Transcript
Zain
0:02
This is the strategist episode 999.999999. My
Zain
0:08
My name is Zain Velji with me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen
Zain
0:11
Stephen Carter. Guys, what's going on? Did you see how, by the way, I
Zain
0:14
I just smoothly nailed that 6-9 landing? See, here's what I could have done. I could have done them as couplets, 9-9, 9-9, 9-9.
Zain
0:22
then what I did is I made them indivisible as threes. So there's like 9-9-9. yeah triplets yeah i i thought it was i thought it was actually a fantastic i
Corey
0:30
i what i would have done is nine nine nine nine nine nine you know showing the kind of that sounds
Zain
0:36
sounds too morse cody i don't i don't like yeah it does hey
Corey
0:39
guys how are you i missed you last episode i uh i hear you had some technical difficulties we
Carter
0:45
we we missed you too you're
Carter
0:47
you're amazing cory you're my bestest friend in the whole world what the fuck i don't know how you can do it okay
Carter
0:55
okay you may have by the the way just left a couple of the instructions out of your note to us and
Carter
0:59
and the notes like if people are wondering why zane and i were a little rambly in the first 30 minutes of the podcast it's because we were looking at your texts on the whatsapp at
Carter
1:09
at the same time it was very distracting but you know what you are great we we we know i
Corey
1:15
i love you so i remember it a little different i remember it as me saying i
Corey
1:20
remember you guys do you want me to do the live stream yeah no that's Do you want me to do
Carter
1:24
do this live stream thing for you? Because I
Carter
1:25
still do the technical thing.
Corey
1:26
thing. I had confidence. You had confidence. You had a lot of confidence. I
Carter
1:29
I know where I went wrong.
Carter
1:31
I had confidence. But now that's all gone, isn't it? And that was really your plan.
Carter
1:36
That was your plan. Well,
Corey
1:36
Well, I like to keep you in your place after you get an 8,000 word think piece about
Corey
1:41
about your life and times there.
Zain
1:45
read it. Of course,
Zain
1:45
course, he claims he hasn't read it, Corey. By the way, we did cover a series
Zain
1:49
series of topics, including Carter's profile, which, by the way, to clarify, is a profile on Stephen Carter and not the more famous and well-deserving Stephen L. Carter of Yale. No, this is a profile of white Stephen Carter, the one, very one on this show. I mean, white privilege, Carter. There you go. I think
Carter
2:11
think that that's true. Yeah. In fairness, I did not ask for the profile.
Zain
2:17
You know what? One, we need to start a campaign. We need to tell the sprawl.
Zain
2:21
We need a profile on Stephen L. Carter. We need a profile on Stephen L. Carter now. I would be quite
Corey
2:27
quite curious, personally. I
Zain
2:28
I would, too. We rarely move
Zain
2:30
move our listeners into action, and we need to do that, Corey.
Corey
2:34
I did not listen, obviously.
Corey
2:38
are a few things that I can bet that you talked about wrong here. So let me
Zain
2:43
me try to predict
Zain
2:45
conversation. Are you going to predict?
Zain
2:46
Wait, okay, just to be clear. you did not listen and you are now going to predict what we not only said but what we said wrong that's
Zain
2:54
yeah okay this is like some steven carter like predictions this is you're you're too dominoing this for no reason whatsoever but i like it
Corey
3:02
good now i know i know you talked based just on this little conversation right here i know that you talked about this
Corey
3:09
this notion of there being a um uh
Corey
3:13
uh you know a column about our friend steven carter and i'll bet you
Corey
3:18
yeah steven carter why did you agree to do this interview and
Zain
3:22
bet you steven carter said so
Corey
3:24
so i could control the story and
Corey
3:26
and i'll bet what you failed to prod him on is why
Corey
3:29
why didn't you do a five minute interview then steven and not a three hour interview do you think perhaps that in three hours you will say a
Corey
3:36
a trillion things some of which will be held against you so
Corey
3:39
so that's my first piece of feedback i
Corey
3:41
i don't know if that conversation didn't but i'm going to bet
Carter
3:44
bet you you did you did you nailed it and and uh cory zane did not ask the follow-up question fuck him fuck him he didn't know anything he's busy scolding us for
Carter
3:53
sending out the live
Carter
3:56
yeah i'd like to answer the question uh
Carter
3:58
uh i was talking about myself there was no way it was gonna take oh yeah
Corey
4:05
well fair point yeah your favorite topic your favorite topic so that makes sense you
Carter
4:09
you forgot who you're talking to okay
Corey
4:11
okay uh i'm guessing you also talked about the conservative party of canada because it was on the front page of national news watch which is how you create your rundown zane so
Corey
4:20
so uh i'm imagining it was about people
Corey
4:23
participating in the debates or not yeah
Corey
4:25
yeah and uh no we didn't actually have a conversation i
Corey
4:28
was going to cover this
Zain
4:29
this i lied to you oh you didn't
Zain
4:31
yeah so you look like a fucking idiot okay what
Zain
4:33
what else I'm one for two. What
Corey
4:35
What else did we
Corey
4:36
we talk about wrong?
Corey
4:38
no doubt if you had talked about that, it would be wrong. But then you probably talked about the endorsement by Stephen Harper. We did. Yeah,
Carter
4:44
Yeah, we did. Did you
Corey
4:45
you have conversations about why they're going so hard if he's supposedly the front runner?
Carter
4:50
Yes, we did, in fact. Yeah. Okay.
Corey
4:52
Okay. Well, I hope that you guys considered as well that Pierre Polyev has seen the last two conservative leaders barely win with 50% and face such caucus trouble. So he's not just trying to win. and he's trying to win with like 80 plus percent his uh his anxiety his continued haymakers the fact that he's got the former prime minister backing him has much more to do with the fact that he wants overwhelming can change everything victory than
Corey
5:16
than it does about any anxieties that he may or may not win he's got this thing locked up
Carter
5:20
let me tell you where you're wrong we did not talk about that part well
Zain
5:24
well what do you mean we did not talk about you didn't bring it up it was literally the show was my point is
Zain
5:27
is my point we
Zain
5:28
we well it seems
Zain
5:29
seems like cory seems like a desperate child to prove his relevancy okay go ahead what else did we talk about
Carter
5:34
about mommy mommy look at the tricks i can do mommy mommy yeah you
Carter
5:38
over here look at me i'm in the deep end i'm
Carter
5:41
the deep end mommy
Zain
5:41
mommy what else what else we talk about and get wrong go ahead well
Corey
5:44
well i'm imagining so listen i i did ultimately have to help produce by like pulling your clips together i didn't listen but i had to sync them off and so i know at the start you guys went a little bit nuts with the soundboard but i noticed
Corey
5:57
noticed that there were no sounds after about like the four minute mark so i'm imagining you somehow broke the soundboard at some point we broke
Carter
6:04
broke the soundboard very quickly very early
Carter
6:07
but in fairness i seem to recall you have also broken the soundboard there has been time when you've tried to press things on the soundboard and it doesn't work no
Corey
6:14
no that's just the
Corey
6:19
for it yeah i
Zain
6:19
i love it there
Zain
6:21
there is one thing thank you i don't know yeah are you done are you done scolding us are you done uh i think so okay good how
Zain
6:27
how did i do though
Corey
6:28
though though like was that two for
Zain
6:29
for three i mean you okay well good you did very well three things correctly um
Zain
6:33
um i think i let me tell you something i just took a live poll of all of our listeners um they hate you more after seven of them they ever have i'll let you know this
Zain
6:42
this i'll let you know um we
Zain
6:44
we also talked about andrea horvath and
Zain
6:48
why she's coming back so
Zain
6:51
so quickly i want to get get your thoughts on this like
Zain
6:55
you know this carter said carter said strict opportunism is just the name of the game so like fucking deal with it i'm
Zain
7:01
i'm summarizing carter yep i want to get your take on this do you agree no
Corey
7:05
no i sort of agree i i you know what i've noticed there's a there's a big trend right now um i don't know how people in cities should feel about the fact that so many people seem to think like well
Corey
7:15
well i i fucked up or i couldn't get it done at the province or nationally so i guess i'll just be mayor i'm owed that at the very least right you know it really is kind of demeaning
Corey
7:24
demeaning to municipal governments particularly the way horvath came in with basically no reason why she was running no
Zain
7:30
no literally on election day she said she said that is a question for tomorrow the
Zain
7:34
why i'm running will
Zain
7:35
be a question for tomorrow so i am announcing i'm running i am not
Corey
7:39
why i'm not announcing why i
Corey
7:42
i am just announcing i'm running is is quite a move that's quite a take so it
Corey
7:47
really is and you know like it's the biggest cliche in politics like you have to be able to answer while you're running oh
Corey
7:53
oh see we talked
Carter
7:53
talked about this too and we dissed the west wing you would have loved that oh i would like that part
Carter
7:59
gotta go back and listen now
Zain
8:00
in court you maybe should listen to it um i think card and i have a career i mean if we have you i think we can do this if we mute bory hogan on the chat i think card and i can do this this podcast i feel
Zain
8:10
feel like that's what's needed okay
Zain
8:12
okay we're gonna leave that that um smarmy summary marie that uh that nicely nicely done cory fitting fitting the role welcome back moving it on to our first segment our first segment i see you see we all see a poetically placed air ambulance carter
Zain
8:27
let's talk about the ucp you know why my alternate card title was i wouldn't use it because it's too mean it was uh snow white in the sixth ward now i would not say that why would i do that that is not appropriate okay
Zain
8:37
why would i do that that's super like that's not not no come on carter carter stop laughing um
Carter
8:43
um i'm not laughing i'm not laughing it was terrible
Zain
8:46
terrible carter in a helicopter hangar the ucp leadership candidates uh duped it out last night in medicine hat in a debate um
Zain
8:56
which you can call a debate that seemed to have front and runner i'll put that in air quotes danielle smith uh being piled upon with attacks from all sides from her policies uh for her her perspectives, for her sovereignty act, for her health spending plan, for her statements about stage four cancer.
