Granted, it's the Politico, but still an interesting look at the mindset around Obama. Gee, I wonder if a certain Pretty Ballerina also feels the same way about the $10 million the Democrats spent on Arlen Specter's campaign?

A senior White House official just called me with a very pointed message for the administration's sometime allies in organized labor, who invested heavily in beating Blanche Lincoln, Obama's candidate, in Arkansas.

"Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toilet on a pointless exercise," the official said. "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."

Lincoln relied heavily both on Obama's endorsement, which she advertised relentlessly on radio and in the mail, and on the backing of former President Bill Clinton, who backed her to the hilt.

Lincoln foe Bill Halter had the unstinting support of the AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME and other major unions. And labor officials Tuesday evening were already working to spin the narrow loss of their candidate, Bill Halter, as a moral victory, but the cost in money and in the goodwill of the White House may be a steep price to pay for a near miss.

I love the AFL-CIO response:

"If that's their take on this, then they severely misread how the electorate feels and how we're running our political program. When we say we're only going to support elected officials who support our issues," said AFL-CIO spokesman Eddie Vale. "When they say we should have targeted our money among some key house races among Blue Dog Democrats — that ain't happening."

"Labor isn't an arm of the Democratic Party," Vale said. "It exists to support working families. And that's what we said tonight, and that's what we're going to keep saying."

Tonight was a big night in primary-land with some expected, some unexpected, some disappointing, and some cliffhanging results.

Arkansas: Blanche Lincoln squeaks by Bill Halter

Despite Bill Halter's slight lead in the polls, Blanche Lincoln took the lead in votes from the first returns and never gave it back, squeaking through the runoff by a 9,500 vote margin as of this writing, winning the Democratic nomination to run against Republican John Boozman in November.

It appears that voter turnout was down slightly from the May 18th primary. In that race, a total of 324,216 votes were cast. In this one, with 83% reporting, 213,818 votes had been cast. Extrapolation of that result gives me an estimated voter turnout of 257,600 or so. This might not be such a big deal, but there are lingering questions about the integrity of this runoff, given that one county only had two polling places for this runoff instead of the 40 open for the primary. A lawsuit has been filed; voter disenfranchisement alleged.

California message: Rich corporate washout women win

Yep, that's right. Carly Fiorina will run against Barbara Boxer for the US Senate, and Meg Whitman will face Jerry Brown for Governor. Tom Campbell, Chuck Devore, and Steve Poizner were left in the dust. Sarah Palin can finally put a winner (Fiorina) in her column, and we're off to the races. Whitman spent $81 million ($71 million of her own money) on the primary. And they say Republicans are conservative.

On the ballot initiatives, Californians bear-hugged open primaries but sent fair elections packing. Despite a harrowing first few hours of returns, it appears that enough Californians rejected the idea of P,G&E and Mercury Insurance buying custom-built laws to build up their business at taxpayers' expense, but it is not a shoe-in. It is 1:00 AM as I write this, and Prop 17 just flipped to NO 15 minutes ago. Prop 16 flipped at midnight or so. Prop 13 sailed to victory as did Prop 14.

In other news, Rep. Jane Harman overwhelmed challenger Marcy Winograd 59.3%-40.7%.

Seems that anti-incumbent sentiment didn't quite ooze all the way out to California.

Birther takes a bath

Orly Taitz lost big, but it still amazes me that nearly 300,000 California Republicans think she's worthy to run for or hold public office.

Nevada - Harry Reid has a very strange challenger: Sharron Angle

A lot of money went to Angle from the tea party groups in the last few months of the campaign, and with Sue Lowden doing the funky chicken, Angle pulled out the win, more or less guaranteeing Harry Reid his next term in the Senate. Angle isn't your ordinary conservative. She wants to repeal Social Security, Medicare, health care reform, and all regulations hindering offshore drilling. I think there may be some issues with that these days. There's more, but that link goes to a cached version of her website which may change since the live site is offline but for a donation page.

Senator Ensign's good buddy Gov. Gibbons lost his primary bid by 30 points (ouch!) to Judge Brian Sandoval, who will run against Democrat Rory Reid in November.

More on yesterday's primaries here.

There are more stories to tell, including how this Twitterer was born. Election nights are emotional, and tonight was no exception, even for some unnamed "senior White House officials."

h/t the ever fabulous BlueGal for the graphic

Why oh why oh why? Can anyone give one good reason why Liz Cheney's pundit career should even exist in the realm of reality? How on earth can anyone who says that waterboarding isn't torture and that Obama can't simply say something to make it so (especially coming from the one administration--and family--that made that practice an art form) and whose latest gig is simply to keep pushing the Bush Doctrine, a policy that the country overwhelmingly voted against. I'm sorry, but the woman's credibility is less than zero. Shame on ABC for booking her yet again to pollute their round table. Will fellow participants Markos Moulitsas and Arianna Huffington have the huevos to call her out on her lies? Stay tuned...

