Leo Hindery has a great piece on Huffington Post about the need for the administration to shift its focus and stop triangulating against the left to set itself out as moderate and reasonable.

It’s pretty obvious that there are people in the administration telling the president every day that he’s exactly ‘where he needs to be’ in the tug-of-war between Progressives on the left and the Tea Party-goers on the right. But there’s a big difference between moving away from the ‘crazies’ and ignoring your true political base, which I would argue for President Obama is mostly the American workers who gave him victories in those states that John Kerry unfortunately was not able to win in 2004.

Those of us at that dinner desperately want President Obama to succeed, but even more desperately we want to see the entirety of his/our government focused on a full and fair economic recovery that quickly creates and then retains millions of new good-quality jobs. The House Members among us at dinner were compelled in Obama’s first year to accept compromises on the stimulus package and on the bank bailouts, and we all grew to accept (if not really like) the administration’s ‘promise’ that after health care reform, everything would be about jobs, jobs, jobs.

Beyond winning politically, as I said yesterday, there has to be an intentional effort to make the public understand the value and importance of government as a positive factor in Americans’ lives.