Zain
9:15
Carter, your takeaway. Now, you know what? Why would I ask your takeaway? Stephen Carter, let me go even simpler. Did you watch this debate? I instructed you to watch it. I instructed you at the minimum read about it.
Zain
9:27
What have you consumed about last night, Stephen and carter so
Carter
9:33
so borgen is on uh netflix and i was given the opportunity to watch borgen in danish without subtitles and not understand a word that was going on or i
Carter
9:43
i could watch the debate and i chose to watch borgen thank
Zain
9:47
thank you carter do
Zain
9:48
do you want to explain what
Zain
9:49
what that is to people
Zain
9:51
no you don't it's
Carter
9:52
it's a danish political it's
Zain
9:54
it's terrible okay the first episode ends never Never mind. I'm going to ruin the first episode.
Zain
9:58
She is running to be prime minister and she fucking leaves the party where they're announcing who's going to become prime minister. Her husband leaves, I should say, before she gets announced. I feel like I feel like that is one of the craziest like ends
Zain
10:12
ends of the first episode. OK, she becomes prime minister. Her husband says, you know what? I'm actually going to go home. It's foreshadowing,
Carter
10:17
foreshadowing, Zane. Let me know.
Zain
10:18
know. Let me know. I don't
Carter
10:18
don't think I'm letting anything out of the bag when I say her husband
Carter
10:22
the end of the season is
Zain
10:23
is not her husband. No, no, no, no.
Zain
10:24
I'm just saying. man.
Zain
10:27
is terrible. I am sweating
Carter
10:28
sweating in uncomfortable ways.
Zain
10:33
Corey, what have you consumed? Let's get a baseline. Let's get a baseline for the people. What have you consumed about the UCP leadership debate, if anything?
Corey
10:40
So I did watch snippets of it last night, but it was cutting in and out. And I found that vaguely frustrating. So I just didn't bother at a certain point. It looks like they had some trouble with their live feed. I did read most of the analysis, I think, that was published today about it. And I did watch some package clips that that
Corey
10:56
showed the exchanges for example that were shared by the sony campaign and some of the infographics that got pulled out of this as well i do find it interesting to see how
Corey
11:05
how each of those campaigns had or didn't have rapid response and the ability to frame what occurred in in the
Corey
11:12
um but you know i i would say i probably consumed it uh the way most people will have consumed it because i don't know how many people actually at the end of the day watched it live particularly given it
Corey
11:23
it started late and there were the frustrations with watching it in
Carter
11:27
in fairness to me i did consume it the same way he did just
Zain
11:35
carter let's actually talk about the background i
Zain
11:37
i want to talk about this yep it's
Zain
11:39
it's in it okay it's in a helicopter hangar with an air ambulance behind them like
Zain
11:43
like i'm not exaggerating that that is literally the background tell me about what
Zain
11:47
what you made of that like you know because there's goals for each candidate there's also a goal for the ucp here is there not and what do you think they're trying to achieve with that location like if you were on the ucp central planning committee what would you like reverse engineer to me what you think their goal was for for last night as it relates to locale and both geographically but also that that particular venue i
Carter
12:09
have to assume the subtext was vote for the ucp and there'll be more you'll need an air ambulance because our health policy is so bad that
Carter
12:17
that until you get stage four cancer, you're not even going to get care.
Carter
12:21
So I would assume that was the subtext.
Carter
12:24
I also know there could be two reasons, Zane. That's the first reason. The second reason is that they have charged $150
Carter
12:31
$150,000 for each contestant. There's seven contestants. And the way that the Alberta Elections Law is written, you
Carter
12:38
you are supposed to actually only
Carter
12:40
only charge an entry fee that is commensurate to the cost of the campaign. Bain.
Carter
12:44
So I'm imagining there's some folks in the like,
Carter
12:46
I think they probably bought that helicopter is what I'm trying to get across. I think that that wasn't a prop.
Carter
12:51
I think they actually had so much money. Now
Zain
12:54
Now owns a helicopter.
Carter
12:56
I think that that's the only way that they could spend enough money to justify that
Carter
13:01
that kind of a fee from each of their contestants. I mean, that's a that's a style of fee that even Corey Hogan as executive director of the Liberal Party would be unable to to justify um
Carter
13:12
you know i i was i i think that frankly
Carter
13:14
frankly i i in seriousness i didn't understand the symbology i
Carter
13:18
i didn't understand what the symbolism was supposed to to do and you know i studied symbolism challenge yourself in university yourself pretzel
Zain
13:25
pretzel yourself what do
Carter
13:26
do you think you could
Carter
13:28
can honest to god okay i can't like what is it supposed to say i mean it's a great question i don't have an answer cory
Zain
13:35
cory what was it supposed to say that it looks cool is it just simply that uh
Corey
13:39
uh yeah there's a certain muscularity to it and i think that's consistent with the the values they want to present i think in general a hanger seems like a terrible place for a debate for me the acoustics were
Zain
13:51
were awful and by the way it did it did suffer like the the the live stream which i'll get to in a second but even in the recorded clips like the audio was not great and if you're one of these campaigns wanting to clip perhaps
Zain
14:02
perhaps even put some of these in a digital ad or tv not
Zain
14:05
not the greatest presentation of your candidate overall yeah
Corey
14:09
yeah you know i i think with the benefit of hindsight some of them might have miked their own candidates to try to try to get their audio there and
Corey
14:16
and you know i was sitting there wondering at certain points like what if they need that air ambulance like what if there's an emergency and they're like okay everybody shut her down we got to get it out on the tarmac we got to go right i mean it was that possible it is an active air air ambulance and and maybe maybe and this is maybe this is something everybody in the room knew maybe it was part of introductory remarks i missed or whatnot maybe
Corey
14:37
maybe the purpose for it was that air ambulance was purchased by the provincial government under the under the ucp that's the only thing i can think that makes sense
Corey
14:46
it doesn't make a ton of sense right um it did seem to me like it was just trying to find cool for the sake of cool and not really thinking about whether the venue would work for them in any way shape or form this was in medicine hat there's a lot of places in medicine hat where you could put on something like this and it's not that's a
Carter
15:02
a great town there would have been a great place lots of great places art
Corey
15:06
art scene in in medicine a really good
Carter
15:08
good art center that has been paid for by in part by uh the provincial government so yeah
Carter
15:13
you know i'm sure the ucp could find a way to pretzel their way around that that credit yeah
Corey
15:19
yeah well so i i didn't totally get it but i guess the other thing is you do need a big
Corey
15:23
big stage you got seven p i don't know like there's there's so many big stages you could have had but it was it was but
Carter
15:29
but they have an art like there is an art center like there are there were better there
Carter
15:33
there were better choices i mean what
Carter
15:35
what you like we we actually went through this when we chose our venues for this for the strategist right like if you choose a uh like we chose two two venues diametrically opposed right we chose we did we we chose the uh the uh the wedding hall in edmonton and we chose the The Martha Cohen Theater in Calgary.
