:35

provinces that, you know, Carter's proof point of half the electorate, perhaps, or half the folks that are going to vote, voting in the advanced polls, and half voting on election day.

Corey 12:47

Yeah. And that changes the dynamics, because now in your week, you've got get out the vote. I don't know, let's continue this metaphor. And let's just say it's like cleaning the dishes that you made the cake in here, because you got to do that too, or else your job's not done. and uh and there's a little bit of go tv this week as well as a result but yeah i mean you can absolutely fuck it up in the last week and steven i can think about the 2012 campaign we

Corey 13:13

we were both involved in i

Corey 13:14

i would say danielle smith kind of fucked it up the last arguably

Carter 13:17

arguably she fucked it up the week before it was a 10-day cycle that kind of care because it was i think the tuesday prior to the election week that she that we did the lake of fire and then it just kept going do you

Zain 13:30

you remember if you had the same advanced vote no we

Carter 13:33

we didn't it was uh you didn't

Zain 13:36

had you had culminated you had you had everything culminating into the election or not everything but the vast majority of the vote culminating onto edin that in that particular yeah really

Carter 13:45

really uh advanced voting didn't change which

Zain 13:47

which gave you a longer runway right like in in it especially for like because i go back to your point carter you had a dynamic where there was people to persuade that actually gave you a longer runway in some way didn't it to let that fully come out let her reaction to the incident fully absorb and then have people make up their mind like you almost had like a three chapter situation the story the response and then people kind of analyzing what they made of both the story and the response if that's

Carter 14:17

that's not yeah i mean polling didn't catch it until the end like polling didn't even see it there was one poll i think that that maybe had us ticking above the wild rose just before the end. And so no one believed that we were actually going to win. But again,

Carter 14:33

that just happened in the oven, right? The ingredients were mixed before, right? I think that had that information come out in the last week, like say, for example, you were sitting on a big fucking Daniel Smith, this is going to embarrass the hell out of her. You'd have done it last week, not next week.

Carter 14:53

right this week coming up is

Carter 14:55

just it's too close will it be covered will it will it have enough time to seep into our consciousness and this is kind of what i'm i talk about a lot with the less engaged right the

Carter 15:05

the less engaged aren't following twitter they're not listening to the podcast they almost get facts through osmosis and osmosis takes time it takes time for the information to be passed from your brother to your sister-in-law to from the sister-in-law to your your friend and Kathy at the book club. And it just, it passes so slowly that, you know, five, six days after the information was known, suddenly it comes home to roost.

Zain 15:32

very interesting. Corey, finish us off on this. I just wanted to do a quick segment. Just get your guys' take on our text chat, and then I'll move it on to other topics.

Corey 15:40

Well, one of the more dramatic illustrations of that was in the montana congressional race uh greg gianforte i

Corey 15:47

i think right he

Corey 15:49

he uh he punched a reporter assaulted a reporter at the very least the day before the election and yeah i mean when you looked at the looked at the results on election day they were a lot less positive for him but so many of the votes were in the can already didn't

Corey 16:03

didn't really change it carter

Zain 16:04

carter sean chiu i was just gonna make bring that sean chiu yeah i was just gonna bring that what was the timing on that this is really The benefit

Corey 16:13

elsewhere, Sean Chu, a Calgary area councillor, really serious allegations made against him, and they happened just before

Corey 16:23

before the election. Yeah, it was too late. And

Corey 16:25

And if you looked at the advance

Corey 16:27

advance vote versus the vote on the day, I mean, dramatically different.

Zain 16:31

Reverse. It was clear that the story had an impact, but it didn't get the soak time, and we've talked about that quite often, that it needed with the public.

Zain 16:42

Fascinating stuff. I'm sure you guys will pick it up with Annalise over the course of the next couple of episodes. A lot to talk about in Alberta. We'll move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, failure to soft launch. Stephen Carter, I have to start with

Zain 16:57

with you. great you

Carter 16:58

you know why i would say soft launch is what you want yeah well

Zain 17:02

well carter uh cory remind our listeners our loyal loyal listeners uh and our less loyal listeners i should say yeah why i go to stephen carter every time we talk about uh the concept of you

Corey 17:14

you don't need to do this launch

Corey 17:16

i think he does there was a day there was a day stephen

Corey 17:19

stephen carter was running a campaign actually in the leadership race for the progressive conservative party uh that the one that jason kenney ultimately won here now as

Corey 17:31

as a listener of the podcast you would have known that uh before everybody else because steven talked about it on the podcast you guys forced me

Carter 17:39

because you guys were such jerks you forced me to betray the confidences of all those that i he cared about uh

Zain 17:47

as i recall it you guys were all around my dining table we were recording that i can remember and carter said it and cory and i looked at each other being like does he actually want to go down this path and knowing carter uh master of the double down both theoretically and in practice he just kept going and he said fuck it uh i don't care about the consequences uh and uh

Carter 18:08

uh your candidate did your did your candidate win no we did i mean she dropped out no when

Carter 18:15

busload of catholic kids showed up to uh vote for the pro-abortion amendments to the constitution and such uh that was time for us to get the hell out of that uh out of that party

Corey 18:26

so let me tell you something we were at your table and we did our usual thing which is no editing and just immediately posting the episode and then i went to we don't edit

Carter 18:35

edit this thing really i

Corey 18:37

i know strange uh so then i went to a uh a bar in um near the stampede grounds that's all i really remember about it okay not an hour had passed like actually clearly somebody who had been listening to it on it at like one and a half time or something and my phone goes ping and i look and it's like did did stephen carter just launch this campaign and i'm like yeah i guess he guess he did you know and then ping ping ping and over the next hour i just had people People, reporters, hangers-on, friends, everybody texting me saying, what

Corey 19:10

what has happened here? But it was really exciting. You broke news on the strategist. You

Carter 19:13

You guys make it sound like sometimes they're not a big deal. But what I'm hearing is I was kind of a big deal.

Corey 19:21

Say it. Any news you want to break while you're at it? Anything you want to tell us about? Just because you're here and you're on the campaign.

Zain 19:27

so – I've got nothing to talk about. Although, although, although, although, I do want to actually use the story of the soft launch to talk about something that has happened in specific in the Ontario Liberal Party leadership. But I want to maybe use it as a canvas to talk about exploratory committees, Carter, because Bonnie Crombie, who's the current mayor of Mississauga, who for a long time, even this past week on Power and Politics and with Vashti Kapelos on CTV, was flirting around the question as to whether she'd throw her hat into the liberal leadership race. Well, turns out that on Monday, there was a landing page that talked about her, her ambition, what she would do, should she run. But it was, A, leaked. So the page wasn't ready for primetime. So they had to take it down. There's that angle of the story, which we can discuss and how that happens in campaigns and how you keep your data tight and how do you kind of, you know, stop soft launching like she did. but she also tried to perhaps prevent a soft launch by doing something called an exploratory committee. And I know on our podcast, we've discussed some of these instruments, these political instruments as length. We've talked about vote pledges before. I think we did a deep dive on vote pledges and where they work. We did a deeper dive, and I think you guys touched on this with Annalise as well, as to whether draft campaigns, remember those?

