From an excellent op-ed posted at POLITICO by William Schneider on the message voters delivered to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid:

The Massachusetts message to Democrats is, "Be afraid. Be very afraid." Because a full-scale populist revolt is breaking out in the country. Again.

Sen.-elect Scott Brown said on Tuesday night, "[Democrats] will be challenged again and again across this country. When there's trouble in Massachusetts, there's trouble everywhere. And now they know it."

A populist revolt is "us" versus "them." "Us" is "we the people." "Them" is the governing class. Right now, the governing class is mostly Democratic. It certainly is in Massachusetts, where every member of Congress, every statewide elected official and nearly 90 percent of state legislators are Democrats.

Why is this happening? For two reasons. One is the same reason it happened in the late 1970s and again in the early 1990s: the economy, stupid.

When joblessness goes up and the government doesn't seem to be able to do anything about it — or worse, when the government spends a lot of money and it doesn't seem to be doing much good — voters get mad. They take out their rage on political insiders. Throw the bums out! Cut their allowance! Limit their terms!

Read the full column at the link below:

Dems face populist revolt - William Schneider - POLITICO.com