Transcript
Zain
0:02
This is the Strategist episode 1860. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter. And he bails this time. Not enough spine, Carter. He doesn't have enough spine.
Carter
0:11
spine. Well, he may have said something about, you guys give me too much of a hard time. And I said, there's no such thing. No such thing as too much of a hard time. Never
Zain
0:19
Never said it to me.
Carter
0:20
He's not talking to you right now.
Zain
0:22
Oh, it's because he thinks I give him too
Carter
0:23
too much of a hard time. He's pretty angry about the whole, uh, uh, gravel situation. And, uh, what did you ask him about fluoride? Yeah. He's a little pissed about both of those. Well, he didn't
Zain
0:34
didn't have a good answer.
Carter
0:35
answer. I know. I know. I mean, we really found the holes in his, uh, his, uh, platform.
Zain
0:42
Uh, yeah. His holes in his platform is that he couldn't tell me if he was on my side. Exactly.
Zain
0:46
That was a hole. Just, just Corey, just tell us. Yeah. Yep. Totally
Carter
0:49
Totally on your side. It's a real
Zain
0:52
5g under the first layer of skin is a real thing and i'm on your side that's all we need to hear from you cory but we couldn't hear those words
Zain
0:59
they couldn't hear those words kind of a failing i'd say well i
Carter
1:02
i mean it's just been failure after failure from him uh you know yeah
Zain
1:07
are you doing are you doing the post-mortem post-mortem yeah
Carter
1:11
okay i get to do the uh post-mortem in vancouver on uh on monday i'm pretty excited about it oh
Zain
1:17
do you get to do an official
Zain
1:18
official one because i feel like the unofficial one has also found its audience yeah
Carter
1:20
yeah there seems to be some people who liked uh my unofficial one and disliked it so it worked out perfect i think i hit the ball right perfect down the middle i
Zain
1:30
i like that gary mason from the globe said it was a very stephen carter quote very few can provide a quote like this oh
Zain
1:36
which is it's yeah yeah so you got you got a gary mason shout
Carter
1:39
shout out i didn't know that um i like gary i should see him carter
Zain
1:43
fuck me week three yep this was supposed to be the week that the conservatives turned it around around let's
Zain
1:48
let's just start here it's friday so i think we can give an assessment on this have
Carter
1:55
no they haven't um is the short answer i mean and and uh i i spent okay have they in any have they in any way
Zain
2:03
way turned it around have they made progress
Carter
2:06
turning they've stopped the bleeding uh
Carter
2:07
uh certainly they've stopped the bleeding some of the polls have them bouncing back to being three four three or four points behind um
Carter
2:15
um three or four points behind in this type of race with the vote efficiency of the liberals is uh really terrible um you need to be you need to be tied to even hope for a minority uh and even then you you should be three or four points ahead uh if you're going to get a minority uh the the truth of the matter is the conservative vote is it's not efficient. It has peaks and significant peaks and significant valleys. Without that efficiency, they're not going to find themselves in government. And Pierre Polyev, I think, knows it.
Carter
2:48
And at the very least, they stopped the bleeding. But I think that everything hinges on the debates coming forward.
Zain
2:57
So I want to question that a bit. But I want to get your sense on how you think they've stopped the bleeding. And then I want to give you two Two counterarguments to suggest why I don't think they have and why the week that could have been owned by them, because Carney did make quite
Zain
3:10
quite a few foot faults, so to speak, in his own way. He wasn't perfect on several questions, especially the unscripted ones regarding what's the whole list of things? Beijing, tax
Zain
3:22
tax havens, you know, he wasn't great on those questions. And those could and should and maybe in any other conventional campaign have become moments. but in your mind where did he where did they stop the bleeding and like where is it just a simple shift of the question i
Carter
3:38
i just think that they've reached the base i think that this is the group of people that want a new government um when you look at the polling the question do you want a new government is still polling well above where the conservatives are right now i think that this is their base uh that they've fallen down to and when they say stop the bleeding they're just simply not losing anymore this is this is the vote that they're going to get and it's a very very high vote. Stephen Harper, I think, was hitting around the same point. I think it's 37 to 39, depending on what you're looking at.
Zain
4:10
Yeah, the CBC News poll aggregator has them at 37 and a half, so right in the middle of what you're
Zain
4:16
which is a very high historic number for these guys.
Carter
4:21
They don't play at the level, no one plays at 50%, right?
Carter
4:26
right? So when you're When you're looking at historic data, 37
Carter
4:30
37 and a half or 39, I guess it depends on the aggregator you're looking at. You know, it looks like they're actually in a pretty decent shape. What isn't
Carter
4:41
isn't calculated into that is that there's virtually no more Green Party. There's virtually no more NDP. And when those votes start floating in the ether, all of a sudden it's possible for the Liberals to float above 40. even when the conservatives are floating in the high 30s.