Zain 20:48

We've talked about those, whether those are effective or those work. I don't know if we've ever had the opportunity to talk about exploratory. And you know what's interesting is that from my recollection, At least two out of the four candidates in the Ontario Liberal leadership started with exploratory committees. They started with Yasir Naqvi, who's now fully in the race, and now Bonnie Crombie, who may or may not enter the race, but seems like with this indication, she probably will be entering the race. have started this exploratory committee angle. And this is something that I know is very common in the United States. I know it's something we've seen often. But Corey, maybe let me start with you. Your thinking

Zain 21:23

thinking on this concept of exploratory committees, the strategy behind them, the purpose from them, and the usefulness they have in our broader Canadian context. And there might be a financial context to this, which we can get into. But give me your top line thoughts. And then I want to get into the personal like have you guys used them have you considered using them are they an instrument we should be looking out for more and more what do they signal there's a whole list of things i'll talk about before your initial take on exploratory committees um and and their usefulness in the canadian political context well

Corey 21:54

well like like so much these days like packs all of these other ways we think about politics they are a bit of an import from the united states where it's a way to enter the race without entering the race it's kind of a half in and i mean it is exactly what it sounds. It's somebody who's going out there and formally considering whether they are going to run for one of these offices. And realistically, they serve a pretty significant need for larger offices, because otherwise, we're all playing kind of a silly game. And we're playing in this gray area of fundraising rules, right? Is it covered by fundraising rules? Is it not? But if you're running for a big office, like, you know, the leader of a political party in Ontario, President of the United States, the reality is a true canvassing of it, a proper exploration and the resourcing required for a proper exploration, that requires a level of organization that requires something like an exploratory committee, no matter what you call it. And I kind of like exploratory committees because they take it into the light of day, right? They allow you to actually see the organization, know who you're talking to, have it covered by fundraising rules in many cases, not all cases, depends on the jurisdiction. jurisdiction and and just have a good conversation but they also allow that candidate to have optionality and it is possible and you do often see at the end of an exploratory committee you know run people say well i'm not catching any fire i'm out right like and then it usually takes the like well now is not the time i i could see these ideas and there's a lot of enthusiasm i want to take that enthusiasm and return to florida with it you know continue my work as governor or i'm going to take that and i'm going to use it in supporting barack obama's presidency whatever it may end up being but you know the exploratory committee built into it is the idea that it may not happen so what you've ultimately done all

Corey 23:40

all of the fundraising all the organization things aside is you've created for yourself an off-ramp you may or may not take at a certain point of public discourse so

Zain 23:49

so carter is it just a is it just an instrument for hedging bets well Well, like, is it just simply a just so I can get the psychological comfort of never having to fail that I'm going to do this and have an off ramp? I don't mean to be so like plain about it, but is that what it is or does it serve a broader function than that? I

Carter 24:06

I think that what it is fundamentally doing is trying to get around Elections Ontario's rules. I mean, I'm looking at their so I'm trying to figure out like I know that an exploratory committee is not legal in Alberta. Berta. It's not legal in Canada, if you were to seek an election there. And it's actually not

Carter 24:27

not legal in Ontario. From my quick review of this, you must register as a leadership contestant to raise money and or spend money. So what you're trying to do, I think, when you put together the leadership, is exactly what Corey's saying. It's a big job, it's a big thing, but you're trying to circumvent becoming official, right? Because the moment you become official, you have to adhere to the guidelines as articulated by Elections Canada or Ontario Elections or Elections Ontario, Elections Alberta, whatever the situation may be. And those rules have become more and more stringent. But, you

Carter 25:07

it's really hard to do. Like, for example, when Mayor Sohi launched his campaign in Edmonton, he

Carter 25:13

he launched his campaign on May the 12th and he spent a shit ton of money. He put out signs. He had websites. Everything was ready and everything was done. And I asked the question of myself, how did he raise the money to do it?

Carter 25:25

As a candidate, you can only put in $10,000 of your own money and you're not really allowed to run debt. So how did you put in place a fully scaled campaign ready to put collateral materials on people's door that day? Because technically it shouldn't be legal. now what cory's describing in an exploratory committee kind of hedges around that right it gets us around that legality and we've imported it like we have like cory said like we have with tpas

Carter 25:54

or packs was what they call them in the states these these things that have morphed and now we're trying to control them if

Carter 26:01

if we were doing less control we wouldn't need these things right the exploratory committee would be 15 people around the candidates table talking about you You know, the phone calls they're making, the potential money pledges they're getting. But with all these rules now, the second you decide that you're going to become a candidate, technically you're supposed to register. And if

Carter 26:21

you don't register, you could find yourself in a heap of trouble. So these are ways around rules. These are ways to avoid them. And again, I'm not sure that in this specific case, that's what they're trying to do. But that's what it has the effect of.

Zain 26:37

So there's more than just hedging bets, right? right? There's this concept of rules, potentially money, the coordination. I'm on her website right now, bonnieforleader.ca. Let me get back into the specific, right?

Zain 26:48

Beautiful website. It's got clearly well-designed graphics. Corey, you'll probably have some quibbles about what I actually mean, beautiful website. What I mean by is it's purposely designed,

Zain 26:59

right? This is what I mean by beautiful, right? It's technically like there's issues with it. We can get into the marketing of And we will, at some point, go through a website review of candidates and campaigns. But this is deliberate, is what I mean to say. This is, they hired a web developer, they put a website together, they've created a logo, they've ensured that the Ontario sort of official flower is part of all that sort of stuff. So there is an element of polish here. But Carter, the question I have, to maybe challenge the hedge the bets question, is that, have you ever seen anyone in the Canadian context start an exploratory committee and not run? which

Zain 27:33

is to say which is to say is it actually let's disabuse people of the notion is it actually to explore your viability is it actually to explore whether the office is for you or is it something beyond

Zain 27:45

beyond that right i want to actually answer that sort of question because if you are running for some office in this country you probably already know whether you've got the ability to raise the money find the people and have a political viability for that office before where you set up a very nice looking website with all this preloaded graphics, preloaded endorsements, all that sort of stuff. So disabuse me of the notion or validate it for me that this is actually for pure exploration of your running for a knockoff. I

Carter 28:09

I mean, the exploration is done totally

Carter 28:12

totally through telephone calls, emails, everybody. You know, the standard thing is everybody says, I've been talking to my, you know, so many people have been asking me to run. No one's been asking you to run. You've been asking everybody, you know, should I run? Should I run? Will you give me money? How much money could you raise for me? All of those conversations are done. And I'm looking at the website as well. When I looked at the website on my mobile, it was already set up for mobile. Like this is, she's

Carter 28:37

she's running, right? There's no, this

Carter 28:40

is what bothers me about these structures and things that we've put in place. If you're finding loopholes and trying to get out of these things, that's not a good start. That's not the way these things are supposed to work. So I don't believe that's true. Now, we did the whole Green Party, you know, the draft thing, and we were convinced that no one would be stupid enough to try and draft the leader of the Green Party without the Green Party's leaders

Carter 29:04

leaders already endorsement, right? Like, he's already in. He's going to do this. But we did find out, in fact, they were that stupid. So maybe, maybe someone is this stupid, but I don't

Carter 29:16

don't know. I would hesitate to call somebody that stupid unless I knew them, and

Carter 29:22

and I'd call them that stupid. Corey,

Zain 29:23

Corey, answer that same question. Disabuse me of the, is it actually fundamentally for exploration? Because I hear you're hedging bets and I inserted the concept of psychological comfort. If you never actually pull the trigger on running, you've got an off ramp. But have we ever seen it actually be used that way, Corey? Or is it actually something, you know, different that we should think

Zain 29:45

think about and how we should think about them?

