this is what fascinates me so much. they could easily butt this bill on the floor. my old boss dick durbin said it precisely. and i m not defending him because he s my old boss. he s right. they won t put it on the floor because they re scared it ll pass. the base will screw them in the fall, the tea party base. and raul, i think we got a new piece of information about why exactly immigration reform has faced such a hurdle in the gop-controlled house in particular. pew came out with new research. most americans really believe immigrants are good for the country. in particular, they broke down conservatives into two groups. your tea party types and business types, your wall street types. 64% of business conservatives say immigrants strengthen our country there are hard work whereas 73% of the tea party types say they burden our country. that tea party republican has been winning. they ve been so successful at blocking progress for the rest of americans that want to see a
and msnbc contributor. jimmy, i m just thinking back. hopes were so high after 2012. it seems inevitable that republicans had learned this lesson that they needed to move on immigration, they needed to get something done, get this off the table. what happened? the republicans happened to themselves. it s quite tragic. you know, look, the autopsy report gets released by the rnc. reince priebus recognizes there s a problem. 5 million votes. 10 million in 2008, 5 million votes for barack obama in 2012. then they need to do they need to close that gap. they do an autopsy report. it says reach out to different groups. okay. so the senate sends them a bill. where s the bill? still sitting at the well on the house floor. it s not being debated. they said we re going to do a piecemeal approach. a piecemeal approach to the fact you have thousands of children sitting on the border right now they re about to put ankle bracelets on like they re cattle. really? and they re blaming the president
president is willing to act is a question that must also be balanced with what his options are. to help stem the flow of undocumented children flooding the border. today marks an entire year of inaction by house republicans on a bipartisan senate bill, and this week that had some democrats seeing red, literally. but as the white house signaled yesterday, and as politico reports today, vice president joe biden sent his own message to a group of immigration advocates. there is no red card on immigration. a week after the vice president travelled to central america, the first lady of honduras is here in the u.s. she s touring facilities where thousands of children from her country have ended up. but if the bottom line is that executive action is not a replacement for congressional reform and far-right conservatism continues to hamper any meaningful progress, what really can be done? raul reyes is a columnist for usa today and nbc news contributor. jimmy williams is the executive editor
that i actually found really promising here is when i saw the cochran strategy of going into african-american neighborhoods and touting things like his support for the ag bill and support for food stamps. i was frankly worried that there would be a white backlash, pushing white voters in the direction of mcdaniel. it doesn t seem like that happened. it doesn t seem like that happened. with the county level data we have right now, we don t think that happened. but the other thing we have to remember, too, is that, you know, cochran reached out to these voters. now, will that translate into any policy changes? we don t know. but about 50% of african-american democrats report no contact from the democratic party. so there is an opening there, possibly because it feels like the state is already red. it s going to take a long strategy, multielection strategy for democrats to gain back support potentially. so you re leaving kind of this, you know, group that is not contacted by anybody.
african-american. they don t expect a whole lot of those to show up, but they re playing with small margins here. only 300,000 people or so showed up for the first primary. there was a couple thousand votes separating the two. and just a little push among unconventional groups to expand the electorate could make a big difference. going to be fascinating to watch. cnbc s john harwood making his cycle debut. thanks for coming on. now to a man who s certainly no stranger to the show. we have howard fineman, editorial director at the huffington post media group. john was just talking there about this cochran campaign strategy of reaching out in particular to african-american democratic voters. i wanted to put on the screen an ad that ran in a newspaper that is in a largely african-american area arguing for thad cochran, saying he funded 20 free clinics, he funded s.n.a.n., otherwise known as food stamps, and the ag bill, stuff that republicans these days are not