Transcript
Corey
0:02
Former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau famously said, Living next to you, the United States, is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.
Corey
0:17
Now, Pierre Trudeau said that in 1969, 55 years later, it feels more like sharing a bed with the bloated carcass of a blue whale, hoping it doesn't do that thing where it explodes on the beach because it's filled up with too many gases. But it's a whale we love, and it's a whale that serves as an inspiration to so many of us here in Canada. So many of us have lived in that whale and have family in that. You know what? Actually, I'm losing the metaphor. Let's regroup.
Corey
0:44
America, I love you to death, but I do sometimes worry it will be to death. You're
Corey
0:50
You're such an exceptional place. You're 4% of the world's population and 40% of the world's Nobel Laureans. But you're such an exceptional place. The only wealthy country where you can die from lack of medical care because your credit card has declined. The only place that routinely sees mass shootings. You're polarized. Red states and blue states, or if you prefer, red countryside and blue cities. But you're spectacular. You
Corey
1:12
You gave us pizza. No,
Carter
1:13
No, they didn't give us pizza. Sorry. Gave
Corey
1:16
Gave us denim. No, no.
Corey
1:17
Gave us basketball. No,
Carter
1:19
No, that was actually Canada. Yeah, Canada did that too. And
Corey
1:22
And the craziest of all inventions, though, Stephen, I think you'll agree, American democracy.
Corey
1:27
inspiration and a fascination for so many of us. Four
Corey
1:31
Four years ago, we did a little experiment. We, a group of Canadian political strategists, said, let's talk about America and the 2020 U.S. election. We
Corey
1:40
We did, and it was mostly super depressing. But it forced us to contrast your system with ours. It forced us to think about democracy on a more foundational level. And it forced us to look at what is almost certainly our own future. Because as is often the case, what happens in America happens here 10 years later and five times crappier.
Corey
2:00
Sometimes because we sleep in the same North American bed with you, you beautiful bloated whale of a corpse. I guess we sleep in the same bed with Mexico too. We're kind of a power throuple.
Corey
2:11
We kind of forget how unique you really are.
Corey
2:14
So it's also a chance to talk about what makes America, America and what makes you different.
Carter
2:28
i'm stephen carter and that was cory hogan welcome to you the people where today we talk all things iowa caucasus or caucasia is a transcontinental region between the between
Carter
2:40
between the black sea and the cassian sea mainly comprising
Corey
2:43
comprising i don't armenia as
Carter
2:45
as they're better don't
Corey
2:46
don't think that's the oh
Corey
2:47
fuck's sake chat gpt
Carter
2:49
gpt i knew i should have upgraded to chat gpt4 oh
Carter
2:53
oh hang on what do
Corey
2:54
do you do this is like a welcome to you
Carter
2:57
you the people where today we talk all things iowa well
Carter
3:01
well not all things we will not be talking about the democrats joe biden or even dean phillips his quote-unquote challenger nor will we be talking about the world's most famous anti-vaxxer in the kennedy family robert jr and his quest to take over the world by taking a right-wing approach to democratic politics so that leaves the republicans romish nicky ronnie and donnie let's
Carter
3:28
let's go it's you the people this
Corey
3:33
this is scripted carter is that what we just heard did you like that was scripted carter i
Carter
3:36
i just did a radio show okay
Carter
3:37
i was on a radio show yeah
Corey
3:39
yeah i heard okay no
Carter
3:40
no i was i and it kind
Carter
3:41
inspired me i felt like you know what i know how to do this i
Corey
3:46
was like all right steven let's
Corey
3:49
do it baby you know who we don't have with us right now uh
Corey
3:52
don't have zane we
Carter
3:53
we don't have zane we don't have annalise we
Carter
3:55
we have a problem i didn't even
Corey
3:57
yeah you didn't even think no that's okay this is uh i you know i did think of annalise i was gonna say i didn't even think to send zane the link but that's okay he wasn't available anyways let
Corey
4:06
me tell you something here you
Corey
4:07
you my friend have been keeping very current with With American politics. I have not. I have actively not
Corey
4:15
been. So you're going to carry the water in this one here. But I feel like I can serve a useful challenge function on things like when you talked about the caucuses being the mountains. I knew that wasn't what we were talking about. So I can do things like that. I went
Carter
4:28
went to chat GPT because as you know, I forgot to write my intro and, um, yeah,
Corey
4:32
yeah, yeah, I do actually know that I didn't, didn't
Corey
4:37
a real thing that happened. Yeah.
Corey
4:39
That's a real thing. So I
Carter
4:40
I fucked that up, uh,
Carter
4:42
uh, pretty solidly, but you
Corey
4:44
you know what? I feel good now.
Corey
4:46
feel good. All right. Well, that was, you teed us up good. We
Corey
4:50
We had, of course, the, uh, Republican primary in Iowa, first in the nation caucus, super super early, it kind of felt like, but here we are. These
Corey
4:59
things creep up on you. Do you want
Carter
5:01
why the Democrats didn't have theirs?
Corey
5:04
Like, how much have you been paying
Corey
5:08
vaguely, the Democrats changed their schedule so that you wouldn't necessarily have these super white, super small states determining the field. Is that not the case?
Carter
5:16
That is the case. I mean, it turns out that a very white state has chosen Donald Trump, but But they
Carter
5:21
they didn't want a super white state choosing, you know, President Biden. So we're going to go South Carolina first for
Carter
5:28
for the Democrats. First in the
Carter
5:31
for the Dems, yeah.
