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I heard a lot about the Affordable Care Act, too. About how people in the individual market were getting clobbered with all these increases, which is a legitimate issue.
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So Republicans packed all the Democrats into districts, very Democratic districts. What that's done is made our party urban, more liberal, and so those people are doing what their constituents want. But that's not what my constituents want.
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Some of the people in my caucus, some of the people in the state party in Minnesota have basically said, "We don't want to deal with these guys because they're too conservative," or "We don't agree with them on social issues."
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If everybody in our caucus had a 50/50 Democrat/Republican district, we'd have a lot different discussion. But if they have a 90 percent Democratic district, they don't ever talk to a Republican, they don't have to and they don't want to.
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The only thing I can think to do is if the Democratic Party can do what the Republicans have done, which is go in there and take control of these legislatures and governors' areas.
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Trade was clearly a factor.That was a complete reversal of where things are normally at. Usually Republicans are all for free trade.
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I fought NAFTA when it passed; it has been a big disaster for us, in my opinion. If we can renegotiate that, it would be wonderful.
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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.
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NAFTA's been a big problem for sugar.
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It was clear that the number just kept growing, and there were no Hillary Clinton signs. People were fed up.
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A lot of it is backlash against all this political correctness that's going on.
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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.
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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.
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The New York Federal Reserve is a tool of the big banks.
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When it NAFTA was sold, we were supposed to get two or three times more exports to Canada or Mexico than they exported to us. It's been the exact opposite.
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Republicans have spent a lot of money redistricting and everything, getting control of these governorships and statehouses.
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I agree with Donald Trump: These trade agreements have not been good deals for America, and they need to be fixed.
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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.
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You can't have a majority party in Minnesota or throughout the country without support from the people in these rural districts. Given the position the Democratic Party has taken, it's very hard to see how you can do that.
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You know what the economics are like in Red Lake County. There's no way a family can pay $15,000, $20,000 a year for health insurance and make it work. You just can't do it. It's got to change.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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People think the government is coddling people, like when people's feelings are hurt at the colleges and they send somebody in to make them feel better. Stuff like that drives voters here crazy.