Many of the names of the Senate Democrats that voted with the Republicans to finally pass a continuing resolution to fund the federal government until Jan. 30 were not surprising: John Fetterman, D-Pa., quickly filling Joe Manchin’s role as the iconoclast of the Senate Democrats. Angus King, I-Maine, technically not a Democrat despite caucusing with them. Tim Kaine? Virginia’s Tim Kaine? What would cause him to switch after 13 “no” votes on the resolution? Did something change? As the senator said, “You bet it did.”

Quietly among the noise created by the argument over what may come in December when the Senate begins debating the extension of COVID-19-era premium subsidies of the “Affordable (no snickering) Care Act” was Virginia’s junior senator telling everyone who would ask that he got the GOP to agree to re-hire all the federal employees fired in the Reduction-in-Force cuts and a guarantee that no other cuts would happen.

I know what you are thinking: “Isn’t draining the swamp a cornerstone of President Donald Trump’s administration?” It certainly has been, and the efforts of Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to carry out these staff reductions have been a burr under the saddle of many in Washington on both sides of the aisle. Perhaps it was that fact that encouraged the Senate Republicans to agree to it. No one has asked the president specifically about this part of the agreement, so we are left wondering when he said that he supported it and that it was a “good deal,” if he’s aware that it functionally stops any additional ”swamp draining.”

Trump did post to his Truth Social account that the experts had told him the shutdown caused the losses in Virginia and New Jersey, so he might be willing to deal on ”Drain the Swamp,” seeing how Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger gained 300,000 votes over Terry McAuliffe’s total of four years ago and that is just how many federal employees live in Virginia according to Kaine.

The question is, who will benefit from that in next year’s midterms? It’s not a stretch to imagine Kaine appearing with every Democrat running in Virginia next year, trumpeting this deal like the white knight that slayed the dragon, while the Republicans will have to hope they can explain why they traded in “Drain the Swamp.” That seems like it will be a heavy lift.

Kaine knows what he’s doing. It appears to be a win-win for Virginia Democrats at this point.

However, we must point out that at the end of the day it appears this partial government shutdown wasn’t about medical care for noncitizens or subsidies for Obamacare premiums or even tariffs. It was about federal bureaucrats, that earn way more than the average Virginian, getting their jobs back.

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