Carter
5:31
It's going to be great.
Corey
5:32
Well, and they did. They chose Donald Trump. Donald Trump, a
Corey
5:37
a man who was almost, well, who was impeached and was just acquitted by the Senate twice. Twice, the man who tried to take a run at American democracy in 2021, which is not that long ago, the man who is under four indictments has gotten- Well, no, four different
Carter
5:55
different sets of indictments, totaling a total of over
Carter
5:58
over 90 individual indictments.
Corey
6:04
that's fair. Well, I'm here for you. That's a lot of, that's good.
Corey
6:09
Where did it land? 51% of the vote? Yeah, it was basically 51
Carter
6:13
51 to 20 to 19. It was very close. Nicky and Ronnie, all but tied. Ronnie wound up in second. Nicky wound up in third. As per my prediction yesterday or on Sunday. I
Corey
6:29
I actually don't feel that that was your prediction, but who's going to run the tape? Who's
Carter
6:33
Who's going to run the tape? Who's got the tape on that? No one. Who's going
Corey
6:35
going to run the
Carter
6:36
Who's going to go get that done? No one.
Carter
6:38
That's a lot of work. but 51 i mean on the plus side he
Carter
6:42
he got more than his competitors combined right donald trump got more votes than than all three are of the other competitors i mean we can we can count uh the fourth but he's already dropped out uh whose name escapes me but you
Carter
6:57
no he didn't drop out yet
Carter
6:59
he drop out already vivek
Carter
7:01
yeah he dropped out
Corey
7:02
oh geez oh my god you're supposed to be our subject matter i was thinking of asa
Carter
7:06
asa hutchison which which is very exciting.
Carter
7:08
Asa's gone as well.
Corey
7:11
see, I missed that big news. Yeah.
Corey
7:13
I missed that big news. So I thought Asa was still rocking and rolling here. I
Carter
7:17
I was actually shocked to find out he was still in it
Carter
7:19
when I saw his withdrawal. I was
Corey
7:21
was shocked to hear that he exists 30 seconds ago when you mentioned him. So we're
Corey
7:27
we're all going through a lot right now. So
Carter
7:28
So on the one hand, these are essentially four nobodies, right? Like this is how Trump has portrayed them. There are four nobodies, but they got 49 of the vote and he got 51 the
Carter
7:38
the question has to you okay there that wasn't the big pop that we usually get american
Corey
7:42
american soft drink no
Corey
7:44
no i know it's an american soft drink but
Carter
7:46
but what i don't understand is is everybody's
Carter
7:48
everybody's talking about this being a huge victory but
Carter
7:52
is it really he's
Carter
7:54
he's basically the incumbent he's
Carter
7:56
he's basically uh the the guy who's supposed to be running away with this and he's up against ronnie and nicky like
Carter
8:04
is he really supposed to get more than 51 percent or not get only get 51 okay also
Corey
8:11
as we mentioned 90 charges he's fighting right now yeah
Corey
8:17
also i think i did mention the whole insurrection against american democracy thing here oh
Corey
8:22
there is a case to be made that he shouldn't be anywhere near here and in fact one of the things i think is super interesting about this is this time last year, Donald Trump's nomination looked less in doubt than it does after the Iowa caucus, right? Donald Trump was not that much up on, you know, Meatball Ron, as he was lovingly nicknamed by Donald Trump. And Nikki Haley was, I think, in the race, but so deeply speculative where she would end up and certainly not polling in the way Ron DeSantis was or Donald Trump was. By the way, I think the first time we said Ron DeSantis' last name, you know, Ronnie, Meatball Ron. Yeah.
Carter
9:01
Yeah. I think we have been seduced
Carter
9:03
seduced by the Don and his nicknames.
Corey
9:10
all I'm saying is there is an argument to be made that 51% is
Corey
9:16
is way better than he deserves. Well,
Carter
9:18
Well, I think deserves is an interesting phrasing. I think deserves is is fascinating because I don't think he deserves to get more than a couple percent. But here he is. And I think I just bring it up because I think that both sides of this of this coin could be argued, right? Like, I think that it's relatively easy to say, you know, he's running away with it. I think that that's a relatively probably true statement, just a simply a simple truth. He is, in fact, running away with this. But I also think it's equally easy to say that for someone who's running away with it, he's running away very, very slowly. I imagine that has something to do with his girth.
Corey
9:57
Well, let me even go a little bit further and say it does to me seem like this might even have been the
Corey
10:03
the best case scenario for Donald Trump. Because you had Nikki Higley getting a bit of a late surge. There was some suggestion, maybe she could consolidate that DeSantis vote behind her, if she could put some distance between her and DeSantis. And she came in third, which was just enough with prevailing narratives to make it look like DeSantis is going to go and fight it out a little bit more. And so Donald Trump, who got, as you mentioned, almost exactly half of the vote, now
Corey
10:30
now the other half of the vote is still split in such a way that he will likely come up the middle. Which, by the way, is sort of what he did in 2016, right? Right? Yeah.
Corey
10:40
In 2016, he managed to win, especially under the Republican rules at the time, a whole bunch of primaries that were winner take all with not that much of the vote. And so Donald Trump, once again, continues to land in butter and have, I mean, I
Corey
10:56
I don't know, I'd usually say at this point, you got to be good to be lucky.