Zain
5:02
So you're saying that they found their base. I think you're right. I think the rallies this week proved that they clearly have their base. Their base is not fleeing. Their base is as active and mobilized and as wanting to vote for them as they did two years
Zain
5:16
as soon as Pierre won the leadership and they're ready to vote on whatever ballot Pierre put in front of them, whether that was a carbon tax election or an election of any sort. work my
Zain
5:25
my counter argument this week though is actually the rallies and i don't know if you've seen the sideshow at the rallies which is the do you believe in the polls yeah
Carter
5:34
you seen that i are you
Zain
5:37
you putting any any weight into that and i know that's in the compartment to the party's credit they've said this is not our official message this is us kind of you know these are supporters of ours but this is not our official message but
Zain
5:51
but there's something weird going on there no that there is seeding of the ground of quasi even diet american style stop the steel shit we're like we're we're two degrees away from it but
Zain
6:05
but we're two degrees away oh
Carter
6:07
oh yeah i mean we're we're very close to stop the steel like uh like the uh the insanity of of being able to declare the election not not uh not valid i think that the the reality is that there's a group of conservatives who've drank the kool-aid and gone full donald trump um they are the ones wearing the uh the you know do you believe the poll sweatshirts and hats though those sweatshirts and hats i think they
Carter
6:35
they come with the the tacit approval if not the actual approval of the of the organizers keep in mind the organizers have the ability to not to say you know turn those sweatshirts inside out right like this
Zain
6:46
this is what's interesting
Zain
6:47
to me so the the party so to pierce credit he said um two things he said number one he'll accept the results of an election and
Zain
6:54
and number two uh that these people are not um they're
Zain
6:58
they're not full-on representatives of the party that being said carter can you have it both ways if you're the conservatives can you be the command and conquer heavy control like no one gets you know the press gets four questions and are put in a fucking pig pen to ask it can you be that party and then also say oh yeah like these people just slipped in sort of thing
Zain
7:18
thing like this is kind of my the tension between the conservative movement yes and you have way more people at your rallies than anyone else so yes there's a greater chance of people slipping through but
Zain
7:27
but to me it's like they're trying to have it both ways now and this seems to be strictly like narrative construction on their part
Carter
7:33
part well i think it is narrative construction i think that these people um are are died in the world conservatives and the died in the world conservative uh like i say you have the ability and and uh the command and control control structure um has the ability to keep people from wearing those types of sweatshirts in their in their events um you know people get removed from events if they're wearing the wrong hats and the wrong sweatshirts uh this the command and control structure still exists and both parties are doing it both parties have uh very strict controls on who enters their events uh so when pierre palio says that these people are aren't uh representative i mean they are are representative. They're being allowed officially into these events. The pictures are being circulated.
Carter
8:19
People want this messaging out there. And if they didn't, if Jenny Byrne and Pierre Polyev didn't want this messaging out there, I can assure you it wouldn't be out there.
Zain
8:30
So then how do you reconcile this?
Zain
8:33
this? And this is one of the two things I wanted to talk to you about that I think is a rebuttal in part to them stopping the bleeding with your statement that they're stopping the bleeding like to me we're talking about this we're not talking about their their crime agenda we're not talking about the fact that you know trump has reversed tariffs and that there's a that question they have a foreseeable chance to move on like why is this why do you say that they've stopped i want
Zain
8:58
want to be as honest as i can with where there's condition is
Carter
9:02
where you and i may have different definitions of stopping the bleeding they're no longer dropping fair right they're they're where they are and where they are is historically a good spot that for me is stopping the bleeding i think what you're suggesting is have they started to rebound and
Carter
9:18
and the truth is they have not started to rebound the rebound is not there they have hit the bottom and now they're hoping for a bounce and the ball is is flat it is not bouncing up so
Carter
9:32
they're hit they've hit the absolute bottom their bottom is 37 to 39 39%. That
Carter
9:39
That is a significant historic high for
Carter
9:42
for a place where... Are you saying that
Zain
9:43
that their new floor is 37? You're saying that their new floor is...
Carter
9:47
is... Their floor for 2025 is 37. It's wild. Right? It's wild. There's no more...
Zain
9:53
more... We used to know a conservative floor down to, what, 32? Yeah.
Carter
9:58
high 20s? I remember high 20s. Right?
Carter
10:01
Yeah. When we had a robust Green Party, we had a far more robust Bloc Quebecois. and the New Democrats. And NDs
Zain
10:09
NDs that were going to potentially form
Carter
10:11
form government in that 15 election. Yeah, floating at 20%. You know, like the numbers just are totally different in this round. I mean, there was, I saw an article talking about the wiping out of the sovereignist movement in Quebec with the polling numbers as they're floating around Quebec right now. This is a historic
Carter
10:30
historic election in that we have three parties essentially fighting for their lives. Three historically small parties, but two of them have formed the official opposition.
