Episode 981: Live in Calgary: The starting pistol for the closing arguments

Corey 0:00

everybody, Corey Hogan here from the Strategist podcast with episode 981, a

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a live show recorded in Calgary.

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Now you might be wondering where's episode 980? Well, it, and

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and all Thursday episodes from now on, plus bonus content, including an episode we did last week on healthcare in Alberta, are

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are now Patreon exclusive. You

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You can find them, and much more, at strategistpatreon.com and access them for as little as $6 a month.

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Without further ado, let's go to Zain, me, and Stephen at the Martha Cohen Theatre. In Calgary, Alberta, I hope you

Corey 0:32

you enjoy the show.

Zain 0:35

This is The Strategist, episode 981. My name is Zane Velgey. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and a live audience here in Calgary.

Zain 0:51

So good. Yeah. Soak it up, Carter. Soak it up. How long has it been since someone's clapped for you? These

Carter 0:57

since someone got the clap from me or since?

Zain 1:01

the way, I do like these chairs, color-coordinated to our skin colors. I've just noticed, by the way.

Zain 1:06

you ever get confused, just

Zain 1:08

just look at the chair.

Zain 1:11

That's two race jokes in seven minutes. How do you think this is going to go? This is going to go really well. Thank you all for being here. Carter, any intro comments? Any AFL predictions or updates for the crowd? out. Listen, I did really shitty. Corey, how are you doing? Are you doing okay?

Corey 1:28

I did really good. It was nice to hear Chester again, though it does remind me, pretty glad he's gone.

Zain 1:34

me tell you about that guy. I mean, he's

Zain 1:36

he's negative. He runs his mouth. I don't think he could ever make it publicly anywhere. I don't know. I don't think it's possible. It's funny. I like them more than ever.

Zain 1:45

Okay. Well, good to know. Well, good to know. Great. Well, how about we do this? Should we move it on to our first segment? Let's move it on to our first segment. Our first segment, Trust issues. Guys, we have to talk about the trust issues inherent within this podcast. You know, many people thought this live show was a joke. Many people.

Zain 2:04

I'm serious. How many people did you think thought this live show was a joke? That's nuts.

Zain 2:13

They're just going to clap for anything. They are

Zain 2:17

that what you were doing? Yeah, okay. They are hammered. Plying up the audience. That's great.

Zain 2:21

But Carter, we do have real trust issues within the podcast. do we not? We

Carter 2:24

We do. We have some significant issues that we need to work through. I'm glad you're bringing it up.

Zain 2:27

up. Corey, some might even say an authenticity issue.

Corey 2:29

Oh, yeah. Well, you know, I'm still pretty convinced about half this crowd doesn't believe there's a real show going to happen tonight.

Zain 2:35

And you know what? We've already got their money, so who cares? I don't. I, for one, don't. No, I really have no idea. We'll see. I told them. I told them not to expect anything, especially the 12 people who've never heard it before. They're already bored. I can see one person with their e-reader out already.

Zain 2:52

But Carter, we have to talk about something because whenever we do our yearly review, we actually

Zain 2:58

actually have our own accountability that needs to happen within the podcast, right?

Zain 3:02

right? Our own collective leadership reviews. Now, Carter... I did not see Grenier here. Yeah, you did not see Grenier here. But Corey, do you want to explain to folks what Carter was doing in the lobby out there?

Corey 3:12

Well, absolutely. So he wasn't just glad-handing, He was working a room. Every live show we have after an election, there is a strategist review where

Corey 3:21

where there is a vote of the live audience to determine whether Stephen Carter is allowed to be on the strategist for the next six years. That's the time we have between live shows on the strategist.

Corey 3:31

Really big, really important night for him. Of course, you all would have had ballots on your chairs. You remember seeing

Corey 3:37

them when you came

Carter 3:39

How about some applause if you filled out your ballot?

Corey 3:45

Now, Stephen helpfully collected, I think, most of those.

Zain 3:48

those. I think he did. I collected

Carter 3:48

collected them all. Yeah.

Zain 3:51

Collected them all. Maybe we'll just kind of take a look at those results right now. If we can just move on to the next. Oh, there we are. Okay. On the leadership question, 99

Zain 3:59

99.5% of our audience in this room does not approve of Stephen Carter. Corey, do you want to explain the two votes that he got?

Corey 4:06

They do approve. They do approve. They do approve. I've got some good news for you. When Stephen dropped off those 401 ballots to us there, he managed to turn it around from a very early loss that he was looking at

Zain 4:19

I contend these results. I feel like for a group here that's paid $35 to listen to a show they could have heard for free, I don't think they knew the question.

Zain 4:27

feel like, and I'm not calling you guys the dumbest 400. He's calling you guys the dumbest 400. But I'd be collected by Q. Okay. Corey, Carter's

Zain 4:39

401 to 2. We get to stay. I get to stay. Fuck you, Grenier.

Zain 4:45

That's good. We wanted to do this segment simply because we wanted Carter to have his validation. But let's move it on to the real work. Let's move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, the passion of the Jason.

Zain 5:01

It's a nice biblical reference. Yeah, it's really well done. That's good.

Zain 5:12

some good Christian content that's what this is about

Zain 5:18

by the way, happy Ramadan to everyone there you go underneath all your chairs, a copy of the Quran so make sure you seriously, just look underneath your chairs

Zain 5:29

right path is the 12 people are looking if you

Zain 5:34

you don't find it, don't believe in false prophets first

Zain 5:38

first rule I told

Zain 5:42

told you I was ready for any type of show tonight I

Zain 5:46

was ready for any type of show it seems like they are as well Corey, let's talk about this we planned this live show

Zain 5:53

with the premise that we would be talking about results from the UCP

Zain 5:58

leadership review team tell

Zain 6:00

us about how the fuck we've

Zain 6:02

we've gotten here how are we here, why are you still here As soon as I heard, there would be no results. I'd be like, fuck no, I'm not going to this thing. But thank you for coming. But Corey, how the

Corey 6:12

the hell did we get here? Yeah, I mean, the short version is you've got to put a deposit down on a place like this.

Corey 6:18

But if you want to get a little bit more specific about how the UCP ended up here, they had a call by a number of their constituencies last fall for an early leadership review, which pushed it up a couple of months. That resulted in them trying to, well, let's be fair. They were trying to game the system a bit and make sure that Jason Kenney could get a preferential result. So they held the special general meeting in Red Deer. So inconvenient for everybody. An hour and a half from Calgary, an hour and a half from Edmonton, an hour and a half from Red Deer. And when

Corey 6:52

when it looked like that was going to be just a bit of a clusterfuck, there were 15,000 people who were registered. And that was just at the membership cutoff. Another 45,000 members who could conceivably

Corey 7:03

conceivably decide to go up there. there. The

Corey 7:05

decision was made to go to a mail-in ballot. Now, that wasn't the

Corey 7:09

the most obvious decision in the world, because what they could have done is added just a number of different locations, which would have still allowed us to do this show without having to do a song and dance about why we're doing it on this day.

Corey 7:20

But they didn't. They went to a mail-in ballot. And the reason you have to imagine is because when

Corey 7:25

when all of the chips were out there and people could see the river, I don't know, you play poker, I don't play poker. There's cards on the table now.

Corey 7:34

they decided that this was their best chance. Doesn't mean Jason

Corey 7:37

Jason Kenney is going to win, but it means he thought it was his best chance.

Carter 7:41

They didn't like the flop.

Zain 7:45

they see our flop. I mean, Stephen

Zain 7:48

Stephen Carter, thank you. I think you've made your contribution for the night.

Zain 7:53

Despite the 99.5%, which I contend, the Saddam Hussein-style numbers you've gotten from us through.

Carter 7:59

I love you all.

Corey 8:01

So here we are. So here we are. I like that you want

Zain 8:05

want to go back to talking about it, seriously.

Corey 8:06

It was not the most obvious choice because they've had to do a number of things to make this work even within their bylaws.

Corey 8:11

The special general meeting is technically still going on. It's in recess right now.

