The appropriate gift for a first anniversary is paper. And on ballots cast in a Massachusetts special election to fill the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's seat, voters in Massachusetts sent President Barack Obama an unwelcome present.

The recriminations for Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley’s stunning 52-47 percent loss began before the final votes had even been cast. Finger-pointing about losing what, for 60 years, had been a true-blue Democratic seat to the insurgent Republican Scott Brown has pitted Democratic Party officials against the White House political shop against Coakley herself. Exactly one year after Obama's triumphant inauguration, and six months after Democrats jubilantly established their super-majority in the Senate, expectations for progressive change have come crashing back to earth.

Democratic operatives shipped up to Massachusetts to manage Coakley’s get-out-the-vote effort say they were “stunned” by the number of voters who waved them away, declaring their intentions to vote for Brown. In working-class Quincy, which should have been Coakley country, a pair of working-class Democrats told reporters, “I always vote Democratic … Brown doesn’t have a chance. The Democrats are gonna take care of it.”

Well, they didn’t. Now first and foremost on the minds of the defeated: Health care reform. Brown’s five-point victory has scrambled the conversation around Obama’s signature legislative priority, passed through the House with a slim majority in November and through the Senate with 60 Democratic votes shortly before Christmas 2009. The ink is far from dry on a final bill—and with only 59 votes, some Democrats are anticipating even greater negotiating headaches ahead.

Indeed, Brown's victory speech cast himself as a spoiler for the campaign to overhaul health care in America. “The independent majority has delivered a great victory,” he said. “People do not want the trillion-dollar health-care plan that is being forced on the American people.” Obama himself was “surprised and frustrated,” according to his press secretary, about losing a state he had carried over Sen. John McCain by 26 points. But this nasty anniversary present demonstrates what should have been clear from the day that Obama took the oath of office—voting for a charismatic black candidate was never enough.

There will be time to analyze the race ad nauseum, and perhaps more than a few Democratic heads will roll. Coupled with the loss of governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, this may smell like a major loss for the Democratic Party agenda heading into a tough year of legislation, and elections in the House and Senate. But the idea that Massachusetts means more than it should—for example, that it was a proxy fight for national Republican and national Democratic Parties, or that Brown will succeed in “killing” health care—gives everyone in Washington too much credit. This vote was not a lesson for the political strategists that sell candidates on the right and the left: It’s a lesson for the average American voter.

Brown coasted into office on an emerging anti-Beltway consensus and genuine populist distress at present economic conditions (despite the White House’s cheery pronouncements, unemployment remains at 10 percent—and at 16 percent for the black population). And he won back as much as 20 percent of the many independent voters who backed Obama in 2008. But despite being named for the Massachusetts rebels who challenged an empire, the “tea party” movement that backed Brown is still not a nationally coherent political entity. They lost a similar election in November in upstate New York. And at the close of last year, there were still zero Republican members of the House of Representatives from New England.

But the story of reduced turnout for elections that are countercyclical—congressional elections, local city council races or mayoral contests—is one that all Americans should pay attention to. On Nov. 4, 2008, we saw lines stretching from block to block to cast votes for the first black president. One year ago, we saw a similar throng. But the number of people on the national mall for the inauguration outstripped the number of votes cast in Massachusetts Tuesday. And while it may not be as inspiring to vote for a placid, workaday public servant such as Coakley, she was part of the same "movement" for which Obama had been given much credit.