After President Obama spoke about Iraq, Politico posted a story last week that said Democrats were “starting to unite” behind his policy. It reported that party members “from a broad ideological spectrum” supported the decision to deploy 300 military advisers as terrorists threatened Baghdad.

Readers who ventured beyond the frothy claim were rewarded with this hidden gem: “Senate Democrats actually did not watch the president’s speech on Thursday, instead talking energy policy over lunch.”

In other words, anything Obama said was good enough for them. Nothing, not even the possible creation of a new jihadist state, can wake Dems from their hypnotic daze. Their master’s voice turns them into iron filings, obedient to his magnet.

Pass the dessert, I vote yes!

What, pray tell, is the Obama “policy” they are uniting behind? Since he didn’t actually articulate one, the only conclusion is that they support him, period.

That the leftist media remain a sucker for story lines about Democratic unity, as opposed to those about a Republican “civil war,” is a disgrace that helps define the age of Obama.

Uncurious and unserious journalists are not journalists. They are stenographers at best, shills at worst.

Their abdication is destructive. The refusal to subject Obama to the same critical standard applied to Republican presidents provides cover for policies that lack public support. And that blackout of skepticism serves to keep potentially wayward Democrats in line. Then and only then is it possible to claim they are “starting to unite” behind a policy that doesn’t exist.

Contrast that fable with the results of a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll: It found Obama’s approval rating falling to 41 percent, with only 37 percent approving of his foreign policy.

A staggering 54 percent say they do not believe the president “is able to lead the country and get the job done,” with just 42 percent saying he can. A Gallup poll finds only 31 percent approve of his handling of immigration.

The dreary view of the president reflects the reality of ordinary Americans who see a weak economy and mounting crises at home and abroad. From the VA and IRS scandals, the ObamaCare mess and the surge of illegal immigrants on the southern border, to slaughters in Syria and Iraq, Russia’s advance on Ukraine and China’s aggression against its neighbors, they see the world turning darker and more chaotic.

They no longer believe their president is capable of rising to the challenges, making this a watershed moment for Obama and the nation.

If we lived in a parliamentary system, that sour mood could trigger a no-confidence vote and a collapse of the government.

Yet the Dems fall in line. They rouse themselves only to denounce Republicans as obstructionists, and occasionally racists, for daring to criticize Obama. With few exceptions, they show no interest in probing the IRS for playing political enforcer because so many Dems demanded the agency do just that.

This is wholesale dereliction by an entire party, yet there is no chance of getting to the truth because Eric Holder’s Justice Department is also corrupted by partisanship.

Most of the Washington media are similarly blinkered, defining all GOP complaints as “political,” as if Dems are doing God’s work.

A popular idea among historians is that cataclysmic events, including World War I, happen because major players “sleepwalk” into tragic mistakes. Complacency, as well as ambition, cowardice and greed, lead to bad decisions and fatal actions.

That pattern suggested itself in a stray comment Obama made Thursday. Aiming to do as little as possible about Iraq, he answered a question about Iran that was consistent with his fetish for the Kumbaya moment.

“Our view,” he said, “is that Iran can play a constructive role if it is helping to send the same message to the Iraqi government that we’re sending, which is that Iraq only holds together if it’s inclusive and that — if the interests of Sunni, Shia and Kurd are all respected.”

Inclusive? Ah, yes, that must be it — a desire for inclusion is why the mad mullahs are sending fighters to Syria and Iraq and financing terror groups Hezbollah and Hamas. Rest assured, once the mullahs get nuclear weapons, we’ll all be included.

Maybe then the president and his party will wake up.

Extraordinarily wrong

Mayor de Blasio, celebrating his first budget, reached for the sky — rhetorically. “I don’t use the word lightly, but it is truly transcendent,” he proclaimed.

His favorite word, “extraordinary,” made seven appearances by my count. His staff, City Council members, their staff — everybody was extraordinary. That makes City Hall better than Lake Wobegon, where only the children are above average.

Throw in “profound” and “incredible” and you might conclude the mayor pulled off a miracle. Sleight of hand is more like it.

The total budget of $75 billion includes added spending in many categories, enough that the total is a reported 7 percent increase over last year. That includes higher state aid and costs for the new teachers contract, but not the income-tax hike de Blasio wanted.

Still, with inflation running under 2 percent, the pattern isn’t sustainable, and future deficits are sure to grow. That’s why I believe de Blasio will try again to raise taxes after November’s election.

He might succeed this time. If Democrats take a clear majority in the state Senate, they’ll have the votes for tax hikes in both houses. Gov. Cuomo, if he’s re-elected, will be eager to repay de Blasio for helping him get the Working Families Party backing and more likely to say yes to a tax hike.

Nothing extraordinary about that. Just tax-and-spend politics as usual.

Bharara’s big bungle

Manhattan federal prosecutor Preet Bharara has had a remarkable run as a gangbuster, but his office was worse than amateurish in screwing up the Malcolm Smith corruption case.

Only during the trial did prosecutors produce nearly 70 additional hours of tapes they made with a key witness. Defense lawyers and the judge were shocked, and prosecutors conceded they never transcribed the conversations, some of which were in Yiddish.

You don’t need to go to law school to realize it was daffy to withhold the tapes on that theory that they weren’t relevant. Watching a single episode of “Perry Mason” would have been enough.

Four jurors couldn’t wait for the translations, so the judge declared a mistrial. Smith, a Democrat charged with trying to bribe his way onto the mayoral ballot last year, and a co-defendant, a GOP operative from Queens, will be retried in January. Meanwhile, Smith runs for re-election with the presumption of innocence.

Hot on IRS’s e-mail trail

A friend suggests a way to find the “lost” emails of Lois Lerner in the IRS case. “If no one else can figure out how to retrieve them, let’s pardon Edward Snowden. He’ll get the job done.”