Zain
10:43
And there's also been conversation coming out of Quebec saying that Yves-François Blanchet, his seat, not safe. We've known Jagmeet's seat and his seat is not safe. That has been broadcast much more clearly. But the fact that Yves-François Blanchet's seat may not be safe speaks exactly to your point about the sovereignist movement, speaks exactly to your point about the riding dynamics and how deep this shift may have been occurring to convert a lot of these light blue BQ voters into into red liberal. Yeah,
Carter
11:11
Yeah, it's been a fascinating journey to watch. And
Carter
11:16
And I'm really intrigued to see if the, you know, the small parties pull it off, if they're able to hold seats and actually, you know, make a difference in the the face of the two heavyweights really battling in the ring there's
Zain
11:31
there's a second point I want to bring up which would kind of be my second counterpoint against your they've stopped the bleeding but I'm going to hold that as its own conversation because I find it interesting and ask you this question
Zain
11:44
Carney's fucked up a few times this week like
Zain
11:46
like he hasn't been clean on answers he hasn't fucked up majorly you see he's taking the prime ministerial retreat today today we record on Friday he's going Going back and saying that the crisis is acute enough and I'm going to stand behind the wooden podium and do that thing. And every time I do that thing, that thing gives me more points than campaigning and making an announcement in fucking Nanaimo or
Zain
12:05
So he's going to do what's working. And I think it's good strategy on Carney's part. I suspect you agree as
Zain
12:11
So go do that thing. Run out the week. And then next week, you know, nothing's going to happen. Debate Thursday, Wednesday, Thursday. Like that's the focal point. And I do want to come back to the debates and just stress test your idea.
Zain
12:23
But Carter, are we at the point, and I'm not jinxing this because that's not my job here, but are we at the point that Carney can really do anything with a wide berth and not lose this thing? It's starting to feel that way. It's starting to feel that news comes out. It should be solid oppo that runs the day, and it doesn't. A gaffe happens. It should be solid oppo that has an opening around where is your money stored, Mark Carney, tax havens, et cetera, and then it doesn't. is this carney having locked in so many canadians who are ready to vote carter or is this the opposition just not being able to do their job like there's some there's something happening here and i can't put my finger on it about why carney's getting such a almost
Zain
13:08
almost teflon like harper like ride he's
Carter
13:10
he's he's not i think that what's happening is that gaffs build upon gaffs and he hasn't reached the point yet where the mistakes are cumulatively significant enough for the polls to start moving but if you if you take a look at the historical uh length of time that it takes to turn something around like again uh i i think that uh christy clark went through that in her election that she was supposed to lose i was at 2014 2013 um the this
Zain
13:41
is the one where adrian dix was going to be
Carter
13:44
be premier for sure and if you take a look at alice and redford's campaign that she was certain to lose it takes about eight to nine days to turn things around to really see a shift in the polls and there are how many days left in this campaign 16 um 16 17 days 16
Carter
14:03
you know what we're looking at is uh that it's enough time for two potential shifts uh depending on how the debates go and the cumulative impact of gaffes I think that both of those are still on the table for Pierre Palliev. I don't know that he gets the opportunity to form a majority government, but I'm certainly not taking the idea that he could form a minority government off
Carter
14:26
off the table when
Carter
14:27
when there's still 17
Carter
14:28
17 days of campaigning and potential gaffes and mistakes during a debate. All of that is still there. You're
Zain
14:38
You're not ready to call time a death on the Conservatives right now. Many are. are many are across the spectrum including conservatives themselves saying time of death we're done this thing is going to be a liberal majority or liberal government
Carter
14:50
i think the courage of tonight has signaled the start of the leadership campaign um i mean the the i
Zain
14:56
i want to get the
Carter
14:58
are convinced that it's over and i'm just not i've i've played the game before i've seen it happen when a when a party that is essentially sitting at historic historic highs is able to um switch
Carter
15:13
switch and grab three or four more points that's all we're talking about here we're
Carter
15:17
we're talking about the margin of error so when these people are out there wearing their do you believe the polls sweatshirts they should be believing the polls the polls are telling us a story that there is a shift available and it just hasn't happened yet it may not happen zane it
Carter
15:32
it may not happen it
Carter
15:33
may not it may shift the other way um
Carter
15:35
um people do shift towards whoever whoever they think is going to be the winner. But, you
Carter
15:40
you know, at this particular moment in time, I'm certainly not laying
Carter
15:44
laying the certificate of death on top of Pierre Polyev and Jenny Byrne's campaign.
Zain
15:52
You've given me a reason around why Corey Tanik is doing this. Have you seen in your, either
Zain
15:58
either as a practitioner working on an election or one following this one like we are, um
Zain
16:05
strategist who is not on any of the teams actively making so much news this guy's got two news waves behind him week one and week three
Zain
16:14
crazy and it's and it's not by accident i do not think it's by accident
Carter
16:18
accident but i'm going to try it next campaign uh
Carter
16:20
uh yeah i was wondering and my second question is are you jealous i've got i've got a little bit of media envy um but he's coming from the center of the universe and we're out here in the provinces so it's it's difficult for us to have the same impact the colonies as
Carter
16:33
they call it so we're we're out here getting to west you know wishing we were back in shoveling coal
Carter
16:41
coal shoveling coal um listen i i'm i think it's impressive that cory tonic has been able to get so much attention i don't know why the news media has decided to give him that kind of attention but um i
Carter
16:53
i don't i you know i thought the first The first one was just a wake-up call to the campaign, and I think the second one is I'm going to be a player in the leadership with whoever my candidate is.
