June 24, 2019

Raw Data: The Great 1950s Blackout

My last post was half in jest, but something I mentioned in it got me curious: there hasn’t been a single president born in the 1950s. And there’s a good chance there never will be. Here’s the birth timeline of every Democratic candidate for president who’s currently polling at 1 percent or higher:

It’s just a coincidence (there were no presidents born in the ’30s, either), but it seems a bit strange. The 1950s were the heart of the most famous generation ever, and not a single person from that decade has ever made it to the Oval Office. I guess the 1946 babies took up all the available slots for president.

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THE BIG PICTURE

You expect the big picture, and it's our job at Mother Jones to give it to you. And right now, so many of the troubles we face are the making not of a virus, but of the quest for profit, political or economic (and not just from the man in the White House who could have offered leadership and comfort but instead gave us bleach).

In "News Is Just Like Waste Management," we unpack what the coronavirus crisis has meant for journalism, including Mother Jones’, and how we can rise to the challenge. If you're able to, this is a critical moment to support our nonprofit journalism with a donation: We've scoured our budget and made the cuts we can without impairing our mission, and we hope to raise $400,000 from our community of online readers to help keep our big reporting projects going because this extraordinary pandemic-plus-election year is no time to pull back.

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