“Democrats are plowing forward with plans to pass a massive Covid-19 relief package. And if Republicans don’t join them, they won’t forget it. Already, there’s talk about midterm attack ads portraying Republicans as willing to slash taxes for the wealthy but too stingy to cut checks for people struggling during the deadly pandemic. And Biden’s aides and allies are vowing not to make the same mistakes as previous administrations going into the midterms elections. They are pulling together plans to ensure Americans know about every dollar delivered and job kept because of the bill they’re crafting. And there is confidence that the Covid-19 relief package will ultimately emerge not as a liability for Democrats, but as an election year battering ram.”

“‘This is one of those rare instances – maybe not exceedingly rare, but it doesn’t happen often – where the best policy perfectly aligns with the politics,’ said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), a Biden ally. ‘If I’m a candidate in 2022 running for the House or Senate, I think I’d want to be able to say we’ve had a robust Covid-19 relief bill, we raised the minimum wage, we made progress on health care, we’ve started to make progress on combating climate change and a whole range of issues candidates would want to run on.’ Over the first weeks of the new administration, White House officials stressed that they are singularly focused on moving the “rescue” legislation and unprecedented response to the pandemic through Congress. Biden and advisers insist they would prefer Republican cooperation on the $1.9 trillion legislation, which calls for direct checks, money for school reopenings and funds for a robust vaccine effort. But their eyes have also started to drift toward what comes after the package becomes law: a major political undertaking to cement the bill’s popularity among voters” – Politico.