Politico: “Distraught and exhausted parents are emerging as a new class of voters that could torment President Joe Biden – and the White House is moving quickly to head off the pain. Nearing a year into the pandemic, Biden’s advisers and allies recognize that they need to respond to the spiraling angst felt by families or risk driving them into the arms of waiting Republicans. It is a crucial test for Biden and Democrats as they try to consolidate their gains from the 2020 election. The pandemic has disrupted lives and exacerbated inequities and a raft of public and private surveys show clear political potholes and opportunities because of it. The coronavirus is spawning sweeping policy prescriptions from Democrats and Republicans alike, from billions in school reopening funds to the creation of a federal child allowance. And it’s prompting pollsters to loosely coin emerging voter demos like ‘women in chaos’ and ‘families in crisis.'”

“Within the GOP, there is a belief that the pandemic and resulting turmoil make Biden and Democratic incumbents especially vulnerable among those demographics. Republicans see room to capitalize on the grim public health and economic situation the White House inherited from Donald Trump by trying to put Democrats on the defensive for being too removed from the pain or too slow-moving to address it. GOP lawmakers, while offering no commitment to meaningfully engage on policy proposals, have responded to continued school closures by striking hard at Biden and Democrats, with more Republicans each week accusing the administration of scaling back their ambitious goals on everything from testing to school reopenings. ‘The science says that the schools should open, but instead of listening to the science, the Biden administration is caving in to Democrat special interest groups,’ RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel told POLITICO. ‘As a result, the education of our children is suffering and hundreds of thousands of working moms are being forced out of the workforce.'”