Playing out the scenario, let’s say nobody blinks, Treasury runs out of options, and there is some sort of partial default on debt payments. Why would Democrats believe that it would help them politically? Sure, they have friends in the media who would amplify the argument that it’s all the Republicans’ fault. But there’s no reason to believe that voters would actually punish Republicans and reward Democrats as the more responsible party.

During the 2011 debt-ceiling fight, polls showed that more voters said that Republicans would be to blame for any failure to raise the debt limit. Nonetheless, as the crisis dragged on, Barack Obama’s approval rating reached the lowest point of his presidency.

There are also many reasons to believe that Biden would be even worse off than Obama was in 2011. For one thing, in 2011, Republicans were coming off a major wave-election victory, so the perception was that they were now at least partially in charge. And practically speaking, there was no way Democrats could raise the debt limit without Republicans. At the time, House Republicans were also making passage of a debt-limit increase contingent upon trillions of dollars in spending cuts.