GREAT SCOTT – AT 9:14 A.M. ET:  Much buzz, and increasing, about Scott Walker as a presidential candidate.  It's understandable.  Superb governor, wins every election, unflappable.  Weekly Standard has a great piece, including the first analysis I've seen of how Walker won his latest race for governor. 

Scott Walker has won every round of his long fight with Big Labor in Wisconsin, but it wasn’t until November 4 that he delivered the knockout punch. In his third gubernatorial election in four years, Walker defeated Democratic challenger Mary Burke by 6 points. It was the same margin of victory he had in the 2010 Republican wave and just a point shy of his 2012 performance in a union-funded recall.

Walker’s victory has secured the conservative reforms he implemented in his first term and will encourage other governors to follow his lead. It should also make him a serious contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination if he wants it—which seems likely.

Some of Walker’s opponents have tried to console themselves with the belief that he triumphed simply because Republicans win low-turnout midterm elections, while Democrats win high-turnout presidential elections. “President Obama went into Milwaukee” and “did all he could do,” a distraught MSNBC host Ed Schultz said on election night. “He went to the base. This was a base election. He just apparently didn’t get out enough people.”

But in reality, the election didn’t come down to turnout. Walker could have survived 100 percent turnout in the liberal bastions of Milwaukee County and Dane County (which includes Madison, the capital and home to the state’s flagship university). Burke could have netted the same number of votes in Milwaukee and Dane counties as President Obama, but if everything else had stayed the same, Walker still would have won.

And...

The key to Walker’s success was his performance among middle- and lower-income voters. Walker won those earning more than $100,000 by 20 points, just as Mitt Romney had in 2012. But he won voters earning between $50,000 and $100,000 by 17 points; Romney only won them by 1. Those earning less than $50,000 Walker lost by 9 points—whereas Romney lost them by 25. As reporter Molly Ball pointed out in the Atlantic earlier this year about that last group, “whether Democrats win these voters by a 10-point or a 20-point margin tells you who won every national election for the past decade.”

COMMENT:  Absolutely fascinating.  Walker is winning where we need to win, and holding down Dem margins where that's necessary.  The rap against him is that he's a boring speaker.  I'm not so sure.  Over time his explanatory rhetoric seems to grow on people. 

I went to a meeting of our side over the weekend, and there was buzz about a Walker–Martinez ticket, the Martinez being Governor Susana Martinez of New Mexico. 

We have to win in 2016.  I'm not terribly interested in ideological purity.  We'll never get it anyway.

November 10,  2014