The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - May 03, 2025


Why the Conservatives didn’t beat the Carney Liberals


Episode Stats


Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

192.60231

Word count

3,277

Sentence count

243

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Wyatt Claypool breaks down some of the dumb takes on why the Tories failed to win in 2015 and why the PPC failed to do the same in 2015. He also takes a shot at PPC leader Maxime Bernier.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. Ever since the Canadian federal election happened, there has been a lot of hot takes from people on what they think caused the Conservative Party to not beat the Liberals.
00:00:13.440 And I want to break some of these down for you guys today because I find them so full of dumb misinformation that I will then hear people repeat in the coming years as to why the CPC HQ didn't win.
00:00:25.580 Do you know why they didn't win? They didn't take hard enough stances on certain issues. I found that they didn't let their own candidates speak on the local level enough.
00:00:34.240 They didn't let them attend enough events or attend to local debates. If they did that and they had a truly grassroots campaign in all 343 ridings across Canada, I think we would have actually probably won.
00:00:45.960 I think there was too much top-down control the same way there was in 2021, in 2019, and 2015.
00:00:52.900 That is the last piece of the puzzle that certain people in headquarters just refuse to actually place on the board, which is letting your people do what they want to do.
00:01:02.060 Obviously, don't let someone go rogue and start saying that they're going to do things that aren't in the platform, but you've got to let your own people do what's right for them in their local riding.
00:01:11.780 Because every riding is very different, even the riding is right next to each other. The style of campaigning and the way the candidate has to comport themselves is extremely different if you want to win.
00:01:22.600 But I want to get to some of the bad takes, because again, people are going to take the wrong ideas away from these if they take them seriously.
00:01:30.280 So first up on the list to respond to is PPC leader Maxime Bernier, who thinks he's taking good shots of the Conservatives here when he's really just taking shots into his own foot.
00:01:42.220 Bernier here says,
00:01:43.100 Good job, Maxime, basically calling your own people stupid if they decide to vote Conservative.
00:02:03.000 And yet, that strategy failed. We still have another liberal government and Polyev couldn't even win his own seat.
00:02:10.240 I know, that would be for stupid HQ reasons that they didn't win his own seat.
00:02:14.100 Goodness, they shouldn't have had him running there if they knew that there was a lot more liberal areas in the riding and he didn't have enough time to campaign himself.
00:02:21.580 But I digress, and we'll move on.
00:02:24.260 But the insane CPC trolls and the fake independent journalists and influencers paid by the CPC are still accusing the PPC of helping to elect Carney.
00:02:33.980 They refuse to recognize that Polyev dropped the ball, that it's not our fault if he failed to beat the party that destroyed Canada for a decade.
00:02:42.120 It's not our fault he offered a weak platform that was indistinguishable from Carney's.
00:02:46.940 Okay, that's where, no, it was not indistinguishable from Carney's.
00:02:50.560 In fact, it was very different from Carney's.
00:02:52.480 I think in certain areas like crime, they could have gone harder.
00:02:55.940 On taxes, don't just propose reducing income taxes by 15% below $50,000.
00:03:03.000 Reduce everyone's income taxes in every bracket by that much.
00:03:06.700 Reduce corporations' taxes by that much.
00:03:08.920 Really rip the doors off the thing and demonstrate that this isn't just going to be better than the Liberals.
00:03:14.800 This is going to be completely different than the Liberals.
00:03:17.280 I think that would have been a smart thing to do.
00:03:18.880 So, in that small aspect, Bernier is right, but he pretends as if the platforms were indistinguishable, which is wrong.
00:03:26.340 By the way, the thing that annoys me about this, and I actually don't blame the PPC for the Liberals winning any seats.