Corey 29:48

Yeah, I mean, arguably we have. I'm not sure if she ever used the phrase exploratory committee, but Michelle Rempel-Garner, she used an exploration of this. She said, I am stepping away from the Patrick Brown campaign to explore

Corey 30:01

explore the idea or assess the idea as to whether I'm going to run for UCP leader. And then she decided not to run for UCP leader. good

Zain 30:08

good example so yeah

Corey 30:09

yeah i mean it is quite possible to happen but you know almost to argue against that zane you could make the argument she was planning to run and then she decided not to run and did it fundamentally change anything there right

Corey 30:22

right i don't know the answer to that i obviously cannot know the answer to that that's something only she can really know the answer of but it is it's not a crazy idea that you would look into these things and say you know what not quite in the cards you

Carter 30:36

you don't do it publicly

Corey 30:36

publicly the other benefit of the exploratory committee

Carter 30:38

committee that's my point cory like you would do that behind the scenes well so here's

Corey 30:40

here's the other benefit of the exploratory committee this is where i'm getting to is if you're worried about it leaking out and causing you some sort of trouble and i think michelle uh is probably a good example of that right if you heard that she was looking into this and making phone calls and considering running at the same time she was a co-chair for a cpc leadership candidate that could be really messy Right. Like, who are you calling on behalf of what kind of work are you doing? And sometimes you just need to declare those things to get yourself out of trouble. Imagine as well in NACV's case, right? We had this conversation, actually, I think directly about it. Like, if there are rumors he is running, it better

Corey 31:17

better not be the first time the prime minister hears about it when he hears the rumors. And his particular

Zain 31:21

particular thing was how to off-ramp from federal office. That's right. Yeah.

Corey 31:23

Yeah. And so maybe you have to be really intentional about, you know what, Prime Minister, I am exploring this. I have not made up my mind yet. And it's quite possible he hadn't made up his mind the first time they had that conversation. But by declaring it there, you avoid the risk that somebody is going to find out about it in a way they're not going to like. And you've just put those cards on the table. Stephen

Zain 31:43

Stephen Carter, are you familiar with the phrase, fuck around, find out? No.

Zain 31:47

Could you explain it to me? okay

Zain 31:49

uh the phrase uh has a genesis of uh you fuck around and then you find out uh the consequences of a fucking around where the definition of fucking around it has a has a wide berth wow

Carter 32:01

wow this is something i wish i'd known before thank

Zain 32:06

like it could have been a life we might we might just need we might just need on the strategist.ca fuck around find out t-shirts with my face on dedication because that

Carter 32:14

that would be just even to steven carter i

Carter 32:17

i get the proceeds cory's

Zain 32:18

cory's cringing but he wants to make

Zain 32:19

i feel like cory's cringing but he wants to make these shirts carter one

Zain 32:22

one may argue that the bonnie crombie uh exploratory committee was a leak it was a fuck up and

Zain 32:29

and do you know what they found out steven carter they found out some beautiful articles about bonnie crombie running for ontario liberal leader in the canadian press the toronto star every major outlet covering it in fact some even talking about the leak so they look at it as a bit of a scoop that you know we were able to source some of the leaked information steven carter i have to ask you was the leak deliberate was the leak deliberate if we go down to brass tax abstraction no actually i actually do not know the answer to that question i now

Zain 32:57

i'm back so hang on a second are you suggesting that they got

Carter 33:01

got at least twice as much coverage as they would would have got if they just i don't know hold on are you suggesting that it was so successful

Zain 33:08

successful i'm actually genuinely asking i'm a proxy of the audience here no

Zain 33:12

no i'm genuinely asking you was the leak a strategy if it wasn't

Carter 33:16

wasn't it should have been because

Carter 33:19

because this is this is exactly you know this is what we this is how you get coverage now you know i mean i i i may have mentioned to a few people uh how to generate uh you know memos that get coverage by the media every once in a while occasionally you know these are the ways like you put you want to make sure that your event never gets covered send a press release right send a press release no one will cover your event send an internal email that accidentally gets sent to the wrong group of people and suddenly you are the most popular uh campaign in town like that's the way the media likes scoops they don't like you know spoon-fed stories so if you want to make sure that your spoon-fed story gets more coverage make it look like a scoop and is there

Zain 34:08

there no is there no doubt in your mind that this was no this is like i just be this is luck no no be honest dumb

Carter 34:13

dumb ass luck zane unbelievable how this happened twice as much coverage she's gonna get and then all those numbers just happen to be ready the pollsters that just happened to last week be in the field testing her popularity oh my goodness she's very popular i did not expect that wow how did they have those numbers ready what a remarkable coincidence give me a fucking break zane don't be so naive you

Carter 34:39

you you are so naive you'd be fitting right in on the discord where they are the most naive people i

Zain 34:46

am a proxy for the audience cory is there any chance that this was not deliberate this leak i

Corey 34:52

i i guess there's a chance i i think it's possible i do feel it's somewhat improbable because it just worked too neatly and you know it's like the old line from the movie dave right like if if i am you know if my son shall be struck by lightning i'm gonna hold some people in this room accountable like you don't believe in coincidence and it's hard to believe in coincidence in these particular moments especially when there There was such a media blitz planned for today anyhow, right? Like that's a little bit much. Although if it was a screw up, it was, you know, it was give the person who screwed up a raise because that was obviously to your advantage here.

Zain 35:30

Carter, what would you have done? Can you go back to me? Bonnie Crombie approaches you. Let's go to strategist mode for a second. Bonnie Crombie approaches you, Mayor of Mississauga, profile, perhaps wants to do it. Is exactly today's template what you would have done for a day one of a campaign launch? Or would this have been something different for you? I want to get your strategy on this. And Corey, I'm going to go to you and then we'll

Carter 35:50

we'll- Well, I've never done one like this. I mean, I think that if someone, like, I'm not sure that I would have been creative enough to come up with this. This is a really good idea. And if someone on my team had come to me and said, you

Carter 36:02

you know, this is what we want to do. I would have said, yes, for sure. That sounds fantastic. There's a tremendous amount of coverage available for this type of a leak. And I think that, you

Carter 36:14

you know, the outcome has proven that it was a really, really smart idea. So, you

Carter 36:20

you know, I wouldn't have necessarily thought of it, but that does not mean that I would not have jumped on wholeheartedly someone else's idea on the team who came up with this. because I just think it's brilliant. It achieved everything that she wanted to achieve from her launch, and she still gets a chance to launch again next week, right? Or whenever she chooses to launch, two weeks from now, three weeks from now. She's automatically a contender because of the way that this information leaked. I mean, she would have been a contender anyways, but she really, really

Carter 36:52

really ramped it up.

