Who says there’s no consensus in Washington? On the heels of a bipartisan budget agreement which likely to pass, Democrats are now urging their party’s members to campaign on a full-throated defense of the Affordable Care Act. Republicans, for their part, welcome Democrats adopting this strategy. Kumbaya. It’s a Christmas miracle.

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On Thursday, a Washington Post article by Greg Sargent detailed the findings of an extensive survey by respected Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg. His was the same firm that recently ventured into the wilds to investigate the strange animal known as the Republican voter and found that the clever species had evolved methods to fool pollsters into thinking they are not racist. Fortunately, the adept pollsters knew full well that racism lurks in the hearts of the GOP voter and asserted as much, in spite of a lack of empirical evidence to support this claim.

RELATED: Dem Pollster Shocked to Find No Racism in Tea Partiers, So They Invent Some

In Greenberg’s most recent findings, his firm surveyed 86 competitive House districts and found that Democratic officeholders and candidates should

“go on offense” over the ACA. Sargent writes that the poll, sponsored by Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund and Democracy Corps, surveyed 50 GOP-held districts and 36 districts represented in Congress by Democrats and discovered that voters might still be persuaded to support the health care reform law:

The key finding: Even though voters in the battlegrounds have extreme doubts about the law, they still prefer implementing it to the GOP stance of repeal. And after a month of crushingly awful press for Obamacare, opinions on this matter in the battlegrounds have barely budged since October.

Sargent notes that the poll found that “implementing and fixing” the ACA is preferred over “repealing and replacing” by voters in these districts by 49 to 44 percent. This is the strongest evidence Greenberg’s firm presents to suggest that campaigning on the ACA is a winning strategy.

Discounting for the moment the public’s bias toward the status quo and the lack of a singular GOP alternative which preserves the aspects of the law which are widely popular, this is not much of an endorsement for the ACA. 51 percent of voters in these districts favored “implementing and fixing” in October – when the GOP had reached the nadir of its popularity during and immediately after the government shutdown. This shift is not statistically significant, but it is a trend in a direction Sargent and Greenberg do not want.

Moreover, Greenberg and Sargent conceded that only a third of voters believe

the law will make their lives better while 46 percent say it will make things worse. While 21 percent remain undecided on that matter, those undecideds rarely break 50/50 over an issue in which a clear plurality has a hardened opinion.

“[I]n the battlegrounds,” Greenberg told Sargent, “the voters are split down the middle. This is not a wedge issue. Voters still want to implement and fix. Democrats can, and should, engage on health care.”

Indeed, the same was said by MSNBC host Ed Schultz on Wednesday who revealed that Democratic members of Congress are approaching him for messaging tips. His unqualified recommendation: Democratic members should be shouting from the hilltops, “It works!”

“That’s all you have to say: it works,” Schultz declared. “And it’s only going to get better.”

This sentiment was echoed by the poll’s sponsor, WVWVAF:

“Despite all the noise over implementation, our polling shows that it remains popular among members of the Rising American Electorate,” says Page Gardner, president of the Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund. “They realize that the law will improve their lives. These often economically vulnerable Americans make up nearly 54 percent of the voting age population, and politicians who ignore their issues do so at their peril.” (emphasis added)

Let’s hope Ms. Gardner does not count young people or Hispanics among their coalition of “the Rising American Electorate.” The ACA’s namesake, President Barack Obama, has lost support among young voters in

poll after poll since the ACA’s demands on their wallets evolved from an abstract concept to the concrete threat. The latest WSJ/NBC News poll shows Obama underwater with young voters, only 45 percent of whom approve of the job he has done in office, and Hispanics, were now just 42 percent expressed approval with the president.

The ACA itself fares much worse. A survey of millennials conducted by Harvard University recently found that 57 percent of young Americans disapprove of the law. Only one third of those young adults who are uninsured told pollsters they plan to sign up for private insurance through the program. A recent Pew poll found that just 52 percent of Hispanics approve of the law but, with 47 percent of America’s Latino population under the age of 27, there is likely to be significant overlap with disaffected millennials.

With numbers like these, recommending a push on Obamacare feels less like a sure bet and more like a Hail Mary pass. Furthermore, the poorly defined “fixes” to the ACA supported by most voters is just as big of an inroad for Republicans to make gains when they campaigning against the ACA next year.

[Photo via screen grab ]

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Tags: Barack Obama, ed schultz, Greg Sargent, Stanley Greenberg