00:03:32.560 I know in Brampton, there were several seats where the PPC made up the Conservatives' margin.
00:03:37.420 That happened because there were people who were kicked out of Conservative Party nominations who then said, screw this, I'm going to run for the PPC just to show them.
00:03:46.680 That was not some random PPC guy who delusionally thought he was going to win and ended up tripping up the Conservative candidate.
00:03:53.260 That was usually like a Hindu Canadian who was arbitrarily kicked out of a nomination saying, well, screw this, I'm going to run myself. 0.70
00:03:59.940 And if the PPC didn't exist, they would have run as an independent.
00:04:03.540 And by the way, that's kind of their prerogative.
00:04:05.940 If you mistreat a guy and you threw him out of a nomination for not a good reason, he could come and bite you by running himself in that same area against your guy.
00:04:16.360 But regardless, though, I don't agree that the PPC screwed up the Liberals.
00:04:20.680 But is Bernier really not going to do any self-reflection on to why his party completely collapsed, on to how he didn't even get an entire third of the country with a candidate?
00:04:32.220 He had two-thirds of the country that had a PPC candidate, and then the other third, they just didn't do it.
00:04:37.420 They just didn't even have candidates in an entire third of the country.
00:04:41.080 After operating this party for years, they still cannot figure out how to get a candidate on every ballot.
00:04:47.620 It's sad and pathetic.
00:04:49.000 And even then, Polyev was getting criticized for not doing American podcasts.
00:04:54.100 Oh, Patrick Bette-David invited it on.
00:04:56.100 You know, that sterling receptacle of knowledge.
00:05:00.260 Patrick Bette-David has asked Polyev to come on to his podcast.
00:05:04.160 Oh, why won't he do Alex Jones's podcast?
00:05:06.220 Why won't he do Joe Rogan?
00:05:07.840 Because it's a Canadian election where a lot of voters are motivated against the U.S.
00:05:13.940 They are motivated to stick it to Donald Trump.
00:05:16.220 And you think going on extremely pro-Donald Trump podcasts is going to be good for Polyev, especially if he flew down to do it.
00:05:25.140 I think that Polyev could have done more podcasts.
00:05:27.640 And that, again, goes back to fundamentally probably people in HQ saying, no, no, no, don't do a podcast.
00:05:32.460 It's going to be risky, which I completely disagree with.
00:05:35.100 But Bernier did all those podcasts.
00:05:37.360 How did Bernier lose so many votes if going on those podcasts was going to make him popular?
00:05:41.920 If it was going to bring him to new wise?
00:05:44.480 He was on Tucker Carlson's podcast.
00:05:46.520 How did he gain votes?
00:05:47.680 It's almost like doing American podcasts doesn't matter.
00:05:50.880 Or else they wouldn't have fallen on their faces nearly as hard unless Bernier is going to claim they would have had zero votes unless he did that.
00:05:58.560 My goodness.
00:05:59.720 But, yeah, I find this all stupid and hypocritical.
00:06:02.460 But now let's get to the next take I want to talk about today.
00:06:06.480 And that is another PPC sort of adjacent take.
00:06:11.240 It's from – actually, no, no.
00:06:13.160 Let's start off with the thing that this person is reacting to because this is a stupid mainstream media liberal take on why the conservatives lost.
00:06:19.280 So here on CTV News, we have this article that says party needs to be not so extreme.
00:06:26.640 Time for soul searching.
00:06:28.260 What conservatives are saying about Polyev defeat.
00:06:31.460 Now, let's be very clear.
00:06:33.020 When they ask people what did they do wrong, they are cherry picking people.
00:06:37.780 They are trying to find people that they can use as basically their wedge against real conservatism in the conservative party.
00:06:45.760 They want to argue that, no, no, no, you should have ran a red Tory who doesn't want to – only wants to cut taxes 1%, doesn't really want to cut any spending.
00:06:56.660 He's going to maintain every social program of the liberals, and he's not going to touch social issues.
00:07:01.000 He's not going to touch foreign policy.
00:07:03.100 He's just going to do whatever the liberals are doing.
00:07:05.200 Not so extreme.
00:07:06.560 What is actually extreme about the current conservative party of Canada?
