For too many months now, Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats turned their back on a growingly impatient nation in order to secretly hammer out a deal to commandeer a sixth of the nation’s economy under the pretense of health care reform. With each new payoff and each new round of backroom wheeling and dealing, the discontent grew. Rather than read the national mood as the referendum it was on his grand scheme, Obama dismissed opponents as obstructionists and made high-flown statements about doing what no administration before him had succeeded in doing.

In point of fact, he has done something no administration before him succeeded in doing. He has managed, albeit inadvertently, to reverse completely the winds of political change that had swept him into office just a year earlier. His achievement, dubious though it is, will be one for the record books.

Why Massachusetts saw red last night should be obvious now even to the most self-deluded Obamaphile — including Obama himself. Which is why this morning’s MSM headlines are mostly of the “Don’t Count Us Out Yet” variety rather than the “Full Speed Ahead on Obamacare” ilk.

The question now is what does Obama do next. Right now he has enough egg on his face to make brunch this Sunday for the entire White House staff. His first State of the Union is just around the corner, and now instead of rubbing Republicans’ noses in his success at moving the nation a giant step closer to a socialist democracy, he is faced with a major dilemma. Does he go out there and try to take a business-as-usual approach, pretending to be unscathed by Scott Brown’s—and the American people’s—victory in Massachusetts? Or does he begin to scale back his ambitious agenda and address the still-flagging economy?

More importantly, does he learn from his mistakes and begin to recognize that he works for the American people, and not the other around? If the answer to this question is no—and I suspect it will be (the leopard doesn’t change its spot) maybe those “Don’t Count Us Out Yet” articles that ran this morning may prove as wrong as the ones that predicted Obama’s face would appear on Mt. Rushmore one day.

UPDATE: And then of course, after the other hand and the OTHER hand, there’s the third hand: Walking into the spinning blades of an airplane propeller.