The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - March 28, 2024


Danielle Smith would crush Naheed Nenshi in an election, polls show


Episode Stats

Length

16 minutes

Words per Minute

197.15092

Word Count

3,280

Sentence Count

162

Misogynist Sentences

7

Hate Speech Sentences

3


Summary

In this episode of the podcast, I talk about the current leadership candidates in the Alberta NDP leadership race, including former Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, Sarah Hoffman, and Kathleen Ganley, and why they are all running for the party leadership. I also talk about some of the challenges facing the UCP leadership candidates, and whether or not they have a shot at winning the next election.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Right now in Alberta provincial polling, Premier Daniel Smith and the UCP are set to win big if
00:00:06.320 there's another provincial election held. Obviously, we're a few years away from that
00:00:10.220 occurring again, but considering that we had a really tight provincial election where the UCP
00:00:14.900 only barely won the majority of seats by about 1,800 votes spread across a few ridings in
00:00:20.040 Calgary, this is a very good result for the UCP so soon after the provincial election.
00:00:24.920 Right now, according to a new Abacus data poll, they have a 16% lead over the NDP, but we could
00:00:32.280 chalk this up to the fact that right now the NDP is effectively not running with a leader.
00:00:36.420 While Rachel Notley is kind of still the leader of the NDP, we know she's going to be replaced by one
00:00:42.080 of the several leadership contestants that are running for the NDP provincial leadership.
00:00:47.340 But let's be fair, I think we all know, at least if you're in the province of Alberta and you've
00:00:52.820 been following this, the new leader of the NDP is likely going to be former Calgary Mayor Nahid
00:00:58.040 Nenshi. And so this is the Abacus breakdown of the popularity of these different individuals
00:01:03.200 vying for the control of the party and what kind of people generally think about them.
00:01:08.440 And so right now, Nahid obviously has a big advantage over everybody because he has a high
00:01:13.600 amount of name recognition, not only in his former city of Calgary where he was the mayor,
00:01:18.360 but just all over the province. Another person who has a decently high amount of name
00:01:23.480 recognition would be Sarah Hoffman and Kathleen Gangley being former ministers and MLAs for
00:01:29.540 the NDP government back in 2015. But overall, the funny thing is that there's a lot of people
00:01:35.080 who don't really know much about a lot of the people running. Even Sarah Hoffman has 51% of
00:01:40.460 respondents in this Abacus data poll saying that they don't know enough about her to really
00:01:44.900 say if they have a positive or negative sort of feeling about her. But the thing that Nenshi
00:01:50.140 really needs to be careful of, because he, in a certain sense, is actually kind of a threat to
00:01:55.020 Danielle Smith. Even though I don't like him because I'm a conservative and I find his personality quite,
00:02:00.100 you know, arrogant and smarmy. Overall, a lot of people do like him. Progressive, urban voters tend
00:02:05.780 to like Nenshi. The problem for Nenshi is that even when you look at this Abacus data poll,
00:02:10.360 a lot of people actually kind of like Nenshi because since he's been out of politics for a few years,
00:02:14.020 people have a more neutral view of him. Plus, frankly, the current mayor, Jody Gondek in Calgary,
00:02:20.860 is so bad she makes people wish Nenshi was back, even though he was just the sort of,
00:02:25.840 she was just the logical conclusion of all of Nenshi's policies. Even Nenshi really doesn't have
00:02:31.060 that great an approval rating. 31% positive, 19% neutral, 23% negative. So, you know, net impression
00:02:38.780 is above eight, but there's still 26% of people who haven't decided. And when you look at these
00:02:44.160 other polls of Daniel Smith's approval rating, I don't think I brought it up here, but her approval
00:02:48.720 rating right now is 38% with people. I think her disapproval is like 31 and there's a bunch of
00:02:53.420 people who haven't made up their minds. So, although the NDP waged much of its provincial
