A report from NBC's Kelly O'Donnell suggests that yesterday's defeat of gun control legislation in the Senate might be good for the Gang of Eight's immigration reform bill.
Reporting on yesterday's vote for the "Morning Joe" program on MSNBC, O'Donnell said: "The politics was about more than gun rights. Later today a bipartisan group of senators will roll out immigration reform. Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who fought hard to get enough votes on background checks, found that with two politically hard votes, some senators chose immigration over guns."
Then the story moved to video of Manchin analyzing the thinking of his colleagues who voted against yesterday's measure to expand background checks for those who buy guns: "If you're looking at it and trying to evaluate it, they're saying, 'Well, maybe the immigration, and maybe guns on top of that might be too much for me to go home and explain.'"