Corey
10:59
He's not fucking good in any kind of sense of the word, but he is, he's got a command of the Republican Party. That's really quite something. He
Carter
11:06
He certainly does. And that command does not appear to be waning. I
Carter
11:10
I think what's really going to be interesting is that Nikki Haley is more competitive in New Hampshire than she was in Iowa. Will she actually get that bump that I think was available to her if she'd beaten Ron DeSantis? You know, especially if she'd beaten him by three or four. does being within one point enable new hampshire to do what new hampshire does which is clean up from iowa right like they seem to think that iowa leaves a bunch of horror you know cow shit all over the cornfield and new hampshire the the grown-up in the field needs to clean it up and actually do the first primary and bring in the the the real winner keeping in mind of course that it's been a long time since the winner of the the iowa republican primary has actually gone on to win the actual nomination for the republicans maybe this is a great uh a great harbinger
Carter
12:03
harbinger that something bad is going to happen to donald trump like i don't know jail it's
Corey
12:09
yeah like again 90 criminal charges against him maybe one
Corey
12:14
one of the things that i think is really interesting about iowa and in general the american approach to the primaries as we go through this is this kind of geography divide that they do which i don't know of another country that takes an approach like this certainly it would have to be a big geographic country and a democracy and that kind of just leaves us and we certainly don't do this this way in canada right yeah
Corey
12:36
but i i struggle for an example of when you give such
Corey
12:40
such outsized prominence to a geography within a federation
Corey
12:45
and and the effect that that has had i think over you know the many years of americans doing this is something i
Corey
12:52
i i don't know why they do it and i don't know why they take it for granted and i I don't know why it's always the same approach. And we already talked a bit about how the Democrats are trying to shake that up. But their idea of shaking it up is, OK, we'll go to the first diverse
Corey
13:06
diverse state on the calendar. Like they're still following the standard calendar that they always do. Like South Carolina is always very early in this thing here.
Carter
13:15
Well, I think the big challenge is that they value states' rights differently. And by valuing state rights differently, states get to set the rules. And those rules are going to vary significantly from state to state. So we don't have that valuing of provincial rules. The Australia doesn't have that valuing of the state's rules. So this this becomes a unique situation. But there is a perverse outcome. If the United States continues to call themselves the leader of the free world, the leader of the free world is a, you
Carter
13:46
you know, we all expect something from them then. Right. We all are invested in American democracy. that's why we do you the people because we're all invested in this american democracy and from outside it looks weird to do let's do iowa i mean the equivalent would be let's start with prince edward island you
Carter
14:04
you know what we're going to start with prince edward island those potato guys they've got this shit down potato
Corey
14:09
potato potatoes small white yeah
Corey
14:12
actually it's a pretty nice comp yeah
Carter
14:14
yeah and so we're going to get prince edward island to go first and then if justin trudeau can hang on then we're going to jump right into new brunswick and new brunswick's going to kick some ass because new brunswick is filled with the first time we're introducing a little bit of french
Carter
14:28
right and then we're going to go into one of the big provinces yeah
Corey
14:33
yeah then we go hard but you know okay but maybe let me make the argument maybe that would be better maybe you would get an opportunity to really understand a politician on a retail level before you move on and isn't that always the argument they make about why iowa is supposed to be such a you
Corey
14:50
you know any country is just fuck not just any country any person if they do something long enough a family does something long enough it takes on this veneer called tradition oh isn't it nice and isn't it quaint but we make justifications for why this happens and the big american justification for why they go to iowa first and give it its first in the nation status is it forces the candidates to go through the retail politics grinder. A,
Corey
15:16
A, I could ask you, does that matter in a country of over 300 million people? I'm not sure, but let's go to B and let's say, if it does in a country of 300 million, doesn't
Corey
15:28
doesn't this make the most sense to pick a small state and do something like this? Sure,
Carter
15:32
Sure, sure. Absolutely not. No, you're totally wrong. Here's why. Because you only get the retail experience if you're in Iowa. If you happen to be in Iowa, if you happen to live in that state then you have then you have access to the retail or if you happen to be in new hampshire you know and then you get the retail i mean one of my very favorite books about politics is a fictional book called primary colors that kind of kind of covers the the clinton nomination process through new hampshire and you can see you know that level of retail politics man i fell in love with that type of politics but that type of politics doesn't exist it's not real run a candidate for mayor and i will tell you that there's a you know running in a city of one and a half million people is damn near impossible to do retail so even this retail of we'll go to iowa there's only a million people that's bullshit because you still can't be retail with everybody in the state you can do more retail but you could do more retail if you had a year run up to uh to california you could still do some retail you can still like we do retail in in calgary of million and a half people we do uh you know six months of retail there's lots of opportunity to do retail it's about time not necessarily the number of people well
Corey
16:51
well so this does get to kind of the the
Corey
16:54
the nature of these primaries in a different way america
Corey
16:57
america you don't really ever seem to want to change the way that you approach this and yeah there's the state's rights components and yeah the democrats are kind of playing around the margins with this but
Corey
17:08
is it possible that they're just kind of a little too enamored with their system and how it is and they're sort of avoiding some of the obvious challenges with it here like why are we even talking about whether a bunch of iowa republicans and it's a caucus too right and so maybe we'll get into difference between a caucus and a primary in a second here but it's even fewer people so a a bunch of Iowa Republicans kind
Corey
17:31
of feel like they're determining the course of the entire fucking country at this point. And it seems
Corey
17:37
seems a little weird, doesn't it?
Carter
17:38
it? We've called out so
Carter
17:40
so many candidates already, right? So many candidates are called out before you get anywhere vaguely representative or anywhere that's actually going to change the electoral college, right?