Zain
17:06
I wanted to talk to you about motivation here because this
Zain
17:08
this one seems— and, I mean, I think I'd argue motivation for both were don't forget about my guy, Doug.
Carter
17:16
might be. It might not be Doug.
Zain
17:19
Interesting. Walk me through it. It
Carter
17:21
It could be another candidate, right?
Carter
17:23
Doug just won the leadership. came out just won his premiership when cory interesting
Zain
17:28
interesting true uh when cory came out on week one it
Zain
17:32
it also came with some polling that they did in ontario which to me would be like you are not putting that polling out as the former campaign manager of a candidate without the blessing of said candidate unless
Zain
17:44
unless your relationships are different carter like you tell me like you are not putting that out without the blessing of doug ford implicitly or explicitly doug's done am i i wrong right
Carter
17:53
doug might be done he's he's you know sitting atop a majority government four more years he says to himself three and i'm done uh cory knows this cory goes off and is starting his next his next political life um you know there there's a there's a number of scenarios whereby
Zain
18:12
unless they're attached at the hip and they're like let's go like this is the movement this and the other there's another person i want to talk to you about in that same vein in a second here who who's clearly supporting the conservatives but
Zain
18:23
would rather potentially have himself uh part of that that mix and that's jason
Carter
18:29
look look who's come from the dead i
Zain
18:32
know on front burner doing a i think a very reasonable
Zain
18:35
reasonable interview for the most part um back from the dead so i want to talk about what's kenny up to but but on tonight though a
Zain
18:43
a the question is have you seen a strategist get more attention the answer i think for both of us is no b what do you think he's up to i think we both agree that there's there's either doug ford or someone else in the mix c
Zain
18:55
the question i find interesting as a partisan do
Zain
18:58
do you feel like he pays a price here like
Zain
19:01
like he's been talking about the price he pays short term but if the pierre campaign loses does he kind of like become de facto the kind of like the leading sort of organizing voice in that movement or do you You feel like that movement's way more. I
Carter
19:14
I think the movement is frayed. I think that there's an awful lot. I mean, the
Carter
19:17
the leadership will be fascinating. You know, Pierre has they
Carter
19:22
they had two very close leaderships. Then the Pierre kind of landslide. And then, you
Carter
19:28
you know, I'm not sure who lines up this time. I mean, Jason Kenney, Doug Ford are both rumored candidates. But, you know, we're a long ways from a leadership. We haven't even finished this election yet, and yet people are starting to shuffle around and make promises. I've talked to people who are already starting to sign up to campaigns. I mean, this is ridiculous.
Zain
19:52
Wow, this one's still
Zain
19:54
going. And you're obviously not calling time a death on the conservative campaign.
Carter
19:59
think there's a high probability that things change.
Carter
20:04
What else are you seeing
Carter
20:05
that makes you suggest that?
Zain
20:06
You'd be a rarity
Carter
20:07
rarity here. I think the gaffes cumulatively could have an impact.
Zain
20:12
talking about, the ones that I didn't think made an impact this week, but you're saying next week as a package or somehow. So talk to me about how they cumulatively make an impact. Does the next one break the camel's back, or do they all kind of come up as a package narrative? Like, how do you see that happening? Well,
Carter
20:27
Well, I mean, I think that it's a piece where, you know, the media like a fair fight, right? The media want a fair fight. and
Carter
20:37
and they blew a ton of sunshine up Mark Carney's ass at the beginning and now to make it fair they're going to bring out and point out the flaws. That's their human nature. That's how they act. They believe in fairness. That it's a foundational belief for them and so the media will try and square it up.
Carter
20:57
Is the media powerful enough in today's society to actually have impact?
Carter
21:02
That's a question that we haven't had answered uh
Carter
21:05
uh in in this particular moment in time so
Carter
21:08
so maybe they do maybe the media has an impact and maybe the media doesn't have an impact but we're going to find that out uh over the course of the next uh next few weeks i think that a number of gaffes early next week with a uh a poor debate performance you
Carter
21:27
you know don't write mark carney has done a hell of a job he is um solidified i think the the first place position but i
Carter
21:38
i just wouldn't be i i just don't want to write the end of the campaign yet because i've seen campaign shift in the last two weeks just too many times do
Zain
21:48
do you feel like there would um do
Zain
21:52
you feel like the ballot box question though has already kind of solidified around preferred pm and that 20 point lead that carney enjoys no
Zain
22:01
is is too much it's it's too high of a mountain to climb and then shifting on any issue whether it be peer favorable let's say we get rid of trump and it's a cost of living next two weeks sprint cost of living peer ballot box inflation all that sort of shit in that package that it doesn't matter because the the preferred pm number is just so high for car no
Zain
22:21
you're vigorously like disagreeing
Carter
22:23
disagreeing i want to know pm is an excellent metric i think that people like that metric i like that metric um but there's also a metric that is uh do you want to change and pierre you know do you want to change is leading it is the number one uh metric people want to see a change they just don't seem to want it to be pierre poliov right now isn't
Zain
22:45
isn't that such an insane battle though
Zain
22:47
like that this this this this confine between change and preferred pm change and uh calmness or stability or whatever you want want to call Carney,
Zain
22:58
right? I think he's been called a lot of things in the polling that we've been reading.
