In this episode, I break down why I think the UCP won the Alberta election, and why I don't think Rachel Notley was actually that bad. I also talk about why I didn't think Danielle Smith was going to win the election.
00:00:00.000So I just want to do a quick breakdown on why I thought that the Alberta provincial election ended up going the way it did.
00:00:06.120And from right off the bat, I'm just going to say that although a lot of conservatives out there are congratulating Danielle Smith on the win and basically kind of making it that it was, you know, it was because of her leadership and experience and wisdom that the UCP was able to pull it out against the NDP.
00:00:21.140I would take a completely different narrative from that and say that really this election was effectively lost by Rachel Notley, that it was Rachel Notley's election to win and then she just failed to win by the end of it.
00:00:35.380This is why to a certain extent and to a large extent, I guess, I didn't really like Danielle Smith during the leadership race.
00:00:41.600I didn't find her, even though she's good on radio, she's good at talking confidently.
00:00:45.200I don't find that she's the sort of person who projects a certain professionalism that's good in elections.
00:00:50.640She tends to be a little bit all over the place.
00:00:53.000And I understand that anyone in media, including myself, you're going to find tweets that where we're like wading into controversial issues that make us look bad out of context or different bad audio clips of us.
00:01:04.080I didn't quite agree with her feeling the need to go on podcast with Vincent Byfield and talking to Artur Palowski and sort of engaging in what I would consider like the fringe of the anti-lockdown movement, the people who actually made the anti-lockdown movement and anti-mandate movement look bad.
00:01:19.980I thought that the UCP overall also was very clunky with its messaging.
00:01:24.600I think it had a few great moments where when it would go after the NDP on crime or when it would go after some of the anti-oil and gas NDP candidates, that was very good.
00:01:33.920At the same time, I thought that their message could get a little bit muddled.
00:01:37.780It felt like they were really like they had like three or four days where they were talking about Bill 6 as if anyone cared.
00:01:44.640I know Bill 6 is terrible and what the NDP tried to do to farming families by like effectively banning children from being able to work on their own family farms.
00:01:52.580But a lot of the time I found that the UCP was maybe a little bit unfocused, I suppose, that they should have been, as soon as Daniel Smith became the premier, just been cutting taxes, showing how fiscally responsible they were, cracking down on crime, and then sort of throwing out a couple of election spending promises here and there, which every party has to do.
00:02:14.520I get it. Anyways, I want to move on to the NDP though, because Daniel Smith, all that stuff, all the UCP strategy, that was kind of baked into the cake that the NDP was going into this election kind of knowing how the ground was already going to work.
00:02:30.340They already knew the pressure points that would probably work on voters, and they just failed to actually utilize that stuff effectively.
00:02:37.400And I want to make very clear up front, I hate the NDP. My opposition during the leadership race to Daniel Smith is because I do not believe that she's conservative enough, especially on social issues where she effectively agrees with the entire NDP's platform on that issue.
00:02:51.720Anyways, but with the NDP, it was a big combination between the worst messaging possible, going so negative that the benefit to going negative broke through to the other side, and then it just made Daniel Smith look good.
00:03:06.640Because when you make her out to be effectively a demon, and then she gets up on stage, and then is a completely normal, almost Redford-like conservative, well, you look like a complete moron.
00:03:17.220And you're going to have a lot of the people who are PC voters who are on the fence, maybe going to vote NDP, going to realize, oh, these people are full of garbage.
00:03:25.360And so they're either going to stay home and not vote NDP or move back and vote UCP, because they did not really like, you know, Rachel Notley's terrible performance against a very normal-looking Danielle Smith.
00:03:36.760So the messaging was bad in terms of the negativity, and the angle I think a lot of people, like that's the more generic reason why the NDP didn't do very well.
00:03:45.240It was too negative. It wasn't really connecting the voters.
00:03:47.700The secondary reason was that they ran terrible candidates.
00:03:51.920Everyone goes after the Republicans in the, like down south, of course, in the 2022 midterm elections, because they had really wacky candidates in some of these states where you really wanted a more moderate Republican.
00:04:05.520The NDP failed to win in Calgary East against Peter Singh because they ran Roseman Valencia, who is a hyper-progressive who thinks Alberta's racist, while at the same time he goes to marches alongside Justice for Palestinians, which is effectively an anti-Semitic organization.