Carter
15:53
And it was, you know, I mean, we
Carter
15:55
we went through the nightmare of producing sound in both of those venues. Like, one
Carter
16:00
one of them was a very professional organization that just apparently forgot to press play or record when we started the show. And the other was the Edmonton Hall. Was the Martha Cohen. Okay.
Zain
16:09
Okay. Sorry, what? We're going for the same joke there. Okay, what? Sorry. Were we
Zain
16:14
we not trying to land the air ambulance with the same joke? I thought that's what we were trying to do. Yeah, we blew that
Carter
16:19
But the venue, the venue tells the story, right?
Carter
16:23
right? The venue tells the story. And the story that was told is
Carter
16:26
we don't, you know, we didn't produce this properly because there's no, there's not proper audio. The visual is stunning. But when you lose the audio, you lose everything. Because that's, that's how this thing lives on beyond the moment. You have to have good audio. you cory
Zain
16:41
cory beside a few i'm not going to call them shoddy polls but besides a few sparse polls that we have uh
Zain
16:47
uh polling ucp members yeah
Zain
16:51
yeah we really don't know what the hell's going on other than like air war momentum so with that being said strategy wise yesterday the triangulation and the multiple punches to danielle smith was that the right call for everyone that wasn't danielle Smith, effectively putting her in the driver's seat? Or would you say it's too late? She's already in the driver's seat. Your job right now with the two-week membership deadline, bring her down a peg. What do you think, Corey, on that overall strategy of saying
Zain
17:19
and perhaps even legitimizing, yep, she's leading?
Corey
17:22
So it's interesting. She's obviously controlled the agenda for the past bit. We talk a lot about the ballot box question. Everyone is reacting to her right now. If you've got such a crowded
Corey
17:33
well, if you've got such a crowded field, and even if these are issues that that are 65-35 against her, she's going to end up first on the first ballot, and then she just needs to wrap people up on subsequent ballots here. So, you know, she is really commanding the field right now in ways that is quite impressive. You've got to give credit to her and her campaign in that everybody is reacting perpetually to everything that she's doing. You can hate it if you want.
Corey
17:57
Certainly, I have qualms with the
Corey
17:59
Alberta Sovereignty Act. I have qualms with the comments she made today about an Alberta pension plan. I have qualms for sure about the the cancer comments.
Corey
18:06
Absolutely. But she is running the tables in terms of setting the conversation here. But to your point, Zane, the
Corey
18:14
only real evidence we have that she's the front runner of this campaign is the fact that the other six candidates are treating her as front runner. And
Corey
18:23
And we have to assume they have a certain amount of information that we don't, right?
Corey
18:27
membership numbers that they've got.
Corey
18:28
They've probably got some sense about how many memberships have been sold overall by the party. They've got their own fundraising numbers. They're going to just know from their own calling to existing members insofar as the list that they have or whatnot, where this race stands. And all six of them picked her as
Corey
18:44
as the person they were going to spend their time talking about.
Zain
18:47
Corey, one thing you did not say, and Carter, I'll come to you in a second.
Zain
18:50
Okay. Explain to me from your guys' experience what assets a leadership campaign in our province would have right now. Now, Corey, you said they'd have a good beat on fundraising, like
Zain
19:03
like how much money is being raised. You said they'd have a good beat on membership sales, perhaps writ large, certainly their own, right? Is that fair to say?
Zain
19:10
Yeah. They also have like the chattering class of politicos being like, I heard this, I'm hearing this. So that kind of like loosely transfers between all the candidates. Yeah, like the intel in terms
Zain
19:20
like this event was hacked,
Zain
19:22
Fucking yeah, I'm hearing TAVES is doing this, I'm hearing this, or like I heard this. Yeah. So that chattering. You didn't say polling though. No,
Zain
19:28
you didn't say polling. Talk to me about that and just explain to the listener, would a leadership campaign at this junction, let's just pick one, a Sonny or an Ahir or a Schultz or a Taves, would they have internal polling right now, Corey? Is that something that they have as an asset?
Corey
19:44
So here's the thing. We wouldn't call it polling at this point. They're just going to call everybody and try to, I'd call it voter ID at this point. They're going to see who's in their lists and they're going to call them all.
Corey
19:54
We're at the point now where they've passed the threshold. I don't know if they've been provided membership lists at this point, but they've got lists. They know who the UCP members are. These lists exist in some way, shape, or form, and they're going to be getting better as things go along. Wouldn't call it polling. When we look at some of the polling that's out there, even if people who say, like, are you a UCP supporter? Are you a UCP member? You've got to take it all with a grain of salt, right? Right. You have big selection bias challenges with this because, you know, there are just going to be certain groups, particularly in a membership contest that
Corey
20:25
like it doesn't lend itself to random polling because membership sales are not random. I guess that's the simplest way I can put it.
Corey
20:30
Membership sales come in clusters. So you might have a community center where all of a sudden you sell one thousand members. But because of a random polling structure that's for the entire province, one
Corey
20:40
one of them might get called. And so it sounds like they've got one member in that context. Right. Right. Like it's it's it's not it's
Corey
20:48
you're layering a bunch of things on and you're creating a bit of shaky data for yourself here. And
Corey
20:52
And when you talk about general population polls of candidates and even if you're just sort of taking a scattering of people who then say, yeah, I'm a conservative member.
Corey
21:00
What do we know?
Corey
21:01
We know that that is going to be what, 140th of the people who respond in the real world. You know, just rough numbers. Right.
Corey
21:08
But that would be about 100000 people.
Corey
21:11
Right. Right. Still pretty big number.
Corey
21:15
you know that if you get one fortieth of them in this way, you're also going to have very small sample sizes. So you're going to have huge margins of error. And it just tends to be more about who have you heard of before. This is why when you have these initial polls, you'll see Daniel
Corey
21:29
Daniel Smith, known commodity, Brian Jean, known commodity immediately spring to the top. Now,
Corey
21:33
Now, a campaign like Daniel Smith's can make great use of that and
Corey
21:37
and say, hey, I'm a known commodity and therefore it can help me in selling memberships.
Corey
21:41
That's a tried, tested and true tactic. But you can't really treat the polls as gospel. Like I will say, like, I don't think Sonny's only getting one percent of the votes. Yeah,
Zain
21:50
Yeah, I think she
Corey
21:51
she sold a fuck ton of memberships. Right. I will be floored if she only gets one percent of the vote, especially knowing who her campaign team is and some of the expertise that's around there.
Corey
22:01
But that's what the polls, the so-called polls of members are seeing right now. One, two percent stuff in that area. you.
Zain
22:07
Carter, talk to me about both this polling voter ID conflation that leadership campaigns have to contest with simply because the numbers are not large enough and representative. And Corey talks about clustering. Talk to me about your experience on the Redford campaign. Did you have, quote unquote, polling? And then let's get into the bigger question of the strategic one I asked Corey about. If you were running one of the six campaigns that is not Danielle Smith, would you position her as the frontrunner? Talk to me about the polling first, Carter.
