where the campaigns have been focusing their ads and the speeches, president obama has a much bigger lead. he leads by eight points, 50 to 42%. on favorability nationally, 48% of respondents have positive feelings toward the president, only 38% have negative feelings towards the president. 33% have positive feelings toward mitt romney and 39% have negative feelings. in the swing states, president obama's favorability is virtually the same, but mitt romney's favorability drops. 30% have positive feelings towards mitt romney, 41% have negative feelings. the polls were conducted as "the washington post" ran this headline. "romney's bain capital invested in companies that moved jobs overseas." today president obama and vice president biden brought that message to georgia and iowa voters. >> we don't need somebody who's a pioneer in offshoring or outsourcing. we need a president in the white house who's going to every single day be fighting to bring jobs back to the united states, do some insourcing. >> so you've got to giveitt romney credit. he's a job creator -- in singapore, china, india. he's been very good at creating jobs overseas. >> if some of the obama campaign's attacks on mitt romney appear to go unanswered, it's not because mitt romney doesn't have an answer. according to his son and campaign surrogate, tag romney, tag told concerned republican voters in iowa, "you'll see us hit back pretty hard. we're biding our time. he explained how his father's campaign had to refill its financial coffers after a lengthy primary fight. we're catching up on cash on hand. if we're going to get outspent in june or october, i'd rather it be june." joining me now are msnbc's john heilemann and joy reid. john heilemann, that is the accepted strategy about campaign spending. you'd rather hold the money for later in the campaign. but is the romney campaign in danger of allowing the obama campaign to set the image in stone of mitt romney in these battleground states? >> well, there's always a danger of that, lawrence, for sure. i think what the romney campaign is counting on is that -- that they're not actually going to get outspent in october and they're not going to get outspent for the rest of this year. i think if you think about the romney fund-raising apparatus, they're raising a lot of mon and catching up rather quickly to the president. and as everyone has talked about for weeks now, the super pacs on the republican side are going to have a lot more money than the democratic side. mitt romney will probably, by the end of this the, have a financial advantage. and they're counting on that. but i do think, you know, these numbers that we've seen show that for all of the worries that a lot of democrats have had over the past three or four weeks, and, you know, you'll remember back in 2008, david plouffe, the president's campaign manager then, used to talk about and dismiss democratic bedwetters who would question the president and the campaign's strategy th. that there's been a lot of bedwetting over the course of the last three or four weeks around bain and some of these attacks. you look at those swing states, that is going to give chicago a strong retort to democrats who think they have been on the wrong track with the messages they've been sending. >> i've never seen anything like it. in 2008, the obama campaign was always right and the democratic worriers were always wrong. let's take a look at an ad that the obama campaign is running today in virginia, ahead of mitt romney's visit there. >> the "washington post" has just revealed that romney's companies were pioneers in shipping u.s. jobs overseas, investing in firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by american workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like china and india. does virginia really want an outsourcing in chief in the white house? >> joy, mitt romney's father, george romney, advised him to get rich before he ran for president, so he wouldn't have to worry about money, so he could afford to run for president. that was the father-to-son advice when mitt was a young man. well, he got rich, but it looks like he got rich in the worst way. >> yeah. i mean the problem for mitt romney, right, is that he's got to try to capture a larger share of the white vote. he's got to maximize that vote. so to do that, he's got to do well with white working class voters. but the problem is his whole persona, his whole background, his wealth, while it is appealing to general in republicans, and even in this poll, when they were asked stream of consciousness questions, the word cloud part of the poll, what is good about mitt romney, him being a businessman polls good with republicans. but the problem is, in those swing states, the image of an outsourcing, of a guy who's not looking out for the middle class, not looking out for the working man, that's a problem for romney and it's a problem for his bottom-line strategy, getting as many white working class voters to the polls as possible in november. >> let's listen to joe biden today talking about mitt romney and outsourcing. >> he gets to be governor of the state, and his administration signed a $160,000-a-month contract to pay people abroad to answer the phone to help poor people in ssachusetts who were calling about, after having lost a job, how they could get food stamps. not a joke. not a joke. and when massachusetts legislature passed a bill saying, you couldn't outsource contracts overseas, he vetoed that bill. >> john, there's something to be said now in politics for having actually had a career in government, where you think you'll never be accused of outsourcing, at least. and it turns out, even there, mitt romney can be accused credibly by joe biden of outsourcing. >> there's no question that romney's business background, as joy alluded to, really cuts in two directions. his strength remains his private sector background. the fact that a lot of people trust him right now on the economy. that's the one place where he polls better than the president in terms of all of the other personal attributes that the president leads him with or on. but this is a real problem for him. it's a vulnerability, and, you know, the campaign, the obama campaign has been very confident with the attacks on bain. the outsourcing thing is a whole new leg of this strategy. but when they ran those ads, when they attacked him on bain, i mentioned before, the thing about democratic bedwetters, they said, listen, this is not a strategy that is aimed at the elites in