00:04:19.900And then at the same time, he's looking up to people like Angela Davis, who's like a race grifter, who also, again, is anti-Semitic and a member of the U.S. Communist Party and Black Panther Party.
00:04:31.000These are not, that's not a good candidate for a Calgary East.
00:04:34.080You should be running someone who very much is from the community, knows a lot of people, is a business owner or something like that.
00:04:40.140Roseman Valencia had only moved to Alberta like five years ago from the Philippines.
00:04:44.720It was such a terrible candidate to run.
00:04:46.680So Peter Singh, even though you could maybe argue he had a couple of problems before this election, he was a community figure.
00:05:02.560There are some vulnerable UCP candidates, mostly because of the name of Danielle Smith sort of getting in the way of some UCP candidates in, you know, places like Foothills for Jason LeJuan and Bedding for Josephine Pond.
00:05:14.720And Whitney Isaac and in her riding down in South Calgary.
00:05:18.500But when you're running people like Drew Farrell, who, frankly, very few people liked on council in Calgary Bow, which is a more traditionally conservative riding.
00:05:30.560It's your fault for running Drew Farrell there.
00:05:32.580Drew Farrell lost the NDP of the election in Bow.
00:05:35.240So then like Roseman Valencia lost their race in Calgary East.
00:05:41.440And then you have a lot of these NDP candidates who were either in safe ridings and they got elected in Edmonton or they were in rural ridings where they had no chance of winning.
00:05:54.460It was Chelsea Petrovic's riding, who was going off on about how terrible the oil and gas industry is and trying to compare oil and gas extraction to slavery and whatnot.
00:06:04.360They had someone, a lady, Liana Peeva, up in Peace River, give it like endorsing commune style living and talking about how capitalism is evil and socialism is fantastic.
00:06:14.020You had people like Rob LaHoya marching in front of communist parades and whatnot.
00:06:19.840You had other sort of people endorsing communism in one way or another, Diane Baden, who actually beat Tyler Chandra by seven votes.
00:06:27.900But again, if you weren't running people like Diane Batten in that area, you probably would have won more ridings.
00:06:34.840You probably wouldn't have all these stupid scandals that you had to deal with.
00:06:38.380And I know a lot of people are going to say, well, you know, the mainstream media didn't cover those, so it wasn't really going to affect anything.
00:06:43.200Like that's just a massive, like a massive consolation to the fact that the media does not cover NDP scandals.
00:06:52.200But enough independent media like us at the National Telegraph, the Western Standard, True North, Counter Signal, we're all covering it.
00:06:59.560And we can reach those on the fence PC voters like organizations like Stop the NDP and like whatever you think of them, Take Back Alberta and then Alberta Proud.
00:07:08.880Like when they're highlighting all the crazy NDP candidates, you're going to have a lot of people on the fence who are either going to stay home or vote NDP come back to the UCP.
00:07:17.520Again, all these races in Calgary were super tight.
00:07:20.740And when it's a super tight race, it's usually not an issue with do you like the UCP or the NDP better?
00:07:26.600I find voters in Alberta are pretty decisive on that issue.
00:07:29.960People didn't like Daniel Smith, but they generally liked the UCP brand.
00:07:33.020People do not like the NDP brand, but they generally found Rachel Notley at least somewhat likable until, you know, the debate where she kind of looks like a bit of a fool.
00:07:41.940But when it's that close, it really becomes a character issue.
00:07:45.140Did the voters see that person in their community enough?
00:07:48.360Or did they feel like their MLA actually represented them?
00:07:51.180Or did they feel like they got elected and ran off into Edmonton?
00:07:53.740So character really matters in tight races.
00:07:56.880And when the NDP is dropping tight races in a city where the ridings are frankly primed for them to win, that's because they had horrible candidates who scared people.
00:08:06.600The NDP in their party constitution still states that they are a democratic socialist party.
00:08:12.020The thing is that they can do the we're a moderate party veneer for a little bit into an election.
00:08:17.800But as soon as people in independent media or even mainstream media like Rahim Mohammed over at the National Post noted the democratic socialist thing.
00:08:25.960When people in mainstream and independent media start noting that the NDP kind of does have a little bit of a love for radical left wing politics, you're going to have a problem.
00:08:34.720And again, you have people like Janice Irwin who are promoting extremely vulgar drag queen story hours in which the guy who's like the queen at the event literally has his boyfriend's OnlyFans Twitter account linked on his own Twitter bio.
