Here’s the problem that Democrats have, okay? The problem that Democrats have is that they measure success only with a W or a [L]. It’s either you won it or you lost it. Mike Espy came within eight points of winning a United States Senate seat. This is an African American in the state of Mississippi. Good grief, I mean no one before him in the last 20 years had come within 15 points, I think … Mike did an amazing thing. And I think one of the problems, especially for Democrats, is that we have played a short game from one race to the next, and we’ve never looked upon our success as the long ball. And we have gotta do that in the south.

We have got to see that in this election cycle who would have dreamed just two years ago that a candidate like Andrew Gillum would have come so close in Florida. Stacey Abrams would have come so close in Georgia. Mike Espy would have come so close in Mississippi. Beto O’Rourke, even though he’s not a candidate of color, he is an unabashed liberal progressive, came so close in Texas. Things are changing. We flipped House seats in the South. We flipped legislative seats in the South. … They were talking about jobs. They were talking about the economy. They were talking about health-care issues. And they weren’t focusing on all those issues that have divided us so much. If we can continue that focus in the South on those issues, we’re gonna have some changes in the South, and the South is gonna be the leader of changes in the country.