Zain 36:55

Corey, what would you have done if Crombie approached you, gave you the conditions? would this have been your strategy and and do you do you feel like there was anything to optimize this strategy anything to make it better anything you would have changed well

Corey 37:09

well i i like the strategy but i think what's missing is they probably needed to get the phone number 58780k zane to

Corey 37:17

to um you know to to be able to call in and give your support as well you know just to let just to let them know that you support them running for leader of whatever they choose to run for leader of i think that's

Carter 37:27

that's an analog too kind of like the old school you know dial in on a rotary well it

Corey 37:31

it shows that uh yeah

Corey 37:34

rotary phones are zane

Corey 37:36

zane doesn't know what a rotary i have no idea

Zain 37:37

idea what it is cory can you repeat that number just for the listeners that may not have caught it uh and then carter i've got one final funnel of follow-up for you before we move on oh

Corey 37:44

oh yeah no 587 a 0k zane a

Zain 37:48

a 0k not a okay no

Corey 37:50

no hey listen this has

Carter 37:52

has gone through a lot of stuff like we yeah

Corey 37:54

we don't have have a okay right we don't have a okay

Corey 37:56

it is not but you know what zero starts with zed zane starts with zed zero k is your bank balance after working at a campaign for a month all of it tracks man it's fine a zero k zane yeah card

Zain 38:07

card have question for you at

Zain 38:11

some point this this let's just let's just take let's just box up what we talked about right this strategy let's just let's just call this a neat strategy d let's call it the exploratory committee oh no we put it up and it It got us great earned media coverage on a pre-launch day strategy. Okay, let's call it that.

Zain 38:29

How many more times can someone use this before it doesn't get covered? Because there's probably old campaign strategies that you've got at the back of the book as other pages like this one now enter the front of the binder. And the next campaign you run, you're probably going to go into the launch section and you're going to see this as one of the options. And then you're going to go to the other ones in the back and you're like, well, fuck, that doesn't work anymore. more. So talk to me about kind of the diminishing, if

Zain 38:52

if you actually believe it's diminishing, and tell me if I'm putting my thumb on the scale here, which I often do on this show, I don't know if you've noticed, but tell me about the diminishing returns on strategies after they are used, covered, optimized, or do you feel like we're actually in an era where perhaps as relation to media eroding, that you could use this again, or it's a jurisdictional or regional thing? Talk to me about that. I find that really fascinating because let's agree with you. This is another page that you can use and put in your toolkit. What does it actually do the next time Stephen Carter wants to use it in Alberta or Corey Hogan is running a campaign in BC and he wants to use it? Talk to me about how you kind of consider it in the broader context, in the broader suite of tools. Yeah, I mean,

Carter 39:36

mean, it will maybe be less effective in Ontario, but it'd be totally easy to steal this and bring it across the country and do it in another market. um and

Carter 39:47

and not only that it would be easy to do it again in ontario what will happen though is that um as

Zain 39:54

as he just said it'll be very different

Carter 39:56

it'd be easier but

Corey 39:57

but you know people you know this stephen carter at the start of that sentence felt different than the end of

Carter 40:03

of that media is not gonna the media will always fall for it carter

Carter 40:07

exploring let me tell you and

Zain 40:07

and you really tell

Carter 40:09

tell you who's not gonna who's not gonna let this happen on

Carter 40:12

on elections ontario if

Carter 40:14

if this was a fall you know if this was a launch if this was uh like what what elections ontario is going to do is they're going to go back and look at their regulations and they're going to say we've got a loophole right and they're going to go back to the government and say can we close this loophole and the government um will probably close the loophole because they don't want to have this available to their to their opposition to other people right now that it's been used once by by you know argue you know by the ontario liberals you know the the the conservatives will close it and arguably it is a fairly egregious breach of the of the elections law if she's launching a campaign before she's a registered candidate so you know i think that that's

Corey 40:58

that's a big if yeah

Carter 40:59

yeah and that's exactly why i said if that's why i said if that's why the word if was there it

Carter 41:05

it the word if IF was doing a lot of work, Corey.

Carter 41:08

But I do think that the way

Carter 41:10

way I read the laws in Ontario very quickly, a skim of their web page, it's very similar to Alberta and very similar to Canada. When you want to run for a leadership, you've got to register. And I wouldn't be surprised to see Bonnie for leader, Bonnie Karambi, registered as a leadership contender in this race by probably Wednesday of this week.

Zain 41:35

your thoughts on this in terms of let's just say this is a page added what does it do in terms of effectiveness going forward well

Corey 41:44

well look we're always trying to learn from the practices of different jurisdictions and the laws sometimes we look at them and we say well this is a variant that might work in this alberta context and maybe it's a question of the number of hedge words on on board and maybe it's the exploratory committee can't be created by the candidate but it can be created by people around the candidate i

Corey 42:03

i don't know but like this is the kind of thing that happens now because and we've talked about this before but i'll just i'll throw it out there again we have moved from a principles-based approach to a rules-based approach so everything is

Corey 42:15

seen as a blueprint to if it's not legitimately excluded it's legitimate right and and so now people are going to say okay well maybe i can take this tactic that worked for bonnie crombie in ontario i can pull it forward that's from a structure that's from an exploratory committee point of view. But then more broadly, Zane, we're always learning from them. And certainly, when we think about the idea of the accidentally launched website, even if it wasn't an accident, I guarantee you in the next 18 months, we're going to see that somewhere else in the country. We're

Zain 42:44

We're going to have someone read it the way we did, package it as a strategy and look at it as something

Carter 42:51

it's not a website. I don't think it's the first time it's happened either.

Corey 42:55

Oh, no. But like, that's just it. Maybe it's not a website. Maybe Maybe it's a platform. Maybe it's something else, but it will go to them. Oh, my goodness, you weren't supposed to get that, but now we have this media coverage, and I guess now we'll put it up live. Like, that's for sure going to happen. Can I? But that's the nature of political strategy. We're always, you know, lifting from each other as we look around.

Zain 43:13

Carter, let me ask you the most nerdiest of questions, and I feel like this might be more Corey appropriate. Because he's a nerd?

Carter 43:19

Giant fucking nerd. Well, no,

Zain 43:22

I talked to you guys at one point about, remember I asked you guys at one point of whether you documented campaigns, like week by week, you documented experiences, et cetera. How do you, Carter, keep your toolkit? Like, what does your actual toolkit

Corey 43:36

toolkit look like? Because

Zain 43:37

Because I just gave you the metaphor of this is now a page to your toolkit, which has gotten me on the idea of, does Stephen Carter actually have like a word file somewhere where he's got like four or five launch strategies associated with best practice? like the Bonnie Crombie story. I'm actually genuinely curious because I... No, I wish

Carter 43:53

wish I did. You know, we

Carter 43:53

do this work. Now I'm feeling like I'm a little inadequate. Well, we all do this work.

Carter 43:56

work. Like, to be honest.

Zain 43:56

honest. The question is, we all do this work. So I'm actually now just curious from like a workman practitioner perspective. No, I don't have... Do you look at a story like this and you document it and say, you know what? I don't want to forget that this is optionality available to me six months from now when I'm tapped to do something or two years from now, whatever. Talk to me about your process here. I wasn't planning... Well, I mean, I... ...how I run these things.

Carter 44:17

Actually, this is it right here. I'm going to hold it up for the audience. I have a little note card thing because I'm, you know, analog. But I do keep track of different ideas and different things that can be done in order to gain attention.

Zain 44:38

So you've actually written them down on note

Carter 44:40

I've got a lot of them.

Zain 44:43

not know that. That's way more than I expected. I think it might be way more than both of us.