Carter
17:51
right? And the electoral college, Corey, you know, it's not like we're in love with the electoral college. We're big fans of like, I don't know, adding up votes. But this this electoral
Carter
18:00
electoral college is going to dictate everything again. And it's going to New Hampshire and Iowa, even South Carolina, aren't necessarily the ones that are going to be the states that change the electoral college outcome. So we're losing candidates one after the other in places that aren't going to make any difference to the overall election outcome in November.
Corey
18:27
so i'm not i'm not gonna belabor this but i want to play a little bit of the zane velgey role here and make you do a little work oh
Corey
18:33
i think we could kind of both agree this
Corey
18:36
this sounds this is a weird system like at least from the outside right like americans you you know you've got your traditions and you you've sort of figured this all out but from the outside it looks a little weird if today
Corey
18:47
today somebody said hey we're gonna create this new thing called the united states of america There's 50 states. They're all a little bit different. We're going to have to choose president. And I'm, you know, don't monkey with the electoral college yet. Let's not open that. Let's save that. You know, let's save that for sweeps, right? right?
Corey
19:04
You're doing primaries, you're doing caucuses.
Corey
19:07
What are you doing that tries to do the same things they at least purport to want to do? Like to have an opportunity to actually get people to meet the candidates, to have that retail experience. So it's not all just how the candidate is packaged and the air war, and they're also like kind of, you know, cello wrapped and hermetically sealed or however you want to say it.
Corey
19:26
How do you build that experience in a way that makes more sense in the primaries you
Carter
19:29
you know what i would love to do this is this is crazy talk but i'm going to talk crazy because i can um i would pull from a hat uh
Carter
19:38
uh 20 congressional districts across the country and
Carter
19:42
and i'd say there's our first primary and
Carter
19:44
and then i do the next 20 okay
Corey
19:46
okay that's that's 20 million people so maybe just pick like no two
Carter
19:49
well but why why would we do that why
Carter
19:51
why would we pick two if we
Carter
19:53
we pick 20, then we're looking at, I think, somewhere in the neighborhood of 22 overall primary dates. And that would be a, you know, you wouldn't necessarily need to do them all, but you'd have a growing primary capacity. And because it's randomized, you're going to have candidates who will do well in some of those 20, and you'll have candidates that will do poorly in some of those 20. And that's going to make it a far more representative sample of what the the american people actually want to see but just pick 20 or you could you know i think that picking anything less smaller than 10 is
Carter
20:28
is going to give a non-representative sample but if but in anything like 30 it's just like well why don't you just do fucking california then right so but
Carter
20:37
but by picking 20 you're essentially like i was going to suggest well why wouldn't you just pick a median state well by picking 20 at random you're essentially picking a median state
Corey
20:49
so here i mean that would be a huge state i just want to say but well i think your idea is garbage thank you just a garbage idea from a garbage person really
Carter
20:57
really great idea from a really good person
Corey
21:00
you've given me some thoughts here which i'm sure are not new to the world but what if you took kind of the same approach but you did it okay
Corey
21:09
okay the first one is going to be on january 15th yeah
Corey
21:13
and we're we're going to randomly pick one congressional district and a week later we are going to do an additional two congressional districts randomly picked and you sort of ramp up in that way so you still allow and
Corey
21:24
and maybe you have more time between the first and the second contest maybe you play with that a bit but you have that randomness you still have like a smaller grv you know congressional districts like 800 000 a million people depends on the state right
Corey
21:38
if it's a small state what about
Corey
21:40
about that like what what about a version where Where you're building to something bigger. And so instead of Super Tuesday being a whole slew of states, it just happens to be when now you're getting into serious numbers of states and the operation has to expand. Love
Carter
21:53
Let's do it. Let's make some calls. Who do we know? And here's why I love it, Corey, is because it builds, right? And because it's random. When Jason Kenney was taking over the Alberta Progressive Conservatives, one of the questions, one of the things we demanded of the Progressive Conservative executive was a non-randomized control of when these delegate selections would happen. um because the delegates were obviously going to be super important in this leadership race uh the or actually i think it was the actual convention but doesn't matter um if you chose them to be against jason kenney then you decline his momentum right his momentum would be taken away from him if you made it so that they were supportive of jason he would immediately get insurmountable momentum but
Carter
22:45
but by randomizing these congressional districts by randomizing where they could be what you're doing is you're you're not you're minimizing someone's ability
Carter
22:54
ability to have overwhelming momentum just by the luck of the draw you're minimizing it and you're allowing others to say well i'm not even going to bother competing in that one i'm going to wait till the third week and compete in these four right and that could be really interesting because now we've We've got dynamics and we've got everybody in the world, in the country paying attention to certain small areas. I love it. Let's do it. Make a call.
Corey
23:19
Okay. America, that was a free one. You're welcome. Yeah.
Corey
23:24
next one's going to cost you, but this one was free.
Corey
23:28
Let's talk New Hampshire. Okay.