Corey 8:15

And they're going to come back once

Corey 8:17

once all of the ballots have been mailed out, once all of the ballots have come back, and

Corey 8:21

and they're able to announce them on May 18th. So I guess we should see if this place is available on May 19th

Corey 8:27

for round two. But we're now in limbo, and the province is in limbo, and it's a weird time for Alberta. Carter, talk to me about that

Zain 8:33

that limbo, but maybe I'll kind of go back a few steps with

Zain 8:36

with the very simple question of we've seen a lot of shit in the last decade in Alberta politics. Have you seen anything like what the gun

Zain 8:43

gun has started on as of yesterday with Jason Kenney's speech and this recess that we're experiencing heading into May 18th? Do you feel like you've seen something like this, and will we have seen something like what the next six weeks might bring to us? Well,

Carter 8:55

Well, no, because we've never seen anything where the rules change in the middle. I mean, Ralph Klein was facing down, you know, a very difficult result. People told him to his face that he was likely to win. He didn't win. They said they'd vote one way, and then they voted another way. Stelmack and Redford were both able to kind of game their systems, wind up with 78%. And I mean, gaming their systems by bringing in their supporters. It wasn't going to be over 2,000 people at their events. They were able to manage their outcomes a lot more effectively. But

Carter 9:24

But in Alberta politics, this is unheard of. We've never seen a situation, first of all, where we had 15,000 people sign up for a political

Carter 9:31

political event like that. And secondly, where they changed the rules to try and find some way. Because I think that the first thinking was if we game the rules, as Corey was explaining, to have them everybody an hour and a half away from the balloting station, then that was their first gaming of the rules. Right. Now they've decided after Cynthia Moore said, you know, there's no way. The only way we can have a vote we can count on is having it in person.

Carter 9:57

They then moved back to a mail-in, which

Carter 10:00

okay, which time were you lying?

Carter 10:04

of these two is a lie. So Cynthia Moore now is saying that the mail-in ballot is the most secure ballot.

Carter 10:10

But now they've also added in we'll collect your ballots in every riding.

Carter 10:14

Right? So if the mail

Zain 10:15

Talk about that a bit more. So just like a couple of days ago, a new wrinkle to the rules. Another

Carter 10:22

Because apparently it wasn't good enough that they were cheating the one way. Now they have to cheat the other way.

Carter 10:27

So what they're doing now is... Come

Zain 10:29

Come before the guy with 99.5% approval.

Zain 10:33

Keep going. I mean, you are

Zain 10:35

are the... This audience loves

Corey 10:40

go, Carter. Scattered applause. Looking great. Yeah, that's

Corey 10:45

It needs to be said that it's always the case that if you are in charge of the party, You get to pick how the leadership review is run, and you often will pick it to your advantage. Of

Corey 10:55

Of course. If you think you're in a bit of trouble. Which is why

Zain 10:56

why we said initially when they set up the – they contoured that initial Red

Zain 11:01

Red Deer meeting, they're like, can he stack in the deck?

Corey 11:04

And that's what we thought at the time. We thought that he would be able to out-organize and bring people forward

Corey 11:09

forward because he would be able to galvanize those people. And he's known as an organizer, and he can get them there. But when there's just this crush of actual legitimate intensity that they'll come from the four corners of the province, five, I guess, we've got a weird-shaped province, and they'll

Corey 11:23

they'll all show up in Red Deer and they'll vote against them. So that's what all of a sudden looked like was going to happen. What

Corey 11:29

What is unusual here is not a

Corey 11:31

a mail-in ballot, not the fact that they are holding it in Red Deer, not that they are going to have

Corey 11:38

have cutoffs the days that they have them. It's that they're doing all of these things, kind of stacking one on top of each other in the middle of the contest, and it's seemingly making it up as they go.

Corey 11:47

So talk to me in straight

Zain 11:48

straight terms with that. Making it up as they go, I think, is a charitable way.

Zain 11:53

Bending the rules to, like, even more? It's their rules. They're not bending them.

Corey 11:58

them. They're making them. Okay, so here's

Carter 11:59

here's the thing. We wanted, like, in one of our podcasts, we said, you know, if they were to open balloting stations in the upper riding, like we even just talked about, you know, the big seven cities, you could do that. and it would appear to be more fair was when they had 15,000 people coming we thought this would be a way that they could do it now they've got the mail-in ballot as well as essentially a new way of ballot collection and i might add all of this is under this premise that some auditing firm is going to be auditing the results they're not auditing the collection of the ballots yeah

Carter 12:29

right the collection of the ballots which is normally pretty like you don't go to the ballots you know the polling station in your local riding and get to take out 10,000 ballots and then bring them back later.

Carter 12:43

So that's what they're essentially set up for this system. And so changing

Carter 12:49

changing the rules doesn't really feel like we're capturing the essence of what's going on.

Zain 12:53

on. I guess, am I capturing a blasé attitude from you, Corey? Being like, that's their rules.

Corey 12:57

rules. They can do whatever they want. No, no, no, you're not. What I want to say, though, is there's lines

Corey 13:01

lines here of normal behavior, and nothing is individually

Corey 13:05

individually unusual. It's the combination and it's the stacking that makes it so deeply unusual. I mean, leaders play with the cutoff date for membership all the time. I mean, you see this even in the Conservative Party federally right now, a lot of debate as to when the membership cutoff should be for that. And the choice is not a choice without consequences. Could help one candidate, could hurt another candidate. What is unusual, though, is to change the rules after that date.

Corey 13:29

Because you have to assume that the Jason Kenney campaign and the loyalists who control the board were aware for at least a week, two weeks, as we were looking at numbers of 7,000, 10,000, 12,000, that they were going to go to a mail-in ballot. And how might that have changed their behavior in those two weeks relative to their opponents?

Corey 13:47

All warfare is based on asymmetry, right? And there's an asymmetry of information here. So, whereas the Brian Jean team might be out trying to sell memberships only to people and focusing only on the people they think are intense

Corey 13:59

intense enough to show up in Red Deer,

Corey 14:01

the Jason Kenney campaign might just be throwing those memberships out. Who gives a fuck? I don't know. We'll get them on the list and we'll figure it out later. Because it's going to show up in their mailbox. We'll send an organizer by. They'll grab those ballots. They'll take them to this central balloting process. And that's how we're going

Zain 14:14

going to get our votes.

Zain 14:16

Carter, I have to talk to you about this. So, this kind of brings people up to speed in terms of what has happened, what's led us here.

Zain 14:21

And then the starting gun happened

Zain 14:22

happened yesterday with a speech from Jason Kenney.

Zain 14:25

45-minute speech to the membership, right? There was a speech yesterday.

Carter 14:29

yesterday. I was outside. Okay.

Zain 14:31

Corey, yesterday, Jason Kenney made a speech to the membership. Thank you for mailing it in, Carter, on the show. You did know today was happening, right? This

Carter 14:40

This is the exact same amount of prep I always do. Okay, well.

Zain 14:45

you would have. Corey, speech yesterday.

Zain 14:48

Kenney, 45 minutes or so. rhetoric is through the roof yeah he's

Zain 14:53

he's talking to the base directly give me your reactions on what he said yesterday that

Zain 14:57

that either surprised you or that you found strategically interesting and

Zain 15:00

and let's pick it up from from from there yeah you bet so i

Corey 15:03

i think fundamentally it

Corey 15:05

it was a pretty good speech if you both have no faculties for critical thought and no memory

Corey 15:15

i actually don't mean that as flip as it might sound it

Carter 15:18

it was pretty flip really

Corey 15:19

really i think it Yeah, I think you did mean that. I think you did. Let me unpack that one degree more. He was practicing that line in the green room. He just took

Corey 15:26

mirror over and over.

Zain 15:28

that one. We only paid for one green room between the three of us. That's true.

Corey 15:34

There were a number of assertions that were made that are just not factually accurate. I mean, from small things like when the 1997 election was, was not in 1995, it turns out.

Corey 15:47

to kind of more concrete things about why people were mad at him when

Corey 15:51

when the Omicron wave was going on, right? And a lot of it had to do with he disappeared for a while, right? And so when you look at it and you put on that cap and you say, wait a minute, that's not how it went.

Corey 16:02

It doesn't really hold water. But if you stand back and you're maybe a less engaged member, it

Corey 16:06

it was a good speech. It was a well-constructed speech. It had kind of a really beautiful arc from a speechwriter point of view of starting with year one, on all of the ambition, all of the things that were going on. By the way, I don't know how many of you know this. I worked for Jason Kenney for that year. I was the deputy minister of communications for that year.

Corey 16:26

then there was the then COVID hit. And this is the dark part when the hero struggles, right? It was very Hollywood in construction. And then he moved on to, but now we're on a tear. Look at our economy. And you and I, Zane, have seen him him give that speech we have in person yeah yeah and uh it's good he's good at it i wasn't

Corey 16:47

it's a good speech i mean it's a well-constructed it's a optimistic part of it and it's an economic message that i think albertans are very hungry to hear yeah so if you if you sort of say i

Corey 16:58

i don't care how accurate this is i'm not going to poke too much at some of the things he said if i just kind of take this as the hollywood treatment of the past few years It

Corey 17:06

It was a pretty good

Zain 17:06

good speech. Carter, I want to read you a line. Friends, I'm here to ask that we unite.

Zain 17:11

I've not been a perfect leader. I've made mistakes. I ask that you not compare me to the Almighty, but you compare me to the alternative.

