February 10, 2020

Mystery Chart Answer

Here is the answer to this morning’s mystery chart:

  • Incumbent presidents lose reelection if economic growth dips below zero in either the election year or the year before.
  • Otherwise they win.
  • This rule has been 100 percent accurate for every incumbent since 1950.

Economic growth did not fall below zero last year and it is not going to fall below zero this year. This means that Donald Trump has a strong wind at his back and will be hard to beat in November. I sure hope liberals are all aware of this and are willing to work their guts out no matter how discouraged they may get from time to time. This includes being discouraged because your candidate didn’t win the primary; because your policies are not getting the priority you’d like; because things look dire in the Senate races; because the polls sometimes show spikes in favor of Trump; and because of general angst over how things are going.

If you ever think of giving up, just remember 2016. All the way until a couple of weeks before Election Day, Donald Trump looked like a sure loser. Two days before Election Day he looked like a nearly sure loser. But he never gave up. And he won. Stuff happens. If he can do it, so can we.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

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