Kristen Soltis Anderson is a
New York Times Opinion writer. She is also a pollster for the Republican Party. Anderson's politics, in other words, are undoubtedly quite different from my own. One of her "Guest Essays," however, which was published online in
The Times on July 20, 2026, does have at least one observation with which I definitely agree.
The Times titled Anderson's "Guest Essay" as follows: "
America Has Eight Political Tribes. Which One Do You Belong to?" Clicking the link should let even non-subscribers read about Anderson's "Eight Tribes."
Here's the statement from Anderson's essay with which I am unequivocally in agreement (the key assertions are bolded in the quotation, below):
Voters are rarely in complete alignment with one political party or the other. They might lean to the left on guns and abortion but turn out to be law-and-order hawks on border security and policing. Some purists might see this as ideological incoherence; as a pollster, I call it completely normal.
In fact, it is the rigid alignment within the parties in Congress, which has
increased over the years, that is abnormal. We have a two-party system, but
the American electorate is much more complex than the partisan binary would have you believe.
I have been - and rather frequently, too -
pontificating in my daily blog postings against the "polarization" of our politics, which promotes the idea that we, the people (citizens and voters), have essentially two choices. You can either vote "Blue" or "Red," "Democrat" or "Republican." Our politics, in other words, is said to give us a simple binary choice. Pick your poison!
That "pick your poison" expression came immediately to mind, because to the degree that our politics has been, and is, relegating us to a "binary" choice, that politics has truly been "poisoned" for many, many citizens and voters. The reason for our widespread rejection of politics is the implicit demand that every one of us needs to select the "team" with which we wish to affiliate. Again, you're either "Red" or "Blue," "Republican" or "Democrat." LOTS of us don't see ourselves in this binary way, where politics is concerned, and so lots of us are rejecting "politics" itself, since it seems that you do need to "pick a side" if you want to get involved in politics in any meaningful way.
I disagree that politics is best understood as providing us with a "binary" choice, and the bolded statements from Anderson's Opinion Essay are absolutely on target, I think.
Where I disagree with Anderson is her suggestion that there are, actually, eight different political "tribes." Eight choices, rather than two, is an improvement, I guess, but I think that there is always a fallacy involved when we turn an observation into a statement about the nature of "reality." I definitely disagree that the "tribes" that Anderson identifies are "realities," and that the citizens and voters of the United States can be defined within one of the categories advanced by Anderson.
In fact, we are all "different," individually, and we also change our opinions and our allegiances based on both our observations and our experience. Trying to "understand" and "define" politics by "tribes," or "categories," is always to mistate what "politics" is actually about. "Politics" is the methodology we use to govern ourselves, as a diverse public, millions of people, different, individually, in almost every way, but all "Equal," as the Declaration of Independence so properly notes.
If we look at how our Constitution tries to establish a framework to guide our experiment in self-government, we see that we expect to govern not on the basis of "parties," or "tribes," but on the basis of geographically-linked "elected representatives," who represent and are responsible to hundreds of thousands of different individuals. These elected representatives (collectively known as the Congress), then have to come to an agreement - of some kind - with hundreds of their colleagues, who represent different "districts," and through the "district" system, hundreds of thousands of other citizens and voters.
Where has our "politics" gone wrong?
Well, if we really believe in "self-government," we need to be involved in government ourselves. That's the first big failing in our contemporary political life. "Politics" gives us "government," and that means that we each need, in some real way, to be involved in "politics."
What kind of political involvement am I talking about? Based on the idea that we "govern" by first electing representatives, to make political decisions for us, we need to get involved in the elections by which we pick our representatives. Thereafter, we need to follow what those elected representatives do, to try to make sure that they actually do what we want them to do. We do both of these things by getting organized with others, who agree with our concerns, and then (as necessary) we cajole, harass, or inspire our elected representatives to do what we want them to do. If our representatives don't seem to be doing what we want them to do, we then need to organize to replace those representatives who are failing effectively to "represent" the constituents as they are supposed to.
Personal, political involvement by a significant number of citizens and voters is the key to democratic self-government. It's a lot of fun (but there's a lot of work involved, too, of course). Note, that if the government isn't doing a good job representing what the voters and the citizens actually want, the voters and citizens have to make them do so. If the citizens and voters think that's too much work (which is frequently true), then they shouldn't expect the government to function in a way that achieves what the people actually want.
Our current "pick your poison" system of political polarization essentially lets citizens and voters off the hook. Our political "parties" become the decision-makers, and money (as always) will almost always win the day.
"Red" or "Blue," or eight different "Tribes"? It's no wonder that people hate "politics!"
Image Credit:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/opinion/voters-political-parties-coalitions.html
