Scott Brown Victory Upends Senate and the President's Agenda

Scott Brown celebrated with his wife Gail Huff and daughters after defeating Democrat Martha Coakley in the U.S. Senate race on Tuesday night.

From The New York Times:

Scott Brown, a little-known Republican state senator, rode an old pickup truck and a growing sense of unease among independent voters to an extraordinary upset Tuesday night when he was elected to fill the Senate seat that was long held by Edward M. Kennedy in the overwhelmingly Democratic state of Massachusetts.

[How blue? Massachusetts is the only state that joined me as a young, wide-eyed liberal law student in voting for George McGovern over Richard Nixon in 1972.]

And after the results were announced, one centrist Democratic senator, Jim Webb of Virginia, called on Senate leaders to suspend any votes on the Democrats’ health care legislation until Mr. Brown is sworn into office. The election, he said, was a referendum on both health care and the integrity of the government process.
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And from an article in The Washington Post entitled "Democrats find themselves on wrong end of the politics of discontent":

President Obama and the Democrats rode a wave of anger aimed at the presidency of George W. Bush to victories in 2006 and 2008. Now, a year to the day after Obama was sworn into office, in a dramatic reversal of fortunes, populist anger has turned sharply against the president and his party.