Carter
22:34
so polling only works when you can randomly sample a known population right
Carter
22:38
right and the problem with a leadership campaign is there is not a known population it
Carter
22:42
is a changing number by the virtue of the fact that you can sell memberships so
Carter
22:46
so you cannot randomly sample the known population yeah so for
Carter
22:50
for example um that
Carter
22:52
that that forces different tactics so
Carter
22:55
so we i got a phone call yesterday um
Carter
22:57
um at from, I
Carter
23:00
I don't know, one of the Alberta Freedom
Carter
23:02
Freedom Caucuses or something. I don't remember how they identified themselves, but
Carter
23:06
it was an IVR poll and they asked me to identify. It had the horse race question and then it had the leadership questions and then it had leading questions or value questions. And
Carter
23:16
And it went fairly quickly. It said it was going to be a minute. It was probably three, three and a half minutes long by the time it got to the end of the demographics.
Carter
23:23
I got that call today.
Carter
23:26
got that call yesterday. Heather got that call today.
Carter
23:28
I would be willing to bet that from our listener set, we had a huge number of our listeners
Carter
23:34
listeners get that phone call because it wasn't a random phone call. It
Carter
23:38
It was a list phone call. And that list phone call is masquerading as an actual opinion poll. And
Carter
23:45
And what they're doing is they're trying to isolate and find as much data as possible for two reasons. One is to ascertain what does the horse race look like?
Carter
23:53
Where are we? Are we even in this thing? And the second is to find potential members, because
Carter
23:57
because those members that may indicate that
Carter
24:00
they're for Sony right
Carter
24:01
right now may be something that Schultz can go after. Whoever paid for that dial
Carter
24:07
is going to be looking at that data and trying to mine the data that they've got and turn it into actual supporters.
Carter
24:15
that's just one tactic that's out there. but no one not
Carter
24:18
one single person in
Carter
24:19
in this campaign actually knows how things are really going um
Carter
24:24
um and that lends me to you know as you guys know i'm huge in the ucp oh
Zain
24:28
oh they love you
Zain
24:29
love you there yeah big
Carter
24:30
big contacts in the ucp i can pick up the phone and
Carter
24:34
and literally call any minister um
Zain
24:39
maybe know your first name not your last name so yeah yeah no
Carter
24:43
i get responses now some of those responses i will admit are profane and minister nixon i'm talking about you anyways
Carter
24:50
anyways the um what
Carter
24:52
what i'm hearing from my ucp sources and they are legend is
Carter
24:59
the reason that people are worried about dan
Carter
25:04
um the people the reason why people are worried about
Carter
25:07
about danielle smith is not just the a performance subsequent to the leadership. It's her performance up to the leadership, right? When the leadership review was done, the negative outcome from Kenny has been pinned on Smith. They are saying that she was the organizational dynamo. Her organization put together the membership sales to actually take out Kenny. And
Carter
25:29
And that's, I think, what's causing the reflux
Carter
25:33
her initial strength prior to the leadership even being called,
Carter
25:36
number one. And number two, than
Carter
25:39
perceived dominance that we've perceived over
Carter
25:42
over the last 30 days of her in the media getting attention and actually controlling the oxygen flow.
Zain
25:49
I would suggest very negatively. Give me that story one more time. So the story is that, as you see it, as we get into speculation...
Carter
25:57
speculation... As I've been told from my legendary contacts... Yeah, this is Speculation
Carter
26:00
Speculation City with Stephen Carter,
Zain
26:01
Carter, which is our own sister podcast. Carter, that
Zain
26:04
that she is being credited credited for the ousting of credited
Carter
26:10
with the ousting of kenny that she sold a ton of memberships prior to the to the ousting of kenny and those memberships of course you can't track them one-to-one yeah you can't say that
Carter
26:20
that that her membership was the reason that kenny is out but
Carter
26:23
but they are inferring that that is one of the reasons why kenny got such a low low
Carter
26:27
low total she actually influenced the outcome of that vote this
Carter
26:31
this is why they are they are aiming their guns on her now
Carter
26:34
now Now, is that true? I don't know. All we have is that everybody was aiming their guns at Danielle Smith. So the question is, Carter, is that good strategy?
Zain
26:41
strategy? Is that good strategy? You saw it on the stage last night affirm itself that these folks, or at least the vast majority of them, were going after Danielle. And yes, she said probably the most batshit things over the course of the last month. So they had to go after her.
Zain
26:55
Perhaps it was designed that way for
Zain
26:57
for them to have to engage her. But the fact is, Carter, should they have? Because the data that we have is sparse and it's limited. And should they have should they have effectively validated her as being front runner status in that regard?
Carter
27:12
I think so, because I think that you can actually get a backlash against Danielle.
Carter
27:16
And today we're talking about Sonny. We're talking about Schultz. We're seeing the people who stood up to Danielle and who had the best attacks actually differentiate themselves. selves ironically no one i talked to today not one person mentioned taves right
Carter
27:32
right taves was not an effective vehicle for attacking danielle and nor did he get his own ideas across so if
Carter
27:39
if if you couldn't get your own ideas across taves todd lowen um
Carter
27:43
um lila here then perhaps your best bet was to attack uh shawnee and so schultz because at least now you're in the conversation whereas Whereas others weren't, you know, aren't in the conversation at
Corey
27:56
Corey's shaking his head. Jump in
Corey
27:58
here, Corey. He thinks I'm bang on. So a couple of things else I want to say, Zane. Our data is sparse. Their data is less sparse. So they're not just sort of flinging around, at least in theory. They're basing this on a little bit more that Daniel Smith might actually be the front runner here. I mean, that was the whole front end of our conversation here.
Corey
28:16
You are right. She presented a lot of targets. So that also presented certain candidates the opportunity to show a
Corey
28:21
a certain leadership and try to create wedges that would be awkward for the Taveses of the world, right? So when you have, for
Corey
28:28
for example, Sonny going hard on Danielle Smith's approaches to God knows what, like everything under the sun,
Corey
28:35
suggesting that she's the only one who has been, you know, Sonny was the only one who could get a deal with Justin Trudeau.
Corey
28:42
This is all just craziness you're selling. This can't be done. The Alberta Sovereignty Act is nonsense. sense. It's
Corey
28:47
It's a little awkward, a little awkward for Taves, right? Because Taves is in the space in between where he knows a lot of his supporters support the Alberta Sovereignty Act and a lot of the pieces that are in it in particular, and perhaps even personally might support things like the Alberta pension plan. I can absolutely see why a minister of finance in Alberta might be seduced by something like that. And so you might say this is unworkable, this is magic, but you don't want to get into the specifics. You don't want to dwell a ton of time on these things And you don't want to have a bunch of clips of you attacking her on that because that certainly has the risk of backfiring if you're a candidate who's a little closer to where Danielle Smith is on the spectrum. So, you know, dynamics abound. But I think that one of the things that I really want to underline kind of blows my mind about last night's debate is
Corey
29:33
is I feel like I
Corey
29:35
I feel like they a lot
Corey
29:37
lot of them went in there thinking they had a game plan. But as far as I could tell, only
Corey
29:41
only one person went in with a game plan, and that was Sonny, right? You know, clearly was deciding she was going to do something, and she did it. Now, did she do it very effectively? I would say, you
Corey
29:52
you know, weak delivery. Weak delivery, but really
Corey
29:55
strategic in approach. Let's
Zain
29:57
open the bracket for a second. And nobody else was strategic.
Corey
29:58
It was just like they were there. They were just there on the stage. And that ultimately is what's going to hand Danielle Smith this leadership before we jump to kind of critiquing Sonny and her comments.
Corey
30:10
everybody reacted to and
Corey
30:13
whether she is the front runner or not have to say from our vantage point the
Corey
30:19
most of the people on the stage think she is to
Corey
30:21
to me says she probably is the front runner but
Corey
30:24
beyond that even if that wasn't the case this
Corey
30:26
this is self-fulfilling like if you're perceived as the front runner for a month month and a half two months you are going to become the front runner because that will drive membership sales bandwagon effects all sorts of thing
Zain
30:37
carter i've got three i've got three questions i want to talk about okay so
Zain
30:40
so the first one i'm gonna lay this i'm gonna lay this out for you guys as a pathway the
Zain
30:43
the first one is where is daniel smith weakest on what issue what policy is
Zain
30:49
is is it her tone is it her style what is she weakest on and did sonny do any work last night to help herself or any other candidate pick up the baton and and take this further
Zain
31:01
further to attack daniel smith that's the first thing i want to talk The second
Zain
31:04
second thing I want to talk about is Daniel Smith's crossover appeal.
