Ted Kennedy must be spinning in his grave.

Republican Sen. Scott Brown dealt a devastating blow to President Barack Obama’s domestic agenda last week, when the largely unknown candidate captured the Senate seat of a man once regarded as the “Lion of the Senate.”

It is ironic that the one Senate seat that upset Democratic supermajority within the Senate is the very seat once held by Ted Kennedy, the man that made health care reform the cornerstone of his political career.

The recent election of Brown in Massachusetts should be setting off alarm bells within the Democratic Party. This Senate seat for Massachusetts, a state that has always been predominantly Democratic, was held for more than 47 years by Ted Kennedy. In effect, losing that seat has put Obama’s health care reform agenda on life-support.

Many speculate the reason is that people across the country are unhappy with the rising rates of unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcy. The president’s campaign promises have not translated into effective policies, reaping anything close to tangible results. That is why the symbolism of Brown’s election is so important. 

Peggy Noonan, columnist for The Wall Street Journal, thinks that a pattern may be emerging.

“First it was New Jersey and Virginia, now we see Massachusetts going Republican,” Noonan said. She points to what she thinks might be the cause for the president’s falling popularity. “He lost the center,” she said. “He needs to hold on to middle America if he wants to prosper.”

Noonan also pointed out that an accurate barometer of how America is feeling at this moment, might be found in how the suburbs voted during these recent elections. “They have gone overwhelmingly Republican, only one year after being predominantly Democrat,” Noonan said.

The president is a great orator and few will debate that, but does that translate into being a born leader? The problem is that many political commentators are beginning to think Obama is becoming a “one-term president” and a “lame duck.” In a country where ideology has come to dominate party lines above issues and everything else, little space is left for dialogue and compromise. With each camp entrenched into narrow modes of preordained thought, it is no surprise that the end result are intellectual giants like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

To make matters even worse, the Republicans seem justified in their newfound zeal. There are a lot of Americans out there that are very impatient with the current state of the economy. As they see it, nothing has being done to ameliorate the situation. Republicans also have the populist movement and the Tea Party movement behind them. Obama seems like an honorable man, but he is aloof to these real threats. He has suffered recent losses due to his inability to connect with middle America. This is nothing new for the president.

There is a saying that says people tend to mistake kindness for a weakness. The president’s problem is that he is too much of a nice guy. He always wants to compromise with Republicans, believing that cooler heads will prevail. Obama reminds me of Jimmy Carter; a nice enough person but not the type you want running the most powerful nation in the world.

If only half of the energy spent on political maneuvering were spent on finding ways to create viable jobs. If that were the case, then Obama might not find himself in the predicament he is in right now. He can keep complaining that his predecessor left him a trough full of problems, but if the president continues to spend his time on less important matters — such as plans on how to win Democratic midterm elections in the fall — then he is losing sight of the big picture and what is of immediate concern to the citizens of this country.

Noonan said it best when she described the president’s easy attitude as being involved too much in “the minutia of legislation,” when he should be “acting grandly and proposing grand schemes” to at least bandage the hemorrhage of jobs across the country. That should be high priority, not securing seats in an upcoming election.

The president needs to get his priorities straight. This is one reason why his party lost their 60-seat supermajority. The election of Scott Brown has breathed new life into Republicans nationwide, at least for the present moment.