What will Democrats do now that Scott Brown won?

Scott Brown, Republican, won the "Teddy Kennedy Senate Seat" decisively - beyond the margin of ACORN, the margin of lawyer, and the margin of Franken-style recounts. Many Democrats are in shock. Ann Althouse hopes the President, a "man of change", can change and become the President she thought he could be when she voted for him.

But there had been reports that President Obama intended to press even harder in his liberal agenda if Scott Brown won. Wretchard:

What’s really interesting is whether the current political crisis will lead to a recovery of the center or whether it simply presages wilder maneuvers. One thing to watch, I think, is what happens internally to both political parties. I think both parties are carrying dysfunctional mindsets which came into existence in eras long gone by. Can the Democratic party “reform” itself? The shadow of 1968 is still like a monkey on its back. Can the Republican party do likewise in its own way, and thus can politics realign itself in such a way that a new stability based on sensible and productive policies can emerge?

One thing I am convinced of is that Barack Obama is not the man to do it. His ideas are old in the worst of ways; not as in validated by long weathering but as in repeatedly rejected by history. But they are all he has. And the really scary thing about his aloofness and indifference is that he may really live in a place that you can’t go.

So my guess is that while he has no money and no prospect of getting any, the President knows only one move: double down again.

It will be fascinating to watch how the Democrats adjust to this new reality.

VDH:

The best thing that could happen to Barack Obama is more Democratic losses in hodgepodge elections that might yank away our young transfixed Narcissus from his mesmerizing reflecting pool.*

Almost immediately after Obama showed his ideological cards last spring, I suggested in the first weeks of his presidency that the bait-and-switch president would soon face a Carter/Clinton moment in which he could either press on with his polarizing ideology, damage his party for a generation, and eventually end up churlish and sneering at the electorate, who did not appreciate his exalted morality and genius — or triangulate and follow the Dick Morris/Bill Clinton model of talking and acting sort of centrist.

Who knows after Obama’s Scott Brown moment?

*Update: Official White House "Narcissus views his reflection" Photo. Do the White House photographers read VDH? Do they like Obama? Note also the quote of President Obama by departing representative Marion Berry.

Berry recounted meetings with White House officials, reminiscent of some during the Clinton days, where he and others urged them not to force Blue Dogs “off into that swamp” of supporting bills that would be unpopular with voters back home.

“I’ve been doing that with this White House, and they just don’t seem to give it any credibility at all,” Berry said. “They just kept telling us how good it was going to be. The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, ‘Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.’