Zain
31:09
If she completely narrows in, and you clearly can see she's trying to leverage the one-member, one-vote system to maximum ability, find a narrow base that is loud and proud and supportive, and she can sign more of those members up. But what's her crossover appeal to the more moderate side? Does she need that? That's my second question. And then thirdly, I want to discuss, I don't finish it off on membership sales themselves, the deadline looming in a couple of weeks. So Carter, talk to me about where is the soft tissue, so to speak, lack of a better term, for the Smith campaign? And where does someone
Zain
31:45
need to start attacking? We talked a little bit about this on the Carter and Velji show, episode one. Excellent episode. I thought it was excellent.
Zain
31:51
Carter, you said, where the fuck was someone in front of the cancer hospital talking
Zain
31:55
talking about, you know, Daniel Smith would have never built this thing?
Zain
31:59
Where is she weak on? I'm just giving you an example. You don't have to use that one. Where is she weak on and what would you do right now to extend based on what happened last night in Medicine Hat?
Carter
32:10
Yeah, I mean, what she's weak on is that her policies don't appeal to the everyday Albertan. You know, there's this myth that we're conservative in Alberta,
Carter
32:20
and I continue to push back strongly against that myth. We identify as conservatives, but we expect all
Carter
32:26
all of our social services and education systems and health care systems to work like
Carter
32:33
like a Swiss clock. We're all in favor of privatization
Carter
32:35
privatization as long as we don't have to pay.
Carter
32:39
We're all in favor of getting around
Carter
32:45
if we don't have to pay.
Carter
32:51
in the actual commitment to our values. We're not really what we pretend to be in our polls. And I've got tons of data that backs that up. So what Danielle is doing is she's isolating herself way over on the the on the side of crazy town yeah
Carter
33:09
people don't want to live in crazy town how do i know that well because i kicked her ass once when she was in crazy town right when she was in crazy town on lake of fire in 2012 keep in mind she was winning that election at that time when lake of fire came out she was the presumptive brian next premier of alberta by a long shot we turned it around not because of brilliance that you know i or the team or anybody else possessed but but because Danielle
Carter
33:37
Danielle Smith wouldn't do the one sensible thing, which
Carter
33:40
which is throw her crazy colleagues
Carter
33:44
She took eight days to do what would have taken us eight minutes.
Carter
33:48
Toss those people overboard who do not have views that are acceptable to the mainstream.
Carter
33:55
She has chosen in her infinite wisdom to double down in
Carter
34:00
in this campaign. A decade later.
Carter
34:03
a decade later on ideas that are even more crazy than they were in 2012 in 2012 it was her her bozo eruption candidates that said the wrong things in 2022 it's
Carter
34:16
it's the candidate herself making the bozo eruptions and
Carter
34:20
and that's her weakness um
Carter
34:22
you know i'll leave it to cory to answer that the first part and maybe you'll remind me what the second and third questions now i'll
Zain
34:28
i'll get to that Yeah, it's a crossover appeal. And this almost these two questions almost merge themselves. Right. Because, Corey, I said she's leveraging the one member one vote system. One could argue she's exploiting it. Right. She's just running to a corner, finding a group already there, building upon that group and trying to take it to a first or second ballot victory. The strategy here is clear. It's open sourced. We know what it is. It's in broad daylight that
Zain
34:52
that she's running it.
Zain
34:54
Yeah, I mean, I have is crossover appeal for her and where she weakest on.
Corey
35:01
Well, so, I mean, let's talk about this one member, one vote. We
Corey
35:05
We have learned in the past two decades and I mean learned. I mean, I'm not being flip about it, but as political parties have gotten more sophisticated at fundraising, They're finding that they fundraise more when
Corey
35:17
when they're more outrageous. And that has led them to come to the very obvious conclusion that membership sales in general can also be assisted by this. So you are seeing more outrageous candidates being able to create this
Corey
35:27
this big effect. I do think we are way past the point where we should be asking, and I know there's a lot of pundits who are, including Andrew Coyne wrote something about this. Does this system make any sense to us or is this a really bad failed experiment? They just have these crazy membership drives every time there's a leadership and have the most extreme voices in political parties get to dictate this. Ones who have potentially
Corey
35:48
potentially no skin in the game whatsoever, right? I
Corey
35:51
some wildness that's probably got to be unpacked there. You talk about crossover appeal. You talk about, I
Corey
35:58
I don't know, like the thing about crossover appeal is it does come into what's her greatest weakness. Her greatest weakness is her extreme views. And we talked about this a couple of episodes. So it's her greatest weakness is that those are very much on the record, going
Corey
36:11
going back years on the radio, years
Corey
36:13
years as a punnett before.
Corey
36:15
We don't need to rehash her greatest hits right now because I'm sure it's coming to an NDP ad near you soon, right? But, you
Corey
36:21
know, she's creating such exposure on such very extreme things. And I agree generally with what Stephen said about, you know, I would say Albertans are very idiosyncratic. We're not a simple caricature of conservatives. You got to keep in mind we're the highest spending bloody province. You know, we like to spend money. We like high services. We like to have our cake and eat it too. We want low taxes, great services. We think that makes us conservatives. I think that might just make us dumb. And we better think about how we're going to get ourselves out of that box. but you know
Corey
36:52
know danielle smith has really latched hard to some of these issues and i think her biggest vulnerability is i
Corey
36:58
mean the cancer comments speak to character and yeah you know they they will they will come back but she will find a ready audience for i was misinterpreted that's not what i meant because most people aren't going to go to the source data they're not going to see it they're just going to hear what they want to hear but
Corey
37:13
but i think the ndp is going to have no trouble at all finding the worst most salient you know worst in a polling sense most salient issue that she's latched onto and that she refuses to back down on because to steven's point she does refuse to back down on these things they could run on nothing else i think about the alberta pension plan comments she made today or
Corey
37:31
or or after the debate i guess might have been last night where she said she
Corey
37:35
she effectively said that she would bring in an alberta pension plan uh
Corey
37:38
uh without even an election in between here yeah right just introduce rachel notley could win an election on nothing but that you've
Corey
37:45
you've got the fairness angles you've got the fact that it's It's going to make people very queasy that their pension is being messed with. You don't mess with people's pensions.
Corey
37:53
I mean, I would poll on it. I certainly wouldn't change all of the horses on it. But like it's Daniel
Corey
37:58
Daniel Smith is creating a lot of a
Corey
38:01
lot of targets. And, you know, the NDP's challenge will be being disciplined about it and just picking the worst of them and making it all about that and making it
Corey
38:09
valid question at this point. point
Corey
38:10
but uh yeah i mean like when you talk about crossover appeal her
Corey
38:14
her big challenge is going to be trying to make all of this not sound scary or wild to huge swaths of albertans and and that's if daniel smith wins i don't believe we're going to have an early election i believe she'll run out the clock because she needs time for people to sort of marinate in her views and not react you know viciously and
Zain
38:31
and vociferously to let
Zain
38:32
let me ask this question a little bit more specifically cory crossover appeal in the confines of this race let's just say she says her finish line line is a UCB leadership race. I'll figure everything out afterwards.
Zain
38:42
Does she need to appeal to the urban vote? Does she need to throw a bone to Calgary? Or do you think with exploiting the system as it stands, she can
Corey
38:50
can just win on the track she's on right now?
Corey
38:53
I think she can win on the track that she's on right now. I mean, I think that she's creating
Corey
38:57
creating sort of this sense of she'll be the one who stand up. She'll be true to these conservative values. There
Corey
39:03
There is a possibility that that an anybody but Smith movement really takes effect to stop her kind of this, this
Corey
39:09
this break on her momentum, the ABS break, you
Corey
39:11
call it, I suppose. But I just, you know, like one of
Zain
39:14
of the challenges you're
Corey
39:16
you're going to have. Thank you. Yeah. One of the challenges you're going to have doing
Corey
39:20
doing that is that there are so many candidates in the race and where do the Brian Jean support our Brian Jean supporters going to join in anybody but Smith campaign. You know, the funny thing is there's
Corey
39:30
there's so many ways you can cut this and there's not Not that many that totally isolate Danielle Smith, and you really have to find a way to cut it in a way that totally isolates her to get that anybody but Smith movement.