Corey
23:31
we could talk about, well, listen, we're going to come back to Iowa. I want to talk a little bit about what happened in Iowa on a bit more of a granular level in a minute. but now all of these campaigns run
Corey
23:43
run into new hampshire you
Corey
23:44
you you're our subject matter expertise expertise guy you're the subject matter expertise guy or expert
Corey
23:51
that's how you say it or uh no subject matter expertise guy you're right that's who you are right
Corey
23:59
talk to me about the differences between iowa and new hampshire talk to me about who's got momentum give
Corey
24:04
give me the stephen carter take about this well
Corey
24:07
i got some questions new
Carter
24:08
new hampshire is very much like Iowa insofar as it's about who has operations. And the operation that DeSantis put in place was primarily focused in Iowa. The thinking being that if you come out of Iowa with momentum, you'll be able to go into New Hampshire and really, it doesn't matter how much activity you've done in advance. It's this new momentum that carries you forward. And we've seen that. We've seen that in elections that I've done. There's elections that, well, you haven't done any that actually generated momentum but you've seen momentum and that momentum will pick up and it will it will create something bigger so desantis was a momentum guy well haley was a let's put in the work gal and she was putting herself in a place where she could win in new hampshire almost regardless of what was actually going to happen in iowa well will she win in new hampshire uh There's been polls coming out that have her in the, you know, 8 to 10 points behind Donald Trump. And there's a question. The question is, did he win with enough to give himself the momentum? Or does Nikki Haley have the ability to create some sort of an upset? And I think upset now doesn't even require a win. It only requires being within five points. and then south carolina where she's also got a significant operation because that was her home state that becomes the you know the real question is is she able to carry both of those things forward so operation
Carter
25:38
operation matters because operation versus momentum and then the ability to carry that momentum into really the first populous state where diversity will matter um is going to be fascinating but right now it looks like it's trump who's going to be carrying all of them So who knows? Maybe he wins it all. It's
Corey
25:55
It's too bad because I did hear somebody make a prediction a couple of days ago that Haley would come in second, go
Corey
26:01
go into New Hampshire, and then kind of just lock these things up in South Carolina. It sounded good. Who would say something like that? Was
Carter
26:09
Fucking Zane. Probably Zane. Fucking Zane Velgey.
Corey
26:11
Velgey. That does sound like Zane advice there. Yeah. Now that I think about it, it was posed as a question that went on for about 25 minutes. So it sounds about right to me here.
Carter
26:20
Must have been Zane.
Corey
26:21
All right. Right. So Nikki Haley is doing well, or at least in some of these polls in New Hampshire.
Corey
26:28
Ron DeSantis, of course, will be turning his focus. He'll be running up
Carter
26:32
up to New Hampshire. He'll be trying to do these things.
Corey
26:36
We are talking a lot about Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. They're both fighting for second. Everybody's back from Donald Trump, as you were saying here.
Corey
26:44
there dynamics in New Hampshire that make it more or less dangerous for Donald Trump? I told you we're going to talk about the caucus versus primary difference with
Corey
26:54
with a caucus essentially you are going especially in kind of the iowa case to like in some cases even people's houses and you're getting together that's the caucus and you're determining who you are going to then vote for and you elect basically delegates in that room under certain rules that allow you then go forward to bigger meetings and so on and then you get to the state convention and that determines the the delegates so when we get all of these nice delegate counts on nights like this and we weren't really subjected to them this time because donald trump just had such a commanding victory it's often kind of with an asterisk like they haven't quite figured it out yet it'll depend on how these other you know subsequent meetings shake out but
Corey
27:33
but my point would be this they are political meetings
Corey
27:38
where you're choosing the candidates right where
Corey
27:40
where they are a meeting they are a meeting of party members that's
Corey
27:44
that's a caucus when you talk about a primary you're talking about voters going the same as they would in an everyday election and they are marking an x next to a name on a ballot they're often even using the same infrastructure that would be used for the various elections held by the state right right
Corey
28:02
so how do those dynamic changes now that we're going from like kind of the crazy zealot party members to a more generalist population how does that play into the whole donald trump effect
Carter
28:13
effect let's go back to one of your first first points which was it's it's about being in someone's home or being in a small venue and having to speak aloud what it is that you feel when you're speaking aloud when you're in the group when you're walking to one side of the room versus the other side you are you know showing everybody who your choice is and in in showing your choice, you are essentially impacted by group dynamics. That group dynamic may have favored Trump in Iowa. We don't actually know yet because we haven't seen whether or not it has impact in New Hampshire. But in general, group dynamics are about peer pressure, right? And peer pressure may find themselves, you know, people may find themselves voting for Trump because their peers are voting for Trump. Now, I'm not saying that 100% of Trump's vote was peer pressure, but maybe 8% was. I
Corey
29:07
would be weird. Everybody's being peer pressured. But
Carter
29:10
But if 4% or overall 4% and it moves to Haley, right now Haley's polling average in New Hampshire is 29.3 and Trump's at 43.5. If that closes up to essentially 35 and 40, all of a sudden you got yourself a much different ballgame. So New Hampshire, when it's just you you walking into that polling booth, and it's just you with that machine or you with that ballot,
Carter
29:38
it fundamentally, you know, they say it's you and your God when you walk into the polling booth. It's more true in the United States, I think, than up in Canada. But here, they're walking in, and they're the ones who are going to make the decision. And maybe, maybe they have a harder time making a decision for someone who's facing 90 plus counts.
Corey
29:59
Interesting. I'm going going to throw kind of the counter argument which is it's easier to vote for a guy like that when nobody's watching right
Corey
30:05
right now i know what you're going to say like because the majority were with trump that doesn't really hold much water that seems to be the socially acceptable thing to do but in
Corey
30:15
in a way like don't you think that there's a bit more of a you're really going to vote for this guy at some of those caucus meetings yeah
Carter
30:22
yeah i wish there was i
Carter
30:28
wish there was a, you're really going to vote for that guy feeling. But yeah, they are. And they believe, because again, there's a significant confirmation bias going on in the United States where they have chosen to believe certain untruths. I was going to say half-truths, but they're not even close to half-truths.