Zain 17:25

again, this is a very biblical... Happy

Carter 17:31

You know what really pisses me off is that we actually gave him this advice last week.

Carter 17:35

We said, you know, you've got to make sure you're comparing yourself to Danielle Smith and Brian Jean. Danielle Smith and Brian Jean have both had the opportunity to run against, you know, to try and form a government. Danielle Smith lost in 2012 despite having a huge lead. She gave it away because she didn't know how to manage the right wing of her party. And

Carter 17:54

And Brian Jean was just recently in 2015 given the opportunity to step into a government that was falling apart, flailing. Conservatives wanted to choose Brian Jean, but Brian Jean didn't give them a reason. But Jason Kenney didn't say that, right?

Carter 18:07

right? Jason Kenney didn't want to actually draw a comparison between himself and the other two. Instead, what he wanted to do is, for some reason, bring in a Stephen Harper line of comparing himself to the Almighty. And it just bombed.

Carter 18:21

bombed. It didn't fit. I don't know if it was just because social media is different today than it was when Stephen Harper said it back in, what, 2000-something. That line

Zain 18:31

line goes way back. Joe Biden has used it in the past. We've heard it for decades. Trudeau the Elder used it. We've heard it before, right? So basically he's

Carter 18:39

he's stealing from Trudeau. Like, you know, don't...

Corey 18:46

like one of his birthrights, not the other. What is it, Jason?

Zain 18:48

Jason? Yeah, that's right.

Zain 18:49

Like, don't compare me to, like, any host that would be perfect in your mind. Compare me to these two, right? And what you'll get...

Corey 18:57

The one in the brown

Corey 18:59

It's a drive-by. It was brutal. But Corey,

Zain 19:01

Corey, see, I need to

Zain 19:03

to talk about this message. Is this the strategic message that Kenny needs to put out to his base? Because let's be very clear, this was a speech for the base. This was a speech narrowed in for the membership. There's no expanding the membership. He probably doesn't even care about the collateral damage, one might argue, that it would do to the gen pop after

Zain 19:19

after he wins, because all he needs to get to is victory. So do you see this, if I can call it the ballot box question of the next five to six weeks that he's trying to structure around

Zain 19:28

around alternative versus almighty or something else? I

Corey 19:31

I don't see it as alternative versus almighty. That's what we talked about. I thought that was maybe not a bad one. And I thought one of the risks that Brian Jean was presenting to himself was making it a fight of the real person, Brian Jean versus, you know, this, this imaginary super leader who might be out there. yeah

Corey 19:49

yeah but really most of the speech was not about that that was the clip line that was a line that got a lot of coverage in the media but

Corey 19:55

but the ballot question he is going for very clearly is united versus divided and he believes that he can hold the united mantra because he's the one who built the party not

Corey 20:05

not super clear to me that he actually gets that but

Carter 20:09

isn't there also a theme though that is that this all happened to me yes i'm not a perfect person but this all happened to me. Anybody would have struggled in these circumstances, Zane. I'm not God. I mean, anybody who's been in this circumstance has really suffered with it. And I think that the challenge with that is that not everybody has. You know, John Horgan came through it really quite cleanly.

Corey 20:34

Well, I mean, sort of, but all of these leaders have taken dents. There's no question Jason Kenney's taken more than all. Well,

Carter 20:39

Ford's going to cruise to victory on Not June the 2nd.

Zain 20:42

2nd. I mean, he's the exact

Carter 20:43

exact same. But Carter,

Zain 20:43

Carter, talk to me about the history of politics, that this happened to me message.

Zain 20:49

How does that generally resonate with voters? You've probably had to construct stuff where, you know, it has been external factors disproportionately that have impacted an outcome, a polling result, an issue, or where you find yourself in. How well does the, oh,

Zain 21:02

oh, this is not, like, this is something I'll own, but between us, it wasn't me. We

Carter 21:07

We saw how well it worked for Rachel Notley in 2019. you know, 2019. You

Carter 21:10

You know, the downturn started in 2014. It wasn't Rachel Notley who said, you know what? Oil and gas is too expensive. Let's just drop it all, right? Let's just cut the prices worldwide. I'm now in charge. It was, it

Carter 21:24

was a worldwide, you know.

Zain 21:26

know. I think that's a winning message, actually.

Zain 21:30

Keep going. Could have worked.

Carter 21:33

But, you know, it happened to her. And then in 2019, the fact that it happened to her wasn't an excuse. It wouldn't work. It was something where we are asking our leaders to lead in spite of the circumstance. So you have to rise up to the moment that is demanded of you, not just to simply slink away and say, it was really hard. And that's what Jason seems to be saying. It was really hard. It was

Corey 22:02

Not my read of the speech. In fact, I think one One of the things that he went back to quite a bit was saying, despite

Corey 22:08

despite all of this going on, we continued on with our ambitious agenda. Yeah,

Zain 22:12

395 different policy points, he

Corey 22:15

he pointed to many times. Promise made, promise kept. But really, what he kept going back to, the well he kept going back to, is you have a choice here. It's between a united party with me or

Corey 22:25

or total chaos and discord.

Corey 22:28

That is what we call a false dichotomy. Those are not the only two choices on the table, but

Corey 22:32

but that is what he's trying to present to his

Zain 22:34

his party. So let's

Corey 22:34

let's pick up on the strategy here. Carter, is

Zain 22:36

the united, divided frame the strategy you would have suggested to him yesterday?

Carter 22:41

Well, I think that it comes inherent to the idea that they're going to win, right?

Carter 22:45

right? So conservatives live in complete fear of the split, right?

Carter 22:48

right? They believe the only reason they ever lose is because of vote split, right?

Carter 22:52

right? It's never because of anything they've done. It's always because of the way that the electorate splits along, right? So Rachel Notley would never win if it wasn't for a vote split. And I just, for me, I don't believe in vote split. split. I don't think the vote split's a real thing, but obviously Jason Kenney does. And more important, the people in the Conservative Party do believe that if it splits, it splits and someone else wins. So maybe he's taking the right message to the right audience, but I also don't think that there's, I think most Conservatives think that the huge

Carter 23:25

huge number of Conservatives that exist are on their side,

Carter 23:29

right? Like the social Conservatives think, oh yeah, everybody's a a social conservative. And then the progressive conservatives are like, yeah, everybody's a progressive conservative.

Carter 23:36

So they all misread how

Carter 23:39

how many people are actually with them, and they don't understand necessarily how things break apart and how they could fall apart. Corey,

Zain 23:45

Corey, I see you nodding to that. Do you agree? Well,

Corey 23:47

Well, a little bit. I think that there

Carter 23:49

there is- A little bit?

Corey 23:51

There is definitely some truth to the fact, and look, it's so recent history, and it's not just provincially, but federally, that's part of the folklore of the Conservative Party as well, right we get together we can win we don't hang together we lose yeah you're seeing that even in the federal context ppc cpc that's why they lost is what a huge group in the party thinks so that there is something to that in the conservative like mantra but i

Corey 24:15

i think it's it's not just

Corey 24:17

just that i mean it's this idea that if

Corey 24:20

if you are going to if you are going to um do

Corey 24:23

do anything but stay with him because he was also sprinkling in these ideas of moderation and mainstreaming and

Corey 24:28

and keeping promises Promises being an important part of it. And boy, it was tough, but I kept my promises.

Corey 24:33

Then we break again, right?

Corey 24:34

right? Because then we're in our own bullshit, which was the problem for the last two

Zain 24:37

two years. There's two strategy questions here that I think are important to talk about. Number one, let's talk about that message yesterday. If you were advising him, Corey, is that the frame you would have encouraged him to take? The united versus divided? The I'm the one who created this party. I'm the one that has its user manual.

Zain 24:53

I am Team United. He

Corey 24:54

He clearly has the user manual. He rebooted the leadership review like that.

Zain 24:57

This is true. true he also hasn't kept them very united throughout

Corey 25:01

throughout this time so no i i gotta say like it's not where i initially went where i went was this idea of comparing to very concrete candidates such as danielle smith and brian g would you name them my name well he he didn't actually i thought that's what i'm saying would you have named

Corey 25:15

named them i would have probably if i was going that route but he chose a different route i

Corey 25:18

i don't hate it but i just don't know enough about the conservative party i'm sure they have some polling i'm sure they have focus groups and if they if they can and reasonably convince

Corey 25:29

that the party splits if he's not the leader, then yeah, it's great.

Corey 25:33

I'm intrigued if that is the case, though, because it's pretty clear that he's one of the big divides in the conservative movement right now.