Zain
39:45
Carter, does she? Does she need crossover appeal in the confines of this race, which she says, fuck it. Everything beyond that is tomorrow's problem. I become premier.
Zain
39:54
Does she need crossover appeal to win this race?
Carter
39:58
No. I mean, this is the Pierre Polyev strategy. This is the Daniel Smith strategy. And it has worked to perfection with Boris Johnson. It's worked to perfection with, you know, Donald Trump. Why would you moderate when there's subsegments of the society that are demanding no moderation? And those subsegments of the society, let's call them, what,
Carter
40:20
what, five to 10% of the population, You know, I mean, that's 400,000 Albertans. 400,000 Albertans, you don't need all of them. You only need a small subset of them to win the leadership of the UCP. I
Carter
40:34
you've got it built in. 400,000 people who chose not to get vaccinated. 400,000 people who, you
Carter
40:43
believe Alberta first. 400,000 people that want Alberta separation.
Carter
40:47
Forget about Alberta, you
Carter
40:49
you know, just throwing up its own sovereignty act. I mean, 400,000 people isn't a big number, and it's not just the people who are ill-informed. It's people who want
Carter
40:59
want to believe in a different outcome, who believe they've been hard done by. We've been talking about this group for a very, very long time, and
Carter
41:06
and it's just gotten stronger and stronger since, what, 2013,
Carter
41:10
2013, 2014? cory and i were talking about this before you know when
Carter
41:15
when he was coming on the podcast episodes two and three right
Carter
41:19
right when we were very first you know with chester cory and i would talk about why wouldn't chester ask us these questions and
Carter
41:26
know we talk afterwards um because we still recorded in person in chester's garage wasn't it well
Corey
41:33
well i mean for a while it wasn't really his garage he was he was renting it from a neighbor but uh it was
Zain
41:38
was actually it was actually a um a a hanger uh it was a hanger that he was uh using um it was
Carter
41:44
was the candy and uh kids toys that put me off i was confused by it i
Zain
41:48
i mean it and it and i credit goes to our sponsor flair airlines for providing that hanger from episode one i mean they've been with us from the beginning but thank
Zain
41:57
thank you so much flair airlines yeah
Zain
41:59
uh flair airlines stay grounded cory i have to ask you
Zain
42:05
talk to me here's
Zain
42:07
here's the thing if
Zain
42:09
if you were given a
Zain
42:11
a boatload of cash today okay cash deal okay today under
Zain
42:16
under the table no one would see it and you'd say because you're a good guy you'd say listen i'm donating this charity but
Zain
42:21
but this this cash would come with the closet listen you have to pick one of these candidates and
Zain
42:25
and you have to help them defeat daniel smith based on what you saw last night based on where we are right now we're recording on thursday july 28th membership shift deadlines remind people august 12th guys remind me the race is october 6th right am i right i
Zain
42:38
i think it's october 6th so yeah okay okay who
Zain
42:41
who would you want to who would you want to say okay i'm going to take your campaign i'm going to be a strategist for your campaign over the course uh of the next couple of months who would it be and what would you get them to do on day one what would kind of the crux of the strategy be uh
Zain
42:56
uh if if you had to take over today cory uh
Corey
42:59
uh well let's Let's just, let's talk this out a tiny bit. Yeah, let's
Zain
43:02
let's just assume that the final ballot,
Corey
43:05
because look, I mean, ultimately you want the person who's going to wrap up the most votes, right? The person who can, you
Corey
43:11
you know, hoover them up from the other candidates here.
Corey
43:16
it can't be somebody who drops off the ballot too early. It's got to be somebody who's in that final cast of characters who can kind of pull them all together. And
Zain
43:22
And ultimately, I think that,
Corey
43:25
I believe Daniel Smith will be there. I believe Travis Taves
Corey
43:28
Taves will be there.
Corey
43:29
don't know if I believe Brian Jean will be there anymore, interestingly
Zain
43:34
Potentially, but not necessarily. Do you think he's got just the built-in Fort Mac vote? Or do you think that could be a fluid vote for him that leaves him and is just there to get him over the top?
Corey
43:43
think he does, and I think that he'll show, but I feel like there's the possibility that
Corey
43:48
that Sonny's campaign just sells a boatload
Zain
43:52
boatload of memberships, for example.
Corey
43:53
example. I don't actually believe Schultz's campaign is going to be able to get high enough in that order to stack those votes together.
Corey
44:02
You know, I don't know. I mean, I guess I'd still say Taves at the end of the day.
Zain
44:06
You'd still say Taves?
Corey
44:07
Yeah, either Taves or Sonny. And in some ways, the reason why I think Taves is a bit of an easier sell is I think that Taves might be able to pull more of those Brian Jean votes at the end of the day.
Corey
44:18
You've got some similarities instead of Fort
Corey
44:20
Fort McMurray, it's Grand Prairie. And if Taves is ahead of Jean, I think those votes can propel him past Smith. And so you can work with that kind of situation. And if Gene is somehow ahead of Sonny, I think you can get the Sonny votes who are going to want to vote for
Corey
44:36
Smith and not Gene. So I think he's still well positioned and certainly with all of his caucus endorsements, that's good. But it's really going to come down to membership sales. He can can win but to win he's got to be in at least third and probably second as that roll-up uh starts kicking off
Zain
44:56
carter this is interesting same deal to you right boatload of cash and a guarantee of a 10 000 word profile um
Zain
45:02
um you have to sit down for a four-hour interview i don't think it should be a problem um not
Zain
45:07
not a problem yeah i figured as much uh you got time um who
Zain
45:12
who are you backing who are you picking you get to pick of one of the six you get to pick and you say i want this one to try to take down um i
Zain
45:20
i want this candidate i want this campaign the the the steering
Zain
45:23
steering wheel is mine which
Zain
45:25
which one are you choosing and
Carter
45:27
i'm taking three of them you
Carter
45:30
okay the only way walk me through it walk
Carter
45:35
deals are done on leaderships right
Carter
45:37
right this is i don't think i'm revealing a story that
Carter
45:40
that everybody you know is shocked to find out but deals are done on leaderships and the only way that this thing is going to work is
Carter
45:45
is if you take sonny schultz and and taves and you
Carter
45:49
you turn them into a trio and
Carter
45:51
and basically what you need to do in that situation is you need to convince sonny that she's going to be the top dog um you need to convince you know after the first ballot you got to convince taves he's going to be the first into the top dog and you got to convince um uh
Carter
46:08
bolts that she's going to be in first and then you just do a simple deal whoever's
Carter
46:11
whoever's in low whoever's lowest in that group supports the next person like supports supports, we're going to talk to our supporters. We're going to make sure that they all choose at least three options.
Carter
46:22
Because in most of these preferential ballots, people will choose one and
Carter
46:27
and maybe two. Now you've got to convince three campaigns to teach their people how to select three.
Carter
46:33
And you've got to be making sure that that communication is going all the way from in the beginning. When we
Carter
46:40
did this in BC, when I was working with Mike
Carter
46:44
Mike DeYoung and our good friend Katie Merrifield, I was running the Andrew Wilkinson campaign. And
Carter
46:51
And Katie and I worked behind the scenes probably at
Carter
46:54
at the 11th hour, maybe a little too late, but we were able to make a deal happen because
Carter
46:59
because I believed we were going to be ahead of Andrew Wilkinson. Andrew Andrew Wilkinson's team, they believed that they were going to be ahead
Carter
47:05
ahead of us. Katie was right. I was wrong.
Carter
47:08
Something I've learned to say many times subsequently.
Carter
47:14
at the end of the day, that was the deal that put Andrew Wilkinson up over the top. He was in fourth place after the first ballot. I think we were in sixth. We fell off after the second ballot and we propelled Andrew Wilkinson into
Carter
47:26
into second place. He picked up support because
Carter
47:29
because no one went to the front row. And
Carter
47:32
And that's what needs to happen. You need to have all three campaigns function, and all three campaigns need to be in cahoots together. When Jason Kenney ran- Let me pick
Zain
47:41
pick the opposite angle of that. If that does not happen, Carter, do
Zain
47:45
do you feel like there's a pathway to victory for any of these folks?