00:07:11.300 Anyone saying that they were extreme is frankly just telling on themselves, but I digress.
00:07:18.260 Now, I want to move on to the real take that I found obnoxious, and it's from Viva Frye, a man who has not lived in Canada for a few years now, but is constantly telling Canadians how they should be doing politics.
00:07:29.400 He says, would you look at that?
00:07:31.580 Keir bent himself over backwards into a devastating loss, trying to be not so extreme for Canadian media, and it still wasn't enough.
00:07:38.800 I wouldn't – no, he was not bending over backwards to be not so extreme.
00:07:43.340 It's like he didn't even read the headline.
00:07:45.760 That's what the media is saying he has to do.
00:07:48.360 He was not extreme, and he also was not trying to be not so extreme.
00:07:52.580 He was frankly doing a pretty good job of just being himself.
00:07:55.540 I think, again, certain policy areas, the HQ kind of bound him and didn't let him do or say or basically pressured him into doing something else and didn't work out.
00:08:04.340 But the idea that the Conservatives just – they just needed to be more right is stupid.
00:08:09.560 There's nothing more right that I'm suggesting about increasing criminal sentencing even more or by cutting taxes even more.
00:08:17.480 That's not even more right.
00:08:18.460 It's just extending on the idea that the Conservatives have already latched onto.
00:08:22.360 But he says, when you let your adversaries dictate your strategy, you will always lose.
00:08:29.440 Any less extreme Conservatives will be more liberal than the Liberals, and Canadian media will be happy.
00:08:36.860 If the Conservatives were a little less extreme, they would not be exactly like the Liberals.
00:08:41.460 And I've been seeing Viva posting about this constantly.
00:08:44.720 Oh, well, Polly of ignoring podcasts didn't help him.
00:08:47.540 Well, he should do more podcasts next time.
00:08:49.360 Bernie did the podcast.
00:08:50.520 It didn't help.
00:08:50.980 All these people who think that, oh, if you're going to run for Canadian politics, you should run like it's the Donald Trump campaign.
00:08:58.320 Guys, you can like Donald Trump, obviously.
00:09:00.180 There's a lot of things I don't mind about Donald Trump at all.
00:09:03.320 But running in a Canadian election is not like running for election in the United States.
00:09:08.700 Imagine if you were running for president, but Florida didn't exist, Louisiana didn't exist,
00:09:15.120 Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky.
00:09:21.180 Imagine if all those states didn't exist.
00:09:23.980 Now you're running for president.
00:09:25.640 Are you going to run a little differently now that the states that you need to win in order to win the Electoral College include Connecticut, includes Rhode Island?
00:09:33.920 You've got to snag or either Colorado or you need to be able to win New York.
00:09:39.080 It's going to be a little bit different.
00:09:41.260 Before there was a big wave of conservatism in the United States.
00:09:45.420 In fact, the parties actually tended to be more moderate in the sense that not like they're like soft, because in fact, you could say the Republicans are softer than like Nixon's people back in the 70s on certain issues.
00:09:58.420 But they were like less ideologically conservative.
00:10:01.020 You know, it wasn't a small government wasn't considered the highest value of the Republican Party at the at the time.
00:10:06.840 You know, it would have been a little bit more of a hodgepodge of issues that were more regional and stuff like that.
00:10:11.840 You know, more pro-union, less pro-union.
00:10:14.040 That would have been kind of like American politics in the 70s.
00:10:17.400 But back in the day, people need the Republicans needed New York because it used to be that the South was Democrat.
00:10:24.000 And so what are you going to do if those states didn't exist?
00:10:27.100 You're basically in Canada now.
00:10:28.980 The South does not exist.
00:10:30.420 You do not get a big giant and Texas also doesn't exist.
00:10:33.580 You do not get a big giant download of votes out of that region.
00:10:37.240 And now that's what Canada looks like.
00:10:39.180 You have Alberta and Saskatchewan, which are very conservative.
00:10:42.180 But once you get to Ontario, you've got to win Ontario.
