Everything seems to be coming up Democrats. The party is still riding its wave of excitement over its “brat” new nominee, Donald Trump and his campaign are floundering, and their candidate has just widened her lead over him after a debate most everyone agreed Trump lost badly. What could possibly stop this kind of momentum?

Another dumb, disastrous quagmire in the Middle East could.

In their euphoric haze, Democrats and the Kamala Harris campaign have been doing their best the past two months to more or less ignore the ongoing, bloody tumult in the Middle East, which was already on the brink of tipping over into a region-wide war back when Joe Biden was still on the ticket. While we seemed to have been in an intermission to the conflict’s escalation — thanks to a combination of Biden’s exit, the possibility of a Gaza cease-fire deal that his administration has dangled in front of voters and the Iranian government, and Israel pausing some of its more reckless behavior — it’s now looking like the show is back on.