Episode 1847: Peacocking

Zain 0:01

This is a strategist episode 1847. My name is Zain Velji, with me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Carter, it's

Zain 0:09

it's looking beautiful where you are. Is that a Mexican

Zain 0:12

Mexican buffet behind you? Is that Mar-a-Lago? Are you hanging out? Oh, sorry, that was a different bald guy. Sorry, sorry, that was, sorry. Exact

Carter 0:21

Exact look, same exact look. Yeah,

Zain 0:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, did you get fleeced out a bunch of money on FTX too?

Carter 0:29

Oh, yeah, I did. Yeah, but it's turned out okay. It's coming back in at 118%, so I'm pretty happy.

Zain 0:36

You may not be right. Stephen Carter, one fact, Corey. It's coming back at 118%, but he's not wrong about FTX potentially recouping a lot of its investment for its investors. Well, of course, I'm talking about Kevin O'Leary, who is not Stephen Carter.

Zain 0:55

I just want to put that out there. There is a lot of confusion, but there's a

Carter 0:59

a lot of similarities. Plus, call me Mr. Wonderful.

Zain 1:02

You are the Flair Airlines version of a Kevin O'Leary, is what I think.

Carter 1:07

think. Thank you very much. Yeah,

Zain 1:07

Yeah, no problem. Corey, you've been well? You haven't been traveling?

Corey 1:11

I haven't been well. I mean, I have been well.

Corey 1:14

I haven't been traveling. Haven't been well looking at social media, seeing everything going on, I guess. I guess maybe I was a bit Freudian. What was the... Okay, so

Zain 1:21

so you guys, or at least one of you, I don't remember how long ago this was, was telling me that you were wanting to get off social media, but now you've added this blue sky to your diet. what's going on here there's

Carter 1:32

there's a lot of questions being asked i mean i think that we have to have uh we have to figure out what's wrong with us uh we you know we should do this session lying down uh asking questions i'm not sure what happened uh i was happy off twitter i was happy not participating and then cory cory dragged me back in into

Zain 1:52

yeah how how has it been in is it i'm not even is it a replacement is it a left wing uh what is it like what's going on here well

Corey 2:02

well i i think that it generally does skew a little bit left because the big surge of blue sky happened when everybody um everybody left x yeah slash twitter after the election right um but that said you know you you get to pick who you're following and so you can find right right-wing voices if you want. You can create a balanced media diet if that's your particular thing. It's not, you know, what's interesting about it is I have, I don't know, like 10,000 fewer followers on Blue Sky than I did on Twitter when I left Twitter. But I would say the engagement with like 3,000 followers, less than that, is more than it was on Twitter when I left Twitter. So it feels a little bit like Twitter of old. I think you could make an argument, nobody really needs to go back to 2010 but it it certainly has a bit more of that feel kind of like if you uh you know if you bought an ev early like you couldn't go to a charging station without the person there trying to talk to you and i was like you don't see that at a gas station right but it's the sense you're like early in and you're in a community and it's got a little bit of that zane to answer your question carter

Zain 3:06

carter let's let's use cory's 2010 analogy and let's talk about politicians who may have had their peak in 2010, but are resurging.

Zain 3:15

Stephen Carter, the West wants in. That's our first segment. We've got two women I want to discuss from the West, one Danielle Smith and one Christy Clark. Two very different topics, connected-ish.

Zain 3:28

Where do you want to go first, Carter? Do you want to go Danielle Smith meeting with Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago, or do you want to go Christy Clark not fessing up to the fact that she was a conservative member to vote for Jean Charest. What is more interesting? We will hit both, but I will give you a dealer's choice. I

Carter 3:42

I am personally very excited about Daniel Smith going to Florida. It's the same as Mr. Smith goes to Washington. Exact same. Isn't it, Corey?

Corey 3:52

think so. I think she did go there to fight for the Boy Scouts, if I remember correctly. Okay,

Zain 3:56

Okay, let's talk about this. So in social media posts that initially did not include Daniel Smith's own post, which it eventually did, it was indicated that Daniel Smith was was that Mar-a-Lago, which was a bit of a surprise picture with Kevin O'Leary, Stephen Carter, Jordan Peterson, and others. I added Stephen Carter as part of the list.

Carter 4:14

Yeah, no, it was in brackets, right? We saw it, yeah. Auto

Zain 4:16

Auto-medium, but I needed people to know that in brackets. That could also be you.

Zain 4:20

And then she posted pictures of her and Donald Trump shaking hands, talking, and had a very long social media post about the type of discussion that she had. Corey, here's the thing.

Zain 4:31

Was this good strategy on her part?

Corey 4:35

No. You know what? I think that if we would have thought it was good strategy a couple of months ago, what happened with Justin Trudeau's visit should probably have shaken that out of us, right? The idea that you're going to go down there and kiss the ring and have any control of the situation afterwards is ridiculous. It's foolish. And we often talk about these ideas of like, you know, high risk, low reward. This is what I would call high risk, high reward. Like if she somehow came out of it with exempting Canadian oil from any kind of tariffs, that obviously would be pretty meaningful to the province of Alberta. but one of the one of the complications here is even if she does that she's kind of fucked up things in other ways here too and it is a bit of a small selfish view of canada that we should be on the watch for uh as as the man is actively talking about annexing us and you know i mean that's probably where to start it's it's tough for me as a canadian to swallow her

Corey 5:32

her going down with kevin o'leary a man who said he wanted to broker the economic surrender of canada Yes. Donald Trump. Yes. In

Corey 5:39

In Mar-a-Lago, like he's going to go down to do that. So he's now there.

Corey 5:43

The premier goes down there and meets with Donald Trump, a man who says he wants to economically conquer Canada. And so leaves

Corey 5:51

leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Also, I don't think that Daniel Smith would take such an approach if say, Justin Trudeau was going to economically conquer Alberta, right? In fact, I can think of a number of situations where Justin Trudeau went far short of that, and that would not have been Danielle Smith's preferred tactic. I don't know how a woman who's made a career of saying, no, Alberta uses strength and does not negotiate with Ottawa says, oh, there's Donald Trump. We're

Corey 6:20

We're going to negotiate with him. It just doesn't actually track for me. and i guess a really long walk here to say she's

Corey 6:28

she's no longer in control of this situation she's done things that are contradictory to her own message she's jeopardized the team canada approach i know that everyone around her will pretend she didn't and say oh this is just the premier working the contacts including like other premiers maybe the prime minister but also she's one tweet away from disaster we don't know what donald trump does next but

Corey 6:49

but we have reason to believe based on past performance it won't be good carter

Zain 6:59

i i get what cory's saying but i'm also here's what i'm struggling maybe i'll put this out on the table for both of you i'm

Zain 7:05

i'm struggling with what what else should she be doing right as as a core construct so carter answer answer the question of whether this is strategic uh or or not uh and then and then i'll kind of follow it up from there i

Carter 7:16

mean short answer it's it's not strategic it's not strategic in any way shape or form um and the reason what she should be doing is wrapping herself in the canadian flag what she should be doing is saying how can i be a part of team canada uh that's what she should be doing because team canada needs all the allies that we can get at this particular moment we don't uh want to be going at this uh with a a split force if you will um and yeah i'm using some kind of military type terminology of split forces and and the like on

Zain 7:48

campaign campaign and political podcast no i know what

Carter 7:50

what someone someone has has threatened to take over the country right like this is as real as it gets in politics um sometimes i think we pretend that politics doesn't really matter uh politics and diplomacy are everything they're what keep us free and this uh this is just uh the case of someone going to appease uh donald trump and the worst first part about it is when has anybody ever gotten the best of Donald Trump? And I don't mean intellectually. I think in any of us could get the best of Donald Trump in any intellectual discussion. And Danielle Smith probably comes away thinking to herself, you know, I did pretty well in that, but

Carter 8:30

but he's a duplicitous fuck and

Carter 8:32

and he's going to fuck her in some fashion because every single person who bends a knee to Donald Trump gets fucked. That's what happens. That's how he treats people period he does not say well she came down here and had a rational argument about uh about oil prices i

Zain 8:50

i want i want to get to that in in a second cory you've got something to add as well but can i throw this at you guys too sure my first reaction when i saw those photos

Zain 8:58

taking out like and not necessarily being able to process whether this was strategically it's kind of why i'm asking you guys a good thing or a bad thing per se because i'm a bit it mixed on it although i lean towards where both of you are at if i'm being honest i

Zain 9:13

was kind of impressed cory like she got access to donald trump and i know we've done an episode like a couple months ago where we were the three of us that were debating whether he'd know who she was and whether a sub-national political figure would be able she got to see donald trump she was posing with donald i thought that was that was my first reaction if i'm being absolutely honest with you so i just want to throw that into the mix i really don't have a question other than to say like that was how i first perceived it yeah

Corey 9:40

yeah i understand that but that's actually a little bit what scares the shit out of me right right because i understand entirely why she wants to meet with him and

Corey 9:50

and when we when we were making those comments that was in the context of 25 tariffs right and it's like why the fuck would donald trump meet with her was my point of view it doesn't make any sense you'd be you'd be talking slash negotiating with a subnational leader you're you're diminishing yourself, you're not elevating the conversation.

