It appears that senior Senate Democrats are worried that Obama’s eagerness to gut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is threatening to squander their advantage on those issues:

Top Democrats in charge of keeping the Senate in Dem hands and maintaining the political health of the party — DSCC chair Patty Murray and messaging chief Chuck Schumer — have privately expressed frustration that deep Medicare cuts risk squandering the major political advantage Democrats have built up on the issue, people familiar with internal discussions say.

Senators Murray and Schumer, along with other Dems like Debbie Stabenow and Mark Begich, have warned against deep cuts in recent leadership meetings, a source familiar with the meetings says, another sign of the unrest that the possibility of serious entitlements cuts is creating among Congressional Democrats.

“We shouldn’t be giving away our advantage on Medicare,” said a source familiar with Murray’s thinking, in characterizing her objections in private meetings. “We should be very careful about giving away the biggest advantage we’ve had as Democrats in some time.”

This, by the way, is why the Democrats won’t retake the house, and will lose the Senate, in 2012.

Because it’s increasingly Obama finds the concept doing anything that might benefit the party as distasteful and gauche.