00:10:44.860 Winning Ontario is like winning New York State.
00:10:46.860 It's possible.
00:10:48.040 But and that doesn't mean you've got to be moderate.
00:10:50.240 In fact, you can actually go really hard on certain issues and you can win more.
00:10:54.060 Every single voter is passionate about something.
00:10:58.300 I've said this many times.
00:10:59.480 There's no such thing as a moderate voter.
00:11:01.900 A moderate voter doesn't vote.
00:11:03.700 Someone who doesn't have any really strong opinions on anything doesn't vote.
00:11:07.360 The people who vote care about certain things.
00:11:09.180 That's why conservatives did so well with Asian Canadians, because Asian Canadians really care about drugs and crime policy. 1.00
00:11:16.820 And the conservatives did a pretty good job on those issues.
00:11:19.160 And if they went even a little bit harder, we probably would have gotten the second Richmond riding in British Columbia.
00:11:25.380 If we said there's no three strike rule, there's a one strike rule.
00:11:28.680 If you're caught dealing fentanyl two years in prison, that's it.
00:11:32.160 Because, you know, you're basically giving out a deadly weapon to people.
00:11:35.960 So if they did that, they would have done well.
00:11:37.460 If they pushed a little bit harder on certain social issues, they could have done better.
00:11:40.960 Maybe roll out a parental bill of rights.
00:11:42.940 That would be good.
00:11:43.740 You could do a lot of stuff like this, again, an across-the-board tax cut, where that gets a lot of people's attention who are in higher brackets.
00:11:50.200 When they hear that you're just going to cut 15% for the first $50,000, that person's like, yeah, I pay a million in taxes every year.
00:11:57.840 That doesn't mean much to me.
00:11:59.560 So regardless, they could have easily done that.
00:12:01.580 But this is just such a dumb take to me that, no, the conservatives need to be more right.
00:12:06.900 Depends on what you're talking about.
00:12:08.280 But the idea that they just need to be more strident is foolish to me.
00:12:12.540 And then I liked this take by J.G. McCullough responding to another take.
00:12:17.740 This is the last one of the day.
00:12:19.840 He says, this is the most delusional idea I've ever heard.
00:12:22.920 If the conservatives' reaction to this election loss is to quadruple down on trying to make Quebec like them, then the party is truly doomed to be on salvation.
00:12:30.860 And he's responding to this text saying, the conservatives could offset their loss of PPC support.
00:12:35.980 However, if they increase their seat count in Quebec, where they only gained one seat while the liberals scored 10.
00:12:42.460 But this would only happen under a leader who appealed to Quebec voters, who would be more moderate in tone.
00:12:48.240 As we saw in this election, Polly was not that leader.
00:12:51.280 But there is now talk that he may seek a seat in Quebec City in a possible attempt to transform himself into someone Quebecers could like.
00:12:58.260 So obviously that didn't happen.
00:13:00.240 He's going to be running for Battle River Crowfoot.
00:13:02.260 I agree with J.G.
00:13:04.040 It's a stupid idea.
00:13:05.500 Do not try and appeal more to Quebec.
00:13:07.500 Because in appealing more to Quebec, you actually push Quebec away.
00:13:11.520 Do you know what Quebecers care about that the conservatives could run on?
00:13:14.780 Lowering immigration significantly.
00:13:17.100 If you did that, you would maybe pick up a couple more Quebec seats.
00:13:19.760 And by the way, I never liked this whole strategy where you need to win the 905.
00:13:24.760 You need to win the Montreal area.
00:13:27.220 You need to win all of Atlantic Canada.
00:13:29.040 No, you don't.
00:13:29.860 You just need a smattering of seats everywhere.
00:13:31.860 You could win another 10 seats in Ontario.
00:13:34.360 You could win another two seats in Quebec.
00:13:36.100 You could win another five seats in Atlantic Canada.
00:13:38.220 Another seat or two in BC and maybe win the Yukon.
00:13:41.020 And you have a majority if you're the conservatives.
00:13:43.040 Conservatives right now are like 143 seats.
00:13:45.700 Again, the math works out.
00:13:47.040 You win another 10, 12 seats in Ontario.
00:13:50.380 Win one or two more seats in Quebec.
