Thursday open thread: Mitch blinked

As I'm writing this, there's a lot of news coming out. The long and short of it is this: Republican leader Mitch McConnell blinked on the debt ceiling.

McConnell offered—through a press release, natch—to accede to a two month debt limit rise, in order to give Democrats more time to pursue a more permanent rise through reconciliation. Mitch thought he was being slick. 

But what did Democrats do? They said "Thanks, Mitch, we'll take the temporary extension, but we'll be back here in December, because we're not using reconciliation to maintain the faith and credit of the US Treasury."

Now, some on our side are taking this Democratic stance as "OH MY GOD MITCH WON! DEMOCRATS ARE WEAKLINGS!!"

That, my friends, in the words of Colonel Sherman Potter, is bull-pucky.

McConnell blinked. He caved. He showed that when crunch time came, he was not willing to burn down the US economy, in spite of his tough talk. And Majority Leader Chuck Schumer knows this. All the Democrats know this.

What Democrats have hanging over McConnell is a carve-out of the filibuster. Momentum was building in the caucus to exempt debt ceiling rises from filibuster rules. Within a short time, it was growing obvious that the entire Democratic caucus would embrace this. Yes, even Joe Manchin. Yes, even Kyrsten Sinema. Democrats are the adult party, and if that means starting to hack away at the filibuster, that's what they would do to not tank the economy. And if they did so, the voting public would reward them. McConnell was faced with a no-win situation. Thus he climbed down.

I'm sure that President Joe Biden's meeting with corporate movers and shakers helped matters along. McConnell can sell to his troglyditic base that raising the debt ceiling is for future spending, not spending already accrued. But the masters of the financial universe know differently, and they were not about to have their incomes jeopardized by playing to the peanut gallery.

"But we'll be back here in two months!!!" Yes, we will. Right before Christmas. And McConnell already showed he is unwilling to destroy the economy. If he returns to his intransigence, the unspoken meaning behind Democrats accepting McConnell's deal is: We know you're full of shit. You caved once. You'll do so again, or we'll pull the filibuster trigger.

This, my friends, was a victory. Enjoy it.

This is your open thread.