Derek Robertson is a news assistant for POLITICO Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @afternoondelete. Alex Fine is a freelance illustrator from Baltimore, Maryland.

The concept of political tribalism in America is nothing new. Hippies and Birchers made their mark on the Cold War era, while centrist “Third Way” Democrats and Tea Partyers cropped up in more recent years.

But the fever pitch of the Trump era has simultaneously brought tribal boundaries into sharper relief and redrawn them in new and sometimes surprising ways. “Liberal” and “conservative” are no longer sufficient for characterizing the fault lines in American political life: The far left has distanced itself from the former label, and the Trumpist right has redefined the latter in a way that would make it all but unrecognizable to conservatives’ midcentury forbearers. Plus, entirely new contingents are cropping up to respond to the unique conditions of the social media age.


With an eye toward the Preppy Handbook, that risible-yet-indispensable chronicle of 1980s old money, Politico Magazine developed a handy guide to the archetypes of political life today. Go forth and shop (or tweet, or vote) accordingly.



Text by Derek Robertson. Illustrations by Alex Fine.