#occupywall

Obama describes the protests as a left-wing Tea Party, but that's far from clear.

"At this point, we're staying away from political actions and really focusing on building awareness," protester Ashley Lowe says.

Unlike the Tea Party, which was willing to walk precincts and field candidates in a successful effort to push the Republican Party to the right, Occupy Wall Street doesn't want to get involved in electoral politics — at least not yet. Even so, former Clinton White House aide Bill Galston says he thinks the protests represent a force Democrats should try to harness.

"We're having a populist revolt now because the people who soared off into the economic stratosphere during the past two decades did not discharge their responsibilities to the broader society," Galston says. "And I think President Obama has everything to gain and nothing to lose by articulating that basic truth."

But another centrist Democrat, Matt Bennett of the group Third Way, isn't so sure.

"When political parties get close to angry populist movements, bad things tend to happen — it certainly has happened to Democrats before," he says. "So we're a little bit worried about how Democrats can embrace some of the themes of the Occupy Wall Street folks without really embracing the movement itself."