Imagine that you are running as a Democrat for a swing House seat in 2022. Your GOP opponent is predictably blathering on about how he represents real people against elitists like you. You respond by pointing out that you supported sending $1,400 checks to hundreds of millions of real Americans, while your opponent did not. When he says that he’s concerned about the deficit, you point out that he had no problems sending similar checks during the Trump years, and that Trump himself supported the additional payments. He has no plausible response to that.
The checks won’t help the Democrats get the Biden package through Congress, and they aren’t properly targeted disaster relief. They will, however, help in 2022. That, in a nutshell, is the case for them.