The far left magazine The Nation which saw its fortunes soar during the Bush administration only to see them fade after Obama was elected is hoping that the GOP sweep on November 2 will be the harbinger of another comeback.

From the New York Times

Other than perhaps the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, there were few places as despondent on election night as the Manhattan offices of The Nation, the 146-year-old journal of fiery leftist opinion.

A group of about 15 writers, editors and interns sat around a conference table and watched the results as they drowned their sorrows in bottles of Trader Joe’s red wine. Even the friendly voices on MSNBC proved little solace as the numbers rolled in, confirming a Republican resurgence across the country.

These are difficult times at The Nation, and not just because liberals are in retreat. Lately the magazine has suffered a one-two punch. On top of political malaise, it faces the economic pressures that political journals often confront when the party in power is on their side.

In the words of Victor Navasky, a father figure at the magazine who served as its editor and publisher before retiring several years ago, what is good for the nation is bad for The Nation.

So as liberal politics flourished in the waning years of George W. Bush’s presidency and reached an apotheosis with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, The Nation’s fortunes started to skid. Couple that with a recession as well as the worst advertising market in decades, and things started to look bleak.

As of Nov. 8, ad pages were down 5 percent compared with last year. Though advertising accounts for just a tenth of revenue, the number is still striking considering how brutal 2009 was for the advertising market. Traffic to TheNation.com has also declined recently. And since 2008, the magazine has run an operating deficit of about $500,000 a year.

Despite all the gloom, could last week’s Democratic pummeling actually have a silver lining for The Nation, once home to writers like Henry James, Ezra Pound, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and even Yeats? Katrina vanden Heuvel, the magazine’s editor and publisher, did not have to think long about that question.

“If you can’t expose the hypocrisy of this new group of Republicans, then we’re not doing our job. And I mean that,” she said in an interview from her office on election night as she sipped a glass of Champagne, defiant as Democratic losses piled up and the mood around her darkened.

“I mean you’ve got a lot to work with,” she said. “You’ve got a Tea Party caucus in the Senate, a Tea Party caucus in the House. So I think you have a lot of rich material.”

If history is any guide, Ms. vanden Heuvel could be proved right.

The Bush years were good — very good — to The Nation. After operating in the red almost every year since it was founded by abolitionists in 1865, the magazine turned a profit in 2003.

From 2001 to 2003, the magazine’s circulation leapt from 107,000 to 149,000 and kept growing. By 2006, it had reached its peak at 187,000.

The magazine’s most recent circulation report to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, however, showed significant decline. During the first half of the year, The Nation had 145,000 subscribers, who pay about $40 a year. It sold just 1,500 copies on the newsstand each week. Three years ago, newsstand sales were three times that.

Ms. vanden Heuvel (pronounced van-den-HOO-vul), who got her start at The Nation as an intern, is not naïve about the magazine’s struggles, and she acknowledged the difficulty opinion journals like hers have had breaking through in a marketplace jammed with newcomers on the left like Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo. But she remains confident about her magazine’s standing.

“The Nation — and I don’t love the word but I’ll use it — is a brand of 146-year standing. It conveys a sense of trust. This is an institution and a magazine and a cause,” she said.

There is no doubt about The Nation’s credibility as a leading institution on the left. But liberal Web sites like The Huffington Post now have vast followings of young people and a certain cool factor — something many advertisers value over intellectual prestige.

The Nation will probably see some benefit from the GOP takeover of the House but with the Democrats still in control of the Senate and occupying the White House the target is much smaller.

It’s no secret that the far left has been disappointed with Obama for not being liberal enough but with a new power structure in Washington The Nation now faces the prospect that they will have to support Obama in an effort to retain the White House in 2012 or risk seeing a complete GOP takeover.

Financially speaking based on their experience during the Bush years that might actually be a better choice but hard to swallow politically.

The reality though is that it won’t matter that much which party is in power as the decline in subscriptions and magazine sales may be more permanent than vanden Heuvel leads others to believe with the rapid move to digital content by the public and a recession that has changed advertiser’s enthusiasm for print ads.

For what’s it worth I hope the magazine survives as it is a constant reminder of how out of touch the left is with reality and is always good for a few laughs.

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