Zain 44:48

but i'm not so

Corey 44:50

so you have like i'm actually really curious so in that he held up like this plastic note card and like

Corey 44:57

box it's just like carter's

Corey 44:59

carter's crazy ideas to get no no no no no back of

Zain 45:02

of a car but

Corey 45:03

but like their ideas to get attention like they they are like this is how i see well not necessarily

Carter 45:08

necessarily just the media narrative i mean i'm i i have different

Carter 45:11

different uh different biases different things that i'm trying to play on tools that i've used in the past that will open those those two you know those doors but

Corey 45:22

but it's like attention like it's it's ultimately like so for

Carter 45:26

i've got a section on launches in here i've

Carter 45:28

i've got a section on oh

Zain 45:30

oh you there's sections you literally such as cards oh so what literally there's sections oh so like like the the idea i had of like this is a page and steven carter's like so he literally has i don't

Carter 45:39

don't know about you guys but i'm a fucking professional right

Carter 45:42

right like this is what i do this

Carter 45:44

is what i do and that's why like when i talk to people and i say you know this might help you in your campaign i'm not just pulling it out of my ass i study this i learn this i put it on i do note cards i try and figure out what biases we're playing with how people are making decisions how information flows all that really matters i

Zain 46:02

i need to i need to i need to get better at this you know um you guys both know i'm corey i'm going to come into you for a question let me take you on story wait time for a second um i'm

Zain 46:10

i'm a big fan of stanley comedy right you guys know this and i think bigger than a fan of what's on stage i'm a huge fan of process in terms of and personally in my life as a process is very difficult for me i'm not that sort of person but i always appreciate

Zain 46:24

yeah yeah yeah i appreciate people who have process right um which is why there's different types of comedians that that i appreciate then that you know there's the ones that can just just have four words that are kind of like those debaters that you, and I heard your last episode about internalized don't memorize, right? They're the internalized comedians. They put three bullet notes and they can do 90 minutes. They've got the three main stories. They're not going to say it the same way in the two cities that they tour. It's never going to sound the same. You're going to get a different version of the show every night. And there's some comedians who literally script word for word, right? The Jerry Seinfelds of the world. So I had an experience to talk to one of these comedians, Dimitri Martin.

Zain 47:00

Martin. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Dimitri Martin. When he came to Calgary, backstage, I got to go see Dimitri Martin, and he had typed out like six pages. And these six pages were not word for word, but he had actually on note cards had written word for word. So he had typed out six pages. And I mean, not on a computer. I mean, typewriter. Okay. And he had note cards that had the long form version of every joke and each line in those six pages matched to a joke that he would actually recite. And when we went to his green room, Carter, he had a version of this typewriter page with all of these jokes. So like 30 lines, six times, 180 jokes, right, that he had done over the 90 minute set. And he was going through from memory, giving

Zain 47:44

giving each one a grade of zero, half or one. And zero would mean it fell flat. One would mean keep it for the next set. Half would mean I need to rewrite it. And he was in the middle of that process while we found him. And I was like, that was like, totally not who I am. But the appreciation for that is just wild to me. And I think the word that I used was just professionalism. But what to me it is, it's craftsmanship, right? Like the craftsmanship of what you do. Corey, where are you on this scale of things? Like Carter, and before I get to you, Carter, with the Bronnie Crombie thing that we just discussed, how would you document that? Or would you? Like, would that be something as part of your toolkit going forward? Would you write this down and say, I don't want to forget about this? Like, give me at least a greater sense. I would put that in kind of like

Carter 48:26

like the tricks category and

Carter 48:27

and I'd say, well,

Carter 48:29

well, I mean, it fits into a broader scale of tricks and it's just the, it's the leak trick, right? But the leak trick is just now being used as a, as a

Carter 48:39

a website, a pre, a pre-lit website.

Carter 48:43

There's all kinds of different ways to do a leak trick. The leak trick is pretty open.

Zain 48:47

Corey, you've got a, you've got a photographic memory, I imagine, so none of this is probably needed for you, but tell me what you do.

Corey 48:54

i don't um i have a good memory but it's not photographic what i do tend to do i'm very much when something comes up i look at what i've done in the past that might be comparable and so for me i don't have note cards i have my dropbox which has my entire digital life going back to like i don't know 2006 or earlier even before i had dropbox right and i will often go through And I'll say, okay, well, what did I do on that campaign? How did I write that thing in 2008 for the Dave Taylor Alberta Liberal Party leadership race? That seems vaguely relevant there. And I'm a big believer in going back and reviewing your old work. And often you'll have like, in

Corey 49:35

levels and mixed degrees, kind of like, hey, that's better than I remember it.

Corey 49:39

And oh, my God, that's so much worse than I remember it. But at least it gives you a starting point. and one of the things i find if you do that is you do actually see sort of the consistency of self too like i don't know if you find this i

Zain 49:49

i find that too all the time yeah but

Corey 49:51

but i'll be like i i thought i came up with that phrase in the last three years i've been using that for 15 years you know and uh and but it's good to go back through and and i'm not so great at documenting in a really well archived sense the results of all of these things but i'll see it and i'll remember it i'll be like how did that play out and i'll think about that a little bit but uh yeah i'm I'm quite impressed with Stephen's little card.

Carter 50:14

card. I mean, just keep in mind that how it

Carter 50:17

it worked is still a mystery because I don't write down how it worked very often because it doesn't matter. That scenario, it may not have worked. The next scenario, yeah.

Carter 50:32

treat it more as like an idea starter. It's not about

Carter 50:34

about whether it worked. It's about whether or not it's going to lead to the thing that does work, right?

Carter 50:38

right? right? Like you, the amount of idea sharing and idea stealing, right?

Carter 50:44

right? Like I always think of like a campaign, like Corey or Zane, you're talking about, you know, a standup comedy. The equivalent would be the writer, right?

Carter 50:51

right? The writer's room, throwing ideas

Carter 50:54

onto the table and then building off of those ideas. And we do that on the pod. I

Carter 50:58

I mean, we do this all the time. We build off of each other. You force us into yes ands all the time, even when Corey's being completely stupid. in and uh then i have to yes and them and you know but this is the this is the joy of the podcast like we're building something together that's what we do in a good campaign a good campaign you're building something together and the person who you

Carter 51:20

you know um who's

Carter 51:22

who's never had any input before who's never done a campaign before could be the person who's got the idea you need and that's the the best part about politics that's

Zain 51:32

that's that's very interesting jump on that point well

Corey 51:35

well i think that's 100 true and and where i think i really like what steven's done and i don't do as good of a job as i have a folder in said dropbox that's like interesting things other people did that i want to remember and look at or maybe a paper that somebody wrote about that i

Corey 51:52

almost never go that to that folder i need to go to that folder more frankly like i tend to think of the campaigns as the filter like if i thought of something before a campaign or if i saw something in the six months before the campaign and i thought it was any good i probably used it and then that becomes the record like what i did during the campaign but yeah i'm not good at kind of capturing the third party stuff we

Zain 52:13

we as we as and i would i dare not to say i work in this profession so to speak because it's it's it's broader than that for all of us in some ways but let me use that as a shorthand for a second we have this tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater that losing campaigns did everything wrong and winning campaigns did everything right. And often, we throw out good tactics or good strategies or good campaigns within a losing campaign, and we celebrate good, bad sort of tactics within a winning campaign because of factors that were really very limited or not necessarily due to that.

