The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - May 31, 2023


Why Did The Alberta NDP Lose The 2023 Election

Topics
NDP candidates and scandals
Hosted by
Wyatt Claypool
Mentioned
Danielle Smith Rachel Notley Roseman Valencia Drew Farrell Vince Byfield Mickey Amory Janice Irwin Peter Singer Dan Bodondi Take Back Alberta Chelsea Petrovic Jennifer Johnson Arthur Pawlowski Fatima Mohammed Whitney Isaac Angela Davis Jason LeJuan Liana Peeva Rob LaHoya Bill C-63 and 5 more
The Alberta NDP Candidates Are Not Normal Cheri DiNovo thinks Inflation Is Fake

Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

202.75

Word count

2,662

Sentence count

123

Harmful content

Misogyny

14

sentences flagged

Toxicity

11

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So I just want to do a quick breakdown on why I thought that the Alberta provincial election ended up going the way it did.
00:00:06.120 And 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.
00:00:21.140 I 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.
00:00:35.380 This is why to a certain extent and to a large extent, I guess, I didn't really like Danielle Smith during the leadership race.
00:00:41.600 I didn't find her, even though she's good on radio, she's good at talking confidently.
00:00:45.200 I don't find that she's the sort of person who projects a certain professionalism that's good in elections.
00:00:50.640 She tends to be a little bit all over the place. 1.00
00:00:53.000 And 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.
00:01:03.040 I fully get that.
00:01:04.080 I 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.
00:01:19.980 I thought that the UCP overall also was very clunky with its messaging.
00:01:24.600 I 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.
00:01:33.920 At the same time, I thought that their message could get a little bit muddled.
00:01:37.780 It felt like they were really like they had like three or four days where they were talking about Bill 6 as if anyone cared.
00:01:44.640 I 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.
00:01:52.580 But 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.
00:02:14.520 I 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.
00:02:30.340 They already knew the pressure points that would probably work on voters, and they just failed to actually utilize that stuff effectively.
00:02:37.400 And 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.
00:02:51.720 Anyways, 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. 0.99
00:03:06.640 Because 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. 0.99
00:03:17.220 And 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. 0.98
00:03:25.360 And 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.
00:03:36.760 So 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.
00:03:45.240 It was too negative. It wasn't really connecting the voters.
00:03:47.700 The secondary reason was that they ran terrible candidates.
00:03:51.920 Everyone 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.
00:04:03.820 Same thing happened with the NDP.
00:04:05.520 The 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.
00:04:19.900 And 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.
00:04:31.000 These are not, that's not a good candidate for a Calgary East.
00:04:34.080 You should be running someone who very much is from the community, knows a lot of people, is a business owner or something like that.
00:04:40.140 Roseman Valencia had only moved to Alberta like five years ago from the Philippines.
00:04:44.720 It was such a terrible candidate to run.
00:04:46.680 So Peter Singh, even though you could maybe argue he had a couple of problems before this election, he was a community figure.
00:04:52.780 That's why he won.
00:04:53.880 Same thing with Mickey Amory.
00:04:55.640 Mickey Amory for the UCP in Calgary Cross ran, won, because he is a community figure.
00:04:59.660 He knows people.
00:05:00.340 He engages.
00:05:01.220 That's why he won.
00:05:02.560 There 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.
00:05:14.720 And Whitney Isaac and in her riding down in South Calgary.
00:05:18.500 But 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.
00:05:28.520 And so you're a race to win.
00:05:30.560 It's your fault for running Drew Farrell there.
00:05:32.580 Drew Farrell lost the NDP of the election in Bow.
00:05:35.240 So then like Roseman Valencia lost their race in Calgary East.
00:05:41.440 And 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.
00:05:49.900 Like that McTeague guy in Highwood.
00:05:53.360 No, it wasn't Highwood.
00:05:54.460 It 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. 1.00
00:06:04.360 They 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. 0.78
00:06:14.020 You had people like Rob LaHoya marching in front of communist parades and whatnot.
00:06:19.840 You had other sort of people endorsing communism in one way or another, Diane Baden, who actually beat Tyler Chandra by seven votes. 0.98
00:06:27.900 But again, if you weren't running people like Diane Batten in that area, you probably would have won more ridings. 1.00