Zain 25:40

Carter, if you were hired for one of your hatchet jobs to save Jason Kenney, he calls you, he says, listen, Stephen Carter,

Zain 25:46

you know, you're the best strategist between Corey and Zane on the stage. What would you

Zain 25:54

What would you advise that I do for this speech? Would you have taken that lane, that united versus divided? Or would you have actually told him to choose

Zain 26:02

choose a different strategic frame? Because here's the other advantage he has. He has the advantage to set the groundwork for what the next weeks

Zain 26:10

weeks look like in terms of the question that he wants the membership to ask themselves. I

Carter 26:15

I would have merged them.

Carter 26:16

I would have merged them. I mean, Danielle Smith had the opportunity. In fact, she crossed the floor to Jim Prentice in an opportunity to bring everybody together and make sure that the evil socialists didn't win. And she failed.

Carter 26:28

She failed. She lost the confidence because she didn't know how to do it the right way. She

Carter 26:31

She didn't know how to do it. Brian Jean didn't even want to do it. Brian Jean doesn't want to lead a United Conservative Party. He's told us that because of his behaviors. Again, he had the opportunity in 2015 to bring

Carter 26:44

everybody together. But he didn't do it.

Corey 26:45

it. That's really interesting. Interestingly, so-called uniters have done nothing but divide. And

Carter 26:49

And here I am. I'm a guy who came forward out of federal politics, didn't need to come, didn't

Carter 26:53

didn't need to come, but I saw that things were broken.

Carter 26:55

I saw that things were broken, and I chose to fix them.

Carter 26:59

Who said didn't need to come?

Corey 27:08

there, like, a morals clause in our deposit?

Zain 27:12

Probably. Corey, second strategic question here, which is the blowback that kenny might get using this particular not even this frame yeah but dialing up the rhetoric to 11 talking about critical race theory battling against wokeness all this sort of like base red meat stuff the blowback that might mean even if he is successful to the gen pop that he needs to secure he needs he needs to grow he

Corey 27:36

he needs to retain what

Zain 27:36

what do you what do you kind of think i think he's

Corey 27:38

he's basically assuming that nobody is going that deep into the speech except for the Twitter audience saying like, oh my God, he's talking about CRT and wokeness. Jesus Christ, did we need that imported from the United States?

Corey 27:49

What is more interesting to me is the flip, right?

Corey 27:51

right? In some ways by him saying you're united with me or you divide is him holding a gun to the head of the party he created, right? It's saying what

Corey 28:00

what happens next is going to be bad and that can become self-fulfilling, right? He's almost giving been licensed to people to split on the so-called UCP if

Corey 28:10

if he doesn't win.

Zain 28:11

Carter, one thing I can't square is Jason Kenney coming out a couple of weeks ago in that leaked audio that

Zain 28:16

that says, I'm the moderating force of this party. I don't want the lunatic fringe to take it over. And then, you

Zain 28:21

you know, a week or two later, dialing up the rhetoric for the base to 11 around CRT, wokeness, the curriculum, defending the ideology for

Zain 28:30

for the base. Like there has to be a price to pay or someone could strategically hopefully make him pay, one would say, in

Zain 28:36

in the general population in that regard, don't you think? Well,

Carter 28:39

Well, you're asking Jason Kenney to do something he's never been able to do before, and that's be rational.

Zain 28:47

Too easy. The applause lines come, yeah, Carter, the applause lines come too easy. Scattered.

Zain 28:52

Scattered. Scattered applause, yeah.

Carter 28:54

But here's the simple truth of the Jason Kenney situation is he's a drowning man.

Carter 28:59

He is a drowning man right now, and as a drowning man, He is literally reaching for any life preserver that he can find in order to hold on to

Carter 29:07

to this part that he's created. The die is cast in your mind?

Carter 29:10

I don't know that the die is cast. I think if the die was truly cast, and keeping in mind, to Corey's point about asymmetrical information, he has way more information than we do. He's called the 60,000 members. He knows what his numbers look like. If his numbers were truly trash, I honestly do believe that he would step out rather

Carter 29:27

rather than suffer the embarrassment. so he's pushing forward probably because it's close and he thinks that he can get his people out whereas

Carter 29:34

whereas the others who are disorganized and don't have the capability because keeping in mind jason kenney's an organizational machine this

Carter 29:40

this is the thing we may not think much of him as a politician but as an

Carter 29:44

organizer jason kenney's one of the top political organizers in canada so he believes that he can win that's the why that's the reason why he's continuing cory

Zain 29:52

cory brian gene war room tonight what are you guys talking about in there

Corey 29:57

well i you know if i'm brian gene i am not taking the bait on this one i'm i'm not making it seem as though i am the divisive candidate i'm keeping it squarely on jason kenney the big mistake would be buying into his ballot question and fighting on those ballot question grounds what you do instead is you say no this is not about unity versus division this is about uh one man and whether he has acted appropriately in the past two years three years as it goes on and then remind people of the things that actually frustrated them about Jason Kenney, right? Talk to them about the fact that he disappeared for three weeks as Omicron was ramping up. And we crashed into all of these, keep in mind, if you're Brian Jean, you're on the more conservative side, right? We crashed into all of these additional restrictions. And think of the businesses that failed because of that, because Jason Kenney was asleep at the switch. And Jason Kenney did all of these things in a way where he didn't engage people and he didn't think about the programs and their construction in a way that would protect ordinary good people in Ponoka, in Fort McMurray, in High River, wherever it is that you think you've got your votes coming from.

Corey 30:55

You've got to make the ballot question about Jason Kenney. You do not want to fight him on his ballot question. Carter, how much

Zain 31:00

much effort would you put if you're a Daniel Smith,

Zain 31:04

if you're a Brian Jean, if you're other names leaking, you know, so to speak?

Zain 31:07

Doug Schweitzer is currently in the fold, right? I don't know where that came

Corey 31:11

came from. There's like a CBC article that said

Zain 31:13

Schweitzer is gunning for the leadership. I thought, that's a drop. Put a pin in that. I want to talk about how you seek the leadership from within still and if that strategy has changed. But, Carter, how much time are you placing right now as

Zain 31:24

as someone who wants Jason Kenney to be gone?

Zain 31:28

You've made it clear. You're a Brian Jean. You're a Daniel Smith. You're one of the key organizers of the party. You're one of the folks who's defected. How much time are you spending

Zain 31:36

spending on trying to define this ballot box question?

Zain 31:39

And are you adding to what Corey said anything related to process? process this is what i find interesting because the process questions

Zain 31:46

questions regarding the rule changes all this sort of stuff do you bicker at all about that or is the race on and you're spending energy to define ballot box questions the

Carter 31:53

the good news about the conservative party is they will bicker about the rules all by themselves right

Carter 31:57

right they they know their rules they're part of it they they will and and their constituencies are strong they have great networks uh throughout their constituencies uh it's one of the joys of being the government is you have all 87 ridings that are working for you

Carter 32:11

All of those writings will do all the complaining that you want. What

Carter 32:15

What you want to do is actually change the ballot box question. You

Carter 32:18

You need the ballot box question. So

Zain 32:19

So you are spending energy on doing that.

Carter 32:21

On the ballot box question, but

Zain 32:23

but not his ballot box question, not Jason Kenney's ballot box question. Explain how you do that. So explain, Corey said, this is what I want it to be. I want it to be a referendum on Jason Kenney.

Zain 32:31

How is Brian Jean or Daniel Smith doing that tonight? How are they thinking about that strategically tonight? One question. Can

Carter 32:40

If Jason Kenney remains the leader of this party, will we win in the next election? Because nothing else matters.

Carter 32:45

It doesn't matter if I'm the leader. It doesn't matter if Danielle Smith's the leader. It doesn't matter if Corey Hogan's the leader. Because apparently he's a conservative now. All we need to do, all

Carter 32:53

all we need to do, we need to win the next election. And the best way to win the next election, it doesn't matter who wins it.

Carter 33:02

All that matters is we get rid of him.

Carter 33:04

Because if we get rid of Jason Kenney, we can win.

Zain 33:10

Now, knowing Corey for as long as I have, that is very high marks.

Corey 33:16

I would maybe go, so

Corey 33:18

so first of all, my strategy would not be putting myself front and center. I would not be talking about my own leadership ambitions if I was Daniel Smith, if I was Brian Jean. And I would make the question, can we do better? Not, can we win? Why?