Corey 10:08

I think I said then, I'm not knocking Alberta. I love Alberta. I'm an Albertan, but we're the fourth largest province in Canada. It doesn't make any sense for him to talk the tariff deal with her. And unfortunately, I think that's still true. And I guess this is what wigs me out, right? What is the benefit of Donald Trump meeting with a Canadian premier? I mean, there's absolutely none on the tariff deal Because now, if anything, like if he were to change his mind, it looks like a premier managed to get him to change his mind. It looks like somebody that's not really in the mix of American politics got him to change his mind. So why would you do it? Well, one

Corey 10:44

one option is, of course, I just did it because Jordan Peterson and Kevin O'Leary wanted me to meet with her. Right.

Corey 10:50

And I'm sure that there's just a revolving door in Mar-a-Lago of people showing up, shaking hands, getting a picture taken, moving on to the next one, especially right now as everyone goes to kiss the ring.

Corey 11:02

And that, in my mind, is the best case scenario, that it was a meaningless trip. But if he actually wanted to talk to her, if it was actually true that he made a beeline for her, that should scare every kid. And has that, sorry, has that been reported or are you just like hypothetically? Well, she said that. Oh, she, okay, right. Yeah.

Corey 11:19

And it was, I guess, the Rick Bell column, right?

Corey 11:24

If that's true, it's a big problem because there's not a lot of reason why he would want to deal with her or have a relationship with her on the terror issue. Right, right. But I understand entirely why somebody who was serious about annexing Canada might want to start talking to leaders at the subnational level and trying to pull apart what right now looks like a consensus of the leadership. leadership that's what's fucking scary like if donald trump is thinking about this if donald trump is being strategic that is what's scary carter

Zain 11:51

carter from like a strategic posture do you feel like it's it's do you feel like this statement is accurate she may have given up more than she gained even if she thought she gained something absolutely

Carter 12:01

absolutely i mean first of all what do we even know about the meeting and how it occurred we have whatever she's

Zain 12:06

she's told us really exactly

Carter 12:07

exactly there's no no tick tock on this there and not tick tock the video but tick tock the the minute by minute conversation uh recording that is released oftentimes with interactions between real world leaders um you know i ran into danielle smith this summer and i had a nice chat with her about uh health care um i didn't tweet i've had a nice conversation with danielle smith about health care um she sees my point of view and everything's going to be fine i mean did she Did she sit down in a room with Donald Trump?

Carter 12:37

Or did she run into him at the poolside, which is what it appears like? And

Zain 12:40

And what's interesting, well, it's interesting, right? Because it seems like one's more of like an evening dinner sort of thing, and another is like more of a poolside. So it's hard to kind of know the context. We're piecing it together. It's not a real meeting. No, right. It sounds conspiratorial on our part, but like it matters based on the stakes that both you and Corey have outlined here in terms of what the heck was she doing, what the heck was said. She

Carter 13:01

She wasn't doing what she should have been doing, right? Which is, I maintain that a subnational leader, even fucking a national leader, everybody needs to be pulling at the same levers

Carter 13:14

levers here. Because this is a guy, when someone talks about taking over your state economically, it is one half of a step away from declaration of war, in my mind.

Carter 13:25

Call me crazy. Call me crazy. but you don't you know you don't hear an awful lot of uh european leaders walking around talking about taking over the their adjacent countries by economic force you know why you don't hear people talking about taking over their adjacent companies with economic force because it's very close to a declaration of fucking war and i'd love to make it less than that i'd love to make it just the ramblings of an orange face lunatic but this is the ramblings of an orange face lunatic that won the fucking election he gets to do what he wants to do let

Zain 13:56

let me come back to cory what he said and cory i suspect you stand by this high risk high reward is what you said it's

Zain 14:03

it's not high risk no reward there's actually you actually position it as high reward and to me i think that part might be her political strategic saving grace no well

Corey 14:12

well for her okay let me maybe put it a different way i think obviously she'll look like an absolute legend to a lot of people if she comes out with of this but what there is a reason to think that the best case scenario for smith would also be the worst case scenario for canada right yeah

Corey 14:26

first of all it will really pull at the fabric of the country if all of a sudden alberta is really exempt but you mean energy exemption sort of yeah like just imagine this just imagine he goes on to truth social and he exempts oil and gas from the 25 implementing 25 tariff oil and gas is exempt because i just met the brilliant premier Premier Smith in Alberta. Alberta is a place that really has got it together. They get us,

Zain 14:49

us, sort of thing, yeah.

Corey 14:50

That's the worst. That's the worst, right? Because at that point, it's pretty clear to me that what he's trying to do is divide and conquer. He is trying to pick off different parts of Confederation and start playing leaders against each other as he moves towards his ambitions of annexation, frankly. So when I say it's the best case scenario for Smith, I mean, given the goals that she said, like when I talk about high risk, high reward, the reward is the reward she's after. It

Corey 15:16

It shouldn't necessarily be considered the reward that we're all after, certainly as Canadians, but even as Albertans, because of some of the downstream consequences of it there.

Zain 15:25

strategized for her. She puts out a very long message today. You read some of the reaction. Of course, there's a ton

Zain 15:32

ton of political bias to any social media post these days, but being celebrated by some, looking like a legend already to many. Spin this for her. Like, make this evergreen positive for her despite what Trump does. How would you start setting up that communication on her behalf to Trump-proof it in some ways? And I'm asking you to do work that I know you hate doing, but welcome

Zain 15:56

to the show. Thanks

Carter 16:01

for this. Here's the thing.

Carter 16:03

only way to achieve something is to actually go and talk. I mean, diplomacy and politics, I talked about it right off the bat.

Carter 16:09

Diplomacy is actually going and talking to your adversary.

Carter 16:12

And Daniel Smith is the only one who's been given this type of access. I mean, Justin Trudeau is not going to do it by going on, you know, PBS television stations and doing interviews. And that's really all that's left that's talking to to him they're not he's not able to win over the american people the way that daniel smith uh can win over the american people because sometimes it means going in putting your head into the into the mouth of the lion and making sure that the the lion understands that um

Carter 16:41

you're not food and daniel smith knows that what we have with oil is the most important piece of uh of this economic tariff, if you exempted oil,

Carter 16:56

you're automatically in a much better place if you're in the United States of America.

Zain 17:01

Corey, you want to jump in here?

Corey 17:03

Yeah, I mean, put your head in the mouth of a lion and the lion understands you're not food was really interesting. I mean, so Stephen said something that

Corey 17:11

wasn't so dissimilar from what Rob Anderson said, right? So he got in a bit of a Twitter back and forth with Mark Miller, who was saying Canada's not for sale, never will be, vive le Canada. Rob responds with, someone has to advocate for Canada, Mark. Your utterly useless government clearly isn't. Suggesting Daniel Smith is now doing the thing that the Trudeau government can't. But he did this two months ago. He did this. He was the first guy to do this. He did this in November. And I would argue that it's quite possible that has precipitated this current moment of Trump's musings. He goes down, 51st governor jokes become a little more real, a little more real, a little more real. Now he is saying, shouldn't be a real country, arbitrary border. I mean, frankly, lines that Germany used talking about the Sudetenland, lines that Russia used talking about Ukraine and the Donbass. Like, this is the textbook play of people who are looking to take shit from their neighbors. And, you know, I just, I don't know. I don't know. I think that memories are pretty short. If we can't remember literally less than two months ago, this

Corey 18:23

this is what Justin Trudeau did, and it didn't seem to work that great for us. So this is the cautionary tale. We said at the time that Justin Trudeau went down, it seems okay. What's the next shoe to drop? Well, a pretty big fucking shoe dropped. And if I were Danielle Smith, I would be a little bit worried about what shoes might drop on my head too. Could

Zain 18:40

Could you help her age

Zain 18:43

age this statement well, Corey? Yeah, absolutely. Age this visit. What would you do in addition to what Carter suggested?

Corey 18:49

Well, I think that Rob Anderson has given kind of a more bellicose version of the argument that needs to be made, which is, listen, this is – you could say that. I can understand why you would be concerned, but this is the Team Canada approach. This is what we've talked about as First Ministers, including the Prime Minister. We will all work our contacts to, you know, advance the conversation through our particular channels. Justin Trudeau himself said that, right? And I exercise my contacts as a leader of the conservative movement to go down to Mar-a-Lago and talk directly in terms that the president would understand about the benefit of Canada and

Corey 19:28

and Canada's economic ties. I was very clear we're an independent nation, but that we're an independent nation that greatly benefits from the trading relationship that we have with the United States, just as they're an independent nation that greatly benefits from the trade relationship they have with us. And yes, I understand that sometimes he can be a mercurial fellow, but we're not going to solve this problem by burying our head in the sand. And what come will come, but we're not just going to sit there and do nothing. We're going to do something, because that's the only choice a responsible government has. Well,

Zain 19:57

Well, Carter, how are you thinking about this if you're some of the other premiers? And I know it's a broad question given their political context, but if they're on the Team Canada page, how are they thinking about this? What are they considering when they see this happen this weekend? I

Carter 20:09

I think they're thinking that bitch.