Zain
23:02
They're almost deadlocked, right?
Zain
23:04
right? Like 50% of people want Carney answer preferred PM, nearly 50% of people want change.
Zain
23:10
And to some people, there is a Venn diagram where those two things cross, which is, I think, where in the value of dumping just, I mean, this is going to be so simplistic, but in addition to the whole baggage that Trudeau carried, the fact that change Change and Carney do have an overlap.
Zain
23:27
It's smaller than the circle that Pierre Pauliev almost superimposes on the change question. But Carney and change do have an overlap. And even if it's five points, it's those five points that might be presented on the board right now in terms of what is pumping up that liberal lead across the country. That's what we're
Carter
23:45
we're talking about here, Zane. We're talking about, you know, the difference of these. And because those two questions are different and they have different answers, I'm just not prepared to say today on this podcast that the liberals are going to form a majority government or even a minority. I don't think the conservatives are going to form a majority.
Zain
24:05
What I am trying to say, though, is that if it does become change wholly or even as much as it can shift in the next two weeks, there
Zain
24:13
there is a case that Carney has a security blanket, which is that he overlaps some element of change. Yeah.
Zain
24:18
Is that a stretch?
Carter
24:19
He does overlap some element of change, but not as big as you would hope.
Carter
24:22
If this became a change election, I think the Carney liberals would face more challenges. This right now, the ballot box question is, who can best stand up to Trump? Carney is in a much better position to deal with that. However, Trump's
Carter
24:39
Trump's all over the fucking place. I don't know what's going to happen next with Trump. Trump doesn't know what's going to happen next with Trump. So Carney, you know, market
Carter
24:48
market rallies one day, collapses the next day. Who knows what we're going to be faced with? But Mark Carney at least seems stable in the face of all this chaos.
Zain
24:59
Two strategy questions I want to discuss on the Tanik stuff, on the Corey Tanik stuff.
Zain
25:05
Let's assume that this is indeed a shot across the bow to start the next leadership. And it's not outside of the Corey playbook. If you recall, when O'Toole was done, he was the one busy publicly trying to get rid of
Zain
25:18
in the weeks following that. So he has done this. Trying to get rid of leaders is a thing. He might be starting a bit early, or he might already be making a calculation that this thing is over and there is a first mover advantage, and I'm going to capture the media attention and the airtime that I can get.
Zain
25:35
How do you assess this strategy, Carter? Like as a strategist who's assessing this as a kickoff to someone's campaign, let's make that assumption. We don't know if it's true. I don't know Corey well enough to know if that's true, and he would never tell me, right? So just to be clear with our listeners, we don't know if this is true. But from a gamesmanship, practitionership thing, if
Zain
25:53
if you saw a fellow practitioner and strategist do this, how would you analyze the strengths and weaknesses of what he's up to? Well,
Carter
25:59
Well, I think that it's fascinating because the truth
Carter
26:02
truth of the matter is that the strategist is starting to become – is very important in the overall scheme of things. There was a time when the strategist was able to kind of sit in the background and not be the front of a campaign. And I think that putting your strategist in the window is becoming a viable media tactic, whether it's Jenny Byrne. The
Zain
26:23
The Stephen Carter model. The
Carter
26:24
The Stephen Carter model. model it's it's uh i
Carter
26:27
do feel in some way you have pioneered
Carter
26:29
i don't think so i think that i followed in the footsteps of people like uh uh carville and uh stephanopoulos and uh okay that's
Zain
26:38
that's those are some big names i don't know that's let's let's make it more local let's
Carter
26:41
let's make it there wasn't
Zain
26:42
wasn't there wasn't a lot
Carter
26:42
lot of people before me locally okay
Zain
26:45
okay so i feel like you have pioneered some of that model which is you don't you never you never said fuck you when someone said stop Stop tweeting, stop making media appearances, stop giving quotes, stop giving good quotes to the media, stop drawing attention to yourself, right? Like, I think there is something to be said about that, that you never said no to that. You always said, no, fuck off. This is actually part of the game. I
Carter
27:03
I always said it was the game plan.
