Scott Brown Massachusetts: Why Scott Brown Won in Mass Special Election – Democrats today were looking for ways to save President Barack Obama’s health care reform plan after losing a key Senate seat in largely Democrat Massachusetts.

Republican Scott Brown collected 52 percent of the vote Tuesday to defeat Democratic state Attorney General Martha Coakley in the special election for the seat held for decades by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy.

This will make it much harder for Mr Obama to pass a healthcare reform bill – the most important domestic policy objective of his first year as president.

Ms Coakley’s defeat is a humiliating blow for the Democrats and their agenda, and a deeply unwelcome anniversary present for President Obama a year after his inauguration.

Correspondents say the vote may not bode well for the Democrats ahead of November’s congressional elections, and that if they cannot hang on to a party s “People across the country are saying, ‘Slow it down,” Steele said.

“People across the country are saying, ‘Slow it down,” Steele said.

But David Plouffe, who directed Obama’s presidential campaign, rejected calls to scrap the bill. “We have a good health care plan,” he said. “We need to pass that. We have to lead.”

Brown said he did not see his victory as a referendum on Obama’s first year in office.