Corey 33:30

Because can we win? We have quantitative

Corey 33:32

associated with it. Well, you know, there's a challenge there. Because you've got the battle of the polls already where Jason Kenney points to polls that he likes. cherry picks data from those polls that he likes ignores other polls even if you like the poll you like and i like the poll i think janet's here love your poll janet but uh but

Corey 33:51

you know you're going to get into a battle of polls sure

Corey 33:53

sure a battle of polls is a pretty pretty murky place to be if that's what you're fighting this on that's not great for you that's not good if you're brian gene it starts with a battle it doesn't end there all of those polls there is a common element which which is Jason Kenney is unpopular. His disapproval, much higher than his approval. So your

Zain 34:10

your ballot box again,

Corey 34:11

me? Can we do better? Can we do better? Yes, and I think that you can talk about the numbers, you can talk about the specific events, you can say that Jason Kenney has, you know, he's a great organizer, we all appreciate his organization, we appreciate what he's done to get us here,

Corey 34:27

but he can't get us any further, and we've seen the limits of Jason Kenney in these past few years. We can do better. I'm

Carter 34:33

I'm just really pleased that the audience is able to see my body language as I'm shifting away from you. As

Carter 34:37

As you're coming up with that. Like a recoil

Carter 34:40

Yeah, it's just so

Carter 34:42

so much more complicated. It's, you know, go with the simple. The simple is we can't win with Jason Kenney. He's not popular enough. Sure, the UCB can win, but not with him as leader.

Carter 34:53

The party remains strong. The fundamentals remain there. But he drags us down. And we need to have someone who will lift us up. That's what a leader is supposed to do. The

Zain 35:03

The problem that the Brian Jeans, the Daniel Smiths have is that they're fractured as a group.

Zain 35:09

They are not just trying to set a ballot box question. They're trying to set a ballot box question that can advantage them as being on the outcome of it. So they don't just want him to be defeated. They are trying to do step one and two at the same time. Is that a mistake, Corey?

Corey 35:21

Potentially a strength as well, though, because they can pick different audiences and they can use versions of ballot box question. You don't need one ballot box question for everybody, especially in a race like this. right so they can go and they can find the people who are the libertarian first in the daniel smith camp and they can they can use whatever language works in that context brian gene can use an entirely different message to those former wild rose supporters and then there are groups even beyond that there are i've been told there are literally dozens of groups organizing organizing in some way shape or form in in the pro and the con sense primarily on the con so

Corey 35:54

so i you know there's there's an opportunity there as well and one of the things we talked about last time was all of those groups, there is a chance Jason Kenney just points to one and says, see, they're nuts, right? I'm the same one. Look at all of the crazy people against me. But Jason Kenney has decided not to take that road. He's decided to say, I am unity. And the risk when you say, I am unity, is then if you start fighting with your own party, you're

Corey 36:16

you're undercutting your own ballot question.

Carter 36:18

Which is what he's been doing, though. I

Carter 36:20

mean, this is why I think he's a drowning man who's just reaching for any life preserver he can find. Because no matter how hard hard

Carter 36:27

he tries, he is contradicting himself. And I mean, there's a limit, I think. We saw Trump

Carter 36:34

every day during his four-year reign of terror, and he continues to contradict himself now. But Jason Kenney's not Donald Trump, and Albertans aren't Americans.

Carter 36:43

Americans. So I think that we are going to see that, you know, he continues to struggle.

Zain 36:50

what are you looking for? Tell me, I want to build on this. Jason? Yeah, well, what are you looking for over the next, you know, couple of weeks from him in terms of message and even perhaps even metrics of saying is

Zain 36:59

is this indeed a drowning leader

Zain 37:01

leader of the ucp if i didn't hear

Carter 37:02

hear from him again for the next six weeks i think he'd be doing his best work yes

Zain 37:10

you're you're going to that well one too many times my friend no

Carter 37:15

no no let me tell you why no but i'm serious i'm serious let me tell you why because Because he doesn't need any more media, right?

Carter 37:22

right? Like, so what you're trying to do a lot of the time is you're trying to get name recognition for your candidate. Everybody

Carter 37:28

knows who Jason Kenney is. What

Carter 37:29

What he's trying to do now, what he needs to do now is put himself in an organizational position. He needs to organize. And organization is always done underneath the surface. You're never doing primary organization with the glare of the media or with the big speech, those types of things. Organization is what puts 1,100 people in a Pierre Polyev event, not

Carter 37:48

not why there's 1,100 people there, right? Like, you do the work, and that work pays off, and Jason Kenney needs to simply do the work, don't make the speech, don't make the messaging, get

Carter 37:59

get your people to the polls, or get

Carter 38:02

get them an extra 10 ballots each.

Carter 38:05

But get them their ballots, get them filled in, get them to their polling stations.

Corey 38:09

Corey, what are you looking for from him?

Corey 38:12

It's great advice. At this point, there are some members that are just going to vote, no matter what. like they're the engaged members you don't need to do a thing you're not going to be able to change their mind anyways the die is cast with that how big that group is he is going to have a much better sense than we will sitting on this stage they've been working the phones for months at this point right uh and from there you go out you say who needs a nudge how do i get these people in this is kind of standard get out the vote stuff that occurs in every leadership and

Corey 38:37

and in every general election you have your lists you work your lists you have like audiences people who are like the the people already on your list, you make assumptions about them, and you get them to vote. What

Zain 38:47

What if, and this is a big what if, but I suspect

Zain 38:50

suspect from your two ballot box questions you want for the

Zain 38:56

advocates or activists, what if they're successful in starting to define the question? That more and more members are saying, yeah, can

Zain 39:04

can we do better?

Zain 39:05

Are we better off without Jason Kenney? Do we have a better chance of winning?

Zain 39:08

Do we have a better chance winning you know the ucp can go on but not with this guy if that chattering class continues jason kenney does he stop the organizing train does he divert resources to the ballot box question see this is the tension that

Corey 39:21

it's eday man like the argument it's already there it's going to continue because we've got this weird one month thing that's now going on but

Corey 39:28

but think about that there's 60 000 members in the ucp ish right 60 000 members how

Corey 39:34

how many of them do you think are actually accessible at this moment we might be talking 30,000 20,000 10,000 right

Corey 39:40

right and so it becomes less

Corey 39:43

less about the convincing and more about the getting them out yeah

Carter 39:47

yeah you don't reset a ballot box question once the ballots are you know in the air right

Carter 39:52

right so it's kind of like saying well the advanced polls are out let's try and start to message to people the

Carter 39:57

the advanced polls are out people are casting ballots that means you find the people that you're looking for and get them to count you call

Corey 40:05

call this a starting pistol i did And I was going to jump on you right there and be shitty, but I thought in front of all these nice people.

Corey 40:12

Yeah, no, no, you need a win now, so go ahead, do it, do it, do it now. This is a good time to take a shit on me. Go ahead, Corey.

Corey 40:18

This was a closing argument, right?

Corey 40:20

right? This is the

Corey 40:21

the thing I need you to think about as you go in here. You're the most engaged. You're the lunatics who are actually watching a Zoom political

Corey 40:29

political speech live from Red Deer. Yeah.

Corey 40:33

And this is my best argument. this is the summation of everything I need you to hear before you go vote. But he's never going to get another moment like this for the rest of the leadership review.

Zain 40:43

Carter, I have to ask you two additional audiences. The first one,

Zain 40:46

the Schweitzer name keeps floating around. We don't know if that's true. I want to go revisit an older conversation we've had, actually iteratively throughout our podcast over the last six months, which is, if

Zain 40:55

if you're on the inside of the Kenny camp

Zain 40:58

camp right now, you're a cabinet minister, you're someone sitting in government, You have your eye on that prize. Your name's not Brian Jean. Your name's not Daniel Smith.

Zain 41:07

What are you doing right now? Are you still saying, this is our guy? Are you being a little bit more chill in your reception? If Corey's right, this was a closing argument, starting pistol of a closing argument.

Zain 41:17

What are you doing if you are one

Corey 41:20

of those folks? What you're

Carter 41:22

you're doing is you're letting

Carter 41:26

There is absolutely no reason. So your advice for Kenny is to do nothing And

Zain 41:31

To organize What the fuck man

Zain 41:35

Are you listening to the podcast I'm simplifying it for the 12 people that have never heard the podcast before Can we, let's just put a pin in it And just revisit, how is your experience thus far

Zain 41:48

you people The other people Who are dates for people who have never heard this podcast before How is your experience, can I just hear from one of you

Zain 41:57

Not great. She didn't say anything. Okay, excellent. This

Carter 41:59

woman right here is like, I'm not talking ever. And your friend made you sit in the front row?

Zain 42:07

Because you were late. They were late. Okay. Yeah, I hope you like the view of that monitor in front of you.

Zain 42:13

Probably not a bad spot to sit if you've never heard the podcast before.

Zain 42:17

You're on the do nothing track. Let it unfold. Keep going. Well,

Carter 42:20

Well, I'll tell you why. Why? Because the person who puts the knife in the back of the emperor doesn't usually survive to win the next race. Well, that's

Zain 42:28

that's what Brian Jean and Daniel Smith seem to be doing right

Carter 42:30

right now. Yeah, Ted Morton doesn't survive, right?

