Mark Blyth and Wendy Schiller – Election 2016: What Happened and Why?

Cross posted from Naked Capitalism.

Even though this assessment of the Trump win and the implications for American politics going forward is long, it’s also meaty and very much worth your attention. Mark Blyth was virtually the only person to call a Trump victory from the get-go (a colleague who spends a lot of time outside the Acela corridor is another member of that club) but also correctly gamed out how the stock market would react.

Everything Blyth says is incisive, colorful, and on the mark. By contrast, it’s frustrating listening to Schiller because she is invested heavily in Dem orthodoxy, and not even in the plausible parts: the Hillary scandals were manufactured by Republicans, Sanders would have lost if he were the Democratic candidate, Clinton was a victim of being a woman with a long political career (hello?). Similarly, towards the end, Blyth says, “There is no left left. It’s already had its lunch eaten,” and explains why, and then Schiller begs to differ by trying to depict the Democrats as still a real force and capable of being “renovated”. Help me. But she does have some random insightful remarks.

In other words, you can run the video and tune your attention in and out, although you may then want to go back and listen to just the Mark Blyth remarks a second time. There’s a lot of solid material here.

There are some good references about Europe. And just to be sure, Italy's Renzi is gone! Fatso Sigmar Gabriel is mentioned. Mark Blyth is always to the point.