The Bridge Grades Origin Story
The inspiration for Bridge Grades came in mid-2023 as a one-two punch.
First, Tim Urban’s provocative book “What’s Our Problem” helped explain that our political enemies are not specifically “the other guys” but rather when our primitive minds hijack our higher minds. His frameworks enlightened me that our allies are more vertical (how we think) than horizontal (what we think).
Second, the discovery of Vanessa Otero’s enlightening media bias chart (produced by her company Ad Fontes Media) which measures and plots media outlets like newspapers, channels, and podcasts and plots them on a matrix comparing political bias against a news reliability scale. The striking bridge-shaped arch in her matrix makes clear the correlation between extreme bias and low reliability news sources in the lower right and left wings.
Political spectrum on horizontal axis
"Higher mind" vs "Primitive mind" on the vertical axis
Political Bias on the horizontal axis
News Value and Reliability on the vertical axis
What if we could sort or politicians on a similar 2x2 framework that could plot ideology (left-to right) against a vertical dimension that measures their abilities to unite and bridge through consensus through coalition, rather than divide?
"Bridgers" vs "Dividers”
Bridgers are collaborative, seek consensus, build coalitions, have a growth mindset, look for win-wins, negotiate, listen, make tradeoffs, are pragmatic, and seek solutions. They unite.
Dividers dig their heels in, are dogmatic, see the world as black and white (no shades of gray), and see the world through the lens of a “zero-sum game” - when i win, you lose. They divide.
But can we objectively identify bridgers from dividers?
We can. Using a blend of 3rd party data that combines legislative record and rhetoric, we can find signal within the noise and apply a grading curve to identify those who more often collaborate, build consensus solutions, and build coalitions across parties relative to their divisive and hyper-partisan peers.
But, why now?
For the first time, this sorting has become possible, thanks to easier access than ever to public data, legislative records, speeches, videos, tweets, and other objective and observable behaviors.
Our mission is to use objective data and a transparent process to sort politicians on the dimension of bridgers versus dividers. Our north star is our conviction that there are bridgers within both (all) political parties. We want bridgers to represent our eclectic population, because bridgers are willing to find creative win-win solutions for our common interest.
As citizen voters, we encourage a cross-partisan voting alliance to re-elect bridgers and vote out dividers to bring back collaborative politics. Until now, as voters we have never been able to objectively and reliably spot them, let alone commit to vote for them.
Now, for the first time ever, we can.