WASHINGTON — The findings blare: NBC/WSJ Poll: 60% Say Reduce Social Security & Medicare Payments to Wealthier Americans.

Like we needed yet another poll to tell us what we already know.

Unfortunately, Pres. Obama and the Democratic Party do. From the latest NBC/WSJ poll:

Less than a quarter of Americans support making significant cuts to Social Security or Medicare to tackle the country’s mounting deficit, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, illustrating the challenge facing lawmakers who want voter buy-in to alter entitlement programs.

In the poll, Americans across all age groups and ideologies said by large margins that it was “unacceptable” to make significant cuts in entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit. Even tea party supporters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to Social Security “unacceptable.” […]

Maybe now that this polling is out Pres. Obama will have a reason to act like a Democrat.

After all, once he saw Independents were on the side of the unions he was inspired to come out to give a bland statement about not bashing unions, which as bad as it was is all anyone’s going to get from this man. Because Obama’s not willing to risk anything by taking a strong stand.

Oh, but wait a minute.

There was no risk at any time.

What I’ve been writing about, whether it’s warning the health care mandate was a loser, that there was never a need for a deficit commission, or that the Bush tax cuts should not be extended, or that Americans don’t want their Social Security and Medicare messed with and prefer wealthier Americans pay more, all of it, was baked into the American mindset across this country from the start.

That’s how destructive Pres. Obama’s Democratic Party budget deficit, austerity, suck up to the Right and follow them in all things economic message has been.

Not only was the Bush tax cut extension unnecessary, but as has been chronicled here and elsewhere, it went against what the majority of Americans wanted.

Pres. Obama also didn’t need a stinking deficit commission, not that I and others didn’t write that long before he stuck Democrats with it.

But that’s not all.

Barack Obama ignored the opportunity to get creative and raise tax rates on multi-millionaires and billionaires, addressing a disproportionate imbalance that’s been around for years. He’d have had the country behind him if he’d done it and been hailed a hero, which is never far from his mind.

Unfortunately, Pres. Obama wants the fat cat corporate big shots in his corner first. But you can’t have both today, because America’s corporations are not on the side of the middle class anymore.

Instead of following the people and the Democratic Party history, Mr. Obama and the Democratic elite not only handed the Republican Right the midterms, because they Obama wouldn’t take the tax fight to the people. But Pres. Obama and the Democratic Party are responsible for handing states and legislatures over to Republicans who want to carve away collective bargaining, ignoring the people, while also chipping away further at women’s freedoms.

This is what happens when you have someone leading who not only doesn’t know where he wants to go, but is so clueless that he’s willing to follow people whose entire political thinking is diametrically opposed to everything the Democratic Party has stood for since F.D.R.

Pres. Obama gave away the store to the Right when he didn’t have to, though it’s not like this lack of purpose wasn’t in the coming attractions.

If Republicans had any decent candidates at all Pres. Obama would be in real trouble, because there’s no doubt he’s vulnerable based on general political incompetence, which began when he adopted the economic argument of the Right.

Taylor Marsh is a political analyst, writer and commentator on national politics. A veteran national politics writer, Taylor’s been writing on the web since 1996. She has reported from the White House, been profiled in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and has been seen on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, as well as on radio across the dial and on satellite, including the BBC. Marsh lives in the Washington, D.C. area. This column is cross posted from her blog.