Zain
27:06
right. Why? Why did you say that then? And why do you think it's relevant? Because
Carter
27:09
Because I think that the there's enough enough bandwidth
Carter
27:14
bandwidth that people can't just focus on the leader and have the leader carry carry the day. there's enough bandwidth that uh strategists star candidates other people can start to pick up the load and the fact of the matter is the star candidates and the and the leaders pretty fucking boring um strategists can be a little bit more uh
Carter
27:35
uh spicy and bring some color our names aren't on the ballot you're
Zain
27:38
you're very quotable cory's
Zain
27:42
that's not by accident
Carter
27:43
it's it's designed you're designed to be like that and and we learn very quickly where the powerful quotes are we know that they're going to hurt a little bit but we we arguably you're
Zain
27:54
you're more quotable than the candidate but that's by design
Carter
27:57
design as well you're
Carter
27:59
it's designed to give you two spotlights instead of one and
Zain
28:03
and one spotlight where if you go too far the candidate can always push back against your freelance we're
Zain
28:12
you think would you like would you give high marks to what cory's up to here given the assumption that he is launching someone's campaign or launching some sort of first mover advantage yeah
Carter
28:21
yeah i think he's doing a great job wherever he lands is going to get the most attention um you know whoever wherever he goes assuming that we wind up in a leadership yeah
Carter
28:31
um wherever he lands is going to be the number one campaign right off the bat right
Zain
28:34
right which Which you are not ready to declare, but should that be the case? No,
Carter
28:38
No, he's very clearly making different calculations than I am.
Zain
28:42
to me about additional calculations, though. Talk to me about two additional calculations, though.
Carter
28:48
Pierre wins. Corey's going to be in the doghouse for a good four years.
Zain
28:53
You think it gets worse than that? No. I think strategists
Carter
28:55
strategists are pretty interesting because we have a tendency to go
Carter
29:00
go into the dark for a little while, but then come back out relatively
Zain
29:05
Like you, and I'm not telling tales out of school, you've had ups and downs, like from a public image perspective. Corey's had ups and downs. I do blamed for the 2015 conservative loss on debate night where he said if, you know, Justin Trudeau came on with his pants on, paraphrasing, came with his pants on that that'd be a success for him. Trudeau
Zain
29:23
Trudeau came with his pants on and exceeded
Zain
29:25
low expectations that the conservatives put out. So Corey's had his ups and downs. All these folks have from a public perspective.
Zain
29:32
you're also i just want to get this on the record i think it's all implied in your answer you also don't fundamentally believe that at this point week three end of week three that he's coming out deliberately to give sage helpful advice to the campaign right
Zain
29:47
i mean okay just to be clear because there are people who will believe that they believed it in week one which i never did i don't think most of us did on
Zain
29:54
podcast i think some folks and now he's out at At the end of week three, arguably week four, like, folks,
Zain
30:01
folks, like, to be clear, you agree with that. This is not to be helpful anymore, even if some people thought it was. I
Carter
30:07
I think that Corey owns one of these.
Zain
30:13
putting up a cell
Zain
30:16
to be $9,000 with the tariffs. Yeah,
Carter
30:19
Yeah, I'm really happy I got a new one already.
Carter
30:21
But let's say that we needed to call you, like
Carter
30:25
like you were running a campaign.
Carter
30:27
I would pick up the telephone and call you, right?
Carter
30:31
Sure, sure. If I'm Corey tonight, I have your number. You know what I mean? Like, I
Carter
30:36
I think Corey's got Jenny's number if
Carter
30:38
if Jenny needs to have a stern talking to from Corey.
Carter
30:42
Pierre's number, sure. I mean, it's ridiculous this idea that he's giving legitimate advice. He's giving the advice he wants to give in order to position himself for whatever the next phase looks like.
Zain
30:56
takes a certain amount of like i don't know if courage is right word because i think that's overstating it but there's a high level of risk to go out publicly like he would um like when when if you were to do something like that what are some of the considerations you would have carter right like career considerations reputational considerations it seems like he's doing fine business-wise from what we can tell etc and i don't mean to make this a cory tonight episode but he is a fellow person who has the same practitioner sort of at least from a maybe Maybe not from a day-to-day GR perspective, which is not what we do, but from a campaign perspective, he's done the same stuff we do, which is run campaigns. So what considerations would you have if this was Stephen Carter saying, I'm going to do the same thing that Corey did in 2025? Like what things would go through your mind? I'm just really curious to kind of think
Zain
31:41
think about a checklist from your perspective. Well, I'd be—
Zain
31:43
be— Career-wise, personal-wise, like it's— I
Carter
31:45
I mean, anytime you go out and you do a critique of the party,
Carter
31:49
party, when that's really what this is, you have to be prepared to not necessarily get invited back to the party. You
Carter
31:57
have to win your way back in. This is what I've learned over, you
Carter
32:02
you know, doing this for a couple of decades. People don't invite you in. You have to win your way back in.
Carter
32:07
So I think that Corey Tanaka has
Zain
32:09
Itch and claw and you do whatever at whatever level sometimes to get back in.
Carter
32:12
in. to go find a new candidate who's going to run for the leader or i have to find a new candidate that
Carter
32:17
that i'm going to put into a senior cabinet position or
Carter
32:21
and i'm going to get dragged back in um
Carter
32:24
um through my new person and strategists are now we're finding people to run rather than having people come to us right like strategists are uh
Carter
32:35
uh and i think this is the the the way it has been forever almost, there's a back room. Today, the back room is the strategist. Back then, the back room was the old boys. Now, Jenny Byrne or Corey Ten Eyck or Stephen Carter or whoever is going to go and find the candidate to shape
Carter
32:55
shape and mold into the next leader.
