Depends how you look at it

If climate change research is inexact science that can be disputed and argued, how does political science fare?

On Tuesday there were a few primaries in a handful of states. Expectations in the media were that the Tea Party as a vehicle expressing populist outrage at Big Government, Bailouts, and Taxation would rule the day. Democrats were supposed, predicted, to be on the run. Incumbents would be routed, proof that the Republican Party and the Tea Party were on the ascendancy.

A story in the Wall Street Journal has it this way: One Victory Alters Parties' Calculus.

Of all Tuesday's election results, it's the Democrats' win in a U.S. House contest in Pennsylvania that is causing both parties to re-examine what they thought they knew about the 2010 campaign ... on Wednesday, Democrats celebrated an eight-point victory in the district of the late Democratic Rep. John Murtha. Party officials said the result, along with the outcome of several Senate primaries Tuesday, had shown them a way to talk successfully to the voters who have resisted them most. Republicans were left puzzling over whether they had been too quick to expect outsized gains this fall.

This was supposed to be one of the places the Second Tea Party would be launched. Seems it wasn't.

"It was a pretty significant blowout," conceded former Rep. Tom Davis (R., Va.), who led the GOP House campaign effort from 1998 through 2002. He said the result put in question whether a wave is building that would hand Republicans a House majority.

But let it never be said that conservative pundits let reality stand in the way of making a good assertion. Two of the Journal's favorite blowhards, er, pundits, have it this way:

Rove: A Bad Day for the Obama Agenda
Barnes: Anti-incumbent? Try anti-Obama

Either they didn't read the paper, or I'm in an alternate universe.