It was quite a week in politics.

In Massachusetts, Republican Scott Brown pulled off one of the most significant political upsets in years by winning the Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy in heavily Democratic Massachusetts.

Senator-elect Brown’s cause was greatly aided by a number of factors. His opponent, Martha Coakley, ran a truly hapless campaign. Ms. Coakley seemingly did not like to spend much time with actual voters on the campaign trail (she thought it was a good idea to make negative comments about Mr. Brown shaking hands outside of Fenway Park) and then only got her campaign spots on the air after Mr. Brown had established himself as a plausible and likeable candidate. When the ads did appear, the attacks on Mr. Brown were so relentlessly negative, and sometimes unfair, to the point of making Ms. Coakley seem desperate. Mr. Brown, on the other hand, scored points with a homespun campaign featuring his pickup truck and he attracted huge amounts of financial and volunteer help from all around the country.

But the big reason for Mr. Brown’s triumph was growing alarm about the policies of President Obama and the Democrats in Congress and in particular the pending health care bill. The health care legislation was increasingly viewed as cumbersome, inefficient and very expensive, with the possibility of compromising many people’s existing coverage. In addition, in light of the continuing recession and double digit unemployment, the all-out push for health reform seemed like a misplaced priority.

Although Mr. Brown’s win had tremendous symbolic importance, it had enormous practical significance as well. The election of Mr. Brown as 41st Republican senator effectively derailed the Democrats’ plan to enact health care legislation in the Senate on a filibuster proof party line vote.

Now, if the Democrats want to move forward on health care, they face much less attractive parliamentary options (attempting to pass the Senate bill unchanged in the House, which Nancy Pelosi says is currently impossible, or passing only a portion of the bill through the reconciliation process). The best guess is that the bill will be laid aside, at least for a while.

For his part, Mr. Obama seems to have taken the tact of diverting attention from the Massachusetts/ health care debacles by populist attacks on banks and other financial institutions. In campaign style appearances, the President railed against Wall Street and pushed his new proposed tax on banks and other proposals limiting the scope of their activities.

This type of attack seems to be a bit of a two-edged sword. While business titans are unpopular with the public as a class (with some justification after the collapse of last year’s speculative bubble), it is also true that the financial sector is needed to supply the investment capital, credit and liquidity to restart the economy. And Mr. Obama’s jawboning could have negative consequences. As an article in the Washington Post observed last week, an “aggressive stance against the bankers, financiers and even government officials popularly blamed for causing the crisis is gaining political momentum, and there are signs it is eroding the very financial stability the government championed.”

Voters may find it difficult to reconcile a spooked market and the creation of a weakened and risk averse financial sector with ending the recession and putting the country back to work. Having lost the health care battle, at least for the moment, Mr. Obama can ill afford the political reputation of an anti-business meddler whose efforts at effecting recovery do more harm than good.