That’s not just my opinion. That’s what a senior White House aide told Politico in the wake of the unions’ failure to unseat Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) last night.

“Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members’ money down the toilet on a pointless exercise,” the official said to Politico. “If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November.” An AFL spokesman shot back, “labor isn’t an arm of the Democratic Party.”

That’s news to me! Granted, 48 percent of the vote against a two-term incumbent isn’t anything to sneeze at. But Big Labor and the netroots invested a lot of resources here, comparable to Ned Lamont’s push to beat Joe Lieberman four years ago, and came up short (and even Bill Halter was a little wobbly on card check). Arkansas might not have been the best place for the unions to make their stand and the sitting lieutenant governor might not have been in an ideal position to press the anti-incumbent message. But most observers expected Halter to win and he didn’t.