washington, d.c. and new york and boston. it's aimed at these swing states and they have been very confident, their polling show that those ads work and their attacks work, they intend to keep it up, and they're going to keep it up until election day, especially if it keeps showing returns like it seems to be right now in key states with those key voters. >>oy, what seems to be so effective about what the vice president said, is he's talking about outsourcing and romney doing outsourcing, but not when he was in the private sector. doing outsourcing while he was governor, so there he's showing people an example of how, if you elect mitt romney, even to a government post, he may be in a position to continue to outsource american jobs. >> right. and lawrence, you have to remember, too, that the obama campaign, their campaign people have been preparing to run against mitt romney for two years, minimum. they have prognosticated that he was the obvious sort of person to become the nominee. so they have two years worth of opposition research, or really more, back from his previous presidential run, and they're going to hit him on this and hit him on this. we're seeing a rerun of the 2004 election, where he is being defined, all throughout this summer. that's what the obama campaign is going to do. and to your int, they're going to do it in ohio, going to do it in pennsylvania, where, you know, the vice president has particular resonance. they're going to do it in virginia. they're going to hit him in these swing states and define him as the outsourcing, whether he was at bain or he was governor, he doesn't care about the working class. that's their strategy. >> john heilemann, we've just received the breaking news in my ear that mitt romney has won the utah primary, which i believe, i believe i actually noticed in my calendar this morning, that the utah primary was today. but i'd forgotten it until this moment. so he rolled up this nomination in a machine-like way. a business-like way. i think he would proudly say. and are they, in the romney campaign, surprised at this stage about how they have not yet gotten past what the trouble they were running into in the primary, which was his business record, his bain record, as raised by newt gingrich? >> well, i don't think they're surprised about it. i mean, i think, certainly, lawrence, they were surprised. although, first, let's take a moment historically to note, the utah primary is, i believe, the end of the republican nomination fidget. we are officially now done with that, so our long national nightmare is over. that should be marked for history. think that they were surprised that they got hit on the bain stuff, on his tax returns. they were surprised that gingrich and rick perry attacked him from a republican point of view. but they have always expected president obama to come at him hard on this issue. so nothing that's coming at them now from the obama campaign is any kind of surprise for them. they've been waiting for that all along. >> john heilemann and joy reid, thank you both very much for joining me tonight. >> thanks, lawrence. coming up, we have an nbc news exclusive. the police recording of matt sandusky, the adopted son of jerry sandusky, detailing his years of sexual abuse and why he initially lied to the grand jury about the case. that's coming up. and in the "rewrite" tonight, how the mythical individual mandate might destroy the health care law in the supreme court. it's a mythical mandate, because it's not really a mandate at all. and i will show you why. and later, we lost a great one today, a great writer, a great director, and for ma of us, a great friend. we'll show you the joy nora ephron brought to all of us. it's very important to understand how math and science kind of makes the world work. in high school, i had a physics teacher by the name of mr. davies. he made physics more than theoretical, he made it real for me. we built a guitar, we did things with electronics and mother boards. that's where the interest in engineering came from. so now, as an engineer, i have a career that speaks to that passion. thank you, mr. davies. i love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. i love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. i love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like i'm nuts. i love that after i spend a day with you, i can still smell your perfume on my clothes. and i love that you are the last person i want to talk to before i go to sleep at night. and it's not because i'm lonely. and it's not because it's new year's eve. i came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. ♪ spread a little love today ♪ ♪ spread a little love my way ♪ ♪ spread a little something to remember ♪ [ female announcer ] fresh milk and real cream makes philadelphia and the moment a little richer. thought they were dead. huh? 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[ male announcer ] aggressive styling. a more fuel-efficient turbocharged engine. and a completely redesigned interior. ♪ the 2012 c-class with over 2,000 refinements. it's amazing...inside and out. see your authorized mercedes-benz dealer for exceptional offers through mercedes-benz financial services. there is still much confusion in the news media about who won and who lost in the supreme court yesterday, and confusion about what was won and what was lost in the supreme court yesterday. but there is no confusion about the political winners and losers. the craziest hate-driven governor in america was crushed by president obama both politically and substantively. arizona's biggest embarrassment, governor jan brewer, famously tried to lecture the president in their last encounter. tried to lecture someone who knows more about the law and governance than jan brewer will ever know. the president made no attempts to teach arizona's bloviating ignoramus anything in that moment, because he knew that his eric holder-led justice departmentas going to crush her constitutionally demented attempt to seize control of immigration law. some in the political media understand what happened yesterday in the supreme court. "the new york times" editorial page gets it. their first line was, "the supreme court rejected the foundation of arizona's cold-blooded immigration law and the indefensible notion that the state can have its own foreign policy." but page one of that very same newspaper, "the new york times," didn't get it. "the court unanimously sustained the law's centerpiece, the one critics have called its show me your