Wyatt Claypool talks about the obvious campaign being put on by the liberal media to hurt Pierre Polyev in the upcoming Battle River-Crowfoot by-election, and why it's a complete waste of time.
00:00:00.000Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. We need to talk about the very obvious campaign being put on by the liberal media to try and hurt Pierre Polyev in the Battle River Crowfoot by-election.
00:00:13.340I'm going to say right from the start, there's no chance that Polyev is going to lose this by-election. I know he lost Carlton, but if you actually look at the historical results from Carlton, Polyev only ever really won that riding by a 10% margin.
00:00:28.760It was actually fairly impressive that he had been the MP from there since 2004, because that used to be a more traditional liberal riding back in the day.
00:00:37.600And the fact that him door-knocking the entire riding two times over every election only resulted in a 10% margin of victory is quite telling of how sensitive, how delicate his actual hold on it was.
00:00:50.840I think that whoever in the Conservative Party HQ suggested he just run there again when he was leader and didn't have any time to actually door-knock his own riding is a complete fool.
00:01:00.820But that is not the situation in Battle River Crowfoot. It's not just, well, he lost in Carlton, he could lose anywhere. You cannot lose in Battle River Crowfoot.
00:01:09.020But Damien Couric, in the general, got 86% of the vote. And now he's stepped down for Pierre Polyev. And this riding is not exactly anti-Polyev.
00:01:19.740They voted for Damien Couric by massive margins, in large part because they like the Conservative Party under Pierre Polyev right now.
00:01:27.940There's no one turning on Polyev because they love Damien Couric so much and they can't stand that Polyev is replacing him.
00:01:34.420That doesn't really represent that many people. I guarantee there's a lot of people who really like Damien Couric, but there's not that many people who don't understand how politics work and that the leader wants to be in Parliament for the rest of his caucus
00:01:46.640and that it would be good to have somebody step down so that the leader can take the seat.
00:01:52.060Anyone pretending that this is weird does not understand how parliamentary politics work.
00:01:57.600William Lyon Mackenzie King, the longest serving Prime Minister in Canadian history, did this twice.
00:02:02.920He lost two ridings when he was the Prime Minister and then had to run again in a by-election to get a seat back in Parliament.
00:02:10.720It's not that strange. But the media is playing this up like there's a possibility that Polyev could actually lose because they are propping up an astroturfed independent candidate by the name of Bonnie Crickley.
00:02:24.240Is she a bad person? No. I don't really have any opinions on her.
00:02:27.360She's obviously far more liberal than she lets on. She goes on liberal podcasts. She goes on liberal television shows.
00:02:33.960You can tell by the way she sort of positions her opinions.
00:02:37.380She has very generic liberal opinions, but she's acting like a peer-centrist in this by-election.
00:02:42.880But this has nothing to do with her. This has to do with the media who are pretending she's got a chance because there are articles coming out from different media outlets saying this.
00:02:52.380And this is rare for me, but I'm going to actually be giving a compliment to Kyle Hutton from the Green Party because he's written a very good article calling people out for this election misinformation, playing this up as a tight race when it is not at all a tight race.
00:03:07.120But before I get into more details, guys, I just want to remind you, hey, if you like this podcast, make sure to leave a like on the video, subscribe if you're not yet a subscriber, and leave a comment on what you think about the situation.
00:03:20.200I like reading through what people think, and it really does help us on the algorithm.
00:03:24.660Anyways, so here is the article written by Kyle Hutton, and it is titled,
00:03:30.400And Kyle Hutton, who again, I've had a lot of disagreements on, I know he doesn't like me, I think does a really good job of calling out many media outlets at the start of this article.
00:03:48.700We're not going to read through the whole thing, I just want to read through a few paragraphs of it because I think he does frame this in a good way.
00:03:54.980And then I want to get into just the absurd amount of promotion of this Bonnie lady, by people who do not live in the riding, and that's not bad, but there is no local grassroots movement for Bonnie locally.
00:04:09.240All of the content is people outside, and then you might see a picture of Bonnie and like one other person.
00:04:14.880There's not exactly a mass movement behind her.
00:04:17.020She couldn't exactly put on a town hall without bussing in people from out of the riding in order to listen to her.
00:04:23.040But Kyle starts this article off saying,
00:04:25.880For some reason, media is trying to manufacture a race in Battle River Crowfoot by election.
00:04:31.540So far, I've seen multiple media figures and publications attempt to boost the profile of a single independent candidate named Bonnie Crickley.
00:04:39.780The most recent is Max Fawcett in the National Observer, who talks about Crickley, concerns about separatists, and so on, so forth.