Carter 42:32

right? We didn't see Jim Jennings survive when he put the knife back into Klein's back. So

Carter 42:38

So the person who's putting that knife in often gets trampled by the group. So your best bet, if you're Travis Taves, you're Doug Schweitzer, if you're Tyler Shandrell, whoever wants to seek that leadership, let

Carter 42:49

Brian Jean and Daniel Smith do all the heavy lifting. There are two possible outcomes.

Carter 42:54

Jason Kenney wins, Bob's

Carter 42:57

Bob's your uncle, right? You're already an insider. You're already cabinet minister. You don't care, right? If Jason Kenney loses, those

Carter 43:04

those two other assholes took him down, and you're trying to keep the party together, right?

Carter 43:09

right? So it's a win-win for you.

Carter 43:11

Stay out of the way. Never put yourself in a position where you're going to get hurt when other people can get hurt.

Corey 43:18

Corey, do you agree?

Corey 43:22

agree. I agree. I think at this point, what is the benefit of jumping off the sidelines for all of the reasons we've talked about? Okay. The die is cast for many of these people. And it's

Corey 43:31

it's really, the next, let's

Corey 43:34

let's just say, let's just play hypothetical here. Let's say Jason Kenney loses. Let's say that's the leadership race. Not a review anymore.

Corey 43:41

You are still going to have a massive amount of that party really

Corey 43:44

really obsessed with unity. and they are not going to want to pick a combatant from one of the two sides and they're going to want to pick somebody who's always looked party first and they're going to say things like, hey, I've always been party first and when Jason Kenney asked me to serve, I served and as long as I was serving, I was going to be loyal to him and yeah,

Corey 44:01

yeah, there were things I disagreed with at cabinet at the time, but you know what? You come out and you're strong together and Zane, are we going to do another segment tonight or is it just one? What's going on? You

Carter 44:09

You know how to tell the time Oh,

Zain 44:12

Oh, I'm looking at the time I told these people that, you know, the sun isn't out, so I can't really tell the time. So at some point, at some point, we'll move on. However, I'm

Zain 44:21

I'm going to ask one last question. One last question. The one person

Carter 44:22

person laughing at your sun isn't out joke is freaking me out.

Zain 44:27

Better. Better than I thought it would go, actually. It's a very charitable crowd.

Zain 44:33

Can we do better? Is that the NDP mantra over the next month?

Carter 44:37

If they have a mantra, they're idiots. Don't say anything.

Carter 44:42

Go underground. let the UCP destroy themselves go underground

Corey 44:47

underground there's nothing to be gained there's nothing you know I think opposition parties in this context feel this compulsive urge to poke and make it worse and pick at the sores all that's gonna happen is you're gonna get the disease right just

Corey 45:01

just stay away let

Corey 45:04

let this play out grab your popcorn watch this shit show unfold in the legislature elect

Carter 45:09

elect your candidates build your ridings raise money money do all of those things all of those are you raising any money from what's going on here not a penny you're raising money on vision you're raising

Zain 45:19

raising money on hope

Carter 45:20

hope you're raising money on the next opportunity i don't know what's going on over there i don't even care what i do care about is what's best for albertans and what's best for albertans are people who aren't eating they're young right

Zain 45:34

it's the lowest of ours we're gonna move it on to our next segment our next segment

Zain 45:44

Our next segment, peer pressure. Guys, I want to talk about peer polyamory.

Zain 45:54

Skippy, Skippy, Skippy, Skippy. Corey, are the rally sizes worrying you?

Zain 46:01

And let me ask it this way. Rather than Corey Hogan, is it worrying you? Is it worrying you in two frames? Is it worrying you if you're brown or charade? And is it worrying you if

Zain 46:11

if you're a guy named Justin Trudeau sitting in the prime minister's chair right now?

Corey 46:15

So we've seen this show before, right? In 2016, there were big rallies for this guy named Donald Trump, and

Corey 46:21

and everyone hand-waved them away. That's not how you win. That's not how you win. You go out, you sell memberships, and we're hearing a lot of the same narrative there.

Corey 46:28

There's nothing that makes me think that people are more right now than they were then, right? And, in fact, the difference was Donald Trump didn't have any of the establishment with him. It's pretty clear to me most of the Conservative Party establishment is with Pierre Polyeth right now. So, you

Corey 46:45

you know, yeah, I think that I would be very worried. Now, there's lots of conversation about is Brown just out there hustling memberships? Is Charest doing the same in Quebec?

Corey 46:54

You know, but look at where the momentum is. We talked about this on our last episode or a couple of episodes ago.

Corey 47:00

He's got the crowds. He's

Corey 47:02

He's got the enthusiasm. He's got the online presence. Is there any metric you think that he's losing on right now? Because I don't see one.

Corey 47:12

the risk is that

Corey 47:13

that he just steamrolls through, and

Corey 47:15

and the intelligence, the personality quip I heard, same things I heard about Donald Trump in 2016, right? There is something that he's capturing that's in the conservative zeitgeist, and

Corey 47:25

and sometimes people just get tired of leaders, and Justin Trudeau could lose just because 2015

Corey 47:30

2015 to 2025, that's a long time. This

Zain 47:32

This is the frame, actually, that Corey just ended on that I want to talk about, Carter, which is we've

Zain 47:38

at length about what Charest does, what Brown does, their regional differences, how you're not hitting the panic button just yet. You may want to revise that based on what you saw over

Zain 47:45

over the last couple of days with the size of peers rallies, et cetera. However, I

Zain 47:49

I want to talk about what a war room inside

Zain 47:52

inside the PMO or the Liberal Party does right now. You might be saying there are many years before an election, but I'd also argue that it's the prep that happens now. It's the contouring that happens now, the off-season work to prepare for, let's be clear, a machine like this that

Zain 48:08

that has the ability to steamroll. What would you be doing right now if you're in that camp, Carter?

Zain 48:13

Well, I'd be starting to think

Carter 48:13

think about the next election for sure. And I think that one of the challenges that the Liberals have had is they're just not good. Like, we've talked a lot about a couple of things that they're not good at. They're

Carter 48:21

They're not good at issue management, and

Carter 48:23

don't think they're good at campaigns.

Carter 48:25

So I would be working really hard if I were the Liberals because Pierre Palliev is good at issues, right? Right. He he grabs the issue like inflation and he makes it

Zain 48:34

it his. And can I ask you on that? Do you feel like and this is a macro question, but do you feel like we're moving to a moment that we're starting to vote more and more on issues rather than jersey color? No,

Carter 48:43

No, I think we're still voting on jersey color and I think we're still voting on on, you know, the single ballot question that is is probably pretty, pretty

Carter 48:51

pretty soft. But I think that Pierre Pellievre can probably win on a soft ballot question. right

Carter 48:56

right like it doesn't have to be the

Carter 49:00

thing is if you're not good at issue management you know that you're in government for three and a half more years and there's going to be issues

Carter 49:06

pierre is going to be better taking advantage of those issues than the last two leaders right

Carter 49:10

right so you better get better at your issue management and then when you get to the election you better actually be prepared to run an election it would appear that pierre polyev is not going to and just

Carter 49:21

just give it to you right

Carter 49:22

right oh is that a verb now that's

Zain 49:26

That might be Aaron

Carter 49:29

O'Toole Both of them were terrible and they just handed the election over Because I'd argue that Justin Trudeau's best election Was 2015 and he hasn't run An election since 2015 It

Corey 49:40

It was even close Indisputable just based on the results But

Zain 49:43

what Carter's saying here is fascinating Is that O'Toole and Shearer Especially O'Toole who tried to moderate himself During an election handed it over To Trudeau is what you say But you've got Polyev now, who's

Zain 49:55

undeniably more right-wing than O'Toole was, at least in the reincarnation that we saw during the election, and you're saying that he might have more muster. It seems like the authenticity gap is perhaps what you're talking about. We're

Carter 50:06

We're going into this model where we think that people actually identify as far right, far left. Most people don't. There is a group of people who are hyper-engaged in politics, and they're here in the room, and thank you for your $35. But most people aren't here. right like most people wouldn't do this because these people are crazy and the

Zain 50:25

the constant disdain we have for the audience is an ongoing theme yeah uh person who's not uh listened to the podcast before thank you go on but

Carter 50:34

but the the vast majority of people are less engaged they don't necessarily understand or identify okay

Carter 50:39

so when there's a big crowd right like people

Carter 50:42

people will go to a thing where there's a big crowd just for the energy like the 12 people who got dragged to this thing they didn't didn't know what they were doing but hell it seemed like a party and there was going to be alcohol so they showed up and

Carter 50:55

and and that's actually how momentum works right you don't if

Carter 50:59

don't get caught up in the left wing right wing thing i mean we're watching it unfold again in france right now yeah

Carter 51:06

is is the far right candidate but she's able to grab on to a lot of others who don't identify as far right and capture their votes for a variety of reasons and that's what Polyev could do against a weak Trudeau campaign and against a Trudeau government that hasn't figured out how to do issues management after six years.