00:02:58.160 election strategy against the popularity of Daniel Smith as a person, I think a lot of the waters have
00:03:04.040 come since the provincial election. Everyone thought of that as a big fever dream and maybe
00:03:07.880 they should be evaluating Daniel Smith under merits. And I'm someone during a leadership race for the
00:03:13.540 UCB was not a supporter of Daniel Smith for several reasons that I would stand by. I think even some of
00:03:18.920 the issues I had have come out to be continuing to be issues now, but overall, I would say a lot of
00:03:23.860 the policy is very good, especially on parental rights. I'd like to see a big tax cut passed sooner
00:03:29.060 rather than pushed off till later, but overall people actually like Daniel Smith. So the NDP can't
00:03:35.340 simply rely on the fact that because Nenshi is the most well-known and probably going to win
00:03:39.840 the leadership race that he is automatically going to be a contender with Smith. Yes, he might be an
00:03:44.720 outsized personality who has a strong base of support, but Daniel Smith does too. And all Nenshi will
00:03:51.960 be able to run on is that somehow he'll do the job better. But if the UCP and Daniel Smith are keeping
00:03:56.800 the province pretty stable, it's a hard argument to get a lot of middle-class voters to say that they
00:04:01.340 want radical change with a party that tends to not exactly be super pro-free market. So before I get
00:04:07.900 to the overall polling when it comes to the different leaders against Daniel Smith's UCP, I just want to
00:04:13.120 quickly comment also on the fact that Racky Pankeoli actually dropped out of the leadership race,
00:04:18.740 which was kind of funny. You'll see her name on a fourth down from Nenshi. Racky was kind of
00:04:24.360 considered to be like, if you're an Alberta politico, you'll know the name Ed Stelmack,
00:04:30.000 the former PC premier. She kind of seemed like she would be the Ed Stelmack of this NDP leadership
00:04:35.600 race. Ed Stelmack, I believe in 2005, famously came up through the middle in order to become the
00:04:41.340 new leader of the PC party and the premier of the province. It was like a big fight between Ted Morton
00:04:46.360 and Jim Dinnings. And although those two had the vast majority of the support, Ed Stelmack with like 17%
00:04:52.500 on the first ballot slowly rose up to be everyone's, you know, third favorite choice,
00:04:57.240 which naturally made him the premier because everyone else, the two, the Dinnings and Morton
00:05:02.500 camps hated each other. That's what people thought Racky Pankeoli would be, but that doesn't seem like
00:05:07.760 it's actually in the cards since she came out and endorsed Nenshi. And so that really leaves the only,
00:05:12.780 I would say, true opposition to Nenshi, being Sarah Hoffman, Gangly, and Stonehouse,
00:05:18.420 and McGowan basically teaming up in order to try and overwhelm him. It almost turns into the
00:05:23.880 Daniel Smith versus the rest of the crowd UCP leadership race, where Daniel Smith, oddly enough,
00:05:30.760 didn't actually gain that much after each ballot on the UCP leadership race, because either you liked
00:05:36.060 her or you didn't like her. So first ballot, she's at 42%. Looks like she should lock this up on next
00:05:40.760 ballot. Next ballot comes up, you know, A here drops out, throws her support to Travis Taves or Rachel
00:05:46.160 or Rebecca Schultz. And then they keep going down, slowly shuffling more support behind Rebecca
00:05:51.260 Schultz and Taves, but until it becomes the Daniel Smith and Taves showdown, which it was actually a
00:05:56.340 very close leadership race. And I will take credit for being like the one person who said, no, this is
00:06:01.460 going to go down to the very last ballot. Yes, you might see a lot of pro Danielle stuff all over
00:06:06.600 social media and a lot of people saying they like her, but there's a lot of people who also wanted
00:06:11.100 someone else who felt like more of like a calm waters type candidate like Travis Taves. But now, this is
00:06:18.540 where the NDP should be a little bit scared. If Nahid Nenshi is going to be the guy who's going to ride in