Carter 20:11

I remember going to a first minister's conference and every single premier came up to me and said, it didn't matter what their political stripe was. They were all pissed with Alberta because Alberta takes this position that we are a nation within the country. We always point the fingers at Quebec, right? Oh, Quebec, Quebec, Quebec, Quebec, Quebec. But we're just as bad. We're out there doing, you know, spending all the money. We're flashing around our oil money and buying doctors and buying nurses. And now we're down in Mar-a-Lago trying to buy our way out of a trade embargo, our trade sanctions. This is ridiculous. If I was one of the other premiers, it doesn't matter if I share the word conservative in the title, I'd be absolutely furious. You cannot put the needs of one province ahead of the Confederation. And Danielle Smith is doing that. She is desperately, desperately trying to keep oil out of this trade sanction. And I think, number one, that's just a huge mistake. It's the only Trump card we have, forgive the phrase. And for

Carter 21:21

for Danielle Smith to wield it, it's just an

Carter 21:24

an abomination. And I'm sure the other premiers are very, very angry.

Zain 21:30

Corey, I'm going to ask you the premier question in a second. Would this have happened if Justin Trudeau was still the full

Zain 21:35

full-on non-lame-duck prime minister? minister i

Corey 21:37

i fully believe it would have right picking up a little bit on what steven just said one of the situations that might be coming at us like a freight train like just just imagine that uh oil is exempted and otherwise the 25 tariff goes in if

Corey 21:53

if you're the canadian prime minister you're talking to the premier of ontario premier of quebec aren't you i mean at least a little tempted to say too

Corey 22:00

too bad so fucking sad like we're just ending exports of oil and gas to the the united states as our retaliatory measure i mean

Corey 22:07

mean and then what the hell are we in and and this goes back to my point of floated

Zain 22:11

floated already yeah well

Corey 22:13

well and what kind of traps are we setting for ourselves as a nation and this goes back to my the best case scenario for smith might

Corey 22:19

might be the worst case scenario for canada because it creates all sorts of little time bombs across this nation of ours and ultimately i just i firmly believe we hang together or we fall together and uh this This does not look like hanging together. So,

Zain 22:32

So, Corey, can I stick with you on this? Zoom into Alberta for a second. Again, so best case scenario for Smith, how

Zain 22:39

how does the politics in Alberta play out for her, especially with the opposition NDP and otherwise, right? We have an opposition NDP? This

Corey 22:47

This is the first I'm hearing about. I'm

Zain 22:49

I'm shocked. Well, talk to me about that, both in terms of where the NDP should be on this, but also in your mind, but also what this means for Smith. because there's many Albertans, I'm not saying a majority, but we've talked about this many times on this show, that there's many Albertans who pretty much care about the oil and gas issue, and that's it. And that might be a limited sort of worldview. But she'll look like a legend to them. And what does that kind of mean for the politics in this province?

Corey 23:15

Well, of course, she's going to look like a fucking legend if she continues to go unchallenged on this, as she has been for the past month by the official opposition here. This is incredibly frustrating to me for a couple of reasons. But let me throw a couple on the table right now. There seems to be this sense that you are only subject to the weather if you're the Alberta NDP. You're sitting there and saying, is this an issue? Oh, right now the premier looks pretty good on it. I guess I'm not going to swing on it. You've got to make a fucking, you make the swing. You make the weather. You're the official opposition. You got to go out there and you signal to all of your allies and all of your partners, whether official or not, that this is an issue you're going to stand on. This is an issue you're going to fight on. If you don't do that, of course they're going to fucking win on it. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if you're not willing to stand up and say something. And frankly, if they had stood up and said something two weeks ago and created a little bit of pressure on the premier not to go to the inauguration, I seriously doubt the premier would have gone to Mar-a-Lago, right? So here we are because we have an opposition that's decided to hold their fire until way too fucking late, frankly. The second problem they have is that in politics, things drift towards 50-50. And in December, we know on this issue of Canada and the United States, I'm not saying we're going to get there overnight. I just want to say that before I even say that. But we know 80% of Albertans want to be Canadians. 20%, they're willing to entertain this US offer, right? How

Corey 24:35

How often are you handed an 80-20 issue in politics? Like, holy fuck, people. You know, there's one thing to say, we want to have a message track, we want to drive a message, we want to drive a conversation. But when someone offers you a boatload of cotton candy, you don't say no, right? You go and you say, okay, well, this is a great issue for us to move on. And again, that's going to be diminishing. And if you don't fight for it, it's going to get down to a 50-50 issue faster rather than later. You got to fucking stand up and you got to say something. And then, I mean, I guess the final point here is, do you stand for nothing?

Corey 25:10

Are we not a little bit concerned about this? And I don't

Corey 25:14

don't know. I mean, I find it just incredibly frustrating. And like, everybody's going to have to decide their own lines, their own, is this like, I guess, actually, let me back that up a little bit here.

Corey 25:25

There are a lot of times we've said on this podcast, man, I believe in that issue, but it's a total dog. So they can't go there because the greater good, the

Corey 25:32

greater good is winning the election.

Corey 25:35

is not one of those issues. This is an 80-20 issue in your favor.

Corey 25:41

The greater good for Danielle Smith would be to shut up about this. But that's not going to be the case if you don't hold her to account. Carter, what's

Zain 25:47

what's your take on this in terms of how this plays with her from a political perspective in Alberta? If she goes with the Team Alberta approach, what does that kind of look like?

Carter 25:59

Well, it means that she's going to continue to appeal to a small group of people. And that small group of people are going to be those heavily invested in the oil and gas industry. You know, it sounds sometimes like it's the largest issue, the largest group. But as Corey's pointed out a number of times, the number of people actually employed in that area actually continues to drop. And

Carter 26:21

And we should be playing for the entire country, not for one specific interest group. And I just don't understand how that's not seen. And where the opposition is when they have the opportunity to stand up and be heard on an 80-20 issue. I mean, that's just, Corey's

Carter 26:40

Corey's completely right. How many 80-20 issues do we get?

Carter 26:45

very few. Because most of the time when there's an 80-20 issue, I mean, even fucking Pierre Polyev is saying that this is something that shouldn't be followed. Right? Even Pierre Polyev is saying that Canada is not going to be the 51st state. but

Carter 26:57

danielle smith's down there doing we don't even know because

Carter 27:01

because we're not even sure that she was in a real meeting i'm

Carter 27:04

i'm just i don't know what i don't know what else to say zane i'm just absolutely fizzled

Zain 27:16

fine fabulous or fucked i like that and he's just a fizzled frustrated flummoxed carter Talk to me about help her. So I asked you about help her age her meeting. Well, help her age her meeting. Well, meeting in

Zain 27:29

in the Alberta context, what would she need to do so that if the NDP get active on this, there, there, there is a path for her to still look good and maintain political support. point the

Carter 27:39

the ndp has never understood the economics of canada right the economics of this province that's what i would say if i was if i was working for her but

Carter 27:48

but the ndp needs to stand up and say sometimes you know this isn't about economics the economics of this are actually uh going to be tragic for all albertans because if if this continues the entire country starts to to just to fall apart and we can't the economic disaster that would be the canada the canadian confederation falling apart is is heads and tails above the disaster of of losing just the oil and gas and we're not going to lose the oil and gas industry either we if we think we're going to export less we might export less but we're going to get a much you know the higher price even if the vast vast

Zain 28:27

vast majority of our exports go to the u.s of

Carter 28:29

course they're still going to buy they're

Carter 28:32

the united states is going to find out that supply and demand works right and as long as the demand is there, the supply will find them. The 25% tariff, it's still going to be, our product is still going to be a lot cheaper than a lot of other products. And these oil and gas, the oil and gas economy will continue.

Zain 28:49

Corey, help me craft the NDP pathway here, the Alberta NDP pathway, I should say, without looking like you're against oil and gas, and giving her the easy sort of mantle of defender of the sector yeah

Corey 29:05

yeah i mean this is like the marshmallow test you familiar with the marshmallow test no i'm not okay you put a marshmallow in front of a kid and you tell them hey if they don't eat it for what is it five minutes even then you get two marshmallows and and it's really supposed to talk about whether they have the impulse control in order to get something bigger

Corey 29:22

in a not too distant time frame well they're we're failing the marshmallow test because yes if we manage to avoid tariffs in the short term a we've created that tension within confederation but b we have trained donald trump that when he says jump we say how high i mean that was already my concern when we were talking about defending the border against a thing that wasn't happening i wasn't yeah you know materially we have but my god i just i yearn for those days at this particular moment you know before economic annexation was was the thing that was on the table here yeah

Corey 29:51

yeah and you know i think if i'm the opposition ndp i say you

Corey 29:57

you know you win through strength and i find it unbelievable that danielle smith who would be the first to say that and acknowledge that when we're talking about you know within canada relationships cannot see that when dealing with a man like donald trump and you have to ask yourself why and you have to ask her whose side is she on at this particular moment and frankly i would i'd throw that dust up and i would say you know are you on team canada danielle because it seems to me team canada is called team canada not team alberta within a canada that can sink or float i don't really care and i you know I would just really go pretty hard on that. Because what she's going to say, and you started with saying, how do you kind of protect this against NDP assaults, is she's going to say, no, I've always said we're an independent nation. I've always said we're a strong economy. We've got to be respected in that sense. But I'm going to fight for Canadian oil and gas. And, you know, and I just, I think that that is where she's going to try to go. And you get ahead of that. I do also want to say another thing that Stephen is not wrong about, like we shouldn't be like indifferent about, but there is maybe a little bit more time in some senses than people realize or appreciate because even if a 25% tariff was thrown on Canadian oil, Canadian

Corey 31:05

Canadian oil is very heavy. Like Western Canadian Select, you know, is a heavy oil. It's got a high sulfur content. Oil is not really a fungible good in the sense that I can just send heavy oil to a light refinery or light oil to a heavy refinery. And there are only so many sources of oil like ours in the world. It's basically, it's

Corey 31:24

it's like us in South America, but you know, you can't tool things that quickly. quickly and so they're going to need that oil still because you can't you can't fix a refinery to use a different type of input that rapidly so we've got a little bit of time on this and in the meantime it'll

Corey 31:40

it'll be really disruptive to the u.s market so my suspicion is they'll still have to buy there'll be a bit of chaos we'll lose a bit of money there but you know it's going to have to end up somewhere in between and ultimately that will put an awful lot of pressure on it so let's let's not be loose about it.