00:13:52.420 Just run really hard on immigration.
00:13:54.400 Atlantic Canada, run on a more socially conservative platform.
00:13:57.560 Again, they actually did a good job in Newfoundland.
00:14:00.140 Running in favor of the seal hunt and expanding fishing quotas.
00:14:04.100 Good ideas.
00:14:05.060 And in Nova Scotia, I think really what happened there is
00:14:07.960 you just had a bigger retiree population that didn't have specific issues like fishing
00:14:13.060 to appeal to.
00:14:14.520 And then those people voted basically against Trump.
00:14:17.040 And also the premier of Nova Scotia, Tim Houston, was not being helpful at all.
00:14:22.980 And in fact, was acting as if he didn't care if the conservatives won or lost.
00:14:26.680 He was almost like Doug Ford for Nova Scotia, was just knifing the conservatives the entire
00:14:31.100 time.
00:14:31.920 But if the conservatives come back in the next election, they can probably grab the last seat
00:14:37.360 in Saskatchewan they need.
00:14:38.900 They can probably grab another seat in Alberta.
00:14:40.800 They can probably grab another two seats in BC pretty easily, maybe three in Ontario, probably
00:14:46.360 another 10 in Quebec, another two in Atlantic Canada, another five.
00:14:50.900 And I think we already have a majority just counting it up that way.
00:14:53.900 It's not that difficult.
00:14:55.980 But everyone who's always saying, oh, well, we need a 905 strategy.
00:14:59.480 No, we don't.
00:15:00.360 We just need a strategy to win certain types of voters.
00:15:03.080 Because guess what?
00:15:04.640 Voters exist everywhere.
00:15:06.340 Voters who care about crime exist everywhere.
00:15:08.260 Voters who care about drugs, taxes, who care about parental rights, who care about like
00:15:13.500 everything.
00:15:14.780 Crime, foreign policy, everything.
00:15:17.000 You can find it everywhere.
00:15:18.600 Target a specific type of voter.
00:15:20.120 As soon as you're trying to target like a regional type of voter, Quebec voters want
00:15:24.180 us to be moderate.
00:15:25.360 Not all of them.
00:15:26.540 And we don't need all of them to win seats.
00:15:27.960 So what are we doing here?
00:15:29.340 This is what makes me so annoyed about strategy.
00:15:32.120 People who are political strategists in this world are delusional.
00:15:35.260 And they constantly convince themselves that voters want to hear less from them.
00:15:39.060 They want to hear weaker policies and then they'll vote for you.
00:15:41.820 Because if you triangulate every single type of voter into one person,
00:15:46.100 you get a voter that doesn't even exist.
00:15:48.160 A voter who just has no particular opinions on anything.
00:15:52.140 They just want you to sound nice and happy.
00:15:54.960 O'Toole tried that.
00:15:55.960 He got wiped out.
00:15:57.500 Here, Polyev, there was probably flaws in the campaigns.
00:16:00.240 He could probably position himself a little bit different.
00:16:02.320 But it wasn't because, oh, they were too extreme.
00:16:05.100 No, in fact, they could have probably talked more about specific issues because voters have
00:16:09.020 a very small bandwidth to be able to hear what you're saying.
00:16:12.120 You've got to really talk about crime if you want voters here care about that to hear you.
00:16:17.400 You've got to really talk about taxes if you want people to hear you.
00:16:21.120 And if they did that more, they probably would have captured more of those types of voters.
00:16:25.840 But anyways, so that's it for me today in this video.
00:16:29.160 Kind of a mini rant, kind of a ramble.
00:16:31.160 I just want to talk about all these stupid takes.
00:16:34.380 Oh, Polyev should be more extreme.
00:16:35.740 Oh, Polyev was too extreme.
00:16:37.540 No, that's just not how politics works.
00:16:39.120 There's no, oh, he should be more moderate.
00:16:41.320 What voter at the door says, oh, I wish he was more moderate?
00:16:44.180 They usually say specific things.
00:16:46.100 So that's it for me today, guys.
00:16:49.480 Like the video.
00:16:50.060 Subscribe to the channel.
00:16:51.100 Leave a comment.
00:16:52.060 Do all that great stuff.
00:16:53.360 Maybe leave a comment on what you think the Conservative Party HQ should be doing in the next election.
00:16:58.840 And that should be it for me.
00:17:00.300 See you guys later.