Carter
47:51
because you don't win alone in a preferential ballot leadership race. Well, not with seven candidates. When Jason Kenney ran
Carter
47:57
for the leadership of the Progressive Conservatives, it was Richard. So, Sandra
Carter
48:02
Sandra Janssen was going to run. Richard, the vet. What's his last name? Does anybody remember? No one remembers. Okay. This guy disappeared. But there was going to be four. Did you know Dave
Carter
48:11
Rodney did it twice?
Zain
48:12
He did it twice. Just so you know. Go ahead. He
Carter
48:14
He climbed Everest two times. Okay. Forgot to take a picture the first time.
Carter
48:23
that's just a callback for like eight people. go
Zain
48:25
go ahead yeah uh go ahead carter that's
Carter
48:27
that's good for us we're happy um so
Carter
48:31
now you forgot me um right
Zain
48:32
right you said there's a vet and then i was like i don't know there
Carter
48:35
there was so basically richard
Carter
48:37
richard and sandra and there was a guy named steven something uh
Carter
48:42
uh who steven khan who
Carter
48:44
who was a cabinet minister who was going to run out of saint albert and
Carter
48:46
and if the three of us had done a deal to
Carter
48:49
to keep jason kenny out, we
Carter
48:51
we might have been able to stop Jason Kenney.
Carter
48:53
But Richard was above it, thought that doing a deal really didn't serve the interests of the voters. And Jason Kenney just ran through everybody.
Carter
49:01
You have to do a deal. If there's one strong front runner, the only way to stop that front runner is to have a deal to stop him. That's why when Patrick Brown left or was kicked out of the leadership contest at the CPC, it
Carter
49:14
it was all but assured that Pierre Polyev was going to win the So
Corey
49:18
So the challenge here, though, the challenge here is that these are not the only players on the field. And this is what I meant when I said it's tough to find a wedge that just isolates Smith on her own,
Corey
49:28
because I find a hard time imagining that
Corey
49:32
that Brian Jean supporters are going to necessarily roll up in the same way to any of those three. You know, and I think that you've got guys like Todd
Corey
49:41
that's just a wild, you
Corey
49:42
you know, it's a wild
Carter
49:44
wild one. Yeah, never
Corey
49:45
never going to go to Sonny. Let's put it that way. he
Corey
49:47
he doesn't pod lowen
Carter
49:49
brian gene you have to believe are going to be so low in the game that they're not going to matter well
Corey
49:52
well i don't think lila
Carter
49:53
lila here you have to i
Carter
49:55
think you can i
Carter
49:57
think you can i
Carter
49:58
mean keep in mind this is the guy who shat all over his caucus colleagues on the way out the door well
Corey
50:03
well if it was about caucus it would be taved by a landslide but you know i mean i the dynamics of this are wild even
Carter
50:09
even see any evidence that brian gene's trying well
Zain
50:14
know yeah i mean i wouldn't say that i mean seems like he's definitely trying but
Zain
50:18
but carter okay so cory i'll let you finish your point and then i want to go back to carter to begin my final final sort of thread of conversation no
Corey
50:24
no i i guess my my only point would be this
Corey
50:27
this is an interesting thought exercise but you almost need to sit down and say who's going to go to who and one of the challenges in this race relative to some of the other races is
Corey
50:36
is especially when you're talking about almost like a three-way deal is that's
Corey
50:40
that's going to be that's going to be complicated like imagine for two reasons one imagine you're taves and saying you should go to sonny right uh that might be tough for some of his rural voters in fort mcmurray going to an urban candidate instead of uh brian jean or smith on a later ballot right i mean there's just there's weird cuts and it's it's not clear what that coalition is and if
Carter
51:04
if if you wanted easy days you shouldn't have gone into politics well
Corey
51:06
well and then Then the second problem is you have to communicate. It would not actually be that difficult to communicate those things if the roll-up was ballot, pause, everybody talk about it, ballot, pause, everybody talk about it. But encouraging people to fill in so many names on a ballot, even
Corey
51:25
adding three instead of two when it's an instant roll-up, I think that's a pretty tall order. And I think a strategy that's hinged on that is not necessarily a strategy that's destined for success. success so that's
Carter
51:37
that's that's the only way to that's the only way to succeed there is no individual candidate model there's no individual candidate look
Corey
51:43
i agree that it's all about the roll-ups but i think the idea that you're going to have like you
Corey
51:48
you know a lot of voters who you're going to be able to sort of massage
Corey
51:51
massage the way you were able to massage you know like second choices and whatnot in other elections is is maybe not realistic carter
Zain
52:00
carter i've got my final thing is about membership sales deadline in a couple of weeks here's the question should
Zain
52:05
should one of these contenders
Zain
52:07
contenders in the race explicitly try to sell memberships to progressives in the province or those that identify as moderates or that have talked out against the ucp that say i hate this party but i want to prevent danielle smith should they target those folks and the flip side should
Zain
52:24
should those folks buy
Zain
52:25
buy memberships like where do you stand on this both as a strategy for a campaign and then from the the perspective of it's not my party, but
Zain
52:34
but should I jump in to prevent something terrible from happening? What's your take on both of those questions?
Carter
52:39
Corey Hogan on an earlier podcast made an impassioned plea for the 100,000 reasonable
Zain
52:43
reasonable Canadians. This is why I started with you,
Carter
52:46
you, Carter. And sadly,
Carter
52:48
sadly, we found that there were approximately 18 of them. And
Carter
52:52
And the 18 guys came in and they are not guys, actually, they're mostly women. They came in, they bought the memberships and it's not going to have any impact. And the 18 people in Alberta that are prepared to buy Lila here memberships will buy Lila here memberships, but they're not going to matter.
Carter
53:08
I mean, if I was a betting man right now, I'm putting Lila here in sixth, right?
Carter
53:12
right? And, you know, she'll pick up the progressives that are in the Conservative Party and
Carter
53:16
and she'll pick up those ones that are on Twitter, you
Carter
53:19
you know, advocating that people do that.
Carter
53:21
Some of those people on Twitter advocating that to happen are good friends of mine.
Carter
53:26
people who tilt at windmills and fight white imaginary demons that they try and slaughter um
Carter
53:31
um i think that's great they're gonna fail there's just not that many people who are interested in playing in leaderships to begin with didn't you succeed with that same strategy
Zain
53:39
strategy with redford though wouldn't one say that wasn't but i'm just so much
Carter
53:43
much better than everybody else like it's just it's impossible to imagine so would
Zain
53:48
say like let me pick it here let me pick sonny would you say after the little sonny bump that you got post uh right like the bump that you would you would you Do not now. 2011,
Carter
54:00
there was no progressive alternative.
Carter
54:02
2011, there was no option except the governing progressive conservatives that have been in power for 44 years. Right.
Carter
54:09
Right. Like there was no opportunity.
Carter
54:13
this was I took the only game in town and I and I applied it at the time when when everybody got involved. I'm not seeing a massive influx of people who are lifelong liberals going to buy a
Carter
54:25
a membership in the UCP this time. They'll just vote NDP next election.
Zain
54:31
Especially if it seems like Smith is heading, then we'll get to that in a much later episode. Corey,
Zain
54:36
Corey, your take on this.