00:06:23.900 on a white horse and save you all from yourselves, your radical party, and Rachel Notley was your
00:06:28.980 moderate face, and Nenshi's the only one who can replace her and make the party seem moderate to
00:06:33.580 especially middle class and upper middle class voters. Nah, not really. The thing is, Nenshi's a very known
00:06:39.680 quantity. And even when you see Nenshi polling against the UCP, he polls at 42% with the UCP at
00:06:46.400 51. Now, let's go back to this poll, 56 to 40. So, he improves the general margin that the NDP would
00:06:53.180 have by only a little bit. So, this is a 16% lead for the UCP. And with Nenshi as the leader, it'd be
00:07:00.280 a 9% lead for the UCP. And obviously, the general polling goes up for pretty much everyone except
00:07:06.200 McGowan and Hoffman. But overall, this really is demonstrating to me that Nenshi is kind of like
00:07:13.580 whenever people mention, well, why doesn't Oprah Winfrey run for US President? She's not going to run for
00:07:19.400 US President, because although she's popular outside of politics, as soon as you take someone like her who
00:07:25.000 has a lot of baggage, and you make her a presidential candidate, the whole positive vibes sort of feel of that
00:07:31.120 person wears off quickly. You can kind of be a positive vibes kind of person in municipal politics.
00:07:37.380 But once you're in provincial politics or federal, where everything's much more ideological,
00:07:41.820 municipal politics is still ideological, but you can kind of fake it a little bit because it's
00:07:45.500 nonpartisan. Once Nenshi comes out as the kind of big orange monster, stop being the big purple monster,
00:07:53.060 he then actually has to stand by hard and fast policies. And he has a base of NDP radicals holding
00:07:59.280 him accountable to their radical agenda. So he can't pretend to be some Alberta Party, you know,
00:08:04.680 leader, some very neutral, not the Alberta Party is not even center, they're actually left, but they're
00:08:09.520 just not as left as the NDP. He can't pretend to be some moderate liberal kind of person. Plus,
00:08:15.680 people don't like liberals in in Alberta. So he can't market himself as the softer kind of version,
00:08:21.580 because he'll just come off like he's Justin Trudeau. And so this poll of his popularity up against
00:08:26.500 the UCP, this is, oh, this one was actually Polera Palace. So he was 42-51 with the UCP.
00:08:34.420 And now with Abacus, he is at 38-53, which is kind of funny that Rachel Notley actually does better
00:08:41.080 than Nenshi would do. And that someone like Sarah Hoffman isn't that far behind. The problem again,
00:08:48.260 for Nenshi is that he's a known quantity. So he doesn't have that much room to grow.
00:08:52.560 So this poll might show that 26% of people don't know enough about him to say anything,
00:08:56.860 and 19% are neutral. But if they weren't positive now, it's going to be hard for him to convince
00:09:01.940 them later. But you can't deny that Nenshi does get the base out. The problem is, even though he
00:09:08.720 got in back in 2010 on a youth movement, he would be someone I'd classify, I think it was actually a
00:09:14.540 little bit earlier than in 2009. He is an old politician. When I say that, I mean that you
00:09:19.660 can't sort of re-roll the youth trick to get today. It's like Barack Obama, if he ran for president
00:09:24.920 again, he can't. He can't go out and get the youth vote, because he's a known quantity. He is an old
00:09:30.300 politician that people have seen around a while. To be a youth politician, you almost have to be that
00:09:34.620 spark that comes out of nowhere. And when you look, and I'm not trying to be insulting, but Nenshi's
00:09:38.740 rally is extremely old pensioners. So these are people who liked him as mayor, they know the name,
00:09:45.720 they trust him because they've seen him on legacy media a lot. But you're not going to go up to an
00:09:49.540 18-year-old and say, Nenshi's running for premier. That's not how it's going to work. Plus, Nenshi
00:09:55.680 might have been charismatic, but it was mostly labor unions that made it so that it was a rollover every
00:10:01.860 time he was running for mayor. They tried to get rid of him with Bill Smith back in, I believe, the 2017