Corey 31:56

But Stephen's not wrong. The Americans will likely still have to buy our oil for quite some time into the future simply because of the mechanics of the oil and gas industry.

Zain 32:05

Carter, two other groups that I want to assess very quickly on the Danielle Smith visit before we move on to the other person in the West, Christy Clark, that we wanted to talk about in this segment. Carter, Doug Ford. We talked about on our previous episode that Doug Ford could be triggering an election. He's, of course, the head of this premier's group. He's He's kind of been their spokesperson and is the chair of this group. When I'm Doug Ford and I see what happened in Mar-a-Lago this weekend, does this give me any strategic fodder to help my own political cause at all?

Carter 32:40

I don't think so. I don't think so. I think that this is one of those things where someone just pissed on your shoes. And when someone pisses on your shoes, it's pretty hard to create a positive political outcome from it. Or

Zain 32:52

it as a proof

Zain 32:55

of a necessity of something. This

Carter 32:56

This is a communications vehicle for Nahed Nenshi and the NDP in Alberta. It is not a communications vehicle for the federal liberals or the federal— That was my

Zain 33:07

my second question here.

Carter 33:08

I think that this is pissing on Trudeau's feet. It's pissing on Doug Ford's feet. It's pissing on the rest of the premier's feet. but

Carter 33:16

it's super hard to take someone pissing on you and turning it into a positive unless

Carter 33:22

unless you're really watching the first episode of uh of billions that's

Zain 33:31

do you want to explain that to people just

Carter 33:32

just started watching billions fantastic you just started watching

Zain 33:35

watching billions you just started yeah

Carter 33:37

yeah i just started can you believe damien

Zain 33:38

damien lewis is british can't

Carter 33:39

can't even believe it unbelievable he's

Carter 33:41

he's got the most

Zain 33:42

most new yorker everything about him and then you're like oh wait this is a guy from loved

Carter 33:46

loved him in band of brothers too loved him yeah

Zain 33:50

good season one of homeland you might be

Carter 33:52

season two certainly not season two there's

Zain 33:56

there's an obvious reason for that yeah

Zain 33:57

if you watched homeland okay

Zain 33:59

hey cory um same question as carter yeah

Zain 34:02

yeah ford and his election and

Zain 34:05

and the liberal candidates which we'll get to in a second and their leadership,

Zain 34:11

any strategic value for any of them to make hay directly,

Zain 34:15

directly, indirectly out of what Smith did this weekend?

Corey 34:19

No, I think this is a bit of a shield issue for them rather than a sword one. If I'm the NDP or the Liberals in Ontario, I'm saying, what are you doing there? You know, and maybe needling him a bit during the election. Sorry, what are you doing there, Doug

Zain 34:31

Doug Ford? Like, do you manage

Corey 34:32

manage this? Yeah, you've got to talk to Daniel Smith. smith you got to get everybody on the same team but

Corey 34:38

but even that is i think somewhat limited like it's hard to imagine a provincial election hinging on doug ford i

Corey 34:45

i i don't know i mean like doug ford not taking daniel smith to a task on that that's in some ways you

Corey 34:50

you say that's the prime minister's job no

Corey 34:52

no and like here's

Zain 34:53

here's the reason i threw ford into there is is he's been trying to seek a mandate amidst a lack of leadership yeah right and so to me like this is kind of another proof point of like shit's hit the fan we need an election like i need a mandate to fucking run the show and we can't have shit like this that's kind of what i was thinking in in the in the broadest sense to even use daniel smith as a domestic ontario-based proof point i don't know if it's a good idea clearly neither of you think it is or has well

Corey 35:19

well no actually understanding that's what you're saying i i don't think it even needs to be explicit i think you you've created an environment if you're daniel smith that it starts to look a little bit more like everybody's for for themselves. And so it

Corey 35:32

just increases that urgency in Ontario saying, you know, we need a plan. We need to be able to stand up for Ontario industries. We can't rely on the federal government to stand up for us alone. Obviously, I'll continue to work with whoever the next prime minister is, but we're, you know, I'm here to defend Ontario. And I need a mandate for the tens of billions of dollars in retaliation that I might need to do.

Zain 35:53

Carter, finish us off on this, and you may have already answered this, but going unchallenging, I started the segment saying I'm a bit mixed on what I saw with Daniel Smith, because, you know, after the segment, I'm convinced that, you know, we're all on the same page. But starting this segment, I was a bit mixed. I'm like, I was kind of impressed that she got to meet the President of the United States. I'm like, what else should she be doing? No, no, like, let me get to the question.

Zain 36:14

Where do you think this lands with people unchallenged? Does it land in like the world where I was at being like, like a bit like wishy-washy on it, but like, I think I know where I'm at. But where do you think this kind of lands with the Alberta sort of electorate?

Carter 36:29

Well, I think this lands like someone who goes down to L.A. and takes a picture of themselves in a restaurant with a famous star behind them, and says, I met Kevin Spacey today. Probably a bad example. Probably not the world's best example. Good one, Spacey's taking a comeback.

Carter 36:46

the perfect example. Do it again, do it again,

Zain 36:46

again, and use Armie Hammer this time.

Carter 36:48

I'm not, you know, I'm taking a picture, and it's Justin Baldoni. No, that's probably not the right... anyways what my point is is that there's a there's a star behind you and you say who who actually introduced premier smith to don to donald trump it appears to be and it may not be but it appears to be kevin o'leary who introduced uh daniel smith to premier trump this is the equivalent of going to your best friend's house and having him introduce you to that cool boy across the street this is bullshit if

Carter 37:20

if that's how you

Zain 37:23

i understand that if that's how you genuinely feel most albertans will receive this if they see

Carter 37:28

the ndp chose to fucking message it that way it would even be better cory

Corey 37:34

cory what do you think i

Corey 37:35

i think unchallenged you're gonna have two groups of people you're gonna have you're gonna have three groups of people but you're gonna have two big groups of people one is gonna say yeah premier's doing stuff for us that's awesome and they're going to be really really happy that she did it and i think that's going to be a pretty good chunk of the population because again it's not like she went down there to say i'd like to be the 51st state she went down there arguably to defend alberta's interests one with one would think but i carter makes a good that's all of the i mean i don't know i mean that's that's certainly the vibe and um and then there's another group who's going to be like i don't know how i feel about this this doesn't feel great like it's a premier meeting meeting with a guy that we don't like because albertans even they don't like donald trump like his past transgressions

Zain 38:19

transgressions we haven't mentioned one six we haven't mentioned all those other things that like you know this is not just about a guy who wants to annex us there's like a bunch of like other things that um i mean many

Zain 38:30

disqualify absolutely for legitimacy

Corey 38:33

don't feel good about it i'm not sure he's there i'm not sure she should be there talking to him this doesn't feel quite right is

Corey 38:40

is this allowed or should we have premiers doing this and um i don't think that group's going to take much to tip them into active opponent group but i do think that those two groups are bigger than the third group which is people who are going to say this is improper i think this opens the door to a you know a really dangerous you

Corey 38:59

know hallway for canada to go into people like me on that sense i guess right i don't know that that's going to be that i actually think your reaction is more if anything it's probably underselling how popular it is with albertans i think unchallenged it'll be popular but i think it is one of those things that wouldn't take too much challenging to make unpopular i think there's a huge group of people sitting there waiting to be told what the problem is or like like i mean you mean like a week

Corey 39:27

like two weeks could

Corey 39:28

it's now 9 19 at night we haven't seen it yet you know but they could could have and they should have and i think they should i mean the problem is always i mean today in like the go forward sense i get what you're saying but i you know the problem always with this is if you wait a week before you look like you've got a principled emotional response it looks like a calculating bloodless response and so the longer they wait on this and i think they've already waited up an amount that's damaging their response the worse it is like they should have hit They should have hit the register the minute this came out and said, this is nuts. Okay, we've just all got to calm down. This is not how we manage things. And frankly, this is not how Danielle Smith has ever shown that she's managed things in the past. What is so different and special about Donald Trump that she's willing to take economic threats and respond with groveling? You know, I mean, I think there are ways you could do that as the NDP, but

Corey 40:22

but your ability to do that diminishes with every hour that passes from the act to when you actually say something.

Zain 40:28

Carter, let's move on to Christy Clark. Can we do that? Can we take a hard pivot to the liberal leadership race?

Carter 40:33

Well, I didn't vote in the conservative leadership.

Zain 40:37

Oh, well, thank you for letting us know. You didn't vote for Jean Charest. You weren't one of the 10 people to vote

Carter 40:41

vote for Jean Charest. I wasn't voted for one of the 10 people who voted for Jean Charest. I

Corey 40:45

feel like you did, though. Did

Corey 40:47

Did you? Don't we have the receipts in the strategist's Discord I can just drop?

