This Wall Street Journal column by Douglas Schoen illustrates the political dangers inherit in President Obama and Nancy Pelosi’s support for Occupy Wall Street.

For one, because it doesn’t have a defined set of goals (aside from public sex and getting high on a bong), the movement could take a detour down some even more unpleasant one-way streets (say, European-style violence). If that happens, Democrats don’t want to have their wagons hitched to the occupiers.

But the WSJ article discusses another practical consideration: The values of Occupy Wall Street don’t reflect mainstream America, nor the views of coveted independent voters:

The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies. On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York’s Zuccotti Park. Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion.

Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn’t represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises 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, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.

SNIP

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. By a large margin (77%-22%), they support raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, but 58% oppose raising taxes for everybody, with only 36% in favor. And by a close margin, protesters are divided on whether the bank bailouts were necessary (49%) or unnecessary (51%).

Thus 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 the Obama-Pelosi embrace of the movement could prove catastrophic for their party.

The differences between OWS and the Tea Party are many, but perhaps the biggest strategic one is that the Tea Party was, and is, focused on a set of core issues. Tea Partiers typically have a wide set of underlying beliefs — opposition to illegal immigration and some social conservative values, for instance — but they are united in focusing on the goals of lower taxes, more freedom, and less government. In contrast, OWS is flailing about in search of a focused mission.