This started out as a response to a blog about how Democrats should campaign in a purple district or state.  As one might expect, the general consensus is Dems need to focus on jobs (and its companion the economy). 

A significant key for the discussion which I don’t think is adequately addressed is that we are dealing with a purple region of the country, whether district or state.  We can get into whole debate about what makes such a region purple, but I will use the 30-40-30* explanation.  By this I mean that 30% of the population will vote Republican pretty much no matter what and 30% will vote Democrat come hell or high water for the most part.  This leaves us the middle 40.

(*These numbers are arbitrary.  I could have easily chosen 40-20-40 or 37-28-35, but I’m just keeping things simple.)

It would be a mistake I believe to look at the 30-40-30 through the conservative, moderate and liberal prism.  In other words, the two “30”s do not represent conservatives and liberals, nor does the “40” represent the moderates who trying to decide between the Republican or the Democrat.  In either of the “30”s there are plenty of moderates, and even the seemingly contradiction folks – the liberal Republican and conservative Democrat.

The “40” is composed of (self-identified) conservatives, moderates and liberals, although one would find I believe that the moderates are the dominant group.  What separates the people in the “40” from those in “30”s is their ambivalence on a number of issues when viewed through the standard Republican and Democrat frameworks.  In other words, these voters just as likely (more or less) to resonate with the talking points of either side, or inversely just as likely be repelled by those talking points.

The term “ambivalent voter” comes from a blog by Andrew Levison posted at The Democratic Strategist:  TDS Strategy Memo: Why can't the Dems make jobs a winning political issue? It seems like it should be a "slam dunk" but it's not. Here's why.

I think this article explains incredibly well the challenge the issue of jobs, the economy, and government’s role confronting Democrats in the purple region.  The article’s opening sums up the position of many on the left when it comes to Democrats and this issue:

One of the most exasperating Democratic failures of the last two years has been the Dems inability to turn high unemployment into a winning political issue. To many progressive Democrats the failure seems literally incomprehensible. After all, millions of Americans are deeply and painfully affected by job losses and opinion polls show with absolute consistency that voters strongly accord "creating jobs" a higher priority than deficit reduction. This holds true across an extraordinarily wide variety of different polls and question wordings.

Given these two facts, many progressives conclude that the only plausible explanation for the Dems failure is their timidity and fear of challenging conservative myths with sufficient boldness. Had Democratic candidates and officeholders displayed sufficient passion and commitment on this issue -- and championed genuinely aggressive action to create jobs -- many progressives and grass-roots Dems argue that they would surely have been able to mobilize the huge latent well of support that the opinion data shows must exist within the electorate.

I will skip over the description as to why the opinion poll data is less clear-cut than it appears when it shows good support for job creation and cut to the chase:  

To understand why Democrats find themselves unable to refute the conservative objections and win widespread public support for aggressive job creation efforts, it is necessary to look beyond the individual opinions that are expressed on surveys and examine the larger conceptual frameworks into which individual opinions are organized. The opinions that individuals express on opinion polls are not stored in hundreds of separate little mental cubbyholes from which they are retrieved when needed but are rather organized into larger "knowledge structures" - various kinds of cognitive schemas, narratives, media frames and mental models that create a mental "picture" or "story" that explains a complex reality like the economy. When people are asked a question on an opinion survey, they refer back to the larger mental framework and either locate a particular opinion that is held somewhere within it or use the framework as the basis for essentially "deducing" or "computing" an opinion.

When it comes to jobs, lowering the deficit, and the role of the government, their are two basic competing frameworks or narratives. Levison provides outlines of the Democratic and Republican narratives. starting first with the basic Democratic stump speech:

1. America has a basic moral obligation and moral commitment to maintain high employment - an obligation first codified in The Employment Act of 1946. It is this commitment that undergirded America's prosperity since the Second World War.

2. The great depression demonstrated that reliance on the free market is not sufficient - government must play a central role in insuring jobs, growth and prosperity.

3. Full employment benefits everyone -- both business and workers -- while unemployment not only harms individual workers but impoverishes society as a whole. Government spending during recessions increases consumer purchasing power and produces new sales opportunities for business, which leads to new hiring, greater revenues and increased profits.

