The Y (why) Axis of Politics

When I was a child, my dad was the last “color set hold out” on the block. We were a black and white family—meaning that we had this old, crappy RCA B/W TV on a rickety stand made of a ?” pipe frame with chipped plastic wheels. Underwriters Labs would probably declare it a death-trap for modern-day toddlers, but we were built of sterner stuff back then.

Don’t get me wrong, as children of a rocket scientist we were blessed financially … but we were the children of a frugal rocket scientist who thought color TV was, “just a fad.”

When we watched shows broadcast in color that were received in B/W, the images seemed flat. That’s because the costume designers and artists in Hollywood had already switched to the full range of color, but had forgotten what they knew about contrasting tints. In other words, color shows like Batman and Laugh-In were crazy tie-dye trips, but on our B/W set, they were just flat tints of gray.

Enter the contrast knob!

We could turn that contrast knob all the way up, baby, and suddenly the edges of clothing and backdrops popped with vivid clarity. We used it so much, I think we actually broke the knob! I distinctly remember turning a small, D-shaped metal pin between pinched fingertips for a while.

That’s what Mr. Trump has brought to D.C.—a giant contrast knob.

In a world where there’s only one political axis (no other shades than the B/W range of Left and Right) it was becoming hard for most of us to understand the edges. Mr. Trump’s brash, unfiltered, non-translated, 140-character tweets became a contrast knob that made previously imperceptible cracks and lines leap out at us.

Yet, most of us are still watching all of this today on the same old crappy B/W set of Left and Right. New politics are actually broadcasting in vivid color, man. Psychedelic, beautiful color. But most everyone is missing it, relying instead on turning up their B/W contrast knobs to the breaking point by defining minutia levels of granularity between Left and Right as their tired fingers strain to turn the D-shaped metal pin any higher.

If you plot Left and Right on a piece of paper, it will form a horizontal X axis—like the ones we used to draw on graph paper in algebra. But the color spectrum that’s now broadcasting is a Y axis, going up and down for Elitism (believing that we should be led by an elite person) vs. Populism (that we should be led by someone who represents the interests of ordinary people).

The Y axis doesn’t care if you’re Left or Right.

Therefore, a person on the Left can be an Elitist or they can be a Populist. Move your pencil to the left on your graph, and then go up or down depending on the type of leadership you want. The same is true for a person on the Right.

For example, during their election run, Hillary was clearly a Left/Elite, and Mr. Trump was clearly a Right/Populist. By the way, Bernie was a Left/Populist—that’s a glorious and vivid color illumination that we gain from seeing both the Left/Right and the Up/Down. We can now see that Mr. Trump and Bernie were both Down (populist purple) and Hillary was Up (elitist gold). Who else was Up? Jeb, Ted, and maybe Marco, to name but a few. That’s right—there are elitists in both parties.

Reality is that the overwhelming majority of the country was initially purple (50% for Mr. Trump and 24% for Bernie). Only 26% were originally gold for Hillary. But our B/W sets didn’t pick that up, did they? We just saw confusing tints of gray, defined only as Left, Right, and Further-Left.

A huge mistake would be to continue defining the present national mood only in terms of the old X axis. If this was the case, then what? Hillary should have been more Left? That would’ve been crazy. If she had gone all the way to the left, it wouldn’t have made a difference. The country craved purple (not Left or Right), and her set just didn’t pick up color.

Gold was out, purple was in, and the pundits were watching in B/W.

If you were a politician last year, and found yourself in any way north of the X axis; if you were even remotely elitist… you failed—it didn’t matter if you were Left or Right. And that’s because of the contrast knob. While everyone else wore even shades of political gray, continuing to debate in terms of only Left and Right, Mr. Trump’s tweets made sure he came across in strong tints just so our contrast knobs could easily pick up the difference, drawing a large, but somewhat confused audience.

Some Democrats actually voted for Mr. Trump, maybe not really being able to say why they did it. They wanted purple, and didn’t know how express it.

Now, it can be very clear (at least to the non-frugal rocket scientists reading this) that the Y axis is not a fad. The Elitist/Populist scale is real, and will win and lose elections just as much as Left/Right.

The sad thing is: by reading this, you have now acquired a color set, but most politicians are still broadcasting in B/W. The elitists aren’t thinking strategically—and that's the most interesting thing about this wide, new, colorful world. They're focused on the B/W of Left and Right, and haven’t started to mix in the Y axis of Elitism/Populism.

Only the winners have done that so far.