Corey
30:49
-truths. Hey, don't you judge our American friends like that.
Corey
30:54
think I will. They're going to think bad about you. I think
Carter
30:55
think I will. but i like i like we
Carter
30:58
guys i like americans they're great people they're just modestly modestly deluded at this point and only half of them so that's not too bad i mean i was modestly deluded through my entire university career but that's fine yeah fair ball it's fine uh so here we are and i think that in the overall scheme of things um donald
Carter
31:22
is right now, it's easier to be subject, you know, to follow along with peer pressure than it is to imagine that people are going to be like, oh, finally, I'm free to choose Donald Trump. Now that I'm alone in the voting booth, but again, time will tell Corey, we'll know in a few in a couple short weeks.
Corey
31:39
So here's the last thing I sort of want to ask you about the New Hampshire, Iowa difference. And I'm going to use this as a bridge to get back to Iowa for a minute that i want to talk about the democrats i'll
Carter
31:48
i'll get over a minute here
Corey
31:52
we haven't said a thing about issues
Corey
31:55
issues yet um and my observation would be maybe it's fair maybe it's not that a lot of the conversation in the united states in the primary in particular i'm sorry the caucus in iowa and now as we go into new hampshire has been almost what i would call meta political political conversations right who can win should this person be there are we going to be able to exact revenge on our political opponents doesn't actually seem to be rooted particularly strongly in the issues of the day right like how people feel about um you know for example i'm not going to say these issues haven't come up at all that would be entirely false and easily falsifiable but you're
Corey
32:32
you're not seeing sort of the same conversations about immigration and taxes and spending as opposed to each other like they'll they'll take a round of the democrats for all of those things but you don't seem to see a lot of issue daylight and certainly issues didn't seem to drive the conversations in iowa from my very distant very aloof perch and it doesn't really feel like they are in new hampshire either but
Corey
33:00
maybe that's not fair no
Corey
33:02
no what's the state of play of actual issues in these two elections i
Carter
33:05
i think it's totally fair cory i think that you know the issues that people are talking about are actually the issues that no one wants to talk about um you know gay the the the immigration issue no one has a solution for it but they are trying to pin it on to joe biden um the uh the the abortion issue continues to come back but again it's i don't think it's the the republicans aren't certainly embracing that and saying here's what we're going to do nikki haley did do some uh some work around the abortion issue and and and articulating a i don't want to say moderate vision because we're canadian and it still sounds like a hellscape but um there there was some moves by nikki haley to address some of the bigger issues uh but there hasn't really been any issues by trump nor has there trump's been instead bashing biden doing his regular speeches just talking about how great things were when he was in charge and how great things will be again without ever describing really what those things are. I mean, there has been some talk that the economy was better.
Carter
34:13
Interesting, but not necessarily true. And there's been talk about the Supreme Court and how, you know, Donald Trump was the the one who ensured that the abortion access would be denied. That's fascinating, but it's not it's not true issues in the way that we've come to expect them where someone was for example unveiling a significant policy the
Carter
34:36
politics of brand which you and i have talked about on on the the
Carter
34:40
the the main strategist podcast a thousand times that politics of brand has really taken hold in the united states and i don't see it giving itself up uh
Carter
34:50
uh anytime in the future well
Corey
34:53
well we're back in iowa we took a little trip to
Corey
34:56
to new new hampshire it was cold we went to iowa still cold still
Carter
35:00
still cold in iowa
Carter
35:00
iowa yeah i thought that the cold might
Corey
35:02
might have some impact it
Carter
35:03
it did it did not yeah
Corey
35:05
yeah you did and you were you know donald trump made some comment like go to vote even though it's cold even if you die it's worth it which was weird but let's set that aside he says a lot of weird things just wanted to make sure that was on the record i
Corey
35:21
fascinated by iowa for another reason you've already mentioned not a huge population in iowa right ron
Corey
35:28
ron de santis famously in this campaign had 99 campaign offices campaign operations i don't know if they were actual physical storefronts or not you might know that but uh i don't but
Corey
35:43
but 99 for a state with a population of just what over three million people here
Corey
35:51
i'm trying to think of what well i can think of the comp we live in a province here in Canada of 4.8 million people. It's not dramatically different.
Corey
36:00
Ninety-nine operations across the state of Iowa?
Carter
36:04
Yeah. Talk to me about that scale. I think that the way to think of it would be, you know, 87 constituencies running a campaign. You
Carter
36:14
You know, Iowa, the former Senator Chuck Grassley, you know, was infamous for the way he campaigned. And the way he would campaign is to do what they call now the full Grassley, going to all 90 of the different, whatever the number is, number of constituencies or organizations.
Carter
36:38
Yeah. You're using words better than me right now.
Corey
36:41
now. They've got these nice square counties. The counties
Carter
36:44
counties were individual and they'd go to them and people have a real strong connection to their county. in the same fashion that we would have a strong connection to a small town. This is where they were born. This is where they grew up. This is where their farms are. This is where their economic activity happens. So going
Carter
37:03
going to where people live, to quote Nahed Nenshi, is a very valuable part of doing politics. And so DeSantis, who was really doubling down on the idea that he had to do very well in in Iowa, decided to essentially model the full Grassley without recognizing that part of the full Grassley was actually being charismatic.
Carter
37:28
So if you eliminate charisma, it
Carter
37:33
it feels like the full Grassley just doesn't have the same impact.