Corey 52:45

that. I mean, maybe you do, but if I did that, I'd literally throw everything out. Well,

Zain 52:48

Well, I mean, you lose a lot, which is a great way for you to come out and let us know that. But Carter, isn't that true? We often perhaps over-calculate and over-correct on the winning side and give it maybe too

Carter 53:01

too much credit in certain cases. The problem is that really bad campaigners do that a tremendous amount. And I think that that's what plagued the

Carter 53:07

the conservatives, the PCs in 2000 and 2015

Carter 53:12

2015 when they lost to the NDP is that they were thinking that everything that we had done in 2012, because we kind of, you know, we were accidental victors in 2012. And I'll be the first, I mean, I was, I think the first to say it, I'll be the first to continue to say it. We didn't deserve that victory. They gave it to us. right danielle smith and her wild rose party gave us that outcome um but

Carter 53:35

we learned a tremendous like we learned a tremendous amount we didn't do everything wrong we just happened to be doing we happened to be losing um the we you know we had lunch the other day the three of us with our good friend dan arnold and we were talking about the great uh al noor kasam campaign of 2007 uh you know the the the the campaign that brought the great minds of uh dan arnold and stephen and carter together on one campaign we never worked together since very upsetting anyways um you know the the the

Carter 54:05

truth is that that campaign was a disaster i mean we had a you know a candidate that you know admitted to being an a kenyan criminal i mean not great not a great day on the campaign trail if you're wondering um but

Carter 54:19

what we learned on that campaign the the lessons of of that campaign powered the Nahad Nenshi campaign to victory that campaign,

Carter 54:28

you know, everything that I learned from Al Nurkassam we used for Nahad Nenshi and,

Corey 54:36

so no doubt true and cool.

Corey 54:39

That is quite a soundbite that I look forward to coming out, out of context at a, at a future date. Yeah.

Zain 54:44

Yeah. I'm looking forward to it too. And very nicely done. Nicely done on this segment, Carter. We'll leave that segment there. Let's move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, I mean, 99 problems and three real choices. Can we talk a few minutes about what's happening in Toronto in their mayoral race, Stephen Carter? There's 102 candidates and

Zain 55:01

only three of them seem to have above double digits in polling, which means that in this situation, there's probably going to be a winner of this campaign that nets out at, depending on how this thing goes, mid-20s to mid-30s. That's what a winning campaign in Toronto will look like. Carter, from a straight sort of, let me ask you this, and I haven't even asked you about the candidates yet. From

Zain 55:22

From a straight sort of by-election democracy angle, is that upset you? Or are you just like, fuck it, that's just a situation. You don't care. Both of you. Because, yes, I can see there's emotions. So Carter, jump in. Could

Carter 55:36

Could not care less. Person who gets the most votes wins. The fact that there's 102 candidates makes it a little confusing. But we said this before we knew there was going to be 102 candidates. We said a person who comes in with who is very well known with an existing platform, with an existing brand position, is going to win this election. Shocker of all shocks. That's what's happening. There is not enough time. There was not enough time three months ago to launch a viable campaign to actually win. The interesting thing that I think is how vulnerable Olivia Chow will be in two years. Right.

Carter 56:09

Everything will right itself. If Olivia Chow is not supposed to be the mayor for a decade. You know what? The next election clears it. So it is what it is. And it's absolutely fine. And don't come after me again, you stupid, I mean, you lovely proportional representation people. I just can't do it again. I can't keep telling you how wrong you are and be polite about it. I just can't.

Zain 56:35

gore uh carter mentioned olivia chow she seems to be in the lead right now there's a forum poll that came out a few days ago having her in the in the low to mid 30s that seems to be almost double uh her her opponent mark saunders the former police chief uh who's who seems to be trailing in second followed by a slew of third third place candidates and then several also on this list same question to you though the democracy angle does that worry you at all or Or do we just like, fuck it, move on. Let's talk about the specifics in this race.

Corey 57:03

Yeah, I mean, it does worry me when the will of the people is going to be so potentially muddled that you can win with 30% of the vote. And frankly, that's a relief that it's not 20% of the vote. And who knows, maybe something that there was more of a winnowing of the candidates, a ranked ballot, maybe Olivia Chow would get 50% in a model like that. But I'd sure like to know. And I think Torontonians deserve having a mayor that has a little bit more support than

Corey 57:29

30 support it is one of those things that i think is going to be just like the uh you know the referendum about lakehead versus the lakehead versus thunder bay people will point to and say yeah see what happens when there's just weird

Corey 57:44

weird choices on the ballot that can break things here i it makes a good case for the vote splitting that's a really that's a

Carter 57:51

a very specifically specifically badly devised ballot see

Carter 57:55

see this is democracy we have this many people who want to be the mayor let's choose the best amongst them totally

Corey 58:03

well so there are a lot of models though right there could be for example if nobody gets over 50 of the vote there's a runoff with the top two candidates or maybe the top three and it's a ranked ballot for the second round those kinds of models make an awful lot more sense when your elections look a lot more like this and maybe this This is an aberration. Maybe it's not, but certainly it's going to have people saying, well,

Corey 58:24

well, let's actually zoom out a little bit and say the job of an election is to reflect the will of the people. Can we agree to that? Yeah. We can agree to that at the very least.

Carter 58:33

least. No, I don't think that that's the job of an election.

Corey 58:36

If – Okay. All right. Counterproposal. Okay. What is it? Interesting take.

Corey 58:41

Let's maybe get to your counterproposal in a second. But if we believe that is the job of an election, then as the conditions change, it makes sense that the system has to change, too. Because ultimately, the conditions may lead to you otherwise not getting the will of the people.

Corey 58:56

Carter, what is the job of an election? The job of an election

Carter 58:57

is to simply choose a representative who will, in turn, try to represent the people through decisions.

Corey 59:03

Wait, sorry, a representative.

Corey 59:06

Okay, I'm a little hung up on that word here. So it's not to reflect the will of the people. It's to be representative of the people. the will

Carter 59:12

will of the people will not be known three days after the election the will of the people was not known when we went into covet the will of the people is not known when the issues develop we are choosing a representative to represent us it is their job therefore to represent us in a fashion that will get them re-elected if

Carter 59:29

if they do not represent us in a fashion that will get them re-elected then they're gone and we choose another representative we are only choosing the representative that is the only function of the democracy i mean especially when you're even even looking at this election in alberta all

Carter 59:44

all the parties are all over the place the ideological stuff is all broken nothing even makes sense anymore there

Carter 59:51

there i'm done it i said it i said it i

Carter 59:53

i said it okay

Zain 59:54

excellent excellent cory here's the thing carter let me go to you back to you for a second olivia

Zain 1:00:01

olivia chow seems to be on this path of victory toronto star and and forum research say it's it's i'm going to paraphrase because i don't have the exact article as i often say in front of me i it's an undeniable at this point she's got this thing would

Carter 1:00:15

you be worried if your

Carter 1:00:16

team yeah i would be worried i mean how many what

Zain 1:00:19

what and let's let's kind of build and here's what i want to do let's build a list of uh just some advice for her she's the the front runner she seems to have a double digit lead perhaps even like half of her uh her opponent seems to be half of her what advice what worries would you have for her right now let's put a list in and and some a nice little basket together that we can send off i mean i

Carter 1:00:37

i think the biggest thing would be voter turnout turnout, you suddenly

Carter 1:00:41

suddenly look like you're running away with it. And voter turnout is like, yeah, you know what, I like Olivia, blah, blah, blah. But I really don't feel that passionate about voting for her. So I'm just not going to because she's going to win anyways. And all of a sudden, your voter turnout model fundamentally shifts. And when we start to see fundamental shifts in voter turnout models, then you start to see strange outcomes, because the polling no longer represents the entire group of the population, right? So the population of polling is everybody who can vote. The population that actually votes could be a different population.

