Beyond Red MAGA and Blue MAGA: Measuring What Actually Matters
Looking past the noise to see who governs
American politics increasingly resembles a spectacle rather than a system for solving problems.
Voters are encouraged to rally around personalities instead of performance, to choose sides in an endless moral drama rather than evaluate what their representatives actually do. The result is a political culture that rewards emotional engagement—anger, loyalty, outrage—while obscuring tangible outcomes like legislation, cooperation, and governance.
This dynamic isn’t confined to one party.
It’s easy to recognize performative outrage, grandstanding, and bad-faith behavior when it comes from politicians “on the other side” whom we already distrust. Their excesses feel obvious. Their incentives look corrupt. Their rhetoric feels hollow.
What’s harder—and more uncomfortable—is recognizing the same patterns among politicians on our side.
When a lawmaker says the right things, attacks the right villains, and signals the right identities, we’re less likely to ask harder questions about outcomes. Are they passing legislation? Are they building coalitions? Are they improving conditions in tangible ways—or simply winning the attention war?
The spectacle works precisely because it exploits this asymmetry. It encourages voters to judge “them” by performance and “us” by intention. Over time, that double standard allows divisive actors in every coalition to thrive, protected by loyalty rather than evaluated by results.
Politics as Performance
I’ve made this reference before, but much of modern politics functions like professional wrestling: clearly defined heroes and villains, constant conflict, and an incentive structure that depends on keeping the feud alive. The goal isn’t resolution—it’s engagement.
The loudest figures thrive because attention is the currency of the system. Media outlets amplify conflict. Social platforms reward provocation. Donors fund outrage. And voters, often unintentionally, reinforce the cycle by selecting candidates based on symbolic combat rather than measurable results.
The consequence is a Congress filled with recognizable fighters that do very little in the way of governing—and an electorate increasingly angry that nothing ever gets done.
The Missing Question: Who Is Actually Governing?
What’s often lost in this environment is a simple but uncomfortable question:
Who is actually doing the work of governing?
Who is writing legislation that can pass?
Who is building coalitions across party lines?
Who is showing up consistently to collaborate rather than perform?
These lawmakers exist—but they are rarely famous. They don’t dominate cable news. They don’t thrive on viral conflict. And because they don’t fit the spectacle-driven model, voters often have little information about them at all.
That invisibility isn’t accidental. It’s an outcome of the incentive system we’ve built.
Bridge Grades and the Case for Measurement
Bridge Grades was created to address this exact problem.
Rather than asking voters to decode personalities or rhetoric, Bridge Grades evaluates members of Congress using objective, third-party data—including bipartisan co-sponsorship patterns and rhetoric analysis—to assess whether a legislator is acting as a bridger or a divider.
This approach doesn’t ask politicians to abandon their principles. It doesn’t demand ideological compromise. Instead, it distinguishes between dogmatism and pragmatism—between those who weaponize identity for attention and those who find ways to govern despite disagreement.
In a system dominated by emotional narratives, measurement becomes a corrective.
Why Measurement Changes Incentives
When voters choose candidates based on identity, symbolism, or outrage, politicians respond accordingly. When voters reward effectiveness, behavior changes.
Making collaboration visible doesn’t just inform citizens—it reshapes incentives.
If bridgers become known, supported, and re-elected, the system begins to favor governance over performance. Not overnight. Not perfectly. But measurably.
This is how systems change: not through moral purity or rhetorical escalation, but by altering what success looks like.
A Deeper Conversation
These ideas—and their limits—are explored in depth in the latest episode of Outrage Overload, where we speak to Brad Porteus, the founder of Bridge Grades.
If you’re frustrated by politics but skeptical of easy fixes, this episode offers something different: a way to see the system more clearly—and a tool for engaging it more constructively.
New This Week in Outrage Episode!
It’s everything the Outrage Overload podcast is not. It’s not edited. It’s not scripted. It’s lightly researched. It’s David and Lisa talking about this week in outrage, what was in the news, in the memes, and maybe finding some backstory with a humorous (at least to us) twist.