MSNBC Guest: If Obama Weren’t Black, Dems Would Easily Retain Senate

WILLIAMS: "I believe and I firmly believe this, if we did not have African-American president in the White House as we speak right now, Mary Landrieu would not be in trouble, Kay Hagan would not be in any kind of trouble, Michelle Nun would win overwhelmingly, and maybe Alison Lundergan Grimes would do well ... I think that's the case. I absolutely believe that because I think there is still -- and by the way, racism is not just a southern problem. If you don't believe me, look at the Boston busing riots. That happened in Boston not in Charleston. So the idea that race does not play into this is absolutely a factor. It certainly is."
BALL: "So, Jimmy, if you were the grand strategist of the Democratic party, we should be so lucky as to you have you in that role, how would you advise Democrats to ship the party or to shape the party or to be able to appeal to white southerners? Or should we just write them off and say they never going to be with us?"
WILLIAM: “No, no. Do not ever write-off white southerners, or southerners. Anyway, I've said that before. They determine these elections for a couple of reasons. First and foremost because the social issues are just not going -- listen, if you want to have a conversation with Democrat about whether or not you're for pro-equality, pro-women, pro-privacy, pro-choice, pro-voting rights and pro-equal rights -- pretty sure, those are all Democratic principles. You ought to align to those things, you ought to talk about them, you ought to embrace them, you ought to lean forward -- remember our slogan -- and you ought to own those. Because guess what you are for? You are for people. When you are against people, then people don't want to vote for you. But if you are for people, like LGBT, African-American, Hispanic American, etc. -- women and their privacy and leaving them alone when they need to be left alone, and helping them when they need to be helped. Like here in South Carolina, 30 percent of South Carolina's black population is below the poverty rate. What is the one thing that the governor of this state has done? Denied Medicaid funding because of Obamacare. And guess what? She doesn't even count on that votes. So if I'm a Democrat in this state whether it be a white Democrat, or a black Democrat, I would absolutely lean on those issues and that's not just a South Carolina thing. Look at Barack Obama. He won Virginia twice, almost won North Carolina twice, lost barely the second time. And in South Carolina -- Mitt Romney only won South Carolina with 53, John McCain with 52. That’s a changing south. Those old white people, they're going to die some day and who's going to be there to replace them? People that want you to be for them not against them."