Mass. hysteria: scenes from the revolutionary takeover of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat.

• Author: Moynihan, Michael C.

It was only 11 A.M. on Sunday, two days before Massachusetts voters were scheduled to choose Ted Kennedy's successor in the Senate, and the bartender at 99 Restaurant in Charlestown was already imposing Belfast pub rules. "There will be no discussion of politics in here today," the squat barmaid grumbled toward a knot of debaters at the end of the bar. "Not until this goddamn election ends." The politically engaged customers--all male and, by the looks of it, all Irish-American--offered a collective shrug and went back to arguing over the race for what one of them called "Teddy's seat."

The bartender's concern was understandable, for the people of Charlestown have been known to be a bit excitable politically. Around the corner from here, back in 1976, a disagreement over the wisdom of using court-ordered busing to desegregate public schools ended in a stone-throwing riot. In 1995, at this very bar, a "mob-related" dispute culminated in the shooting deaths of five people. Now a droopy-faced local with a Lech Walesa mustache--four beers deep before noon, dressed head-to-toe in New England Patriots-branded clothes--announced calmly that Tuesday would be the most important moment in modern Massachusetts history.

In this bluest of blue states, I had been following Republican state legislator Scott Brown and Democratic gaffe master and Attorney General Martha Coakley as they weaved their way toward Tuesday's finish line in Boston. I had spent hours talking to union members, former Democrats, current Democrats, Kennedy voters, and gay rights campaigners who were--as almost all of them said--Scott Brown supporters worried about the "explosive growth of government." All natives of the Commonwealth and reflexively Democratic, they kvetched about what they viewed as reckless government spending, rising taxes, and a risky overhaul of a health care system that treats them rather well. As one member of a pipefitters union told me, "None of the guys in my union trust that Obama won't hit us with that 40 percent health care tax."

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When I was a college student in this state, before the days when you could get any book overnighted from Amazon.com, I had to special-order Road to Serfdom at a local bookstore. Two days before the election, at a rally in front of Northeastern University, I chatted with a Massachusetts native with a Boston accent as broad as the Shannon who was carrying a hand-lettered sign that alluded to F.A. Hayek's classic 1944 defense of the market order. The following day, at a Republican rally in the tiny town of Littleton (Obama, 58; McCain, 41), almost every car that drove by honked in support of Scott Brown. A surprising number of Brown sign holders said they had always voted for Teddy Kennedy but insisted they pledged no allegiance to the Democratic Party.

On Tuesday, January 19, they backed up that talk with shocking action. Brown upset Coaldey and the entire Massachusetts political establishment, taking 51.9 percent of the vote in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 3 to 1. By the end of the week, Congressional Democrats' plan to overhaul the nation's health care system was failing apart. If an unknown Republican can singlehandedly shatter hopes for a health care bill by winning the Kennedy family seat, anything in American politics is now possible.

Nigerian Zionists for Coakley, Irish Republicans for Brown

No one in state politics expected anything like this. For Brown to lose by 15 points would have, in December, been considered a respectable result. To win was inconceivable.

Everywhere I turned I found r-dropping Bostonians complaining about government, insisting...