Zain
32:58
But there's something interesting there inherent in that, which is there is a sense of there's no role. There's no... tell me if this statement jives with you okay
Zain
33:08
you in particular that
Zain
33:10
that there's no role no candidate no type of office that is beneath you to
Zain
33:15
to help or to get someone elected to i
Carter
33:19
mean i i and the broader point i'm trying
Zain
33:22
trying to make is that you've
Zain
33:24
you've run a campaign for premier yeah
Zain
33:26
yeah you've run a campaign for mayor and you haven't stopped and said the next thing i do has to be either this size or bigger no
Zain
33:35
right and i think that's what's interesting to me is that like folks usually stop at that point i don't i don't mean to make this an examination of your career but i do find it interesting in light of this because you have to be cory's got to be ready that he could be running the leadership campaign for the next prime minister of canada the next leader of the conservative party or his clawing back into the party if pierre has a deadlock on this and then you know has a decade of his own tenure which by the way was literally what every single one of us was saying eight
Zain
34:05
eight weeks ago right that if the conservatives win there's a decade of this right like there's going to be a decade of this shit like i'm not going to say i wasn't saying that right um that he's got to be prepared to like humbly clause way back in
Zain
34:17
and that may not necessarily mean getting to run top brass at a leadership level so that's kind of the point i'm trying to make here which is that you know it's it's not like stephen carter stopped at mayor and premier and said i'm not going to run a potential cabinet minister or another mayor or someone who's got ambitions on the ground or a party in vancouver right
Carter
34:37
right recently right i mean it all depends on what you want to do for a living cory's got a gr practice i don't do gr i don't like doing gr um other people you know ken bosengul uh has his gr work that he does politics as a hobby lobby um you know it's different styles of practitioner so each each you know cory for example you know our cory cory hogan you know he he didn't do this for a living um in the last 10 years he's done other stuff yeah right um and suddenly now he's throwing his hat in the ring as a as a candidate i mean there's multiple ways to serve this particular beast that we that we have chosen to cozy up to um you know you're a communications professional as much as you're a campaign professional if not more right each of us is defined a little bit differently and maybe corey tonight's at the stage of his life where he can make enough money in gr in ontario that he doesn't have to worry about ottawa ever again and that's you know i think think that that's a reasonable and and perhaps likely scenario let
Zain
35:46
me ask you another strategy question and
Zain
35:49
and then we'll get to the debates and then wrap this thing up there's
Zain
35:52
there's a rumor out there
Zain
35:58
he do it no
Zain
36:00
what do you think carter where
Zain
36:02
where he is right now should he
Carter
36:03
he do it this is so interesting because where you
Carter
36:06
you know mark carney was when he did the the the daily show he
Carter
36:10
was about to yes
Zain
36:11
yes pre the pre-launch the pre
Carter
36:13
pre-launch daily show the day before the launch you
Carter
36:16
you know that was a uh a
Carter
36:18
a guy who was about to launch a campaign about to become something and you know to to say now i go back to the daily show that you know the daily show should be off of mark carney's options not just because he's done it once until
Zain
36:32
until he wins but
Carter
36:33
but it's It's because it's an American program. It doesn't have the same reach in Canada. Joe
Carter
36:37
Joe Rogan. And the moment has kind of changed in the last two
Zain
36:41
two and a half months
Carter
36:42
I just don't think that going
Carter
36:44
going on Rogan is signaling anything but desperation. You're trying to find the good old boys, the young 20-somethings. You've already got them. you got to find you know you got to find a way to back to to work your a into the uh plus plus 65s again where you're plus 55s i mean and you're losing both genders like yes
Carter
37:10
yes you are there's that
Carter
37:11
there's so much the
Zain
37:12
the most recent polling across the board abacus has him down uh ipsos has him down i think lege has him down on the 55 plus uh
Zain
37:19
uh women definitely he's tighter with men which which is not surprising, but he's
Zain
37:25
he's not killing it. He's not killing it at the high sort of
Zain
37:28
of splits that he needs to with
Zain
37:31
that age range. You'd think it'd be pure desperation. Any social value to it, any political capital from it, anything to harden the base and make that argument that they aren't already hardened for, or do you feel like it's just pure downside at this moment? And I think people are looking, you know, Corey always talked about you don't follow the playbook of the last time. Well, the most recent playbook that we have is
Zain
37:52
won American election yeah I that happened in November and and people are like oh Donald Trump last minute podcast wars right like let's go do that and Pierre is doing podcasts he just did a French one the other day um but Joe Rogan would be the ultimate one and of course it's just based on a rumor but I want to get the strategy out of it I tend to agree with
Zain
38:11
um I do see that there is potentially some like star value to it um
Zain
38:16
um but I'm not sure it adds any sort of halo to folks that are in the demos that he's he's
Carter
38:21
he's got to focus on what is lost not what his uh where he where he currently stands and if he goes on rogan he's only solidifying where he is currently i
Zain
38:32
i i also feel like that we haven't even calculated the rogan backlash in the demos that he needs yeah right the backlash will not occur in the demos he wants and it will not occur in the demos he already has it will occur in the demos he needs which is the story can be told through paid and other mediums that, A, here's who Joe Rogan is, right, if you don't know, and B, just a simple fact that peers spending time talking to a conservative outlet right now, right,
Zain
38:55
right, and an American conservative outlet right now has this particular cost to it.
