So how much like the rest of us is the Occupy Wall Street crowd?

Douglas Schoen, a pollster for Bill Clinton when he was President, has conducted a survey of the Occupy Wall Street crowd. The results are interesting for those of us suspicious when we are told these protestors are just like the rest of us--common souls just tired of being ignored by the petty politics of today.

Schoen, who wrote a piece in The Wall Street Journal, believes President Obama and the Democratic leadership are making a critical error in embracing the Occupy Wall Street movement—and it may cost them the 2012 election. We are told by Obama's crowd that these protestors are just like us. For example, last week, senior White House adviser David Plouffe said that "the protests you're seeing are the same conversations people are having in living rooms and kitchens all across America. . . . People are frustrated by an economy that does not reward hard work and responsibility, where Wall Street and Main Street don't seem to play by the same set of rules." Nancy Pelosi and others have echoed the message.

But Schoen says this picture of the Wall Street crowd isn't true. According to him, the Occupy Wall Street movement reflects values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people—and particularly with swing voters who are largely independent and have been trending away from the president since the debate over health-care reform.

Schoen's polling firm interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park. His findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion. So what did he discover? These people are far-leftists, not common folk like we are told repeatedly. His research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Instead, it is made up of an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda. The vast majority of demonstrators are actually employed.

Here's the scary part to me. What binds a large majority of the protesters together—regardless of age, socioeconomic status or education—is a deep commitment to left-wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth, intense regulation of the private sector, and protectionist policies to keep American jobs from going overseas. Sixty-five percent say that government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement—no matter the cost. Wow . . .

So they are not like the vast majority of Americans. Occupy Wall Street is a group of engaged progressives who are disillusioned with the capitalist system and have a distinct activist orientation. Among the general public, by contrast, 41% of Americans self-identify as conservative, 36% as moderate, and only 21% as liberal. That's why Schoen believes the Obama-Pelosi embrace of the movement could prove catastrophic for their party. Obama has thrown in with those who support his desire to tax oil companies and the rich, rather than appeal to independent and self-described moderate swing voters who want smaller government and lower taxes, not additional stimulus or interference in the private sector.

Schoen says the Democrats are doing the wrong thing here. Rather than embracing huge new spending programs and tax increases, plus increasingly radical and potentially violent activists, the Democrats should instead build a bridge to the much more numerous independents and moderates in the center by opposing bailouts and broad-based tax increases. They need to say they are with voters in the middle who want cooperation, conciliation and lower taxes. Will they do this? I don't think they will. That makes the 2012 election year more important than ever--the sides will be clear--small government versus a utopian remaking of America.