Look to your left. Now look to your ri ... No. Sorry. Keep looking left.

I've been a longtime reader of The Nation. I don't remember when I first subscribed, but I can remember it on the magazine pile as far back as the '80s. I've only been reading Jacobin for a few years. My attitude toward The Nation shifted once Jacobin was on my reading list, in part because of my own political shifts, and in part because of how the two compare.

I've long had an uneasy relationship with The Nation. Its politics are generally "just fine" to me in the way that the politics of a lot of left-liberal policy nerds are "just fine" to me. There's a certain hardscrabble, increment-farming aspect to people who live in that segment of the ideological spectrum. And they're the kind of liberals who are fine expressing their support for a "leftist" publication by paying for a special cruise or branded wine club.

I guess as I sit here trying to come up with the words, The Nation feels very influenced by all the ways progressive politics have been influenced by 40 years of neoliberalism, and it feels closer to the world of policy people and think tank denizens who are still within shouting distance of institutional power. Jacobin is more unabashedly socialist.

A few years ago, Jacobin's founder, Bhaskar Sunkara, became the president of The Nation, and I wondered if that would end up pulling the two a little closer together, ideologically.  I don't think it really has.

I wish things would tip in Jacobin's favor. The Nation seems much more quick to run headlines like "Trump is the Ultimate Gang Leader" or "Why Kristi Noem Thinks Killing a Puppy Is Good Politics." I much prefer things like Jacobin's "The PMC Is Not a New Class" (relevant to my recent thinking) and "Class Dealignment Is the Defining Political Challenge of Our Time."

The former doesn't really help me understand much I don't already. Just skimming the dog-killing story, it mainly wants to recount what a lurid tale it is, then say "plus, it's going to blow up in her face." Nobody who needs to read about the performative cruelty of Republican ghouls is stumbling across that take in The Nation. And nobody reading The Nation is on the fence about a Trump second term, whether we frame it as "a Trump second term, you remember the first one" or "Trump is trying to turn the US into a failed state."

The latter help me form a thought about conversations I could be having with people who share a bigger portion of my political beliefs, but might not be full-on social democrats, or who may subscribe to some ideas of what is "realistic" that could be pushed back against given the bridge from everyday American political life to something more social-democratic that Jacobin preoccupies itself with.