Massachusetts Special Election Results Challenge Obama's Agenda

Senator-elect Brown will fill the seat left vacant with the passing of Senator Edward M. Kennedy in August and become the first Massachusetts Republican senator since 1979.

Switching the seat from a Democrat to a Republican means that Democrats no longer have the 60 votes necessary to keep the Republicans from filibustering and blocking bills they don't agree with.

Democrats "on notice" for 2010 mid-term elections

	In December, Martha Coakley held a double-digit lead over Brown in the polls.

Senator Kennedy served almost 50 years in what has long been thought of as safe democratic state.  But despite campaigning by the Kennedy family, Democratic candidate Martha Coakley lost 47 percent to 52 percent.

Voter dissatisfaction over the financial bailout, a weak economy and the health care bill sent many to the polls and left Democrats "to wonder whether they and Obama have an answer to that anger that can head off potentially devastating losses in the November midterm elections," writes Dan Balz in the Washington Post.

In his acceptance speech, Brown said Democrats should be “on notice,” warning “it’s just the beginning of an election year filled with many, many surprises, I can tell you that. They will be challenged again and again across this great land, and when there’s trouble in Massachusetts, rest assured there’s trouble everywhere, and they know it.”

All seats in the House and many in the Senate are up for grabs in mid-term elections later this year.

Referendum on health care bills in Congress?

	Democrats are now one vote short of the the 'supermajority' needed to pass health care reform.

The Chairman of the Republican Party, Michael Steele, said the results were the voters' rejection of the healthcare bills passed in both the House and Senate last year with almost zero Republican help.

Democrats, who spent most of the past year crafting the legislation to expand health care coverage and enact more strident regulation on the health insurance industry, may have to start all over again.

While the Democratic candidate was leading in the polls by a double digit margin last month, Brown surged from behind on a platform opposing the healthcare bills, which he said included shady deals for votes and showed arrogance by President Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress.

Obama’s new course: jobs and fiscal responsibility

	The election results surprised the Obama administration, which had been counting on 60 Democratic votes in the Senate.

The loss of Kennedy’s seat comes only one day shy of thepresident’s one year anniversary in office. 

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Tuesday that the president is "both surprised and frustrated" and "not pleased" by the Massachusetts race.

In response to the new balance of power in Congress, President Obama will shift his strategy to a “more populist tone and an embrace of greater fiscal responsibility,” according to The New York Times.

Terry McAuliffe the one time Democratic National Committee chairman and governor hopeful for Virginia last year said “This is a giant wake-up call. We have to keep our focus on job creation. Everything we have to do is related to job creation. We have to do a much better job on the message.”