00:04:47.880But she's also being interviewed and profiled on the CBC National Post and the Calgary Herald.
00:04:53.920The fact the last two are post-media owned as well, it makes it very funny.
00:04:58.140And he means that because post-media tends to be more conservative overall, but they're also playing up Bonnie Crickley as a potentially, you know, significant figure.
00:05:07.440I don't think it's because it's like a bipartisan consensus that this race may be tighter than people think.
00:05:12.440I think she became newsworthy, so the National Post also covered it.
00:05:16.500But most of the people who've been playing her up early were from the left.
00:05:20.780Maxwell Fawcett, CBC Power and Politics, David Cochran.
00:05:24.660You have Laura Babcock on her podcast, and we're going to get to a TikToker later.
00:06:29.800But he goes through and debunks that Carlton was ever that safe a seat in the first place.
00:06:34.660But yeah, so check out that article if you want to see the full reasoning.
00:06:39.240But now I want to jump over to what I see as the AstroTurfed campaign, which even Kyle Hutton on the left sees.
00:06:47.940There are so many people creating graphics and other things for Bonnie Crickley's campaign that are obviously not coming from her.
00:06:57.120This person who is named Saucy Seawitch, who I don't think I have to tell you does not live in Battle River Crowfoot, says support Bonnie Crickley, independent in Battle River Crowfoot, to be elected as the representative who actually lives in the riding.
00:07:11.760A person who won't abandon constituents to help keep a 20-year career politician in place.
00:07:16.820Okay, well, I am waiting for all these people to get very mad at Mark Carney for running in Nepean when he wasn't living in Nepean.
00:07:25.580In fact, he didn't have a permanent address, apparently, in Canada when he was running for prime minister.
00:08:49.900You're kind of trying to convince longtime conservative voters to vote against the party they've always voted for.
00:08:54.540Do you think that they're mad enough to vote against the conservatives for an independent candidate?
00:08:58.580Absolutely, and I'm not the one who's saying that.
00:09:02.160The funny thing is, notice how she's not telling people, well, you know, I have never been a conservative, but I think you can maybe agree with my ideas, or I've been a longtime conservative myself.
00:09:11.820She's a liberal, and that's the problem here.
00:09:37.340But just because somebody who is a communist or a fascist or, you know, some Green Party type hippie lives in a riding doesn't mean that they represent the riding.
00:09:47.980Same thing in a very downtown progressive riding.
00:09:51.340Just because you, as, like, a red meat conservative live in a downtown progressive riding doesn't mean that you really represent the views of the people who live there.
00:09:59.480You maybe want people to change their views and vote for you, but it's dishonest basically pitching yourself as, oh, I'm just grassroots.
00:21:39.680Well, he's under threat because some random lady's running who the media is talking about because apparently everyone's going to vote the way that David Cochran would.
00:21:47.420But anyways, oh, yeah, it's not going to work.
00:21:50.220But, again, what they're trying to do here is get enough people to vote for anybody but Polyev that he maybe slumps down towards the mid-60s or something like that in terms of the vote.
00:22:02.180Maybe low 70s they'll even try and claim victory, and they'll say, whoa, Damien Kirk had 86%, and now Polyev only has 72%.
00:22:11.920And then there's going to be panels on CBC, and there's going to be articles written at all the other outlets talking about how is Polyev done?
00:22:19.900Did Bonnie Crickley getting 3.25% of the vote in Battle River Crowfoot end Polyev's political career?
00:22:46.660The idea that anyone's going to turn on him because of a slight underperformance underneath Damien Kirk in a by-election is stupid.
00:22:55.340By-elections also have really weird voter turnouts.
00:22:57.900So you'll always get the political hardcore showing up, whereas the people who make up the bulk of the electorate are not going to show up.
00:23:05.180And typically, if you vote for any of the other parties when one party gets 86%, you're probably more likely to be a hardcore for that party.
00:23:13.980So I have no doubt that Polyev is not going to get 86% of the vote.
00:23:18.300He's probably going to get like 75% or something like that, 73%.
00:23:23.120In a by-election where a lot of people aren't motivated to turn out and it's just basically a formality to get the leader back into parliament, that's fine.
00:23:31.160Even if he fell into the 60s, who cares?
00:23:35.820And Bonnie Crickley is not a real candidate, and anyone pretending she is should have their journalism card taken away from them.
00:23:42.820Anyways, so that's it for me today, guys.
00:23:45.860Just another reminder, if you like the show, like the video, subscribe, leave a comment, do all that other great stuff, and I will see you guys around for next time.