Zain 51:28

Corey, tell me your scale of worry inside a liberal camp right now around what this could look like and what the prep for something like this needs to look like. And you might be saying, Zane, you're overstating it, that he's winning on all these metrics, they're only internal to the party, they won't be that strong when he emerges out of this thing. But it's looking scary if you're a progressive in this country, I would say. Well,

Corey 51:48

Well, so I would broaden it, in fact. I would say one of the things about

Corey 51:53

about us being in sports team times, right, where it's like it's my team, so I'm going to support them, is the

Corey 51:59

the biggest booster of the team is the person that people tend to go to. And that's true on the left and the right. It's more true on the right, I think it's fair to say. But it's true in both cases. And you see people everywhere saying the reason we lose is because my party just, they've watered down too much. They've moderated too much. We just need strong conviction of our values. We do that. We'll move the Overton window. People will be talking about things. We'll win some elections because people just want fighters. People want conviction. Nothing here is unique to the right wing. And it's something that's just going on more generally across society right now. So if I'm the liberals and I'm sitting there and I'm thinking about that, I'm thinking about how do I, as Justin Trudeau, the leader of a purportedly centrist party, deal with a world that is polarizing like that? Now, we've seen the liberals move to the left on quite a few issues, and maybe that's the liberal solution to it. But that's still leaving an awful lot of people perhaps feeling a little bit squeamish, a little bit uncomfortable. You know, one of the things that – so on Friday I was having a drink with a friend, and

Corey 52:58

and he – You sound

Corey 53:01

acquaintance at best um and

Corey 53:05

and he was he had volunteered for the charrette camp and

Corey 53:08

and he had volunteered for this right now you

Corey 53:10

yeah like recently he'd gone to a couple of like the national meetings on zoom and all of this and he kind of ghosted he ducked out of it all and i said well why he said well there were two types of people there there

Corey 53:21

there were really old pcs like really really, really old. Like Stephen Old, yeah.

Corey 53:25

Yeah, like Stephen Old.

Corey 53:28

Yeah, Stephen Carter's the young guy in that room.

Corey 53:31

You were for five

Zain 53:32

five minutes when you left, Carter, yeah.

Corey 53:33

And then there were the blue liberals, right? The kind of the champagne set of the liberal party who

Corey 53:40

weren't necessarily feeling, it's not even that they wouldn't vote for liberal at the end of the day, but they wanted

Corey 53:45

kind of a charade backstop there. And they were feeling like maybe the party had moved a little too big. So a couple of things that really struck me about that. One is none of the enthusiasm is with a moderate right now but

Corey 53:55

but the other is there

Corey 53:57

there are liberals available i suspect to a moderate conservative party so there's interesting tensions there and if i'm the liberals i'm seeing worry

Corey 54:05

worry but i'm seeing opportunity and i'm definitely watching and preparing for a lot of outcomes in this conservative leadership race carter what else are you doing to prepare

Zain 54:12

prepare right now anything tactical videos anything you're putting out are you once again is this just eating popcorn for you if you're the liberals right now is it a different situation than what kenny's about to do here in and embark upon with the starting pistol of the closing argument in Alberta. Is this fundamentally different, what Trudeau has to do in Ottawa and then the party has to do nationally as they observe the conservative leadership race? On

Carter 54:38

On our last episode, the Patreon special.

Zain 54:41

Yeah, that's right. Which is also a real thing. Once again, the authenticity issue that we have is quite significant.

Carter 54:47

Yeah, so in that show we talked about how we haven't seen Trudeau as much, right? with

Carter 54:54

Ukraine event, with the COVID, kind of the end of COVID plus the rise of COVID that is coming. We're not seeing Trudeau for that. We didn't really see Trudeau on the budget. And I think that this is all speaking to a missed opportunity, because

Carter 55:08

because he has the opportunity to stand up and say, this is all shifting right now. And we need a national

Carter 55:14

national government that is mature and responsible. And I think it's really good that he's sharing the limelight with his ministers. but we need to see the leader as well and I think that Trudeau really needs to reassert himself as he did during a large portion of the of the COVID-19 problem and show us what grown-up mature leadership looks like versus what it is that Skippy's trying to do.

Corey 55:38

2025 is a lifetime away it is if if the liberals are smart and I believe they are smart to do this they would be going out they would be making sure they're getting footage of all of these rallies they're getting those those times when he is feeling perhaps a little less guarded he's talking to his base there and they're preparing it uh for step one an introduction to canadians because to the point about normal people right there's there's not that many people who know this man yet so they they essentially they

Corey 56:06

they d on him to use another kind of yeah right yeah uh explain what that means do you think it is easy to make priorities you know yeah i

Corey 56:15

i mean it's the idea of like putting You know, the shit heel ad. That

Zain 56:19

That was Dia? I

Corey 56:20

I was like, what do you want from me? I was wondering if that's a merger of the two of them together. No, you put out this ad where you've clipped a moment that's not a great moment for them, and that is how all of Canada gets to be introduced, right?

Corey 56:32

right? And then you make sure that you keep the rest of it that you don't need for the introduction for the election.

Corey 56:38

So, because there's no point in defining this person in

Corey 56:42

in 2024 after that initial how do you do.

Corey 56:45

It'll all be forgotten by 2025. I

Carter 56:47

I think the political parties somehow sometimes forget that elections are when elections are won and lost. They sometimes think that...

Zain 56:55

elections are where elections are won and lost. Right,

Carter 56:57

Right, because they want to... Is money the currency of politics? I

Zain 57:01

want to bring up another Stephen Carter phrase just

Zain 57:04

make sure we're on the same page.

Zain 57:09

Why are you turning to him? He's not sympathetic.

Zain 57:13

less and less of this audience is.

Zain 57:17

That does not sound like 99.5% to me.

Carter 57:21

My simple point is this. They try and win the election every day of their government.

Carter 57:26

They're trying to win their election today. They're trying to win their election tomorrow. And yes, certain trends carry, but the election is going to be won or lost in the last couple of weeks before E-Day. Is

Carter 57:38

Is that better? Are you happier with E-Day? Yes, thank you, Carter.

Carter 57:40

This idea that you're going to win or lose today, And this is where I think the provincial NDP get themselves caught in this. We've got to win the day. We've got to win today. You don't have to win today. You have to win when the ballot happens. And this, sure, yes, what you do today may impact that, so don't fuck up.

Carter 57:58

But it doesn't have to be a full divisive. Like

Zain 58:01

Like a big capital W. Right.

Carter 58:03

Trudeau doesn't have to win today.

Carter 58:05

He just needs to make sure that he continues to show what mature government looks like.

Carter 58:11

Corey, I need to ask you,

Zain 58:12

as a final question to round out the segment, we're seeing this populist rise. We saw the move in 2016. We've seen it elsewhere around the world. We're seeing interesting

Zain 58:20

interesting developments happen in

Zain 58:22

in France right now.

Zain 58:23

If you're someone on the progressive side of the spectrum, you're a hyper-engaged person across this country, you see what's happening with

Zain 58:29

with the peer polyamory campaign,

Zain 58:31

the populism that comes with it, the rhetoric in

Zain 58:34

in its own right dialed up to 11, the

Zain 58:36

the simplistic sort of language that is having many people gravitate towards it around freedom and making Canada the freest country in the world. We've seen versions of this film across

Zain 58:45

across the world. Sure.

