Two years into pandemic, Biden and Democrats are now playing defense on Covid

WASHINGTON — If it’s Tuesday ... President Biden meets with the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat and Republican to discuss the upcoming Supreme Court vacancy. ... Trump stars in new ad in Georgia's gubernatorial race as GOP primaries get heated. ... NBC’s Benjy Sarlin looks at the debate over whether pre-K programs work. ... And the 4th quarter FEC reports are in.

But first: The Biden White House finds itself squeezed on Covid.

On the one hand, you have 70 percent of Americans in a new Monmouth poll agreeing with the statement that Covid is here to stay, and that we need to get on with our lives.

You have Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson saying on “Meet the Press” last Sunday that “we need to move out of the panic mode” when it comes to the virus.

And you have Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy agreeing with him: “We’re not going to manage this to zero. We have to learn how to live with this.”

On the other hand, you still have some 2,000 Americans dying each day from the virus; you have a situation where children under the age of 5 aren’t eligible to get vaccinated (though there’s significant progress on that front); and there’s the realistic possibility of another wave or variant on the horizon.

What President Biden hasn’t done is articulate a vision forward after Delta, after Omicron, after boosters, after 75 percent of Americans have received at least one vaccine shot, and after the administration began distributing free Covid tests.

The closest he came was in last month’s news conference, when Biden said: “We are in a better place than we’ve been and have been thus far, clearly better than a year ago. We’re not going back — we’re not going back to lockdowns. We’re not going back to closing schools.”

But what about local mask mandates? Remote workers returning to the office? Indoor gatherings? Day-care disruptions after positive tests?

As we’ve said before, as the virus goes, so goes Biden’s presidency.

And now Republican candidates have flipped the script on Covid, campaigning aggressively against vaccine mandates, Biden’s handling of the virus and even Dr. Anthony Fauci, per NBC’s Marc Caputo and Natasha Korecki.

While Democratic candidates have been relatively quiet on Covid.

Tweet of the day

Midterm roundup

Republican David Perdue launched his first TV ad this morning in his race against GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. And the ad stars former President Donald Trump.

“Brian Kemp let us down. We can’t let it happen again,” Trump says.

And the ad comes as other GOP primaries are taking a negative turn.

In Pennsylvania, Mehmet Oz is knocking former hedge fund manager David McCormick in a new spot, labeling McCormick as “China’s friend, not ours.”

And in Alabama’s Senate contest, the Club for Growth is continuing to air an ad tying Katie Britt to Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.

Meanwhile, fundraising reports filed Monday showed once again that Trump’s endorsement doesn’t necessarily translate into a windfall, especially for candidates taking on sitting Republicans.

None of Trump’s seven preferred candidates who are challenging incumbents that voted to impeach Trump outraised the GOP lawmakers. On average, the House Republican facing a Trump-backed challenger raised $891,00 in the final fundraising quarter of 2021, while the average Trump-endorsed primary opponent raised $226,000. In the Senate, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, once again bested her primary opponent, Kelly Tshibaka, raising nearly $1.4 million to Tshibaka’s $602,000.

Embattled Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, started the year with a sizable financial advantage against his primary challenger, Jessica Cisneros. As of Dec. 31, Cuellar had nearly five times more cash-on-hand with $2.3 million in his campaign account to Cisneros’ $494,000. For more on the South Texas race, check out NBC’s Garrett Haake’s dispatch from the ground.

Data Download: The number of the day is … $178.4 million

That’s how much combined cash the four major super PACs that spend in congressional races had on hand at the end of 2021, per fundraising reports filed Monday.

And the Republican groups bested their Democratic rivals. The GOP super PACs, Congressional Leadership Fund and Senate Leadership Fund, which play in House and Senate races respectively, had $39 million more on hand compared to their Democratic counterparts, House Majority PAC and Senate Majority PAC.

Here are the toplines from their fundraising reports, which spanned the final six months of 2021:

• CLF: Raised $53.6 million, had $61.2 million on hand

• SLF: Raised $42.3 million, had $47.4 million

• HMP: Raised $28.5 million, had $39.2 on hand.

• SMP: Raised $36.2 million, had $30.6 million on hand

Other numbers you need to know today:

$122 million: How much money former President Donald Trump’s political committees had on hand at the end of 2021.

$22.3 million: The amount of money in Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock’s campaign account as of Dec. 31, the most of any Senate candidate, per an NBC News analysis.

16: The number of senators participating in bipartisan negotiations to update the Electoral Count Act, per Politico.

Talking policy with Benjy

Democrats love universal pre-K. Does it work, though? Even as Democrats work to pare down Build Back Better in the hopes of salvaging a deal, any version that passes still seems likely to include a universal pre-K program, which is popular even with centrists like Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V. But there’s less consensus than you might assume on how or whether pre-K benefits young children.

A new study by Vanderbilt University researchers of Tennessee’s low-income pre-K program made some waves this week when it found a slight negative impact on participants by 6th grade, including lower test scores and more disciplinary infractions, compared with kids who were unable to obtain a pre-K slot through a lottery drawing.

Dale Farran, one of the study’s co-authors, told NBC News her team and state officials “had every expectation that ours would be the first rigorous study to validate the long-term positive effects of attending pre-K.”

Instead, they were “saddened” when the result seemed to show the opposite and are trying to figure out why. One theory Farran and her co-researcher Kelley Durkin offered is that pre-K may be too focused on school topics like numbers and letters, versus more general skills like paying attention to a task or story.

Defenders of pre-K programs point to other research showing benefits. A recent study of graduates of a 1990s lottery pre-K program in Boston found that graduates were more likely to finish high school and less likely to end up in prison or juvenile detention than kids who didn’t get into a class.

But Vanderbilt isn’t the first study of pre-K that’s thrown its benefits into question. A survey of decades of research by the Brookings Institution in 2017 also found mixed results, with some studies suggesting positive long-term effects and others more ambiguous.

Rasheed Malik, director of Early Childhood Policy at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, suggested BBB might be more beneficial because its programs would cover all incomes. A National Bureau of Economic Research study found students tended to make bigger gains in universal pre-K programs, rather than ones targeted at disadvantaged families like in Tennessee.

Universal pre-K may also be important as a child care program, even if its academic benefits are less clear. A 2018 roundup of research by Vox noted that while the data on pre-K benefits was mixed, universal programs in places like Washington, DC allowed many more parents to enter the workforce and boost their family incomes.

ICYMI: What else is happening in the world

The New York Times reports that Trump was more involved in the effort to seize voting machines after the 2020 election than previously reported.

In a bipartisan effort, South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn and Sen. Lindsey Graham are urging the president to nominate someone to the Supreme Court who did not attend an Ivy League school.

And Politico Magazine predicts “the makings of a constitutional crisis” if Trump and Biden face each other in a rematch in 2024.