You have no idea how right you are, in fact, it's worse than I think most people realize. I've avoided commenting on it because I needed to see how it played out, but let me explain something I realized a couple of months back and is what got me started on my kick about Political Capital.
Pulling out on 9/11 would have been the mother of all Political Capital tsunamis. The sheer optics of it, on the twentieth anniversary, pulling out and saying its done, leaving a nominally 'stable' Afghanistan. Yah it'd fall in a few months, but that is soo far away it COULD be successfully memory-holed. The sheer -amount- of Capital it would generate would be huge, more so than even a successful election. Enough to pass any bills the administration wanted.
And so they borrowed against it.
Relying on that capital to come, they pushed for lockdowns, vaccine mandates, set up what they needed for election reform, pressed for filibuster reform, floated the idea of stacking the court. Even as crises began to mount they borrowed more from it, trusting it'd come so they delayed action on Immigration, Inflation, the New Housing Crisis.
This is why Biden's handlers were daring SCOTUS. They know it will fail, but one month was all they needed. One month, and everything could be solved. One. Month. and the paycheck would be in.