There's no end of spin about Tuesday's election results, but Alaskans can tell our compatriots in other parts of the country they should be careful about reading too much into them.

Political opponents of President Obama rush to see rebuke in the governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia, while ignoring the victory of a moderate Democrat over a true-believing conservative in an upstate New York district that had been Republican for more than a century.

Obama's backers shrug off the Virginia and New Jersey results as having little to do with Obama and much to do with state politics, even though both states went Democratic in last year's presidential race.

Mostly people are seeing what they want to see, and what they would have you see.

What people are seeing now, through whatever lenses, doesn't matter much.

The elections that count on the national level happen in 2010, and a lot can happen in the year between now and then. Alaskans have recent, first-hand experience of a political landscape changing fast.

Sarah Palin went from wildly popular governor to vice presidential candidate to ex-governor in less than a year.

Sean Parnell went from the light gov who couldn't beat a weakened Don Young for Congress to the steady-as-he-goes governor restoring order post-Palin.

Alaskans who can remember back to 1990 recall Wally Hickel's stunning victory when he hijacked the Alaskan Independence Party ticket and beat Democrat Tony Knowles and Republican Arliss Sturgulewski in the race for governor.

The point is that as circumstances change, so do poll numbers and election results. You can draw some conclusions about Virginia, New Jersey and Plattsburgh, N.Y., from Tuesday's vote. Beyond that? Only this -- for most of America, the jury's still out on the Obama administration. Major decisions -- health care reform, the course of the war in Afghanistan -- are still in flux. And then there's the economy.

Spin lasts about as long as it takes a coin to stop rotating and come to rest on your kitchen table. Except where they were held, the 2009 elections already look less important than they did Tuesday night.