I DO NOT THINK THAT WORD "INCUMBENCY" MEANS WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS

This is a peculiar story from Axios's Andrew Solender:

Democrats hit the anti-incumbency trap

Democrats are learning a hard lesson Republicans know all too well: The party out of power doesn't just ride the anti-incumbency wave — it can also get swept up in it.

Why it matters: The populist energy surging through the left after President Trump's return to the White House is roiling Democratic primaries and fueling establishment fears about the party's general election chances.

Just ask Senate Republicans how that went for them in 2010, 2012 and 2022.

In 2010, Senate Republicans gained 6 seats (and House Republicans gained 63 seats), so even though they failed to win the Delaware Senate race with Christine ("I'm not a witch") O'Donnell and perhaps blew a couple of other potential wins, they had no real reason to complain. The "anti-incumbency wave" in 2012 ended with the re-election of the incumbent president, so maybe there was no anti-incumbency wave at all. And 2022 ended with Republicans gaining 9 seats in the House and Democrats gaining 1 seat in the Senate, so, again, maybe it wasn't really a strongly anti-incumbent year.

What are Solender's examples of anti-incumbency pressure on Democrats?

Former state Rep. Amish Shah — whose grassroots, door-to-door campaigning tactics the DCCC does not believe are effective — prevailed over the party favorite, ex-TV journalist Marlene Galán-Woods.

The DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] ran a $500,000 joint ad buy with Galán-Woods and outside Democratic groups spent millions more to support her, but to no avail.

Shah's win came after progressives Randy Villegas of California and Matt Dunlap of Maine defeated DCCC-backed rivals in primaries last month.

But none of the losing candidates in these primaries were incumbents.

While Villegas and Shah are running to flip GOP-held seats, Dunlap is simply trying to hold retiring Rep. Jared Golden's (D-Maine) district.

"Incumbent" is a word that has a meaning. It means you're the current officeholder. The establishment-endorsed candidates in these races weren't the current officeholders.

It's as if to Solender -- and maybe to the establishment Democrats who served as spin doctors for his story -- "incumbent" means preferred establishment candidate. Just being in the clique -- being the Democratic establishment's favorite -- is like being the incumbent.

Solender continues:

Add that to Democrats' big mess in Maine, where populist left-wing darling Graham Platner dropped out earlier this month amid allegations of sexual assault, which he denied.

Platner, a self-described oyster farmer, had won the Democratic nomination after muscling out Maine Gov. Janet Mills, the preferred choice of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Instead state party activists have turned to Troy Jackson, a progressive logger and state Senate majority leader who is already facing scrutiny over alleged angry outbursts during his time in the legislature.

Jackson is leading in the first poll of the race and is a 67% favorite according to Polymarket, but this is a "big mess" for Democrats, according to Solender. And hey, it might be -- Collins consistently trailed in the polls the last time she ran, then won handily. But the polling this time might be right -- the betting markets think so. In any case, Janet Mills may be the incumbent governor, but she's not the incumbent senator. Yet it's as if she was owed the nomination because she was the establishment's preferred candidate.

You can probably guess which race this is leading up to:

One of Democrats' biggest headache this cycle is Michigan, which has primaries on Aug. 4.

Centrist Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and progressive Abdul El-Sayed are pummeling each other to be the Democratic candidate in what is sure to be a highly competitive U.S. Senate race.

Establishment Democrats are petrified about an El-Sayed win....

Again, what does this have to do with incumbency? Neither Stevens nor El-Sayed is the incumbent. (That would be Gary Peters, a Democrat, who's retiring.) But it's as if being the establishment favorite is effectively incumbency, to Solender and his spinners.

As I said yesterday, I'm worried about this race, mostly because of the intra-party pummeling Solender mentions. But polling suggests that both candidates are equally viable -- they each lead Republican Mike Rogers by 0.5% according to the Real Clear Polling average -- and Polymarket thinks Democrats are 70% favorites.

Still, none of this has anything to do with incumbency, unless you think of the establishment Democratic Party -- powerless and stuck in the minority -- as an incumbent party that deserves to retain its status forever, powerless or otherwise.