It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...CNN.com?!

This is the kind of thing at which CNN.com, Time and other “news” purveyors excel—something that’s neither an editorial, a polemic, or even really reporting.

(1) The headline is a question (A gathering anti-incumbent storm?), not a report (“Two wounded in shooting”) or a strong assertion (“Clinton’s health-care plan an utter debacle.”) So no matter what the author says, he can’t lose, because he was merely asking a question.

(2) The sub-headline (The Web is making it easier to challenge the establishment) is directly contradicted by facts given in the “article”:

“Since 1980, we've had only three incumbent senators lose primaries…Alaska's Frank Murkowski is only the fourth governor to lose a primary in the last 12 years.”

(3) The article’s body contradicts itself:

“For me, it lies in the emergence of the Internet as an organizing and money-raising tool.”

BUT

“The power of the Web may be easy to overanalyze.”

ALSO

“The trouble with extrapolating from these and other incumbent defeats, though, is that there seems to be no common explanation.”

BUT

“Sometimes it's a question of character or personality. The other key reason is policy or ideology.”

So, there are no common explanations, but there are four common explanations: character, personality, policy, and ideology, which together encompass… everything?

This guy’s like John Madden in the video games: the receiver can’t catch the ball when the defender knocks it down! Thanks for your “analysis.” I’ll stick with dailykos and National Review.