Sen. Bernie Sanders told The Daily Beast that Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls Andrew Gillum and Stacey Abrams lost their races — in Florida and Georgia, respectively — because "there are a lot of white folks out there who are not necessarily racist who felt uncomfortable for the first time in their lives about whether or not they wanted to vote for an African-American."

The big picture: Sanders, attempting to explain the losses Democrats suffered in the midterm elections, compared Gillum's and Abrams' losses to the defeats suffered by more conservative Democratic candidates in red states, saying that they "did not bring the kind of new people, new energy that they needed and ended up doing quite poorly. In admittedly difficult states. Missouri and Indiana are not easy states, but neither is Florida or Georgia or Texas."