Elsewhere around the dial, Coast Guard Commander Thad Allen is making some serious rounds to discuss the Gulf oil spill. He'll be on ABC’s “This Week,” CBS’s “Face the Nation,” CNN’s “State of the Union” and “Fox News Sunday.” Also worth noting is the head-to-head of Arkansas runoff candidates Blanche "DINO" Lincoln and Bill Halter on CNN's "State of the Union". And if you're a real glutton for spin, the Israeli ambassador to the US will be on "Fox News Sunday", no doubt to try to justify the shootings of the humanitarian flotilla. Luckily, we're spared our normal Sunday David Gregory hackery. "Meet the Press" is pre-empted for the French Open.

ABC's "This Week" - Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the Gulf oil disaster; Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and John Cornyn, R-Texas.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Allen; Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Howard Fineman, Michele Norris, Andrea Mitchell, Bill Plante. Topics: A Look Back At The Moments in TV and Politics Which Changed American History; The Good, The Bad and The Unforgettable

CNN's "State of the Union" - Allen; Gov. Charlie Crist, I-Fla., Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, D-Ark.; Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Israel; the man who came in second in the recent Afghan elections tells Fareed what he really thinks about the man who beat him - Hamid Karzai...and offers his advice on what the US should be doing to fix his embattled nation.

"Fox News Sunday" - Allen; Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Miss.; Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren.

So what's catching your eye this morning?

Oops. I imagine this is a pretty uncomfortable situation for Bill Clinton, since Bill Halter served in the Clinton White House. The Halter campaign attributes it to a previous commitment to Lincoln, made before Halter entered the race:

A day after finishing ahead of Lt. Gov. Bill Halter by just 5,000 votes and being forced into a runoff, Sen. Blanche Lincoln announced she's bringing in a hefty campaign reinforcement: former President and Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton.

The Lincoln campaign said Clinton would campaign for her in the Little Rock area on May 28. Details of the stops have not yet been released.

"Blanche is fighting the special interests and standing up for Arkansas," Clinton said in a statement released by the Lincoln campaign. "She has written the toughest Wall Street reform proposal to help Main Street businesses. She has fought for Arkansas farmers, ranchers and foresters. Arkansas cannot afford to lose Blanche's leadership as Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee," the former president continued.

The move is squarely designed to halt the momentum Halter has gained by coming within two percentage points of the two-term incumbent. With 93 percent of the vote counted, Lincoln led Halter 44 percent to 42 percent. The little-known D.C. Morrison captured 13 percent of the vote.

"We understand President Clinton is fulfilling a commitment he made before Bill Halter entered the race," said Halter campaign manager Carol Butler.

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It's always fun to watch Election Night on Fox, especially when they get their hopes all fired up and things kind of fall flat instead.

They wanted to get all excited about Rand Paul's big win in Kentucky -- but then there's the little problem with Paul's win being a big fiasco for the GOP establishment. So the excitement was a little muted there.

What was unmentioned: If you look at the complete Kentucky results, the liberal Democrat, Jack Conway, who Paul will face in the general election collected about 22,000 more votes than Paul, and Democrats in general garnered about 170,000 more total votes than Republicans. No one should start assuming that the seat is Paul's just yet.

It was also tough to spin Blanche Lincoln's almost-certain runoff with progressive Bill Halter in Arkansas as a conservative win, considering that Lincoln had screwed herself with the Democratic base by playing games with health-care reform and financial reform. Mostly that race went ignored.

And then there was Joe Sestak's win over Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania. Again, it was a little difficult to spin this as a win for conservatives, considering that Sestak is a progressive Democrat and Specter had just switched parties after decades as a Republican. Instead we heard a lot of talk about "anti-incumbent sentiment."

But the biggest deflation of the Tea Bag came in Pennsylvania's 12th District, where Republican Tim Burns -- a Tea Party fave who got heavy media play at Fox for the past couple of weeks -- still couldn't pull off the victory against Democrat Mark Critz, a longtime John Murtha staffer who leaned heavily on his old boss' legacy to keep his seat. This was a race that had been touted on Fox and elsewhere as a likely pickup for Republicans. Quoth Tory Mazzola, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, which dumped $200,000 into the race: "The fact that we have a strong GOP candidate, Tim Burns -- committed to job creation and repealing ObamaCare -- combined with a favorable Republican environment has turned this historically Democratic seat into a swing district."

RNC chairman Michael Steele had even guaranteed a Burns victory. Ooops.

So of course, having invested heavily in promoting the "Mini Super Tuesday" election as a referendum on President Obama, Fox had to figure out some way to spin the results that way. This meant getting out their spinmeister "pollsters", Frank Luntz and Doug Schoen.

Luntz managed to turn PA-12 into an anti-Obama referendum by pointing out how Critz ran to the right during the campaign. (Um, OK, Frank, whatever. Tea Party Dude still lost.)

Schoen even more bizarrely tried to claim that Specter's loss was "anti-Obama," because the president had endorsed the converted senator. Um, so, lessee if we have this straight: In DougSchoenland, Pennsylvania Democrats rejected a conservative ex-Republican and replaced him with a progressive Democrat not because he was a piss-poor Democrat, but because he wasn't right-wing enough? Come again?

OK, you knew they had to spin it as a victory for the Tea Partiers somehow. It just took some ... imagination.