Advantages of incumbency could scramble midterm races: The Note

The TAKE with Rick Klein

For all the things that make this midterm year unusual, it still seems better to be in office than to be outside looking in.

That's evident in the case President Joe Biden is bringing to voters, with a Democratic National Committee event Thursday night in Maryland proving the point. This week added student loan forgiveness to a list Biden -- and especially key members of his Cabinet -- are taking into states and districts where the Democratic majority in Congress may yet be preserved.

You can also see the confidence of incumbency in the aggressive anti-immigration measures being taken by Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, or a growing number of conservative-friendly points Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., is putting on the board.

Just two days after learning who his general election opponent would be, DeSantis on Thursday announced a new initiative to lift tolls and cut taxes in the weeks before Election Day. He framed it as part of a response to inflation he argued would be worsened by Biden's student loan plan -- which DeSantis blasted as "very unfair" and "not constitutional."

The primary season has been rough for some incumbents, though not in all types of races. With primary voting almost over, 15 House members have lost races for their party's nominations – including six who lost to other incumbents -- but no governors and no senators have gone down in defeat, despite early aggressive plays from progressives on the left and MAGA forces on the right.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's comments last week about "candidate quality" stem in part from GOP retirements, including battleground-state decisions to step aside that gave Democrats a boost coming into the election cycle.

On that front, this could be awkward: McConnell on Friday hosts a fundraiser in Kentucky with Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz and Rep. Ted Budd -- the party's Senate nominees in Georgia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, respectively, ABC News' Lalee Ibssa reports.

All three of those men won the nominations after getting endorsed by former President Donald Trump. Trump this week repeated his demand that McConnell be replaced as Republican leader "immediately."

The RUNDOWN with Averi Harper

Democratic messaging on abortion has new fervor this week as bans triggered by the overturning of Roe v. Wade have gone into effect in several states.

Idaho, Tennessee and Texas had these so-called "trigger laws" go into effect on Thursday. North Dakota's law is expected to follow Friday and Oklahoma has a law with steep penalties for abortion providers set to go into effect at the end of the week.

Beto O'Rourke, Texas' Democratic nominee for governor, on Thursday released his first television ads of his campaign -- both of which are focused entirely on the abortion ban that is now in effect in the Lone Star State.

"From this day forward, August 25, women all across Texas are no longer free to make decisions about our own body," one of the ads says.

"An abortion ban that is no exception for rape or incest, that is not us. That may be Greg Abbott. It is not the people of Texas," O'Rourke said during remarks in Houston Thursday.

The notion of reproductive rights being "on the ballot" was a winning message both for New York's Pat Ryan, who came out on top in the special election Tuesday in the Hudson Valley, and in Kansas earlier this month where voters opted to keep the right to an abortion in the state constitution.

"The entire political ground in the country is shifting right now because when you see anyone try to rip away fundamental rights and freedoms, people stand up and send a message and say, 'This is not who we are as a country,'" Ryan said in an interview with ABC News Live on Thursday.

These races, Democrats like Ryan hope, are a sign of things to come this fall in terms of mobilizing voters on abortion issues.

The TIP with Alisa Wiersema

The slate of Senate battleground primaries is now winnowed down to just one state -- New Hampshire, whose election night is less than three weeks away.

Incumbent Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan is defending her seat, which she won in 2016 by just over 1,000 votes. After a tight contest six years ago, Hassan could now be poised to ride a potential wave of swing-voter responsiveness to the Supreme Court's decision to strike down Roe.

The political environment surrounding abortion could be critical in the coming months: As reported by FiveThirtyEight, New Hampshire voters are among the most sensitive in the nation regarding responsiveness to political developments, making the electorate less defined.

That trend is due to a lack of significant representation from a major part of each party's voter base -- Democrats often rely on Black voters and the Republican base is largely made up of evangelical white Christians. In contrast to both demographics, New Hampshire voters tend to be secular and white.

Five Republican primary candidates took to the debate stage in a tense and hectic face-off this week, but the field continues to lack a clear front-runner despite retired Army general Don Bolduc making headlines. Bolduc -- who ran for Senate in New Hampshire in 2020 but lost the primary to Corky Messner -- has alienated a popular and powerful member of his own party by taking swipes at the state's Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, calling him a "communist Chinese sympathizer" and alleging his family business "supports terrorism."

"He's not a serious candidate, he's really not, and if he were the GOP nominee, I have no doubt we would have a much harder time," Sununu recently said in reference to Bolduc during a New Hampshire radio interview, adding, "He's kind of a conspiracy theorist-type candidate."

NUMBER OF THE DAY, powered by FiveThirtyEight

12. That's how many primary candidates have lost their election and then immediately cried fraud, per FiveThirtyEight's Kaleigh Rogers, who has been tracking how Republicans who deny the 2020 election fare. And as Kaleigh writes, this creates a real problem: After spending months crying fraud, what do you do when you win? Read more from Kaleigh on the candidates who've claimed fraud this cycle -- both those that have won and lost.

THE PLAYLIST

ABC News' "Start Here" Podcast. Start Here closes out the week with ABC's Alexander Mallin explaining a judge's decision to release the redacted affidavit that justified the Mar-a-Lago search -- which questions will it answer, and which will it not? Then ABC's Kate Shaw breaks down the three state abortion bans that went into effect Thursday. And, ABC's Matt Gutman explains the significance of California's move to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. http://apple.co/2HPocUL

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEKEND

• President Joe Biden meets with state and local elected officials to discuss actions to protect access to reproductive health care at 11 a.m. ET.
• The White House holds a monkeypox briefing at 2 p.m. ET.
• ABC’s “This Week”: Sen. Bernie Sanders (D- VT), Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), Roundtable: Co-Anchor and ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl, ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega, Former New Jersey Governor and ABC News Contributor Chris Christie, and Former North Dakota Senator and ABC News Contributor Heidi Heitkamp.

Download the ABC News app and select "The Note" as an item of interest to receive the day's sharpest political analysis.

The Note is a daily ABC News feature that highlights the day's top stories in politics. Please check back next week for the latest.