00:08:49.160These are the sort of people that the NDP are running.
00:08:51.380And of course, Janice Irwin's always going to win her seat back.
00:08:54.060But you cannot be surprised that when you have a Janice Irwin running in Edmonton, you're going to have some Calgary voters saying, I don't want that person becoming the minister of education or child services.
00:09:05.860So again, for the Alberta election, I thought that going into it, and I think we effectively saw it.
00:09:12.840I know that people are going to point at the popular vote and say, hey, well, the UCB won the popular vote 53% and the seat count was 49 to 38.
00:09:22.800But it was a knife's edge election when it came to Calgary, and it really shouldn't have been.
00:09:26.740And it's because of just, I frankly think, the poor marketability of Danielle Smith as a candidate and the fact that she kind of comes off as very right wing, even though on a lot of social policy that she actually comes off as very center left to left.
00:09:42.600So she has this disconnect where some of the hardcore SOCONs are not going to come out and vote for, which is why you sort of get a little bit of these fringe independence parties that will pop up and get, you know, 200, 300 votes.
00:09:52.840And those really do make the difference when writings are coming down to seven votes like in Acadia.
00:09:59.940But and then, of course, Daniel Smith's also alienating people who don't really like her statements on the radio and don't like her doing interviews with Vincent Byfield and talking about how people who are going along with mandates and lockdowns are kind of like people who follow Taylor.
00:10:14.180And I fully understand what her point there is.
00:10:17.320And it's like Jennifer Johnson when she compares transgender children to to like feces and cookie dough.
00:10:23.240So like as kind of gross as that is to say, I kind of get where she's going, but she is not articulating herself properly.
00:10:32.980And it's just like Smith is that Smith when she's on the radio, her goal is to keep viewers on the dial.
00:10:39.200So you say interesting and controversial things.
00:10:42.800I understand it doesn't disqualify you from being the party leader for the UCP or the premier of Alberta.
00:10:48.020I just think that there wasn't a good enough pivot.
00:10:50.120But like the pivot at the debate was what probably saved her is when she said, hey, I was just trying to be interesting on the radio.
00:10:54.940We're supposed to have interesting conversations, but now I'm serving Albertans.
00:10:57.560But it took so long for that to be said.
00:11:00.060If she said that right when she was running for the leadership or right after she won the leadership and became premier, I think the UCP would have gotten 55, 56 percent of the vote.
00:11:08.220And as silly as that sounds like, well, does she really have to say that?
00:11:11.020Dude, there are so many people in politics who vote, who sit in the cheap seats, who they need to be told the most obvious things ever in order to actually, you know, not become completely unhinged about little out of context, five second clips Daniel Smith said.
00:11:25.420But yeah, getting back to it with all of that, with all of the kind of incompetence of the UCP's campaign overall in terms of like, I'm not saying the campaign itself.
00:11:35.360Honestly, the campaign, the 30 day campaign period wasn't that bad.
00:11:38.740It was the seven month lead up of trying to like market the arena deal is why you should vote for the UCP and kind of all these other high spending things when they should have just been going back to sort of bread and butter basics with tax cuts, cutting regulations and cracking down on crime.
00:11:54.100They did that later on, but it was like a month or two before the election where it can kind of be pretend where people can pretend, well, that's it's too, too little, too late.
00:12:02.120But again, the NDP offered nothing, nothing for any of those things.
00:12:06.020If if Rachel Notley simply, you know, didn't oppose involuntary involuntary drug treatment, probably would have done what probably would have pulled out a couple of more Calgary writings.
00:12:16.860If she didn't back safe supply when she was in the legislature, probably would have won the would have been premier right now.
00:12:22.880If she did literally anything to address actual significant issues in Alberta, rather than doing the Jagmeet Singh thing and just throwing money out of her pockets and pretending like we can beat inflation by spending more, she would have won.
00:12:34.460But the thing is that she provided no answers to any of these things and effectively just let her party's current popularity going into the election stagnate the entire time.
00:12:43.340And then she just lost at the end because effectively she provided no evidence that she would be a significant, you know, she would significantly improve anything in the province.
00:12:52.560But I guess that's my take. People can disagree with it.
00:12:55.520I'll probably make more videos over the next week or two discussing my opinions on this.
00:13:00.300Hopefully this wasn't too rambling, but again, the Alberta election was a mess, so I'm OK with this video also being a mess.