Corey
37:38
Okay. Well, I don't want to entirely lose the fact that you talked about 87 ridings. That's for a province of almost 5 million people. And for a state of almost 2 million fewer people let's say one and a half million fewer people you're talking 99 you
Corey
37:54
you you would be really hard pressed to find an operation in each of those like we combine operations in this province all of the time between writings and this is for like not
Carter
38:03
cory that was the one you were working with
Carter
38:06
the successful parties tended to have you know individual operations but
Corey
38:11
but that's just so wrong like every you know we have two main parties and both of those parties had shared offices and operations basically across the board well
Corey
38:19
in cities for sure not
Carter
38:20
not when i was in charge here's
Corey
38:23
well and then you weren't so i don't know causation
Corey
38:27
causation correlation you decide listener
Corey
38:33
still seems like an awful lot but let's talk a little bit about ron desantis on our way out the door of iowa on our way to the white house let's talk about our friend joe in a second here ron
Corey
38:44
ron desantis supposed to be the great hope of the republican party this guy who was turned a a purple state red right with florida and he you know was supposed to be this great hope of the republicans what
Corey
38:58
what the hell happened to him he put everything into iowa give
Corey
39:02
give me your assessment i
Carter
39:03
i think that um character
Carter
39:06
character assassinations continue continue to work in the united states of america in canada we have a line you see uh we
Carter
39:13
we have a line and and we you know for example we crossed it in 1993 you know this is how uh how much how strong the line is i remember when it happened when the progressive conservatives made fun of jean-claude chen and his uh facial deformity due to a an illness when he was young that
Corey
39:35
It was 30 years ago and we still talk about it in this country. Yeah,
Carter
39:38
Yeah, because that became, you
Carter
39:40
know, kind of our red line. We will not cross that red line. And it makes sense because if you cross the red line, you have a chance of failing. There is no red line in the United States. And certainly there is no red line if your name is Donald Trump. He can literally, you know, keep in mind that, you know, in terms of issues, kind of going back a little bit. it eight
Carter
40:01
eight years ago he was talking about mexican rapists and murderers you know they weren't sending us their best um he continues to have that type of rhetoric and it has not hurt him at all not one iota and so when he starts going after ron desantis and he starts you know the the the childhood game of these you
Carter
40:23
you know nicknames and and you know bringing him down this
Carter
40:27
this is a guy I got to tell
Corey
40:30
works. I got to interrupt you here. Yeah.
Corey
40:32
Meatball Ron is a great nickname. It's a catchy nickname. Was not Donald Trump's first attempt at giving Ron DeSantis a nickname, though. No.
Corey
40:39
For $12. Do you remember the first nickname he tried to pin on Ron DeSantis? On Ron DeSantis
Carter
40:44
DeSantis for how much?
Corey
40:46
$12. Not worth my time. $12. Yeah.
Carter
40:52
Oh, that was a
Corey
40:52
a good one. Bad nickname. Yeah.
Corey
40:54
No, I think he lost his game on that particular one, but he found it again with Meatball Ron. on. I thought that was pretty nice. That's good. But
Carter
40:59
But the point is that when you have this
Carter
41:05
character assassination operation, and I think that that's probably the best way to characterize it, it becomes really hard to define yourself when you're always being defined by someone else. And I think that if we were to transport that to Canada, it would backfire. I think that in a lot of jurisdictions around the world, it would backfire. But not in the United States, not right now and as a result um it
Carter
41:30
it it was super hard for ron desantis to to get get
Carter
41:35
any traction at all i mean he just absolutely was spinning his wheels almost from day one because he he never got out from underneath the attacks he never even got close to getting out from underneath why not why didn't he punch back because he was afraid to punch back because he had this stupid ass campaign strategy that seemed to indicate that he was going to get uh trump's and you'll forgive me for the phrasing sloppy seconds um i
Corey
42:01
won't forgive you for that now i've got that image you
Carter
42:04
you didn't forgive me for this okay but that was his strategy right uh people who like trump who just don't want that baggage well turns out the people who like trump did want the baggage And because of that, Ron never got out from underneath the caricature that was created of him by Donald Trump. And I would also add the Democrats as well. I mean, Pod Save America and Crooked Media never stopped going after Ron DeSantis. this um i think that the democrats feel like their best chance of re-reelecting uh sleepy joe bryden is to uh ensure that their competitor is is uh donald trump which i think frankly is a dangerous game to play but i think
Corey
42:52
think it's just some
Carter
42:52
some canadian yeah yeah so
Corey
42:55
so it feels like an incredibly dangerous game to play for
Corey
42:57
for sure um i think it's pretty clear neither of us are fans of the donald and And we're kind of, you know, we have long positions on this. We've not been fans of Donald Trump for quite some time. Not super shocking.
Corey
43:11
Most Canadians aren't, although I do want
Corey
43:14
want to end on that note when we get there. That's a little bit of a teaser for you, some recent polling.
Carter
43:19
Good stuff, good stuff. Yeah,
Corey
43:20
Yeah, right. Stay tuned, is what that means.
Corey
43:23
We've been talking about the Republicans.
Corey
43:26
We're not talking about the Democrats.
Corey
43:29
There's a reason for that.