00:10:07.420 mayor's race. And that might have worked, but it's just that trade unions tend to rule municipal
00:10:12.820 elections, so Nenshi couldn't be beat. Even though when you pulled it out, most people hated Nenshi,
00:10:17.920 it's just most people aren't engaged in municipal politics. And I will say, and this is a little bit
00:10:22.080 of a trailing off thing, but people trying to be like, Nenshi claimed there's 1,200 people at his
00:10:27.740 rally, but there was only 618. It's a big rally, guys. It's actually impressive. He actually went over
00:10:33.180 capacity for what that room was allowed to have. So I'm not going to say like, oh,
00:10:37.420 well, he only has 618. He had 1,200. Not to take a shot at Key and Bexty. Key and Bexty does a good
00:10:41.980 job. And I know that people hate the idea when people are like, there's 18,000 people in this
00:10:46.280 room. And it's like, dude, the room has a capacity of 400 people. I really doubt it. But Nenshi does
00:10:51.720 get the base out. The problem is that base is probably stalwart NDP voters, people who decide
00:10:58.000 they're not going to vote UCP a long time ago. And I don't think that Nenshi is going to be able to do
00:11:02.240 anything to prove he's sort of like a breath of fresh air for the province, especially if people's
00:11:07.540 tax rates are going down, the province feels stable, wait times in hospitals go down, Nenshi's dead in
00:11:12.560 the water. He has nothing to market himself with if there's not a massive disaster when it comes to
00:11:17.520 public policy. But here's a video he released from that rally. And you can make your own mind if you
00:11:23.080 think he's particularly inspiring. And even this entire video, it's not marketing him on ideas. It's not
00:11:28.620 marketing him on I have a fresh vision for the province. It's marketing him on the fact he's
00:11:32.620 Nenshi. And really, that's all Nenshi has is that he's Nenshi. Because if he says anything
00:11:36.760 ideological, he's no longer Nenshi. He's a socialist NDP politician.
00:11:46.500 I'd like to introduce to all of you in my hometown on this stage.
00:11:51.540 I just want to mention that Raki Pankhioli, who I said was kind of like, she had been like the
00:11:56.400 DEI type moderate NDP choice, like a very insider, like consultant type choice. I like how she's the
00:12:04.060 executive chair of the campaign. I remember Court Ellington, the Calgary Foothills NDP MLA, was his
00:12:11.840 chair, his campaign chair. But I like how they've now made her the executive chair just so that she
00:12:16.020 had a little bit more power than Court Ellington. You know, just sort of the pettiness of, you know,
00:12:21.360 horse trading and politics. The next leader of the Alberta NDP, and the next premier of Alberta,
00:12:28.220 Nahed Nenshi.
00:12:33.800 So, I've always been
00:12:35.960 an Edmonton Oilers fan.
00:12:41.020 I bleed blue and copper.
00:12:43.020 And I want to share with you my jersey that I've worn for years and years and years.
00:12:50.180 The slogan for the campaign.
00:12:52.920 For Alberta, for all of us.
00:12:56.380 I thought that that's how I would say it.
00:12:59.060 That the emphasis would be on the word Alberta
00:13:01.140 and on the word all.
00:13:03.780 But what I've learned in the last two weeks
00:13:05.700 is in fact, it's not the words Alberta
00:13:08.940 Alberta and the word all
00:13:10.040 that have really resonated with people.
00:13:13.140 It's that tiny little word
00:13:15.540 for.
00:13:17.040 F-O-R.
00:13:19.240 Because for so long,
00:13:21.300 we have been trained
00:13:22.780 by our political...
00:13:24.100 I'm going to, I'm not going to play this whole thing, but like,
00:13:27.060 that's just in my sense dull.
00:13:29.280 And he is avoiding like the plague
00:13:31.380 trying to say anything that makes him
00:13:33.260 sound like an actual NDPer.
00:13:35.020 And that's the funny thing, is I could see Nenshi
00:13:36.860 getting into massive scrapes with
00:13:38.960 the party stalwarts who want him
00:13:41.000 to be the nutcase,
00:13:42.880 pants on head socialist like Janice Irwin
00:13:44.880 is, or Sarah Hoffman or Kathleen
00:13:46.880 Gangly would probably be, or Gil McGowan,
00:13:48.820 but Gil McGowan's so irrelevant, I don't
00:13:50.800 care. He's like some union leader running