Zain 40:52

Yeah. We have a 1995-looking database that we can screen cap and throw all over Twitter. What's

Carter 40:57

What's going on? This is turning very negative for me. Hey,

Zain 41:02

Hey, okay. So, Carter, listen. We now know the rules. $350,000 entry. Let me run through the rules. You guys can jump in on this, too, because I think you've... Didn't

Carter 41:09

Didn't we do the rules in advance? Yeah, we were pretty close. Basically say everything that

Carter 41:13

that was going to happen. Yeah, so you were

Zain 41:14

were close-ish on the entry fee. It's high, but it's not 500K high. It's 350 high. Still high, right? I kind of said it would be lower than 500K. I know. Okay, so great. Carter, you didn't win on the deadline.

Zain 41:28

deadline. You got shorted by like 15, 17 days. The membership cutoff deadline, I mean, sorry. That is coming up Jan 27, so 15 days, 14 days?

Carter 41:38

No, it's a jam. It's going to be fast. 14

Zain 41:41

14 days to sell memberships. That's assuming you're in today. Yeah. Right? Which, like, nobody is. Right. Which I don't understand at all. Okay, I'm going to get to that. I'm confused by that, too. I'm surprised we saw no activity this weekend. I'm very surprised we saw no activity this weekend in terms of a launch. Jan 23, you have to announce that you're in by Carter. Everything wraps up by March 9th. Sorry, I don't have it in this. Yeah, March 9th. You're right. You remembered it very well. well

Zain 42:08

350 to enter i believe is it 400 spending cap during the race i

Corey 42:15

think it's gonna be hard to spend that money

Zain 42:16

money in that time

Zain 42:17

yeah so anyways that's where we're at christy clark uh one of the candidates one of the what you'd call what's the media at least seems to be getting their head around the top three she seems to be one of the top three with carney and freeland in the in the mix um goes on the house cbc pre-records an interview that that airs this weekend, but comes out on Friday, in which she says, I was never a member of the Conservatives, I never got my ballots, etc. If I did, the Conservatives are manufacturing this. And then, of course, the same interviewer, Catherine Cullen, goes on Power and Politics, and they read Canadian press articles where she says, I've gotten my ballot, I'm ready to vote, I'm excited. Podcast interviews where she says, I've joined to help Jean Charest. She then comes up with some cleanup on Twitter, said, no, shit, I fucked that up, paraphrasing, but I'm always gonna... Yeah.

Zain 43:05

No, I mean, like, pretty much

Carter 43:06

much word for word. Yeah.

Zain 43:09

And then ultimately saying, listen, I always stand up against Pierre Polyev. And that's what I'm contemplating doing again, this time joining the liberals.

Zain 43:16

Carter, what's the bigger sin here? Is it that the cleanup wasn't great? Is it the fact that she's, I mean, let's

Zain 43:22

let's just give her the moment. Like, I'm not going to try to re-engineer how she does the moment better. She fucked up the moment. Let's go there on after. How did you think of the cleanup? And what do you think this kind of means for her for her chances uh in this extremely truncated race i

Carter 43:38

i mean i i don't know what impact it's going to have on her chances i there's a school of thought that says oh man when you screw up this badly coming out of the gate i'm not sure how this badly it is um i think that it was absolutely a misstep i

Carter 43:54

i think that she'd want to do over if she was given the opportunity But

Carter 43:58

I'm not sure that people were hinging their

Carter 44:00

their support of Christy Clark, who would be, I think, the most right of the liberals.

Carter 44:07

I'm not sure that that's going to be the definitive reason that people will or will not support her. um i'm sure she wishes she hadn't done it i'm sure she just said listen i've been fighting if she'd said i've been fighting against pierre polyev since before he was the liberal before he was the conservative leader and i did that by trying to support my old liberal premier colleague mr jean charre i i think that that would have been fine but instead she fucked it up bad

Carter 44:37

bad bad prep work bad bad uh bad

Carter 44:41

bad lines whatever however it was done how it i think it's in the past i don't think it's going to really impact her in the long term so

Zain 44:49

so you think she goes still

Carter 44:52

oh yeah have you met her ego i mean it makes it makes cory's ego look like inconsequential

Zain 44:58

cory she goes okay let's let's uh and we'll get to why she hasn't launched or anyone hasn't launched a second year. How harmful and give me a analysis on the cleanup, Corey.

Corey 45:12

have to imagine that her entire selling point was that she, A, is somebody who is like more towards the, you know, the right of the liberals. And B, it's that she's a competent political organizer. And what baffles me about both her response and then her cleanup is that, you know, She managed to somehow – she

Corey 45:31

she attempted to undercut one and ultimately ended up undercutting the other. Like, why she wouldn't have just gone on there and said, yeah, you know, I mean, Stephen, your line would have been perfect, right? I've

Corey 45:43

been fighting Pierre for a while. I supported a former provincial liberal leader for the PC leadership or the – sorry, the conservative leadership. I'm not sorry about that. I know a lot of – now it's me talking again. I know a lot of liberals who purchased memberships in the CPC to vote for Jean Charest. Obviously, not nearly enough to change the outcome, but it wasn't exactly considered this horrible sin. I know a lot of new Democrats who did it, frankly. I don't think she would have lost anything saying, yeah, I bought a membership to vote against Pierre Polyab.

Corey 46:15

Like, where do you go from there? Well, but like, how do you call yourself a lifelong liberal? When you have to technically denounce

Zain 46:19

denounce your liberal membership to get a conservative one, etc, etc, etc.

Corey 46:22

Yeah, I, you know, I'm not sorry about that at all. I did what I did to try to stop Pierre Pauillet, and that's what I'm doing today, too. Like, you just own that shit, right? But then to say, like, no, it's not here, I absolutely deny it. There's so much coverage. Jenny Byrne posting this screen grab of their, like you said, Zane's system that looks like it comes

Corey 46:41

comes with Windows 3.1, you know? It doesn't work, whatever it is. It's

Corey 46:46

It's pretty old. Also, I mean, I know political parties are exempt from a lot of our privacy laws. But wow, I mean, the idea that somebody in a party might just post your party membership profile is just pretty gross, I think. But that's an aside. You know, like you just you did that to yourself. And then the cleanup to say like you misspoke or whatever, just undercuts this idea that you're a competent political organizer. And so you've done some damage to your brand. And

Corey 47:13

And that's why it hurts more than like a regular gaffe. We've talked about this in the past. Whether a gaffe lands or not depends a lot on whether it undercuts your core proposition, or it reinforces a big negative that people have about you. And you managed to do both somehow. You look like you were hiding that you were a conservative and maybe not really a liberal. And you ultimately also just didn't look very competent. it the only way she could have made it worse is if she tried to do it in french and she fucking butchered that too so so it was a bad day for her there's no question about what do you think of the cleanup though cory

Zain 47:45

cory what do you think of the cleanup i

Corey 47:47

i don't think i don't think it was cleanup i think it was like saying oh this floor is covered in shit and then sticking a mop in a toilet full of shit and smearing it all over the floor like like to suggest that this was like a misspeaking was ridiculous you just say i actually don't even know what i would say at that point but But I think you just have to fucking own it and say, yeah, I mean, I don't know what I was thinking. Of course I joined. Like, that was a ridiculous thing for me to say. Would you have done it differently?

Zain 48:13

differently? Like, not a tweet or would you have done a video or something else? No.

Corey 48:17

No. I think a tweet's fine. A tweet's absolutely fine.

Corey 48:19

You don't want to – well, like, you want video of you looking like a fool? No, it's just – the one nice thing about Twitter and Blue Sky is it gives you a really low effort. Out. Low. Yeah, low effort out. I guess that's the way to put

Zain 48:31

put it. So, talk to me about this. Carter, I'll start with you.

Zain 48:35

Before we get into why no one has launched, and you guys can break it down for me in terms of what- I heard

Carter 48:41

that they were waiting to find out if Steve McKinnon was in or not.

Zain 48:46

So you watch. Why are you doing that? All hell is going to

Carter 48:48

to break loose now.

Zain 48:49

McKinnon is, I'm just going to break the news on the show, he is a liberal MP.

Carter 48:55

Sorry, I don't know if the people knew that. No, I think the people

Zain 48:58

people knew that. He's actually

Zain 48:59

He's actually a minister. Okay. Yeah. Wow, now you broke some news to me. Yeah, later.

Zain 49:06

we're just breaking news to each other this is huge this is

Zain 49:10

is why people listen

Zain 49:15

before we get to why no one has launched carter

Zain 49:17

carter talk to me about what's actually possible in two weeks so we know the point system remains correct right chance the point system remains point system 100 points per riding registered

Zain 49:27

registered liberal they've tightened that up a bit it's an an online process. What can one actually do in two weeks, Carter, like in terms of selling? Like, let's say I was in today. I was the first one in, right? What could, as organizers, as strategists, like, this is probably giving you heart palpitations, but two weeks is not a lot of time. Would you, what can one actually do? And I know I'm asking that in the broadest sense, but like, define for me how you're even thinking about selling memberships with such a short runway. way.

Carter 49:56

Corey will actually have the stats on this, but what is there? Something like 80% of your actual memberships coming in the last two weeks in a leadership race. You'll have a buzz at the start. And then at the very end, all hell breaks loose. That's the nature of the game. So, I mean, I remember running a nine month, I think, like we could have had a baby, Alison Redford and I. That came out wrong. That

Corey 50:17

That was a weird phrasing. I

Carter 50:19

I did that backward.