Zain
54:38
Should one of the campaigns, or several of the campaigns for that matter, try
Zain
54:42
try this strategy? Explicitly try to sell it to moderates and progressives? I put that in air quotes. and
Zain
54:48
and where do you stand refining your take from before in terms of people who don't belong to the ucp signing up so they can defeat smith or prevent something quote
Zain
54:57
quote-unquote terrible from happening what's your take uh
Corey
55:00
uh should one of these candidates do it uh somebody will but nobody should do it i think that they
Corey
55:06
that they're basically signing their own death warrant in this campaign with the rest of the the members it'll be seen as a as a betrayal of conservatism in some way shape or form any
Corey
55:15
any such campaign would need to be a lot more subtle uh you know it's possible to say like we're looking for middle of the road albertans to join us but at a certain point isn't that just membership sales isn't that just you defining your space in a campaign yeah to
Zain
55:29
to do what you finding
Corey
55:30
is to have like politically active people who actively support other parties to say well i don't want somebody i strongly disagree with in this situation so i'm going to i'm
Corey
55:39
i'm going going to do what i can to you
Corey
55:41
you know stop them or pull them out that's a different ask right and so you
Corey
55:45
you know i could i could easily imagine people saying yeah we should do that we should we should vote we should try to have you
Corey
55:51
the least terrible options on the ballot you know because sometimes you know the other person wins and you really want the other person to win to be the donald trump of the campaign or something like that like
Corey
56:02
look let's put it this way i still i I still believe that, you
Corey
56:07
should vote for good options, not bad ones. The one thing I hope nobody is thinking is that they should go and vote for the candidate they think would be the most terrible because
Corey
56:15
because that kind of active
Corey
56:19
you know, that's backfired so many bloody times. if
Corey
56:23
you are interested in in participating if you think that the UCP values are something that you can sort of conceptually stomach but maybe not specifically stomach if
Corey
56:32
if you're politically active in that context go ahead get involved try to get the best conservative possible you
Corey
56:37
you know if you're outside of what you think is acceptable UCP now but you can envision a UCP where it can happen if you vote for one of these candidates I
Corey
56:43
I encourage anybody to be politically active in that context but
Corey
56:47
but uh you know realistically i think that um you
Corey
56:50
you know this this race is on a different track than
Corey
56:53
than what we were talking about in the federal race
Corey
56:55
and you know people people are going to vote they're going to react in a lot of different ways i've seen people say this is crazy i'm going to vote against danielle smith certainly there's a lot of ammunition there she's made such extreme statements um
Corey
57:07
um but if you know especially in this province with with the dynamics we have going on.
Corey
57:14
An organized effort to do that, I think, would likely backfire.
Zain
57:17
We're going to leave that segment there, move it on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round.
Zain
57:24
it's all about you. We do this for you. Everything's about you.
Zain
57:27
One member, one vote, the system to
Zain
57:30
to elect leaders, overrated or underrated, Stephen Carter?
Carter
57:34
Overrated. There's many different ways of doing democracy. One member, one vote. Maybe
Carter
57:38
if it was a closed system where you had the members who existed prior to the
Carter
57:42
the leadership being called, that might work. But
Carter
57:45
But this, we're going to sell up a whole ton of memberships and change the membership dynamic.
Carter
57:52
it's ripe for takeover. And I say that as someone who has taken
Zain
57:57
Corey, overrated, underrated, one member, one vote system. Yeah,
Corey
58:00
Yeah, look, I understand the appeal of the more direct democracy. I think if this is a system that people want to maintain, we've got to start thinking about it in terms of how do we ensure that the outcomes are not driven by the most extreme elements of parties.
Corey
58:13
You could have a system where you can have, for example, up to five votes if you've been a member for five consecutive years to really diminish the power of the
Corey
58:23
the instant members to a political party and sort of reward long-term participation. participation.
Corey
58:28
Similarly, you could have people who show up to things or able to, you know, to
Corey
58:32
vote or there's some sort of requirement there. Did we just lose Stephen Carter? Yeah, we did. He's back. We lost
Zain
58:38
lost Stephen Carter and now he's trying to come back.
Corey
58:43
And, you know, then there's the possibility that you can just say to hell with this system and let's look at something that's more caucus driven, maybe the riding presidents, just so you're not relying entirely on a group of people that that may be kind of narrower in effect but yeah
Corey
58:59
yeah that you know the one member one vote let's just hijack it doesn't even matter where all those people are you can easily imagine a race won by 20 000 people but
Corey
59:10
mean we're seeing the problems with that right
Corey
59:12
right uh the problems are too hard to ignore at this point and i think political parties will will rebel against them at a certain point we
Zain
59:20
we have indeed lost stephen carter uh which is sad because as you know cory Corey, I don't know if you've heard this before. We do this for him. This is for him, and he has left us while we were doing the only segment on the show that is for him. So, Corey, how do we want to play this? Do we just end this? Do we end it right now? Or do you want to give me your rapid-fire answers to my rest of my over-under and lightning round questions? It wouldn't feel the same, but then again, we did an entire episode without you, and it felt great.
Corey
59:45
You know what? And we always have the clip of him talking about Jeb Bush winning the election that we can go back to.
Zain
59:51
You know what? Let's do that. Yeah, Corey, let's do this here. Up or down after yesterday, Rebecca Schultz?
Zain
1:00:00
Tell me why quickly.
Corey
1:00:02
Well, because I simply didn't separate from the pack in any kind of conceivable way. I think Sonny did a better job of doing what I think Schultz was trying to do. This is what I mean when I say, like, the strategy.
Corey
1:00:12
I didn't see it for certain people. I didn't see how she was trying to separate from the pack and create
Corey
1:00:16
create that wedge where people watching would say, everybody's
Corey
1:00:18
everybody's on this side or most people are on that side, but Schultz is here. So that's
Zain
1:00:24
Up or down, Brian Jean?
Corey
1:00:27
Brian Jean was a non-entity for the portions that I watched. There's not a lot of clips coming out of him, too. I think that he just really did not seem like he was in it. Does he seem like he's running
Zain
1:00:37
running out of gas? Like he's just like he spent so much energy getting rid of Kenny for the last three years that he's got no gas for the real war here?
Corey
1:00:44
know, a little bit, maybe. Maybe. But I think it's never been like the thing that he's great at is is having the debates. We've seen him on that stage before. Yeah.
Corey
1:00:53
And I don't know. I mean, it just it was pretty underwhelming.
Corey
1:00:56
Let me talk about the Schultz thing one more time, though, because it's actually a problem that a lot of these people have more broadly, which is if you're trying to be the consensus candidate like the everybody will come to me, you
Corey
1:01:07
you can't be so you you can't be last on the ballot. Right. Yeah. If you're everybody's second choice and you're nobody's first choice, you're going to be off the ballot first. And I think that's the problem with the Schultz campaign right now. Like, there's not a clear reason to vote for her. She is too many people's second choice and not enough people's first choice. And I could say that probably
Corey
1:01:25
probably about, you know, to a lesser extent about Jean. And, you
Corey
1:01:31
you know, I think that Taves has to be careful that he doesn't run into that as well.
Zain
1:01:34
Well, that's my question here. Travis Taves, up or down after yesterday?
Corey
1:01:38
Oh, I think down. But, like, not prohibitively
Corey
1:01:41
prohibitively so. So his campaign was pretty quick to go out and spin him as the reasonable person.
Corey
1:01:46
He's not the big dynamic debater. He came off as who he is, which is just kind of this very staid individual in a lot of contexts.
Zain
1:01:55
And our final question, we're actually going to go to Stephen Carter for a prediction. But before we do that, Corey, I think we may have something to tee us up there, if I'm not mistaken.
Corey
1:02:05
Yeah, this was donated to us. This
Zain
1:02:09
This was donated. we we sometimes have pies uh sometimes have uh a fan mail uh sometimes we have what you're about to hear donated to
Corey
1:02:30
that's nice i like that yeah that was nice uh
Zain
1:02:32
uh for steven carter um i know you're here carter in spirit i'm just quickly going to go through uh just a prediction question for you um Um,
Zain
1:02:40
2016 Republican nominee. Who's going to, who's going to take that Carter? Uh, do you have any thoughts on that? Jeb
Carter
1:02:45
Jeb Bush needs to survive this primary and compete in a general. Jeb Bush is not surviving this primary. He's totally surviving this primary. Mark it down on your calendar. Okay. Stephen Carter said today. So hold on, hold on. Jeb Bush is the guy. There
SPEAKER_01
1:03:02
You have just been witnessed to another Carter
SPEAKER_01
1:03:08
Now back to your podcast, already in progress.
Zain
1:03:41
My name is Zane Veldtree.
Zain
1:03:43
With me, as always, Corey
Zain
1:03:46
Maybe not Stephen Carter, but we'll indeed see you next time.