“McConnell backed down after Democratic threats of nuking the filibuster for the debt ceiling started to become more real. At their Tuesday lunch, Democratic senators discussed how McConnell’s blockade on the debt ceiling was boosting the case of filibuster reformers. Later that day, Biden, generally a skeptic of filibuster reform, said such a change for the debt ceiling was now a ‘real possibility.’ McConnell himself alluded to how filibuster reform was the key issue at play. ‘It’s not clear whether the Democratic leaders have wasted two-and-a-half months because they simply cannot govern, or whether they are intentionally playing Russian roulette with the economy to try to bully their own members into going back on their word and wrecking the Senate,’ he said.”

“‘The filibuster is McConnell’s instrument of obstruction,’ one Democratic senator told Playbook. ‘He wants to protect that at all costs. He was at real risk of overplaying his hand as he faced the growing prospect that we would have 51 votes to waive it for the purpose of dealing with debt. He wanted to avoid creating that precedent. Still, would have been better for us to just do it.’ This is the second time this year that the politics of filibuster preservation enticed McConnell to play dealmaker rather than obstructionist. The minority leader backed BIF partly because he wanted to show anti-filibuster Democrats that bipartisanship was still possible. In both episodes McConnell relied on an alliance – sometimes tacit, sometimes explicit – with Manchin and Sinema against the anti-filibuster forces. The other leading explanation for McConnell’s last-minute offer is that some of his GOP colleagues were skittish about mounting another filibuster against debt ceiling legislation and McConnell needed a way to save face” – Politico Playbook.