Imagine waking up today as a union leader, having just burned $90 million of your members’ money, and having to tell them that you came up empty-handed. Oops!

Well, that’s the situation in which unions find themselves today. Figure AFSCME spent about $90 million of their members’ hard-earned dues to support candidates that a whole bunch of the members don’t support. The National Education Association took a break from thwarting education reform to pour $40 million of their members’ money down the same rat hole. Not to be outdone, the SEIU burned $44 million or so, too. Nice.

But worse yet for labor, 41 anti-democracy candidates who had voted for, cosponsored or endorsed the "Card Check" bill were defeated, including at least 31 who co-sponsored the bill in the 111th Congress. In the Senate, eight candidates who supported card check lost while West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, who came out against the bill, won. See a pattern here? Worse yet for labor, South Carolina, South Dakota, Arizona and Utah, overwhelmingly passed constitutional amendments requiring a secret ballot election in organizing drives.

Of the $4 million spent by the SEIU, they endorsed 29 House candidates, with only 7 winning. The AFL-CIO lost 15 Senate races and 59 House races. Ouch. No wonder they don’t like secret ballot elections. Coercion works so much better.

So as the post-mortems continue throughout the weeks and months ahead, one clear loser emerges: The House of Labor. We hope that the new members of Congress will keep this in mind when they begin to craft solutions for the future: Labor’s agenda is a non-starter -- and is ultimately a loser.