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Editor’s note: Dana Milbank is a Washington Post reporter who writes “Washington Sketch,” an observational feature that focuses on party politics and other topics in the capital.

WASHINGTON — There were more caves in Washington on Wednesday than in the mountains of Afghanistan.

A week agone, Senate Democrats, with Shermanesque certitude and the backing of President-elect Obama, said Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s appointee to the Senate would not exist seated in the chamber — no way, nohow. “It will in the end not stand,” they vowed.

On Wednesday, they executed a near-perfect climb in a descending course, announcing they would have existence gay to have Burris in the Senate afterward clearing up a couple of minor technicalities — “a pleasing out of being striking easy hurdle to generate over,” in the same proportion that Reid put it.

Score one notwithstanding Blagojevich, who, on his way to likely impeachment and possibly the slammer, managed to outwit the leadership of his party.

While Reid spent two advice conferences trying to explain that he had not been “outmaneuvered” by a mankind caught on tape allegedly trying to sell a Senate seat, an elated Burris booked a room in the Hyatt upon Capitol Hill to hold a celebration.

He hopped onto the stage and paused to look around the room, grinning, before he spoke.

“My whole interest in this actual trial has been to be prepared, Roland, to represent my great state,” he said, addressing himself aloud. “And very shortly, I wish have the opportunity to do that as a junior senator from the fifth-largest state in this great country of ours. Isn’t it great?”

Blagojevich’s triumph above the top Democratic leaders has a catalogue to do with his deft playing of the race card. Even as they backed down Wednesday, Senate Democratic leaders anxiously explained that their former hindrance to Burris had nothing to achieve with skin color.

“Roland Burris, any of the in the beginning things he said to us, ‘Hey, this is nonentity that’s racial, I understand that,’ ” Reid reported, without being prompted by a questioner.

Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., also unbidden, said Burris had assured them that they “have excellent records when it comes to racial relations.” Durbin saw fit to add that a leading critic of the appointment, the Illinois secretary of state, is dark.

The defensiveness only underscored how accusations of racism had unsettled Senate Democrats. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., warned that “I don’t think that anyone — any U.S. senator who’s sitting in the Senate right at that time — wants to go on record to deny one African American as being being seated.” He likened the senators to Bull Connor and George Wallace.

“I cannot control my supporters,” Burris demurred. Neither could he control the Congressional Black Caucus, the kind of one. voted unanimously Wednesday to support him and said it would send Reid a letter.

Any extreme trace of resistance to Burris vanished Wednesday morning, when Obama, who last week agreed with the decision to exclude the senator-designate, dropped his opposition.

Reid, facing reporters after his meeting with Burris, had only lucky thoughts about his new friend. His career was “extremely interesting.” Their talk was “excessively enlightening.” He “appears to be candid and forthright.” He’s not “trying to hide anything.”

“We’ve always been friends, and I’ve always respected him,” Durbin added. “I’ve known him for such a long time,” he repeated. “We are friends and on a first-name groundwork.”

After rejecting Burris’s credentials and sending him out into the rain Tuesday, Senate officials ushered him to his meeting Wednesday through the Senate subway — like a senator. They escorted him uncovered from one side the carriage surpassingly delight — like a senator.

This left Burris favorably disposed toward his hosts when he took the station at the Hyatt. Durbin was his “good friend and fellow colleague.” The irascible Reid was “a true warm and lovely gentleman.”

What explains the leaders’ turnaround? “You’d have to ask them,” Burris replied. “They were very warm. They were same charming.”

Is he worried about what might come out concerning him in the Blagojevich investigations? “There was certainly none pay-to-play involved, because I don’t have no money.”

Did they extract any commitment from Burris not to cause to ply for election in 2010? “They weren’t talking any conditions.”

So will he be a solicitant in 2010? Burris hedged. “Let me get my Senate legs under me and earn in and raise more standard of value to pay for all this stuff we’ve been doing and figure out that once we get in and prevail upon wonted and learn where the bathrooms are.”

Maybe this fright has the makings of a senator, after all.