Corey
43:31
The Democrats do not appear to have a
Corey
43:34
a competitive race for the primary. Joe Biden, sitting president, in that sense, not unusual. Sitting presidents aren't usually seriously challenged. but this is an unpopular incumbent he's he's fairly old by the standards uh i mean donald trump's really old too but joe biden is fairly old nobody
Corey
43:54
nobody really in the race why aren't the democrats having a race at this moment with
Corey
44:02
where they are with with joe biden's age being what it is donald trump's age being what it is with um the popularity of joe biden being where it is why isn't there a race on the democratic side for the nomination well
Carter
44:14
well i mean the answer is tradition um
Carter
44:17
um because generally speaking did you like that by the way that was good stuff i
Carter
44:21
i did generally were you
Corey
44:22
you doing like a tevye yeah it was was that a fiddler on the roof god
Carter
44:26
god you know for someone who doesn't like musical theater you're right up to speed with it i
Corey
44:30
i do okay yeah but
Carter
44:33
tradition is to to allow an incumbent to to be on a post through through the primary. I mean, we've seen Kennedy took Carter to task. We've seen others try, you know, the Christian conservatives of Buchanan tried to take on Ronald Reagan. But in general, it
Carter
44:51
it doesn't work. And people feel like the incumbent has the right to a second kick at the can.
Carter
44:57
And I kind of think that they're right. I think that in general, incumbents perform better. And there's all kinds of science as to why that is. But incumbents perform better. And And even when they're not polling all that well a year before the election. So I think it's wise for them to enable Joe Biden to run again, but he's not making it easy. The polling is not good and the
Carter
45:26
campaign direction is solidifying over the last couple of months, but it's taken too long to unfold.
Corey
45:36
right well i'm sure we'll talk a lot more about joe biden talk a lot more about the democrats the republicans everybody else sitting on the wayside as we go through this wacky journey over the next america you crazy country i do want to end up back here in canada though for a minute you know let's let's get through customs let's uh you know exchange pleasantries in french and english with the border guards yeah
Corey
46:01
let's talk a little bit about our home country okay
Corey
46:04
recent polling showed one in three canadians would
Corey
46:10
would like donald trump to win this election now that's higher than i think i can remember ever seen on a question like this
Corey
46:16
this i remember at one point i
Corey
46:18
i think it was around 2016 in our home province of alberta which is of course usually seen as one of the most conservative provinces in the country if not the most although i think Saskatchewan kind of has us on that one these
Corey
46:31
I recall Democrats polling around, you know, 70, 80% at that point. Now, I think the numbers are around 40% of Albertans were supporting the idea of Donald Trump being president again.
Corey
46:47
What in the ever-loving fuck are
Corey
46:50
are we supposed to make of that? Well,
Corey
46:53
the growing popularity of Donald Trump after the last eight years well
Carter
46:59
first and foremost i mean we've grown very tired with our own progressive government uh you know that government of of justin trudeau that was so new and shiny back in in 2015 uh 2016 as donald trump was making his ascendancy to the presidency that that shiny government has changed dramatically it is no longer um this new exciting thing that we all were in love with progressivism at that particular moment in time. And instead, we find ourselves now, you know, perhaps
Carter
47:31
perhaps a little wistful and wishing for the good old days of the conservatives. But the conservatives have fundamentally changed as well. Pierre Polyev has incorporated elements of Trump's conservative
Carter
47:45
conservative populism. We've seen the conservative populism take hold around the world. Europe has seen a rise in right-wing populism, which is modestly troubling when one considers the history of Europe. But this is where we are. And the changes that are happening in our society do change the way that we look at other groups. So we are now looking through different glasses at what is occurring in the United States and coming up with a different conclusion. um much the same way that i think that can americans are remembering things a little differently than i remember them and no one is trying to dissuade from that it's not like justin trudeau is trying to change the way that we think of of donald trump he's trying just to keep his head above water so who's
Carter
48:38
who's who's our person who's railing against donald trump who's the person who's the group because it doesn't appear to be media and it isn't the politicians politicians themselves.
Corey
48:50
Well, for the past couple of elections here in Canada, one of the things that we perpetually hear is that the liberals, the governing liberals, are going to use Trump as a bit of the boogeyman, like the guy, watch out, Pierre
Corey
49:02
Pierre Polyev, he's bringing in Donald Trump style things. Do you think perhaps there's a bit of a wagging the dog here, where this has been said enough times, people agree to it, but because they're supporters of Pierre Polyev, they say, say, well, maybe I like Donald Trump then. Do you think maybe there's an element to that? Do you think it's all about the forget? I guess my challenge with the forgetfulness argument or the like we've moved on, it's not like Donald Trump was particularly nice to Canada
Corey
49:28
during his four years in government.
Corey
49:30
- Are we just forgetting about that?
Carter
49:31
We forget about that and we put it into a new context. And that context is we like conservatives now, right?
Carter
49:37
right? We didn't like conservatives back then. We were opposed to conservatives. We we like the we like the red brand instead of the blue brand. And now we like the blue brand brand, which happens to be the red brand in the US. And isn't that exciting? It's it's a different color. And, you know, like, keep in mind, we're not making really in-depth decision making on this. This is like if you were to have to vote in some hypothetical election at some point in the future that you're never, ever going to vote in. who would you choose yeah fuck it trump right like it's it there's there's no consequence to saying these words and i think that that's why some of these words get uttered from time to time
Corey
50:23
i think we're going to leave that there i don't know how we end this show because we haven't done it in four years three years so
Carter
50:30
we do it together and we say fuck you zane velji isn't that no
Corey
50:35
no for sure that's not how it is because
Corey
50:37
because i can't imagine i can't imagine and zane saying that to zane like it just grammatically doesn't really work that's true
Corey
50:44
right yeah uh so maybe we just say um that's though that's a rap is like the strategists yeah so