Zain 58:46

What are you doing right now? If you're that person, if you're engaged in politics, you're part of the unit in this country that wants to see some

Zain 58:55

some change, but not in this direction, is there anything you're doing right now? Well,

Corey 58:58

Well, you have two choices, right? Let's put it this way. This is a real thing that is happening across the globe. We've seen what's going on in the United States. the total ho-hum attitude towards an insurrection that just barely failed sure right is really quite troubling and you know we do tend to take these american trends on just a couple of years after the americans themselves do them so you have two choices right you can do it better or you can do it different but both take a certain amount of intentionality and you've got to say this is my strategy and where i think uh progressives really need to kind of really get serious with themselves and think this out is are we going to try to fight this overall trend because that suggests a certain type of tactics and it suggests going to a moderation of views and perhaps either trying to ride a wave that's coming or creating a wave towards more more

Corey 59:45

more sedate government than we've had in the past couple of decades here it feels like or

Corey 59:50

or a decade at least or you can say who's our pierre polyev who is the who is the firebrand who's going to stand up and fill those those rooms and and just have this total fucking clash of civilizations election coming on so those are your choices

Zain 1:00:05

choices and do you do you feel like that we're headed

Zain 1:00:08

headed to one of those two choices by default i

Corey 1:00:11

i think by default they will attempt both and fail at both so that's

Corey 1:00:16

that's that's a warning call in some ways isn't

Zain 1:00:18

you know carter one of the phrases that really stuck with me not in light of what's happening with pierre but it's around these global movements that a

Zain 1:00:24

a zealous minority can always defeat a flabby majority a

Zain 1:00:28

a majority that that kind of sits around that whole hums that doesn't get involved your

Zain 1:00:33

your advice for individuals groups etc that look at what's happening with

Zain 1:00:38

with the populism of a pure polyamory campaign and

Zain 1:00:41

and and want to counteract it well

Carter 1:00:44

quo almost never survives right

Carter 1:00:45

right so there is no sir because you know wasn't that long ago we were talking about how we've really seen a real shift in American politics and an ad in Canadian politics towards the progressive side yeah

Carter 1:00:56

you know Progressivism was absolutely dominant for quite a while. And you could see it as it was oozing into Alison Redford or oozing into Ed Stelmack or some of these progressive conservative parties that were truly progressive conservatives. And it was also working in the same way with the true progressive, if you will, identifying parties. These things were legitimate and they were real and the population seemed to be there and it was like oh we have got this now we've got this but

Carter 1:01:28

equilibrium you know it shifted again and as it shifted we didn't no one thought that donald trump was going to be kind of the the biggest example

Carter 1:01:37

example of that but he was just but one right

Carter 1:01:40

right we did see the same type of thing happening in brazil we see the same type of thing happening in europe we've seen it all over the world where

Carter 1:01:48

the shift is happening so if you want to avoid being that group that is overtaken you need to to be the group that is actually doing things and and that

Carter 1:01:56

that means that politics needs to be more than just simply that something that you watch it needs to be something that you participate in because

Carter 1:02:02

because it's only through the participation that we actually change it cory

Corey 1:02:06

cory anything to anything to close this out on yeah look i'll just say this history is not dead and progress is not time zero you want to change the world you fight for it every day because there are people who have other views and those views are going to be in conflict so

Corey 1:02:19

so uh go out there and fight for what you care We're going to leave that segment there Moving on to

Zain 1:02:23

to our next segment

Zain 1:02:26

love how we have to

Carter 1:02:27

to look To see what the

Zain 1:02:27

the next segment is We'll skip that segment about Trey We'll skip that segment about Patrick Brown We'll skip Pakistan politics today We'll just move past that one

Zain 1:02:42

We'll leave that there Or over under our lightning rod

Zain 1:02:52

we do it for you We do this entire show for you On

Zain 1:02:56

a scale of one, actually you know what Over, under, on six The

Carter 1:03:00

under, on six? That

Carter 1:03:02

was a D- for me I mean

Carter 1:03:07

was trying to carry quite a bit He was trying to make in one speech It was both the launch and the end Of his campaign pain so it was tricky i mean it's fine i think it's about the launch

Zain 1:03:18

launch at the end of it's what i

Carter 1:03:20

put in there okay

Zain 1:03:20

okay nice let's take it from youtube oh thank you

Carter 1:03:22

so much but i think that his problem was that he was trying to uh achieve too much and i think that the questions ill-formed um

Carter 1:03:30

um the unity it's not just enough to stay together just to stay together that we need he needed to put together reasoning and rationale it's not about the last 385 promises it's about the next one Corey,

Zain 1:03:41

Corey, over, under, on six, the Kenny speech. Carter gave it a D plus, which translates into an under. A D minus, which translates into an under. How about yourself?

Corey 1:03:48

Over, under, on six, yes.

Zain 1:03:52

Thank you for acknowledging.

Zain 1:03:54

Anything else you want to add to this, Corey, as we wrap up? Yeah,

Corey 1:03:56

Yeah, I think it was a good speech. It was a good speech, but it requires a certain willful ignorance of events. And it's just interesting to see what

Corey 1:04:05

what the mood of his party is. Because if his party isn't in a mood to move on and forget and fuck it, let's just ride the bull. then it was a good speech. Corey,

Zain 1:04:13

Corey, are you in or out on the Daniel Smith's for leader strategy, which seems to be, I'm running for leader, I'd be interested, I'm now running for this nomination. Here's my website that is ready for a leadership race at any moment in time, but

Zain 1:04:26

but I'm just running for this nomination. Are you in or out on that strategy for

Corey 1:04:32

I think it is a pretty good strategy because it allows you to do all of the things you need for a leadership contest without declaring the leadership contest. test you can start raising money you can start building lists this is all pretty sensible stuff uh you know the bait and switch of i'm running for counselor no i'm running for mayor you

Corey 1:04:49

you know it's a it's a time-tested kind

Corey 1:04:51

kind of thing nah

Corey 1:04:56

uh no but it works yeah really

Carter 1:04:57

really do you think that works carter are you in around

Zain 1:04:59

around that fucking so wrong

Carter 1:05:02

it would be fine maybe if she didn't say she was running for leader but she said she's running for leader stupid fucking choice if

Carter 1:05:10

if you're if you're running for leader then run for leader it was the wrong time what

Carter 1:05:14

what you need to do is say i want to be back in i want a party that can succeed and i'm going to start i'm going to put my money where my mouth is i'm running in whatever the hell the name of the riding is longview

Carter 1:05:23

longview is that right no

Zain 1:05:26

no one one of them no we don't check facts that's fine that's fine carter overrated underrated setting the ballot ballot box question specific to what's happening here in the UCP in Alberta? Is that overrated or underrated, the

Zain 1:05:38

the setting and the framing of the ballot box question? Setting

Carter 1:05:40

Setting and framing the ballot box question is the core element of politics. If you don't do it, you're not winning. And so

Carter 1:05:46

so I'm not sure that it's overrated or underrated. I think it's just, it

Carter 1:05:49

it is the game.

Zain 1:05:51

Carter's going with underrated, Corey, overrated or underrated, setting the ballot box question here in this UCP. Here's the reason I ask it that way, Carter, because Because of the final days, Corey says they were

Carter 1:06:01

were really awkward in your phrasing. No, I

Zain 1:06:03

I was not awkward in

Corey 1:06:07

Underrated, but your question, your addendum there is the point. It

Corey 1:06:13

is overrated at this moment because so

Corey 1:06:16

so much of this has already occurred, and there's just so much history, it's going to be interesting to see people's perspectives.

Zain 1:06:22

Corey? Yes or no, are we headed for an early election here in Alberta? Yes.

Zain 1:06:28

Why? Tell me why. Tell me how you see this play

Corey 1:06:30

out. Okay, well, I

Corey 1:06:31

I said it so confidently,

Corey 1:06:35

confidently, I am definitely asking the universe to kick me in the ass.

Corey 1:06:42

a Stephen Carter prediction right there.

Corey 1:06:45

We're triple recording this, right? Just

Corey 1:06:47

Just to make sure. I believe one of two things is likely to happen. Oh, he's expanding the

Corey 1:06:50

the agenda. One of two things is likely to happen. There

Corey 1:06:53

we go. Jason Kenney will win or Jason Kenney will lose.

Corey 1:06:59

hold on in the case of number one you

Zain 1:07:00

you paid 35 i just

Corey 1:07:04

just want you to know in the case of number one jason kenney has not dealt with the rebels uh he has already put out signals that the only thing that would cause him to go to a snap election is if his caucus doesn't hold with him so he's signaled already that he's willing to do that and clear the decks on his own campaign

Corey 1:07:21

if if he loses there will be a leadership review there will be or not a leadership review a a leadership contest there will be a new leader and the new leader is not going to sit there to be hated for six months they are going to take that honeymoon and they're going to go to the polls in the fall so

Corey 1:07:34

so those to me seem like the two most likely scenarios um and

Corey 1:07:38

and you know it could be a meteor destroys us all and that that would make me wrong but i think only that would make you wrong

Corey 1:07:47

otherwise i feel pretty

Corey 1:07:47

good we will be

Zain 1:07:48

be looking at an early election of an adam mckay movie would be the only thing that would prove you wrong that's good carter are

Zain 1:07:54

are we going for an early election here?

Carter 1:07:56

Well, I mean, the smart move with the live audience would be to disagree with Corey, but we're going to an early election.

Carter 1:08:04

Oh, yeah, but better.

Zain 1:08:10

We'll leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 981 of The Strategist. We'll get that music.

Zain 1:08:23

Bye. Bye. audience here in Calgary.

Transcript