Carter 50:20

Anyways, a baby could

Carter 50:22

could have have been born in the time that we ran the the alice in redford leadership campaign and i bet you we sold at least half the memberships in the last 10 days um

Carter 50:31

um because that's when people will pay attention so when you say what can you do well you can do quite a bit and and you don't have to do a lot compared

Carter 50:40

compared to you know like um you don't have to have membership numbers of hundreds of thousands you just need to do better than the other person right so if everybody's got the same two weeks, then all you have to do is do better than the other person. You don't have to worry about whether or not you're, you know, achieving something bigger and better than that. Just beat the other person.

Zain 51:02

Corey, what can you get done in two weeks? Like, Carter makes a good point about the last two-week sprint. We've talked about that on other leadership campaigns. But it's the only two weeks. It's not the last two

Zain 51:13

It's the only two weeks. So does that change the dynamic at all in terms of how you would be thinking about this if you were on a campaign right now?

Corey 51:18

hundred percent. I mean, so yes, there's the buzz at the start and there's all hell breaks loose at the end. This is the one and the same, right? You have basically 18 days or whatever it was from when these rules were announced until the end of the signup period here, which, I mean, I'll just throw it out there right now, is why I can't for the life of me understand why all of these people are waiting to announce their campaigns until next week. They lose a third of their membership sales. Is that what we're hearing? That their next

Zain 51:43

next week is like this

Corey 51:44

this kind of week? And, like, Carter all of a sudden doesn't want to put gossip out out there, but I've heard rough dates for everybody's launch, if they're going to be in. Right. And they're, like, they're into the middle of next week, you know? Like, it's fucking lunacy to me that- Does

Zain 51:58

Does that just imply that they're just relying on existing memberships? Like, that's the core strategy of some of these people?

Zain 52:04

think that that's got

Corey 52:05

got to be part of the thinking, but what is an existing member at this point? Like, the way the liberal rules are is they have this registered liberal system. is

Zain 52:13

is like not a member just to be clear yeah

Corey 52:15

yeah well so there's this register system but there's kind of a two-step registration here and so i don't i don't fully get it myself at this moment but i'll tell you this it's

Corey 52:24

it's it's not you don't want to lose that time and when you only have two weeks every day matters a lot i don't for the life of me understand why on the friday after the rules were announced on the thursday mark carney didn't walk to a microphone bernie sanders style

Zain 52:41

style and just Or

Corey 52:42

just say, I'm in. I'm in, and we hit the ground now. The work starts now, because we don't have time. We don't have time, Zane. We don't have time as a party. We don't have time as a country. The work starts now. So if you want to save this country, if you want to save this party, you go and you register 10 friends today, and you get them to register 10 friends the day after that, and you get them to register 10 days the day after that, and we go, because that is how we win. We can't waste time. I'm with Corey on this,

Zain 53:11

this, Carter. What could be like, and you and I, Carter, you've sold me increasingly as we've had this show for many years on the low importance of a launch. You've actually been at the school, been like, launch it, just get it out of the way. What are these candidates waiting for? Is it caucus endorsements? Like, what are they lining up for? Is it the money stage gated so they don't need to have 350k to just drop tomorrow? Like, that's not a thing, to be clear, like, despite the fact they need that money. so what could these people be waiting for carter in terms of going i

Carter 53:43

gotta be honest why don't you why don't we see no one can i

Carter 53:46

i be honest with you i loved

Carter 53:48

loved cory's walk to a microphone strategy

Carter 53:52

i i may have even i was telling someone to walk to

Carter 53:54

to the microphone strategy

Zain 53:55

bernie sanders style walk

Zain 53:56

across the the whatever just be like i'm in fuck off i'm

Carter 53:58

i'm fucking microphone you know i get it what what are people seeing in the launch i i don't know i don't buy into to the launch strategy idea i don't think that you

Carter 54:09

you know there's there's these huge great launches that fundamentally change a race one could argue that this that this two-week race uh to to sign up members uh or supporters or whatever the hell it is uh cory whatever bastardized system cory

Carter 54:28

cory has laid upon the country uh

Carter 54:31

uh you know whatever that is i mean why would you wait do Do you actually think that a great launch will change your trajectory? Maybe, maybe. I mean, I'm not in that room, so I don't know how people are thinking. But if it was me, if I was the grand poobah of all things, I think I would have walked to a microphone.

Zain 54:51

Corey, I should mention that there are two liberals that have suggested they're going to run, Chandra Arya, the sitting MP, and Frank Bayless, a former MP.

Zain 55:01

If you're one of the, what I'm going to use as a shorthand, the top three, the rumored candidates, how concerned are you about them given the compressed timeline for both membership, rules, everything? No idea if these folks can hit the money requirements, etc. But let's just assume they can. How worried are you if you're someone who wants this job desperately as Carney, Freeland, or Clark about these two individuals?

Corey 55:23

individuals? Not remotely. I see them as opportunities. There's no way they're going to have national networks. works they just don't have the profile and name recognition and they're not going to build it in a couple of weeks frankly they can't fly to every fucking place in a couple of weeks to build it like this is how compressed this particular time period is but i do see them as an opportunity because they might have strength in montreal for example if you're bayless i mean that seems like a stretch even if i'm going to be frank when you say strength yeah yes but even if it's just a few more points that you can get and say hey if i can get their supporters to put me as number two when they go out first ballot as they sure as fuck will right

Corey 55:58

right i'll uh i'll pick it up if they're there at all and if they're not then their members are up for grabs or their supporters are up for grabs and we can move on the

Carter 56:05

the numbers on a three-way race saying are fucked because

Carter 56:08

because a three-way race two and three decide to get together it's all over for number one unless number one wins on the first ballot like

Carter 56:15

but you do a five-way a five-way race four and five roll up to first suddenly things may look totally different.

Zain 56:23

Wow, we're back to the roll-up. Yeah, good roll-up. We love a good roll-up on the strategy. Stephen Carter roll-up. Hey, listen, Carter, talk to me about this. The point system incentivizes campaigning in liberal wastelands.

Zain 56:38

What does that mean if you're, well,

Zain 56:41

well, if you're the West, I think the answer is clear. You're more important, I guess, now than you historically have been in a liberal context. But what does that mean for these candidates as they're contemplating membership sales over the next two weeks? How would you be thinking about it? Or would you say like go to where you're strong versus trying to build where there's advantage and upside? How do you balance those two things, I guess is my question. I

Carter 57:03

I think that these candidates are going to have telephones surgically implanted in their head, and they're just going to be working. Who knows three guys in northern Saskatchewan is going to be the call. Who's got a guy out in western Manitoba that we can go and grab and see if they can't find 100 people? Some of these ridings, 20, 30, 40 people are going to vote and that's going to give you 100 points. So you're nuts not to make those phone calls. Same as

Zain 57:34

as Toronto Centre, for example. But

Carter 57:35

But they're not going to

Carter 57:36

to be hopping on a plane to go to Winnipeg. I

Carter 57:40

I would suspect you'll see people in the top five cities and then using a hub and spoke model where you'll have hubs and, you know, like Calgary will be a hub and then there'll be spokes out to the rural ridings from Calgary. The hub and spoke model will probably be the one that makes the most sense for organizing. recognizing.

Zain 58:02

Corey, how do you think about it with these point

Zain 58:04

point systems, the liberal wastelands that don't have many members in them? Are you leaning into that? Are you partially leaning into that and then going to where you think you could be strong and they're already liberals and persuading them? How do you think about this? I'm

Corey 58:18

I'm leaning hard into that. Stephen's absolutely right. You know one person, you give them a call and you get your team to make those preliminary preliminary calls first and identify some prospects. And if you end up being one of the four active liberals in Grand Prairie, then you're Christy Clark, you pick up the phone and you call those four active liberals and you try to turn one of them into an activist for you. You arm them with how they can sign up in a hurry, 20, 30 members out of their neighbors, give them ways they can walk through it and think about who might be available to become registered. And then there you go. Fuck, there's 100 points for you. Congratulations. The race goes on. Or maybe maybe not a hundred, but 70 of the hundred. That's incredible. Like you're doing great work. And so the work of the next couple of weeks will be how do you optimize your leader's time and how do you optimize your caller's time? And all of this is going to push people towards areas where the liberals are not particularly strong because it's less effort per point. And that's the way everybody's going to be thinking about this. What is the effort per point over the next bit? And if If they're not thinking about it this way, they don't deserve to be a leader, frankly.

Carter 59:24

Yeah, like if you're Sukh Dhaliwal, you're going to be working your ass off for the Surrey points, but there's going to be other rural British Columbia points that will be available that maybe a Parm Bains is going to go after. There's multiple ways to – first of all, are

Carter 59:38

are you not impressed that I named two visible minorities and pronounced their name properly? I

Corey 59:43

I mean, I would have been if you didn't then turn around and look at the explosion, right?

Zain 59:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like they did in Dave.

Zain 59:54

Great third act in Dave.

Zain 59:58

Corey, like, so you work that through. You've got two weeks to do it. Do you also, like Carter, feel like this is going to be a largely, can I use the term virtual campaign? Like a largely leaders hunker down and doing like phone calls? How do you like, I'm almost trying to get a flavor of what this looks like. Like, is it videos and virtual and maybe a debate or two? And like, that's about it. Are we going to, am I going to see Mark Carney in my neighborhood? Like, give me a sense of like what Canadians might expect here, at least what you think and how you'd strategize in terms of, and then triangulate that in terms of what Canadians might expect here.