Carter 1:01:18

you just don't want to see that. You want to have as big a turnout as possible, because the larger the turnout, the more representative it's going to kind of be of the potential that you represent. represent so i think that you know olivia chow just does not want everybody to become complacent if they think that she's going to walk away with it um it could get really ugly really quickly

Zain 1:01:44

i want to get back to that point in a second cory your your thoughts on this as we build on some advice for the front runner in this campaign olivia chow

Corey 1:01:51

yeah we don't know what the next four weeks are going to turn up like five weeks i guess in in toronto on on the way to the actual ballot here but it is quite possible that this has been an unofficial primary of sorts and you're going to see a natural winnowing of the field and you're going to see people say okay well if you're not in the double digits you're probably not real and those people are going to drift from two percent in the polls to zero percent in the polls that's very possible you know you got a hundred people running oh

Corey 1:02:18

oh my god what what an insane number of people and people are going to have to make choices about who's viable and not we say I say this all of the time. Accessibility, viability, intent.

Corey 1:02:28

Well, now we're at a point where viability matters an awful lot more. And I do expect you'll see some sort of natural rationalization of the field as things move forward. Not for sure. Like when I think about the California Goopin tutorial that Arnold Schwarzenegger won, I would say didn't end up with that rationalization of the field. Good point. Yeah. Right. But generally speaking, you do see people say, okay, these are folks who are in the game and these are folks who are not in the game. And so if you're Olivia Chow, you've

Corey 1:02:55

you've got to be mindful that if it becomes a sense of anybody but Chow, you're probably in a little bit of peril still, even though you've got a pretty significant lead at

Corey 1:03:05

at this particular moment. But having double the vote when you're at 30% to 15% is not exactly an insurmountable double the vote. And it's quite possible that as this thing goes on, as people look at this campaign through the lens of three candidates, or even two candidates instead of one candidate, or

Corey 1:03:24

or 100 candidates, it's going to look a little bit different. And so you've got to make sure you don't end up being kind of wedged against 99. It can't be 99 people versus Olivia Chow. It's got to be a bit of a mix. You got to keep things interesting in the sense that you can't immediately find yourself on the wrong side of the coalition of 99.

Zain 1:03:45

Well said, Corey. And Carter, I want to talk to you about this, this concept of the Nenshi insurgency that you talked about getting into third place. There does seem to be a bit of that with a couple of the candidates, Bayo and Matlow, and I believe Matlow as well, trying to get into this position of potentially becoming third in some polls, Bayo second. second um but your your thought here on is an insurgent second or third place possible and how does one let me get more specific how does one start and get traction for an anyone but chow campaign how does that actually work i'm

Zain 1:04:21

i'm very curious the first

Carter 1:04:21

first thing you have to do is establish your own brand super strong so whatever your positions are going to be make sure that those positions are easily understandable and that they've already kind of been put out that you you look like you're a real candidate. We have a lot of problems with this where candidates don't think they need to become real until some later date in the campaign. And the truth is you need to be very real very quickly in this type of a campaign. And I think that you can see a couple of people really surging into that reality spot where all of a sudden they're more likely to be known. They're more likely to get their press releases covered. and as soon as that happens it really doesn't take much to position yourself like when you're in second third second third or fourth all

Carter 1:05:11

all of a sudden you are naturally in the game you are naturally being spoken about and at that point the anybody but olivia game

Carter 1:05:20

game becomes very real and if i were in the chow campaign that would be the thing that i would be the most fearful of is an anybody but and uh the entire

Carter 1:05:33

entire campaign coalescing between you know behind essentially uh three or four people uh and that very easily could happen in in the coming in the coming weeks it's it's not i mean nenshi was at one

Carter 1:05:47

one percent with 60 days ago you know like it it doesn't take a very long time for for everything to shift cory

Zain 1:05:54

cory how do you prevent it if you're the child campaign how do you prevent it and going back to another point carter made how do you ensure that your supporters don't get lazy simultaneously how do you prevent the the wedging and

Zain 1:06:06

and then how do you prevent your your supporters from from not getting lazy in that sense well

Corey 1:06:12

well you can't become the villain on any issue right so you've got to be mindful if you make a statement for example where you said like uh you know i i actually think if anything we need fewer police officers on that I'm just giving an absurd example here, right? Fewer police officers on the street. Well, then all of a sudden, you are giving your opponents a bit of a hook to come in and say, like, you know, you know, Olivia Chow is soft on crime, and Toronto doesn't need that right now. And yes, we need to look at other solutions. Yes, we need response times. Yes, we need, you know, mobile phone coverage on the TTC. But you know what we also need? Police right now, today. And that's something Olivia Chow is just not willing to do. And that's wrong. You know, you've got to almost create this villain version of the candidate in order to get that coalescing that we've been talking about. So avoid being the villain by being a reasonable person who is not making broad statements, right? It's the same as any time you're trying to build a coalition. You've just got to make sure that you're not saying things that are going to cleave people away from you in any way, shape or form. So I

Corey 1:07:13

I guess in a way, it's a variant of the standard frontrunners campaign where you play it a little bit safer. You're not going out there to say things that are bold are going to get you noticed because you risk this potential backfire effect. fact um the reality is olivia chow has been in the public eye for quite some time i

Corey 1:07:30

i suspect people will try to pull comments out from when she was an mp back from when she was in the public eye with jack layton who the hell knows and there's the risk that something is going to be taken and torqued out of there but the

Corey 1:07:42

the way you comport yourself has got to be reasonable so that when these things do come up you've you've provided yourself a bit of a you

Corey 1:07:49

you know an off-ramp so So, you know, maybe don't skewer somebody for comments they made six years ago, or if you're worried about comments you made for six years ago, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, ultimately, it's just keep

Corey 1:08:03

keep your head down, smile, do regular campaign stuff. The bigger, bolder pushes are the ones that risk the potential backfire.

Zain 1:08:11

Carter, a build off on what Corey said as we wrap up this segment, how do you prevent the anyone but campaign and how do you ensure what you put on the table earlier that your voters don't get lazy or um presumptive that this is a done deal for you and in some cases a tightening actually kind of helpful to you or is any sort of tightening total bullshit and it's not helpful that that's a myth of campaigns that the tightening tightening

Carter 1:08:35

help very much i mean you just want to stay as far ahead as you can um you know in terms of like

Carter 1:08:43

like when we went When Nenshi was beating or catching up with Rick McIver and Barb Higgins, he was catching up, you

Carter 1:08:53

you know, like they weren't making mistakes. We were just coming after them. Like if they burped, we were there. And we, you know, Nenshi would attack them that moment. You know, it was nearly impossible for them to breathe without a negative, like when they released their their platforms we had negative or negative commentary out within i think two hours and we'd never seen their their you know their platform before but we were able to pick it all apart and find everything that was wrong with it even if there was nothing wrong with it because you know that was that was the game that we were playing and i suspect that if you're in third place hoping to get the second place um you're probably playing a very similar game uh you know as that uh right now because that's really the only way you're going to get there you have to just tear