00:06:34.840 You probably wouldn't have all these stupid scandals that you had to deal with. 0.97
00:06:38.380 And 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. 0.99
00:06:43.200 Like that's just a massive, like a massive consolation to the fact that the media does not cover NDP scandals.
00:06:52.200 But enough independent media like us at the National Telegraph, the Western Standard, True North, Counter Signal, we're all covering it.
00:06:59.560 And 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.
00:07:08.880 Like 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.
00:07:17.520 Again, all these races in Calgary were super tight.
00:07:20.740 And when it's a super tight race, it's usually not an issue with do you like the UCP or the NDP better?
00:07:26.600 I find voters in Alberta are pretty decisive on that issue.
00:07:29.960 People didn't like Daniel Smith, but they generally liked the UCP brand. 0.98
00:07:33.020 People 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. 0.94
00:07:41.940 But when it's that close, it really becomes a character issue.
00:07:45.140 Did the voters see that person in their community enough?
00:07:48.360 Or did they feel like their MLA actually represented them?
00:07:51.180 Or did they feel like they got elected and ran off into Edmonton?
00:07:53.740 So character really matters in tight races.
00:07:56.880 And 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.
00:08:06.600 The NDP in their party constitution still states that they are a democratic socialist party.
00:08:12.020 The thing is that they can do the we're a moderate party veneer for a little bit into an election.
00:08:17.800 But as soon as people in independent media or even mainstream media like Rahim Mohammed over at the National Post noted the democratic socialist thing.
00:08:25.960 When 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.
00:08:34.720 And 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. 1.00
00:08:49.160 These are the sort of people that the NDP are running.
00:08:51.380 And of course, Janice Irwin's always going to win her seat back. 1.00
00:08:54.060 But 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.
00:09:03.400 That person is a little bit scary.
00:09:05.860 So again, for the Alberta election, I thought that going into it, and I think we effectively saw it.
00:09:12.840 I 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.
00:09:21.480 OK, that's great and all.
00:09:22.800 But it was a knife's edge election when it came to Calgary, and it really shouldn't have been.
00:09:26.740 And 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. 0.96
00:09:42.600 So 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.
00:09:52.840 And those really do make the difference when writings are coming down to seven votes like in Acadia.
00:09:57.820 You really do need all those votes.
00:09:59.940 But 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.
00:10:14.180 And I fully understand what her point there is. 0.90
00:10:17.320 And it's like Jennifer Johnson when she compares transgender children to to like feces and cookie dough. 0.96
00:10:23.240 So 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. 0.89
00:10:32.980 And it's just like Smith is that Smith when she's on the radio, her goal is to keep viewers on the dial. 0.97
00:10:39.200 So you say interesting and controversial things.
00:10:41.620 That's completely fine.
00:10:42.800 I understand it doesn't disqualify you from being the party leader for the UCP or the premier of Alberta.
00:10:48.020 I just think that there wasn't a good enough pivot.
00:10:50.120 But 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.
00:10:54.940 We're supposed to have interesting conversations, but now I'm serving Albertans.
00:10:57.560 But it took so long for that to be said.
00:11:00.060 If 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.
00:11:08.220 And as silly as that sounds like, well, does she really have to say that?
00:11:11.020 Dude, 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. 0.57
00:11:25.420 But 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.
00:11:35.360 Honestly, the campaign, the 30 day campaign period wasn't that bad.
00:11:38.740 It 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.
00:11:54.100 They 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.
00:12:02.120 But again, the NDP offered nothing, nothing for any of those things.
00:12:06.020 If 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. 1.00
00:12:16.860 If she didn't back safe supply when she was in the legislature, probably would have won the would have been premier right now. 1.00
00:12:22.880 If 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.
00:12:34.460 But 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. 0.95
00:12:43.340 And 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. 0.66
00:12:52.560 But I guess that's my take. People can disagree with it.
00:12:55.520 I'll probably make more videos over the next week or two discussing my opinions on this.
00:13:00.300 Hopefully this wasn't too rambling, but again, the Alberta election was a mess, so I'm OK with this video also being a mess.