Scott Brown campaigns outside the TD Garden in downtown Boston...

Scott Brown campaigns outside the TD Garden in downtown Boston on Monday. (Jan. 18, 2010) Credit: Getty Images

The Republican Scott Brown won the Massacussetts Senate seat vacated with the death of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy -- dealing a clear blow to President Barack Obama in his role as national party boss.

From Sen. Charles Schumer, Democrat, seen as potential successor to Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, and whose partisan listen-up contrition is interesting:

“The country is speaking to us, and we will hear them in the agenda we pursue over the next year. Our focus must be on jobs, the economy and delivering for the middle class.”

From Anthony Manetta, who heads the Roosevelt Strategy Group in Babylon, which advises political campaigns:

"The Republican current that started with the Gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey, then making a stop over in Nassau County with Ed Mangano's win, is not only continuing but still gaining momentum as evident in Massachusetts. The Republican voter seems to not only be voting Republican again, but voting with ferocity."

This analysis by Gerald Seib in the Wall Street Journal is worth a look for the survey information it includes.

From the newspaper's edition earlier today:

"The Democratic party's problems, crystallized in the last-ditch scramble to save Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat in a special election Tuesday, can be traced to a simple mistake: Many in the party misread voters' desire to switch parties in recent years as an ideological shift to the left."

"In fact, there is little sign that Americans' ideological tendencies changed much at all, even as voters gave control of Congress to Democrats in 2006 and handed President Barack Obama and the rest of his party a massive victory in 2008. Ideologically, the country remained throughout this period what it was at the outset: a center to center-right nation."

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