Carter 1:09:47

tear them apart and within the way that in the opposite way is to put your foot on their throat and just stop them to grow right like and that's what we did to uh jeff davison's campaign and in with the gondek campaign we just just forced

Carter 1:10:00

forced him not to be able to grow we we we never gave him any oxygen uh we just kept attacking i think attacking is the way to do these things rather than playing defense but um i mean there could be whole whole episodes of podcasts dedicated to uh attack versus defense we're

Zain 1:10:20

we're gonna leave that segment there steven carter moving on to our final segment are over under our lightning round carter we do this for you and i need i need this desperately i need you to give me a ranking of one to ten on the bonnie crombie soft launch exploratory campaign leak strategy slash non-strategy oh

Carter 1:10:37

oh it's got to be at least an A-. I mean, it got double the coverage. Well, I mean, we haven't seen her launch yet, but I guarantee she's going to get the same amount of coverage. She's a real player. And so she gets an extra whole cycle of coverage for herself, doesn't cost herself the launch coverage. And she's really sitting perfect. I mean, a definite B-plus from me.

Zain 1:11:03

Okay, great. A downgrade from an A- to a B

Carter 1:11:06

on a scale of 1 to 10. And Corey, what is it for you? Consistency is not important.

Corey 1:11:11

Well, Zane, I guess I give it a 587A0K, Zane.

Zain 1:11:17

Thank you, Corey. Thank you, Corey. Corey, I'm going to stick with you on this next one. Ron DeSantis is expected to enter the U.S. presidential, well, not the U.S. presidential race, the nomination for the GOP to become their nominee for president.

Zain 1:11:32

What are you looking for this week from Ron DeSantis as part of his launch? We talked about launches today with Bonnie Crombie, but just give me your one word, your one thing that you're looking for from Ron. It could be rhetoric, it could be visuals, it could be branding, it could be positioning, it could be all these things. What is the one thing you are very curious about when

Zain 1:11:53

when Ron DeSantis launches this week, Corey?

Corey 1:11:56

A hundred percent. It's how he deals with the Donald Trump question. How is he going to position himself versus Trump? For me, that is the question on this particular one. Is he going to position himself aggressively? Is he going to be dismissive of Donald Trump? Is it going to be a combination of both? I don't know. But if he has no Donald Trump strategy, or if it looks like he's just going to say how great he is as he runs against him, well, then I think his campaign is dead in the water. So that to me is the big determinant. it. Carter,

Zain 1:12:23

Carter, what is it for you as you look at Ron DeSantis launching this week, of course, Donald Trump on Truth Social, calling him Tiny Ron and then mentioning his height, which

Zain 1:12:34

which I think was- I think that's

Corey 1:12:34

that's a fake post, but it's

Zain 1:12:36

it's still very funny. I mean, Tiny

Zain 1:12:38

Tiny D, Tiny D would be way better. Carter, what are you looking for? Is it the Trump question? Is it something else? Is it crowd size? Is it endorsements? Is it brand? is it branding for you what is it as ron de santis launches or it's you know it's

Carter 1:12:53

it's it's so uh it's so repetitive because i'm always saying this cory is so right um cory

Carter 1:13:02

cory you know it is basically is he going to stand up there and you know be

Carter 1:13:09

be a sycophant to trump or is he going to stand up there and say donald trump is a loser who cannot win in the next election we need a better candidate can i

Zain 1:13:18

i ask you can

Zain 1:13:20

i ask you very quickly on this does he need to do that on launch he doesn't do it on launch

Carter 1:13:25

he's got to come out with his his his key differentiating factor and his key differentiating factor is that if

Carter 1:13:31

if you don't want why are you in the race like

Carter 1:13:34

like literally why are you there if you if you do not want to take a position on trump then don't be in this race because you don't need to be there you can go do other things you can go to disney world disney world is great i love disney world um cory you know what you should do you should take your hard-earned patreon money take the kids and

Corey 1:13:52

and take your kids to

Carter 1:13:53

to disney world they'd love it love it i tell you yeah

Corey 1:13:57

yeah i'm so glad they don't listen because i you know me

Carter 1:14:00

me and annalise don't

Corey 1:14:00

don't want to do that little discord

Carter 1:14:01

going on cory it's quite great yeah cory

Zain 1:14:04

cory carter said the word go ahead go ahead yeah

Corey 1:14:07

yeah look so to greatly confuse our audience my daughter's name is annalise as well as our co co-host name being annalise yeah okay

Corey 1:14:15

yeah tell the name a little bit about all your children

Carter 1:14:22

i've got a gift for you actually i've had a gift for five months but you've been too busy to pick up the fucking like i can't get over to bring the gift over you're too busy i

Zain 1:14:32

hope it's a fucking toaster that's all that's all i could

Corey 1:14:38

i like a good callback

Zain 1:14:38

callback it's a good cupboard based toaster i could just plug into the cupboard so i could open it so we get a beautiful stainless steel but hidden hidden from plain view uh cory carter used the word repeat and repetitive uh if there was a word that you cory hogan citizen of alberta would be repeating to yourself as a mantra this week week to round out the election, what would it be for you, Corey? What is your word that you're going to be just repeating to yourself in almost a quasi-religious way for the rest of this week?

Corey 1:15:11

I don't, I have no clever answer for this, Zane. I think one of the things that all Albertans will be doing, regardless of who they're supporting, is just saying, oh my God, I just want this to to be over you know uh it just it feels like such a high wire act it feels like i don't want to deal with another week of um well like so i live pretty close to an ndp campaign office and clearly the landlord's not on side because they've started putting up like signs that are anti-ndp on the side of the building the ndp is renting from them like i'm just so sick of the bullshit i'm so sick of this i just you know can this be over right i i just don't uh i think this is an important election it's a high stakes election i think if you are um have the time you should get engaged in the election for whatever team you support i

Corey 1:16:05

just don't want to do it anymore carter

Zain 1:16:06

carter you're a man of the cloth a man who carries around a rosary uh as you as you bead by bead what word are you repeating this week uh the answer

Carter 1:16:15

answer is please um you know i'm just saying please please please please please let's get i mean cory's like little soliloquy about you know being involved regardless of whatever team you support uh fuck that um do not support the ucp please danielle smith has lost her ever loving mind um her candidates are trash and uh this is a literally the worst election i have ever seen from a political party and and and the fact that they could win it is a stain upon all of us it is like we are all walking around with a shit stain in our underwear that came from danielle smith and none of us have the fucking gumption to take our undies off and put them in the washing machine take your undies off put them in the washing machine get your ass out to vote

Zain 1:17:14

we're gonna leave it there that's a wrap on episode 1065 the strategist my name is zane with me as always cory hogan stephen carter and we will see you next

SPEAKER_01 1:17:30

following horror stories about Calgary traffic are brought to you courtesy of current Mayor Dave Brancanier.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:36

I took Glenmore westbound under the new interchange. It was sure quick. I

SPEAKER_00 1:17:40

I got into the 37th Street traffic jam faster than ever.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:44

Why can't you get onto Deerfoot North from Beddington? Are they worried we'll leave for Edmonton?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:49

A vote for Elnur sends the message that you want a new approach to the traffic crunch. Make your voice heard, Calgary. Vote Elnur. Send a message. Brought to you by the Go Elnur campaign.

Transcript