Exploding the "both sides" meme

[Proud Liberal Dem]

People can say whatever they want about the Democratic position on cutting spending, raising taxes, etc. but AFAIK there are no Democrats whom are refusing to raise the debt ceiling under pretty much any circumstances- even if they have to swallow spending cuts without any new revenue as a condition of raising the debt ceiling and this has ALWAYS been the case. Now, of course, Democrats have a limit. Democrats won't adopt Paul Ryan's "Ayn Rand Budget" but the public doesn't want it either and won't punish Democrats for standing up to the Republicans over it IMHO (I'm not even sure the Republicans are still pushing this as a condition of raising the debt ceiling anymore either).

There also have been NO Democrats I have heard of whom have ever made the argument that refusing to raise the debt ceiling might be a "good" thing for the country or are refusing to raise it under. Some people in the media and, especially, Republicans want to keep throwing the fact that Democrats, including then-Senator Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling in 2006 in our faces but the situation in 2006 was NOT analogous to this in any way. For one, Democrats didn't decide to take the vote to raise the debt ceiling "hostage" in order to extract spending cuts or other things from (P)resident Bush and the Republicans. They knew that the Republicans had enough votes to raise the debt ceiling without them and nobody mounted a filibuster, so we were never in any danger of causing a default like we are now.

Giving these facts, does anybody know of any ways that BOTH SIDES are clearly to blame for this mess? Is there indeed intransigence from the left that is analogous to the intransigence on the right on this issue? If there is, I just can't see it. :shrug: