Pushing gun control drives people [in my district] crazy, gay marriage, abortion, deficit spending.All of that stuff adds up to be a problem for Democrats.

Try to un-gerrymander these districts so that you're not packing all the Democrats into one district, so you've got districts that are competitive, so that you've got a shot at electing Democrats. But that's more a long-term proposition, if it can even be done.

There's no question that [Donald] Trump got elected because of rural America. And our party still is in denial. They don't get it.

I am personally saddened and stunned by the tragic events that took place in Red Lake.

I always run ahead of the ticket [compared to Democratic presidential candidates]. But this time there were a lot of people that just voted party line, a lot more than usual.

We [Democrats] have become a party of assembling all these different groups, the women's caucus and the black caucus and the Hispanic caucus and the lesbian-gay-transgender caucus and so forth, and that doesn't relate to people out in rural America.

I don't know how you change that. There's hardly anybody left like me in the Democratic Party in Congress. These districts have been so gerrymandered that, in most of them, a Democrat can't win. Somebody like me trying to start off today, he'd never get endorsed. Because I'm too conservative.