What's happened is the Republicans have been smart.

[Rural people] have a different lifestyle, and they don't want to change it. They're happy with the way things are. It's causing the party political problems.

There's no question about it. If you look at the map, there's hardly any [Democrats representing rural districts]. There's me, [Rick] Nolan, [Tim] Walz, [Dave] Loebsack and Cheri Bustos. So that's five. And all the rest of them are in urban cities. That's a problem.

The [Democratic] party's become an urban party, and they don't get rural America. They don't get agriculture.

I think we are starting to get some information that will allow us to get to the bottom of this, and I hope we continue to work on this until we get to the bottom of it.

It was kind of interesting: [People] didn't really want to talk about it too much. And then after the election, it's kind of like they've been unleashed.

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.