President Joe Biden is making a big bet, with his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, and the future of American democracy could depend on whether he succeeds or fails.  Biden’s relief program will help millions of Americans; it is the right thing to do and it should boost the economy. But the key question is: can Biden draw many white working-class and lower middle-class voters back to the Democratic Party?  

Biden’s plan offers massive, concrete benefits, and it is targeted at less affluent Americans, including white working-class and lower middle-class voters. This is a course correction for the Democratic Party, which has neglected those groups for three decades and alienated many of them with its stances on cultural issues such as gun control, immigration and abortion.

In 2020, as the pandemic raged across America, election officials scrambled, looking for ways to make voting safer. They dramatically expanded the use of early voting, mail-in ballots and other measures. Turnout soared, and the country conducted a fair, secure and safe election. The new approaches worked so well that many states may adopt them permanently.

But many Republicans, cheered on by Donald Trump, want to make voting harder, based on his lies about election fraud and his attacks on mail-in ballots in particular. Unfortunately, Trump’s Big Lie has worked: about 70% of Republicans believe that the election was stolen.

Since November, Republican lawmakers have introduced over 160 proposals in 33 states to curtail voting rights, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Including bills that the Republicans have carried over from previous sessions, they are pursuing over 400 measures in 43 states. They would restrict mail-in ballots and early voting, or they would disenfranchise voters through other means, such as tighter I.D. requirements or voter purges.