The Nation‘s Chris Hayes rang in the magazine’s 150th birthday on his MSNBC show All In with Chris Hayes. He opened the hour with a powerful statement about The Nation’s staying power in the tumultuous media landscape. “If you took a political journalist from 1865 and put him in a time machine to cover the current election cycle,” he said, “they would be more or less baffled by everything they encountered, but for a small handful of institutions that have somehow managed to endure.” The Nation is one of those institutions.
In its 150 years, the magazine has challenged the status quo, often anticipating the consequences of major political moments like the Iraq War, global warming, and the 2008 housing crisis before they happened. “The Nation is a reminder of how not liberal the mainstream is,” Hayes said, “exposed in high relief during particular moments in our nation’s history.” He ended the segment with a reminder of why The Nation is needed more than ever—”to criticize the cozy consensus of mainstream and power elite.”
—Cole Delbyck
