Massachusetts shocked the country Jan. 19 when citizens opted to elect Republican Scott Brown to Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat.

Brown, a former state legislator, is the first Republican to be elected to the office since 1972. His victory over the state’s Attorney General, Martha Coakley, extinguished Democratic hopes for a filibuster-proof Senate. His election potentially hurts the Democrats’ chances of passing a controversial health care bill and other legislation on President Obama’s agenda.

Brown may well be the 41st vote to prevent the Democratic-led health care plan from moving forward. His victory has given Republicans around the country a surge of much-needed confidence.

The Republicans have appeared helpless in the past two years, losing long-held Republican districts like New York’s 23rd Congressional District, where a Democrat won in a special election back in November. Moreover, the Democrats are facing drama within their own party, as many Senate Democrats who represent conservative districts have vowed they will not support the current Senate health care bill. The election of Brown has put the Senate bill in an even more vulnerable state.

The House passed its version of a health care bill in early November 2009, offering a public option that the Senate highly opposed. 

The Senate passed a watered-down version of a health care bill on Christmas Eve. This bill focused on insurance reform but no public option, a major dilemma for House Democrats.

To compromise, they are sending both bills to a joint committee, which will merge the two and send them to the House for a vote and then to Obama, who will sign it into law. But this step is not so easy, as we saw on Thursday when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Health care reform faced failure Jan. 21 as the leaders struggled to cooperate and merge the two bills. Pelosi announced that the House would oppose the Senate bill because it lacks a public option and covers too few people. The Senate Democrats, however, refuse to start from scratch in order to appease the House. Direction on fixing the problem from the Obama Administration has not yet been given.

Democrats struggled all year to maintain a coalition in support of health care reform without any GOP votes. Brown’s improbable win in Massachusetts Jan. 19 now looks like it has the potential to end that almost-impossible balancing act.

What does all of this mean for the Democrats as mid-term elections approach? The Democrats put all of their eggs in one basket: health care. If we hearken back to the Clinton administration, which failed to pass health care in 1993, we can remember that the Republicans regained the House and Senate shortly thereafter. Despite the Democratic resolve to pass a health care bill, there is a strong possibility they will not be able to agree on an approach before this year’s elections, leaving the Democrats vulnerable to defeat in November. A Democratic defeat could leave Obama with an even lower approval rating and a very difficult campaign season in just two short years.

Brown’s election was a wake-up call to Democrats in Washington. If they don’t pass a legitimate form of health care before Congress recesses, the campaign season will prove difficult for Democrats.