Last night’s Keystone XL pipeline vote, rushed to the floor to save Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, did not go as well as planned for the Senator now facing a runoff. After much afternoon whipping, Democratic leadership, which had pushed the bill in the first place, couldn’t manage to eek out the 60 votes needed to pass the measure.

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday narrowly failed to pass a bill that would have approved construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, rejecting a measure the House of Representatives approved last week.

The vote count was 59-41 in favor, but 60 “ayes” would have been needed to assure passage. Fourteen Democrats voted for the bill, joining all 45 Republicans who voted to support the pipeline.

This raging success was, apparently, brought to you by the Democratic leadership, who, despite touting Mary Landrieu’s immense pull with energy- and gas-focused legislators, failed to whip itself hard enough to get it’s own leadership on board with a bill that was never going to make any real impact anyway. The whole purpose of the bill was to show that Mary Landrieu was not completely useless, not to actually pass any sort of real middle-American pipeline. Republicans can do all that when they control the Senate. But according to the vote count, Dem leadership still split on the issue, and even Dems who only just narrowly avoided being ousted didn’t think it was important enough to save one of their own.

Between this and that whole thing about not being allowed to vote when you’re a pregnant war veteran, it’s clear that this is not such an awesome time to be a Democrat.