I am deeply disappointed about Walker’s loss. I think it was a combination of things. Much like the national mid-term flip, there’s been only one WI governor since WWII who managed to keep his seat same party as the first term POTUS. So Walker had that trend working against him. Evers probably got some coattails from Tammy Baldwin’s Senate re-election. Several Wisconsin counties got (worthless advisory non-binding) marijuana referendums on their ballots. I’m guessing that it was a coordinated effort knowing that it would help with Leftist/Democrat leaning turnout. And at the end of the day, Wisconsin still tends to just be rather “purple” and fickle.
At least WI had no upsets or surprises that went against the GOP in the state legislative races, or our WI Congressional seats in D.C. Randy Bryce, the ultra-lefty union iron worker who’s been gunning for Paul Ryan’s seat was handily defeated. And what was probably the worst leftist smear campaign in the state to defeat Dale Kooyenga failed.
As WI Education superintendent, Tony Evers is a nobody, a cipher, and rather lazy. He is awkward and goofy in terms of appearance and presentation. So he does not have good optics working for him at all. (Imagine a skinny Bernie Sanders with a better haircut, and no charisma…) His direction and initiatives will be coming largely from whatever busybodies infest his administration. Evers will be mostly a lame duck from the get-go as the GOP held onto the WI Assembly and Senate with decent margins. So nothing major legislatively will be coming from him or the Democrats. However, he will be able to force some significant compromises every two years as WI is constitutionally obligated to pass a budget, and the WI governor has got a fair amount of power with the line-item veto. Which is in contrast to the relationship POTUS and COTUS have federally, where POTUS does not have line-item veto, and COTUS does not have to create or pass a budget, they can just keep passing continuing funding resolutions indefinitely.
Overall though, the “blue wave” definitely failed to materialize. As noted by others, the GOP losses in the House last night are on the lower end of averages for such midterm election turnover. The wind was at the Democrats backs with the normal historical midterm momentum, which was then supposed to be turbocharged by the Resistance and Trump Derangement Syndrome. By that standard it was a big fizzle. Mainly the Democrats have merely avoided destruction, or the fracture of the party into two separate parties, one hard left, the other moderate. And all the other fallout that failing to gain back anything, or that a red wave would have caused for them.
From what I’ve overheard anecdotally from Democrats around me at work, they’re mostly disappointed in Beto’s loss in TX and Gillum’s loss in FL. They’re not exited or jubilant about Evers or WI at all.