4. There is therefore no excuse for inaction. All that is required is to set aside outmoded conservative myths that modern economics exploded many years ago.

….In "red-state" America there is an alternative narrative that goes as follows:

1. Only the private sector can create real jobs - government just shifts resources from the private to the public sector.

2. Business is always ready and willing to create new jobs. The only thing that prevents business from hiring more workers is the multitude of impediments imposed by government. Serious policies to create jobs are therefore measures that lower business taxes, remove regulations and eliminate all other government imposed constraints on the private sector.

3. "Creating" jobs through government action, on the other hand, only creates a new kind of artificial welfare program. The belief that government can "stimulate" the economy is an illusion that is easily refuted by daily observation and good, old fashioned "common sense."

4. The only way to create jobs is to step back and let the free market work. There is no other alternative.

In the 30-40-30 perspective, we have one “30” embracing the first narrative and the other “30” standing firm with the second narrative.  As Levison puts it:

The defining characteristic of their perspective is an "all or nothing" view of the opposing narrative. The opposing perspective is totally wrong and all those who accept it are simply deluded.

The “40” meanwhile aren’t so sure.

The second major group is the "ambivalent" voters who are not fully convinced by either of the two narratives. They have "not completely made up their minds," or "see some truth on both sides," This group represents a smaller segment of the electorate than the two base groups but they are of critical political importance because they are the most persuadable "swing" voters who can be won by either side.

I would suggest that in some purple states and especially districts, this ambivalent voter makes up the largest of the three groups (hence why I chose 40 to represent this group).  Even if they are smaller than the other two, in those purple regions they are necessary to win in order for either the Republican or the Democrat to achieve 50% plus one.

Levison provides two explanations as to how the ambivalent voter makes their political choices between the two conflicting narratives.  The first is the “either one complete narrative or the other.”  In this view, the voter adopts one narrative as true, then switches (or flip-flops) to the other view.  In a sense, it would say that these ambivalent voters are one moment a member in one “30” group, and then for some reason (a stump speech by the president, some PAC funded commercial, spending the night talking politics over beers with a particularly persuasive friend), the individual is in the other “30” group.  As one might infer, I don’t think this explains the majority of ambivalent voters.  Neither does Levison:

The alternative understanding of how "ambivalent" voters make political choices between two conflicting narratives….there are also "open-minded" individuals who examine and compare opposing narratives using an "on the one hand, but on the other hand" mode of thought and who apply "common sense" to reach conclusions.

Most do not radically switch their position from one day to another - in the way that Newt Gingrich completely flip-flopped over the Ryan plan, for example - but rather gradually modify the balance of positive and negative features they recognize in two alternative perspectives. Equally, at any specific moment ambivalent people generally do not rigidly insist on the absolute correctness of one of two opposing narratives but rather offer an "on the one hand, on the other hand" balancing of the two opposing perspectives.

For the Dem in the purple districts and states, his first three of four “important practical implications for Democratic strategy” derived from seeing the ambivalent voter through this second perspective are critical for success in my opinion.

• First, simply repeating the traditional Democratic narrative -- regardless of how frequently or emphatically --- will not produce significant attitude change….

• Second, doubts about the ability of government to create jobs reflect not only a disbelief in Keynesian remedies for unemployment but also the profound doubts many Americans have about government in general….

• Third, attempts to convince the critical group of ambivalent voters have to be based on those voters' distinct way of thinking about political issues - the desire to find a "common sense" middle ground. Attempts to persuade them that the Democratic view is completely right and the Republican view completely wrong are unlikely to be effective because such attempts run against the grain of their mode of thinking. The most effective strategy will be to present facts that weaken the plausibility of the conservative view and to argue that the Dem position is actually closer to a common sense middle ground than the more extreme Republican view.

One other significant take away from this perspective is the weakness of jobs and all of the connected issues as being a wedge issue in the purple region.  The wedge is going to work on the people within the two "30"s.  One way to think about it is that people in the "40," our wondrous purple and ambivalent voter is in the "40" because they are internally wedged.  Taking a wedge issue approach will only serve in most cases to enhance the sense of ambivalence.

The goal then for the Democrat candidate in the purple district or state is walk that tightrope of respecting both narratives, while, emphasizing one particular narrative over the other.