Fresh off an unexpectedly resilient performance in the midterms, the Democrats appear to be bungling things right off the block by making a major political miscalculation on how to handle the debt ceiling.
Democratic leaders have signaled that they don’t intend to address the borrowing limit in the current lame-duck session of Congress, when their majorities in the House and the Senate would theoretically give them a shot at raising or even eliminating the cap entirely without the help of Republican votes.
Democrats also seem to have convinced themselves that should the issue come to a head in early 2023, pushing the nation once again to the brink of a default and economic crisis, Republicans will take the blame.