Corey 1:00:35

Yeah. So let me just say, I actually think that right now the signs are that they're going to go through the regular leadership pageantry in a truncated fashion, that we get that even just from the sense that they want to do the launches and the debates

Corey 1:00:46

debates and maybe they'll Caucus endorsements,

Zain 1:00:48

endorsements, maybe, like lined up behind them. Caucus

Corey 1:00:51

endorsements. Well, we're already hearing Mark Carney will have, like, there was reported 30,

Zain 1:00:54

30, I think. Right, right, right. Standing

Zain 1:00:56

him and being like,

Corey 1:00:56

like, this guy. Maybe fewer, maybe more. Maybe it doesn't matter, because maybe caucus doesn't matter for leadership. Maybe the days mattered

Zain 1:01:01

the number of caucus endorsements.

Corey 1:01:02

endorsements. Maybe the days mattered more than the caucus meetings. But then, you know, the debates and the showing up in the various cities to say, I've gone from Vancouver to Calgary to Winnipeg, and, you know, the bullshit that they always do during a leadership review, and maybe they're going to do all of that. And

Corey 1:01:17

maybe that's a deeply suboptimal strategy. And I think back on my own experience here. And in 2008, I ran a leadership campaign for a fellow named Dave Taylor. Actually, that's when I first really got to know Stephen in

Corey 1:01:29

meaningful way. Yeah. And I was, you know, I was the guy who had come from the Federal Liberal Party. And I had built a fair bit of this liberal infrastructure in terms of communications and fundraising. And it was all, you know, I think it was built for a national party, right? And so then I tried to apply this to a party that had a much smaller membership base. And, you know, we were doing things that were, you know, I would argue, actually quite ahead of our time. We were doing innovative, custom mailouts, where based on what we knew about you, you're getting like totally different bundles of why you should vote for the guy. We were identifying all of these like, you know, caucus support, you know, we were doing everything that you're supposed to do. And then we lost because you know what happened? David Swan picked up the fucking phone, and he called everybody in the party like four times, and the party was not that big. And over the course of many months, that was pretty

Zain 1:02:20

pretty easy to do, right? And

Zain 1:02:23

could be entering that era where someone could become prime minister from a cubicle somewhere. This

Corey 1:02:27

my point. And so

Zain 1:02:28

so I think that people

Corey 1:02:30

people need to ask themselves always whether this is getting them the outcome that they want. And in my opinion, the optimal strategy for a campaign of this nature with such a short membership cutoff, and actually such a short period, is that virtual campaign. It's saying, my time is not well spent on an airplane. My time is not well spent showing up at a hall in like Northeast Calgary. We've all seen the fly in, fly out, right? Of course, yeah. Where, you know, we're going to meet 300 people who probably I could have gotten my lieutenants to organize and I could have called like a good chunk of them directly over the course of the time anyhow, right?

Corey 1:03:02

My sense is that. My sense is that the candidate who understands that is probably going to do better than the candidate that doesn't but the draw and the desire especially when you're running for prime minister is going to be very strong to put on a prime ministerial campaign to peacock a bit too to be like i can

Zain 1:03:19

can so and how does that impact carter from your perspective then how does that impact the best campaigner in the race and i believe this is a consensus amongst the three of us and christy clark someone who and maybe that's not a consensus me i don't speak for you i mean it might have been last week sure sure sure last week

Carter 1:03:35

week it looks a little different i how

Zain 1:03:38

does this impact someone like her, right? Like, where she's maybe, you know, we've talked about this before, the person that's good one-to-one versus one-to-ten versus one-to-a-thousand, one-to-a-hundred, right? Like, which political athleticism will be best applied here, Carter, amongst those three lanes I've just identified? And I'm using some of your examples that you've mentioned in the past. Christy Clark, to me, kind of seems like a good one-to-a-thousand person. I could be wrong. But which sort of political athleticism do you feel like is going going to be most valued here well

Carter 1:04:07

i don't think we're going to see any 3 000 person rallies in this campaign it's all going to be 200 person events and and small things like that so you still

Zain 1:04:16

still think we're going to still see 200 person events hey i think

Zain 1:04:19

think they'll see a few i

Corey 1:04:19

i think you'll see i think you'll see a 3 000 person rally because again i don't waste the time putting

Carter 1:04:24

putting together a 3 000 person i'm curious about

Corey 1:04:26

about both of these more than one of them does i'll bet you more than one but because

Zain 1:04:29

because it's strategic or because that's just what they think they should and need to do Because

Corey 1:04:34

Because they will say, that's

Corey 1:04:35

that's how we win. They'll say, we don't have a good command. Because like, look at the infrastructure, they've already lost so many days, it's not going to be set up. They're not going to well understand the membership base. They're going to believe that the existing members will need to be persuaded by shows of force. And yeah, they're going to do that. I absolutely believe they're going to do that. Carter,

Zain 1:04:53

Carter, defend that. Do you feel like you'd be surprised if you thought you saw a 3000 person? And Corey, I'll come to you in a second on the couple hundred people. You feel like that's going to happen too, don't you, Corey? Oh,

Corey 1:05:03

Oh, yeah, most certainly. And I'm not even saying I think it should.

Corey 1:05:07

I'm saying it will.

Zain 1:05:10

so it's interesting. Carter, do you feel like, if

Zain 1:05:13

if I summarize it this way, this might be a standard liberal seven-month presented

Zain 1:05:18

presented in five weeks? Or do you feel like that's actually going to fundamentally feel different?

Carter 1:05:23

I think it has to fundamentally feel different. Anybody who's playing... It has to or it will. I get the

Zain 1:05:27

the has to, right? And I get the strategist angle of has to, but will it that's what i'm more interested in like surely

Carter 1:05:34

surely to god there are going to be enough smart people around these campaigns to run this thing the way it needs to be run i'm

Carter 1:05:40

i'm quite confident that we're going to see huge um huge

Carter 1:05:44

huge plays by people who know what this campaign looks like and and when i say huge plays we may never even see them because

Carter 1:05:53

because the huge play that we're going to see right now is a surrogate doing a tour that

Carter 1:05:57

is a huge play in this campaign

Zain 1:06:02

explain that what do you mean by surrogate doing a tour and cory reacted but let carter

Zain 1:06:05

carter define it and then i'll let you take that ball from there uh

Carter 1:06:09

uh literally a surrogate uh someone deciding that they've got a uh a pathway in northern ontario and they hop in their car and they drive they're making telephone calls through northern ontario wherever they've got cell service and they're They're calling everybody. They're meeting with them and doing coffee shops. And they've met 20 people in this riding and 20 people in that riding and 20 people in the other riding. And they just keep going 20

Carter 1:06:34

20 by 20 by 20 on your behalf because it's not going to be, you know. Yeah. And

Corey 1:06:41

And identifying the five that you need to call and then really lock up.

Carter 1:06:46

And that becomes your primary campaign. And

Carter 1:06:48

And we'll never see that. We're not going to see the guy in the pickup truck driving across northern Saskatchewan to try and get that one riding, but that's 100 points.

Carter 1:07:01

You know, this thing is going to boil down to where can you get those 100 points cheap and easy, and cheap and easy includes using surrogates.

Corey 1:07:08

I'd like to react to this. Yeah, I mean, so I think that's super smart because you still have people on the ground who are going to have the jam that they're going to get people out to those coffee shops and identify it. But then you are going to find them and you're going to make sure that those follow-up calls are happening from the candidate or from the candidate's inner circle, whatever needs to occur in order to kind of lock up the sale and then push the further registrations or the further conversions as necessary here. And one of the things that became really clear, I think, in the course of this conversation to me, and especially when Stephen was just talking right now, the

Corey 1:07:41

the good campaigns are going to look like bad campaigns and vice versa, right? Because the people who are investing in that peacocking, as you say, that's – peacocking is a great metaphor because peacocks have these big feathers because they're an ostentatious show of wasting energy, you know? They are. They're saying, I am so healthy, I've got extra energy to burn on this, right? That's really dangerous if you actually don't have that energy to burn. And it's really fascinating, because we'll have to see how the dynamic unfolds with the existing supporters and the kind of the core liberal base that's there, because they might expect and want that Peacock. this is i'm

Zain 1:08:19

i'm so glad you mentioned i wanted to go here which is like there's a question i'm written here um and i've written three words for this entire episode just so people can can be impressed by how good i am at this um persuasion

Zain 1:08:32

does the persuasions if they don't do that how do you persuade do you do the david swan call the list and that's your that's your persuasion and you're not doing the big i watch me debate watch me debate really well and i should

Corey 1:08:44

should like How do you do that part of the job? Well, so again, I'm going to go back to that campaign because I think it might be more illustrative than people will want in this particular matter. But one of the things we did as Dave Taylor's campaign is we had this big, super long and elaborate thought piece about all of the changes that were going to be done to the party. We were by far the most polished of it. We definitely tried to show... Our whole strategy was we're going to show what a winning campaign looks like, and they're going to say, that's a winning campaign. That's going to take on the PCs. That's what we want. Yes,

Corey 1:09:12

Didn't fucking work. You know why? because David Swan worked the phones, and he called everybody. And sometimes that's all that's required. But there's going to be that argument and that push. And I'm not going to say that that campaign is going to be an entire repeat