papers provision, though they left the door open to further challenges." okay, let's get it straight. the court did not -- did not -- sustain the law's centerpiece. the court sustained another provision, a minor provision compared to the centerpiece. the part of the law that the court let stand, at least temporarily, and probably only temporarily, makes it mandatory for arizona police officers to check the immigration status of some people they arrest or detain. that procedure is already a perfectly legal optional procedure. not mandatory, optional procedure for police officers anywhere in america. that procedure was already going on in arizona and elsewhere. the court pointed out that while it can stand making it mandatory -- it can stand temporarily, the fact that they make it mandatory does risk what the court calls constitutional challenge, as soon as arizona starts enforcing that provision of the law. and as the court made clear, that provision does not allow police to detain anyone simply to check their immigration status. the supreme court made clear that if arizona police take someone into custody, they are not allowed to keep that person in custody for any extended period of time to check their immigration status. and the court made clear that if arizona police take someone into custody and discover the person is in the country illegally, the arizona police can do absolutely nothing about it. nothing. nothing. there is no legal reason for the arizona police to detain anyone simply because their immigration status is not legal. the centerpiece of the law, which was struck down, which was blown away, the centerpiece enabled arizona police to arrest people for absolutely no reason. to arrest them for no other reason than being in the united states illegally. that was the centerpiece. the centerpiece of the law made arizona police able to enforce federal law. that was thrown out. that was the show me your papers provision. that was the provision that allowed arizona police to stop anyone, anywhere, in church, in the mall, walking down the street, and demand, demand instantly to see their green cards or their work permits or immigration documents or any kind, anything that they possess, an arizona driver's license, to prove that they are in the state legally, and if those people could not instantly satisfy the police in such encounters, that they were in the state legally, arizona could round them up, could handcuff them right there, put them in jail cells, or put them in not yet built prison camps and hold them there. that was the show me your papers provision. that was destroyed in the supreme court. that affront to the constitution, that offense against humanity was the centerpiece of jan brewer's legislative madness that the supreme court wiped out yesterday. the part of the law the supreme court left standing does not allow anyone to show papers, doesn't enforce anyone to show papers. it simply requires a police officer to communicate with the immigration service center to check the status of certain people arrested and detained, something that is already allowed by law, and something that does not allow the police officer to then take any further action based on whatever information they get back from the immigration service. a million such status checks are already run every year through the immigration service center, which is open 24/7 for precisely that purpose. the centerpiece of the law, the one that had echoes of the most oppressive regimes in the world, was the one that allowed people to be stopped anywhere at any time and thrown in jail if they didn't answer a police officer's question the right way. and that particular piece of un-american law enforcement was something that mitt romney was just as crazy about as jan brewer was. >> as president, if you had the opportunity, would you drop the federal government's lawsuit against arizona over sb-1070. >> yeah, and i would at the same time finally put in place defense -- >> but do you believe that police officers and troopers should go looking for illegal immigrants that might not be breaking the law and deporting them? >> i've told you my position. my own view is that if you secure the border and you do the job that i want to do as president, that this issue will ultimately disappear and we'll be able to have a legal immigration program that works. i've also told you that i support the effort on the part of arizona to have a safe and secure border. >> joining me now, karen finney, msnbc political analyst and former dnc communications director and ana marie cox of "the guardian." ana marie, mitt romney was on record in the past as saying he supports the arizona law. and then when the supreme court rules, when one of his favorite justices, the chief justice, rules against mitt romney's support of the arizona law, mitt's having trouble mustering some strong support for jan brewer's position here. what's happened to him? >> well, i mean, he's searching for a position that will satisfy all comers, or at least satisfy with the base, and, you know, this elusive latino republican voter, who i believe exists somewhere. but they haven't been able to find him yet. and it is a puzzle for him. he might actually have to come up with a conviction that he has about something, which he's been loathe to do so far. i do feel like mitt romney has sort of been given new meaning to the memory negative campaigning, becau he's like defining what he isn't all the time. he's just not saying stuff and leaving us to guess what it is he actually believes. >> karen finney, you will be surprised to know that rush limbaugh is very disappointed in his boy, mitt. let's lien to what rush had to say about mitt. >> okay. ladies and gentlemen, yesterday mitt romney blew it. yesterday was a warning, i think. yesterday was a red flag for the romney team. yesterday, and it's the first time in a long time, first time i've thought this in a long time, the romney team was not ready for prime-time on this illegal immigration, the arizona decision. if romney's response yesterday had happened in a debate, it would have been a big win for obama. >> karen, with friends like rush, mitt isn't -- >> finally, he's being helpful. >> mitt's in very serious trouble. there's the box right there, he dares not -- mitt dares not cross rush limbaugh on this. >> well, that's exactly right. but, look, i think the response we saw from mitt yesterday also reflects the practical reality that we've really reached a tipping point in this country on this issue, given that w