00:13:52.780 for the NDP leadership, which is funny
00:13:54.900 because he's still acting as the union leader while he
00:13:56.840 runs for them, which is like, you know, a big
00:13:58.860 tell based on how close the trade
00:14:00.840 unions are with the NDP and public sector
00:14:02.860 unions. But Nenshi is going
00:14:04.820 to keep doing this. Boring speeches
00:14:06.960 about how I'm here for you
00:14:08.740 and that's it. And the thing is, I think
00:14:11.000 that the UCP wants to beat
00:14:12.400 Nahad Nenshi. They have to go on the
00:14:14.580 fact that this guy is basically
00:14:16.420 a complete scammer. He scammed
00:14:18.800 his way in as a moderate in the
00:14:20.620 municipal elections, was a massive tax
00:14:22.880 and spend, like basically
00:14:24.980 NDP mayor of Calgary.
00:14:26.680 And now he's going to do the exact same thing
00:14:28.960 with the provincial NDP pretending
00:14:30.760 like he's some moderate conservative
00:14:33.140 Alberta party kind
00:14:34.800 of politician. He's not. He's the
00:14:36.800 type of guy who will basically
00:14:38.200 either, either he gets into a
00:14:40.840 massive fight with the NDP
00:14:42.040 stalwarts because he's not going to go along
00:14:44.620 with what they want, or he
00:14:46.660 is going to do exactly what they want and
00:14:48.680 push for radical, you know,
00:14:50.720 radical increase in taxes,
00:14:53.140 nationalization of certain
00:14:54.720 industries like the NDP tried to do last
00:14:56.380 time during provincial government
00:14:57.580 attacking the oil and gas industry.
00:14:59.100 That's what's going to hurt him. He can
00:15:00.800 go against the oil and gas industry as
00:15:02.460 the Calgary mayor because there's
00:15:03.660 enough downtown progressives who are
00:15:05.000 disconnected from the oil and gas
00:15:06.260 industry that they'll vote for him
00:15:07.840 and there's not that many people vote
00:15:08.940 in municipal elections. All those
00:15:10.520 comments are going to catch up to him.
00:15:11.980 All of his photos with Justin Trudeau
00:15:13.300 are going to catch up to him and all of
00:15:15.080 his kind of obvious just grifting
00:15:17.640 type position taking in order to
00:15:19.680 merely be popular is going to catch
00:15:21.480 up with him. At least what you can say
00:15:23.020 with Daniel Smith is she generally
00:15:24.480 believes what she says.
00:15:25.940 Nahad Nenshi does not believe what he
00:15:27.600 says. He's got to follow his career.
00:15:29.100 He's very much a man who has a very
00:15:31.860 leftist type mentality but is very
00:15:34.540 good at, you know, saying just enough
00:15:37.080 to let you, let you, make you leave
00:15:39.580 him alone so he can do whatever he
00:15:40.780 wants. Every single bad thing that
00:15:42.540 currently Mayor Jody Gondek is doing
00:15:44.840 in Calgary is just an offshoot of
00:15:46.680 what Nahad Nenshi had already done.
00:15:49.660 Anyways, that should be it for me today,
00:15:51.520 guys, just to quickly plug the fact
00:15:53.620 that I, Wyatt Claypool, am running for
00:15:55.520 the Calgary Signal Hill Conservative Party
00:15:57.200 nomination. If you live on the west side
00:15:59.180 of Calgary here, check if you live in
00:16:00.620 this riding. These are what the new
00:16:02.000 riding boundaries will look like midway
00:16:04.000 through April. So if you live in this
00:16:05.820 area, buy a Conservative Party federal
00:16:08.040 membership and check out my website,
00:16:10.080 WyattClaypool.com. And you can also
00:16:12.280 donate to the legal fund for myself and
00:16:14.260 the National Telegraph in the description
00:16:16.180 below. It's the Give, Send, Go link. We have
00:16:18.180 a billionaire developer suing us over
00:16:19.940 nothing, does not have any evidence that
00:16:21.740 we defamed him, has not actually submitted
00:16:23.680 any evidence that's worth anything, and
00:16:25.680 has basically just been trying to draw out
00:16:27.200 this case as long as possible, knowing
00:16:28.780 that he can't win. Anyways, have a great
00:16:31.140 one, guys. No, I know this has been a bit
00:16:32.960 more of a long video, but I do like to
00:16:34.740 chew on a topic a bit more, and this was a
00:16:36.400 fun one for me. Have a great one.