Corey 1:09:26

repeat in this campaign here. So people are going to need to watch that. But I do wonder whether there's not going to be this seductive and overestimation of how much people care about that stuff. Well,

Zain 1:09:37

Well, what's also interesting, Carter, to get your reaction to this is that part of it could be seductive, but the other part, you can argue to yourself is strategic, because in mere minutes, we're going to have to fight a general election. So might as well get started on that and flex some of those skills. Can Mark Carney fucking debate? Can Christy Clark have command of French? These are just throwing examples out there, right? Like, well, if we don't test some of those peacocking things in this race, even though that's not strategic, in mere minutes, we're going to have a general election against Pierre Polyev, and then all of a sudden you realize, oh, shit, this guy was really good at making phone calls from a cubicle and not necessarily having the political campaign no and i mean you're totally right you're totally right don't have any time to get to know that like literally we might have days carter yeah

Carter 1:10:20

yeah but that's the way this is this cookie is going to crumble right like that's just the way it's going to go what do you want from us you want us to try and create a different campaign this is the campaign that the liberals have chosen this is the liberal this is the campaign that justin trudeau has foisted upon let me

Zain 1:10:36

me ask you let me ask you this this way you are running a campaign are you fine winning however you need to win even if that means you haven't stress tested any of the things that your candidate will need in a couple of weeks for a general election i'm

Carter 1:10:48

i'm sorry did you just say that you still win yeah okay i mean

Corey 1:10:55

mean are you in the same boat you're

Corey 1:10:57

you're in the same boat man like there's there's no way you're not i am in the same boat but i'm curious to just see if there's

Corey 1:11:02

there's any nuance that any of the three of us have yeah but i'll say this um here's

Zain 1:11:06

here's the nuance here's a thoughtful no

Corey 1:11:08

no there's no nuance it's it's more like there is a reason why parties don't have contests this short they

Corey 1:11:13

they they want to do the things you're talking about and at this point with just a couple of months and even that feeling long given the stakes that we talked about at the start of this episode for the country you

Corey 1:11:24

you know they just don't have the time and so sacrifices have to be made and i don't know what the nature of those sacrifices are at this point are people going to say oh no no we are are not going to do normal liberal leadership things. We're actually going to keep open minds and look at who can best win the election. I doubt that's 100% true. Are they going to say, well, we're going to do the classic signup thing? Because if that's the case, then that's going to push you to a different strategy. I don't know. I mean, nobody has done this before, right? And so I guess as much as we've made statements about what should be right now, I guess that the major, major advice maybe to wrap on here is people are going to need to be fucking alive to a situation that is very different and not actually just rely on how they did things in the past. They're going to need to really invest in data. They're going to need to be really thoughtful. They're going to need to bring good ideas, new ideas, and they've got to have some humility.

Corey 1:12:14

Nobody has done this before. There is no old wise man in the room. There is no old wise woman in the room. Nobody's fucking done this before. So let's see what they do. I

Zain 1:12:24

I think it's so fascinating that the most successful campaign ultimately could look look like the one that doesn't have their shit together from all the conventional campaign metrics. And it's just a bunch of people doing the groundwork without any of the sexy air war.

Carter 1:12:38

The one who puts 3,000 people in a room loses.

Zain 1:12:43

That's so interesting to me. Fuck, that's crazy. That is so interesting to me. Carter, let's leave that segment there. Moving on to our over, under, and our lightning round. It is almost your bedtime, and we want to leave you on a high note.

Carter 1:12:52

note. It's way past my bedtime. time.

Zain 1:12:54

Stephen Carter, are you in or out if the Liberals end up with three candidates in this race? If you're a Liberal, if you're a Liberal organizer, if you're someone who's partial to this party, are you in or out if the Liberals end up ultimately with the Carney-Freeland-Clark trio running in this race? I

Carter 1:13:08

I got my foot between the door and the doorstop. I'm neither in nor out. I'm disappointed

Carter 1:13:14

disappointed because I think that four or five makes a lot more sense than three-two. Um, but, uh, it appears that with the $350,000 and the, and the membership cutoff being in two weeks, um, I think that the musing of the also-rans is going to lead to a three-person race.

Zain 1:13:36

are you, your partials of the Liberals in this, in this case, in or out, uh, on three ultimately being the number of candidates that run for the Liberals? I

Corey 1:13:43

I think that's the right number. I'm actually fine with it. But it would have probably been nice if there was somebody who was considered more like this new, like, up-and-comer in the party. And you might still get that, right? I shouldn't say otherwise. You might end up with four, maybe, or maybe some weird splits, maybe some last-minute decisions go on here. But, look,

Corey 1:14:03

look, you have too many with this little time. We're not even going to – it's like when you pick up a book with too many characters. Canadians will just be like, who the fuck are all of these people? I don't fucking know, right? You've got to get it down to a reasonable amount. If only so, the story that you try to tell as a party makes

Corey 1:14:19

makes any sense to the audience. Thanks

Carter 1:14:21

Thanks a lot, George R.R. Martin. What a dick.

Corey 1:14:25

Too many characters, I would argue, Carter. Too

Corey 1:14:29

Yeah. Well, did you have a clue who any of them were before season two?

Corey 1:14:32

Like, I knew, like, Ned and he got killed. Spoilers for season one of Game of Thrones.

Carter 1:14:37

I think it's okay. It's 10 years ago now.

Corey 1:14:40

Okay. Damien Lewis does not fare

Carter 1:14:44

No, he does not. Just

Zain 1:14:48

Thank you very much. Yeah, no problem.

Zain 1:14:50

Carter, overrated, underrated? If

Zain 1:14:53

If the liberals end up with no francophone candidate?

Carter 1:14:57

Oh, that's interesting. I think it might be underrated. I think that this idea that they swap back and forth between anglophone and francophone, that may happen, but I don't think that that's a practice that one wants to encourage. And by not having a Francophone candidate, it's going to be really interesting to see how the, I don't know how many writings there are left in Quebec. Is it 77?

Carter 1:15:20

But however, that's a lot of points. And how those points are distributed is going

Carter 1:15:26

going to be very challenging if you don't have a Francophone candidate. did it carter

Zain 1:15:31

carter melanie uh cory i should say melanie jolie has said she's out yeah champagne has not said anything just yet if i'm not mistaken although rumors are that he might go back liberal side of things yeah

Zain 1:15:43

overrated underrated if the liberals don't end up with a francophone candidate um

Corey 1:15:47

um you know i don't know i go back and forth on this it really has been the convention and so i think if you're a quebec candidate you're staring down this idea that you

Corey 1:15:57

you know you're you're You're very unlikely to win just because there's this sense it's not your quote-unquote turn. But on the other hand, it does feel, especially if Christy Clark were to become leader, like you might have a really big Quebec problem if there's this sense that the party is just gone in Quebec. And, you know, on the flip side, I know that – I know Christy Clark's trying hard to court Melanie Jolie. jolie but like if you are somebody like a melanie jolie or a champagne and you endorse a christy clark you might immediately be the number two in the party so you know don't count never count quebec out like quebec politicians quebecers are so good at making themselves relevant to a contest but um you know i do

Corey 1:16:41

do think it will be it will feel weird especially with a you know with a candidate like christy clark who doesn't well

Corey 1:16:47

well we all need to see her french don't we like i i still I still haven't really seen that.

Zain 1:16:52

Yeah. I mean, I need to see it too now. I don't speak French, so I'll be easily impressed, but I also want to see it. Carter, overrated, underrated. Anita Anand saying she's out as a candidate for the liberal leadership race, but also saying she's out as running again.

Zain 1:17:12

Wow, that's pretty harsh.

Corey 1:17:15

I don't know why it's over to me, but...

Zain 1:17:18

Overrated, underrated. Anita Anand not running, and not running.

Zain 1:17:21

Sorry, who's Anita Anand again? Okay. Corey, and I'm going to end this with you.

Zain 1:17:27

Everything we know thus far, 14 days membership deadline, a few days before that to declare a candidacy, March 9th, it all wraps up.

Zain 1:17:36

Who does this leadership race thus far, from everything you could read, put all the pieces that you have taken, triangulate them together, who does it favor, and who's most best positioned for it?

Corey 1:17:49

I think the default resting position of the party favored Freeland.

Corey 1:17:54

I think she knew that, which is why, you know, Freeland's team was pushing pretty hard for something that most looked like the default resting state of the party. I think the current state of rules favor Clark. And the reason I think that they favor Clark is she's the only one who's been actively campaigning for months for the job. And with so little time, it

Corey 1:18:15

it will be tough for the others. Now, I want to be really clear, like a massive asterisk on that. I think the rules favor Clark. I don't think that means Clark's necessarily the one most likely to win.

Zain 1:18:25

Right. Carter, the question is about the rules, because those are the newest things to be rolled out. And just frankly, what we've seen in terms of who else is out, who else is not going, the dynamics that we've kind of experienced thus far and absorbed, who does the most recent developments favor? favor um

Carter 1:18:42

um actually dark horse candidate uh cory hogan uh it's gonna be massive it's gonna be epic

Corey 1:18:49

oh did you just soft launch my campaign right here the

Carter 1:18:52

the only launch you've had in the last 12 years has been soft launched we're

Zain 1:18:58

we're gonna leave it there that's a wrap on episode 1847 of the strategist my name is zane velge with me as always cory hogan steven carter and we shall see you next

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