Zain
39:02
Two ways to look at next week, Carter, which
Zain
39:05
which is debate week.
Zain
39:09
it is the potential
Zain
39:15
anyone who thinks it's a potential game changer has already lost. No one has ever changed their minds from a debate. I
Carter
39:20
disagree with the no one has ever changed their minds from a debate. I think that we see a solidification of
Carter
39:26
of the voter pool. I think that undecideds decide very, very late. And even people who are presenting as decided are still making up their minds in the last week. I can show you graph after graph after graph of people visiting websites in the last 36 hours before they vote, right? Like, I know that people choose
Carter
39:51
do their research at the 11th hour. The
Carter
39:54
The 11th hour, though, starts next Friday when
Carter
39:56
when we start doing our advanced polls. It really does. And
Zain
40:00
And it's Easter weekend.
Carter
40:00
weekend. And we have a massive
Carter
40:02
massive advance poll over that period where
Carter
40:06
25% of Canadians are going to cast their ballots. You know, 25% of the people who are going to cast their ballots are going to cast their ballots over the advance weekend. Maybe more because it's maybe less because it's a holiday, maybe more because it's a holiday. We'll find out when we do the analysis afterwards. But this is a big this is this is it. There is no no one recovers after advance polling. No one recovers after after advanced polling. So he either appear probably have either moves the dial on
Carter
40:37
on debate night or he doesn't. And I'd say that the odds are in the favor of he does not.
Zain
40:46
Tell me, tell me what's more important.
Zain
40:49
A long weekend just before the election or the debates. Oh,
Carter
40:53
Oh, I think the debates. I think that a long weekend just before the... I
Carter
40:58
think a long weekend before... During
Zain
41:01
before the actual... I know this, and the reason I bring this up is for folks that are not
Zain
41:05
initiated. This is a big Stephen Carter... Yeah,
Carter
41:07
Yeah, because we do our elections immediately
Carter
41:11
immediately after the Thanksgiving long weekend. And
Carter
41:15
And I maintain that that's when people make up their minds. That's when people are chatting about, you know, they're meeting with people who actually give a fuck. And suddenly they care because the people who actually give a fuck are directing them into the winner. I don't think that I mean, maybe Easter Sunday dinners are going to be populated with with talk of Pierre versus with versus Carney. Maybe
Carter
41:42
Maybe I hadn't actually thought of that, Zane. Now I'm thinking about it. So thank you for that. I
Zain
41:47
I do think they have a compounding effect that if there's a debate that there's no clear winner or Carney's a winner, you
Zain
41:53
you know, in anyone who wants to be an honest broker. poker and then you head in i think it crystallizes it if pierre comes out with a w i think that weekend becomes really interesting
Zain
42:04
well i it because we could come out we could come out of that weekend to your point with a very different sort of momentum reality that we may not be and i've been able to track and that could have already found itself in the advanced polls but then you almost and i'm just kind of layering on things and you also be like but have people already locked in have they already voted before they actually let that momentum shift that may may happen in the in the in the week in the final week kind of kind of you know um sway them
Zain
42:30
it's fascinating stuff potentially like the dynamics of the next week are really interesting to me the materiality of the next week's like what happens at the debate their strategies etc we can talk about on sunday right and i'm curious about that and i'm interested about that but i think the the macro sort of bounces debate to long weekend to advanced poll to the final week week
Zain
42:49
week it's just really interesting
Carter
42:49
interesting part of the reasons i'm
Carter
42:51
i'm not calling a a carney victory everything could shift in in a 10-day period um
Zain
42:58
um and it's also it's also potentially the exact recipe to solidify and expand the carney vote it
Carter
43:05
it could i mean the shift
Zain
43:07
i think that's also that's also on the table right
Carter
43:09
right now um assume that there's a 10 probability that that Pierre Polyev wins the debate, and a 5% probability that Mark Carney wins the debate. The remaining 85% is no one wins the debate. That is the default option.
Carter
43:26
Each party claims victory for their own people. Right now, that means that the party that's in first place has more people saying, yeah, Mark Carney won, than the other party, which is in second place. That's just sheer numbers. numbers so yes
Carter
43:40
that could reinforce and push a lot of people to the quote-unquote winner right so people who vote for the winner are going to shift to mark carney um because that's likely uh and that could see the the gap expand um the pierre polliev victory in the in the debate
Carter
44:00
it's got to take hold right away and it has to be decisive if it's going to actually have impact on this election.
Zain
44:08
We have so much to discuss on Sunday, which we will, but we'll leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1860 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Belch. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, and absent, sending regrets, Corey Hogan. And we shall see you next time.