Scott Brown’s speech yesterday in Massachusetts deserves not only to be read but also remembered. It was simultaneously straightforward and sophisticated, understated and eloquent, perfectly presented with Boston heroes surrounding him. It was, for the reasons enumerated by Scott Johnson, a classic speech.

Barack Obama’s speech yesterday was vintage 2008 Obama, as he leaned into the microphone to push waves of applause higher as he sought to energize a base. He seemed happy to be back in campaign mode, where everything is aspiration, hope, and the promise of change. But this time he spoke against a backdrop of actually existing Obamanism, a president who turned out to be a liberal in a hurry, pushing the most partisan piece of legislation within memory, railing yesterday against “fat cats,” “Wall Street,” and “big banks … big insurance companies … big drug companies.” It was unpresidential.

It is fitting that in Massachusetts tomorrow, Obamanism will face a test that cannot be met by a Louisiana Purchase, or a Cornhusker Kickback, or a Collective Bargaining Kickback, or convening a vote at one in the morning or on a Saturday night. It will be a plebiscite that the president himself has nationalized — conducted on the last day of his first year, in the most liberal state in the nation, in the place where the original tea party occurred. If two polls taken yesterday are accurate (both showing Brown up by 9.6 points), it will be a shot heard ’round the world.