It’s hard to know what to make of the SEIU-backed effort to create a third-party in North Carolina. I certainly understand Tarheel progressives’ frustration with the three congressmen who voted against health care reform. But I think these activists may be getting played.

Chuck Stone, a longtime SEANC leader who is chairman of North Carolina First, asked: “Does it really matter if you put a Democratic label or a Republican label on them when they go up there and support big companies and big insurance?”

SEANC and its parent group, the Service Employees International Union, possibly the nation’s most politically powerful labor union, are funding the effort, which was announced April 8. In the days since, they have hired more than 100 canvassers who are rounding up the signatures needed to qualify as a third party on the general election ballot.

This is a top priority for outgoing SEIU President Andy Stern, who considers it a way to hold Democratic lawmakers accountable for their health-care votes. “It’s not a fly-by-night kind of thing,” said SEIU spokeswoman Lori Lodes. “We’re making a very strong commitment to doing this. There is significant money behind it . . . There’s not a ceiling to what we’re willing to do.”

They need to get the signatures of 85,000 registered voters by June 1st, and then they must nominate candidates before July, even though they have not yet identified any candidates.

Now, the SEIU is also involved in primaries, notably, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter’s challenge to Sen. Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas. And that route makes a lot more sense. After all, the optimal outcome is not to bleed enough votes off from the left to elect a Republican, but to actually win the primary and field a candidate you can be proud to support. But the effort to create a new party called North Carolina First is all about achieving accountability through the former approach.

Now, the excuse is that it doesn’t really matter “if you put a Democratic label or a Republican label on them when they go up there and support big companies and big insurance.” That’s basically true. But it matters a lot whether all the committee chairman are Democrats (mostly progressive Democrats) or they are conservative Republicans who want to repeal health care by defunding it. It matters whether we have a Speaker Pelosi or a speaker Boehner. So, why doesn’t the SEIU fund primary challengers? Because, it appears, they know they can’t field a credible threat in any of these three districts (Reps. Kissell, McIntyre, and Shuler).

But, you know what? I don’t think they can do much damage (this year, at least) in the general election either. Here is what I suspect. I suspect that they will either fail to get the signatures or they will fail to field candidates. What they’re doing is trying to put some pressure on these Democrats to give us some progressive votes. And I don’t think that is worth all the effort and resources that Andy Stern decided to put into this effort before he announced his retirement.

One alternative explanation is that Stern thinks two or all three of these candidates are going to lose anyway, and he wants Labor to get credit for their defeat so that they can increase their leverage with other members in the next Congress. That would be a somewhat more savvy strategy than the first scenario, but I still think its advantages are dubious in an environment where even Nate Silver is predicting that control of the House of Representatives is a toss-up.

I don’t think that is the kind of environment where progressives want to play the role of spoilers. I support primary challenges, even where an insurgent upset would make an otherwise safe seat into a toss-up. But that’s the most risk I want to contemplate at the moment. Intentionally trying to throw races to Republicans to put fear into other Democrats? How’d it work for the Club for Growth? They got more party discipline at the cost of their majorities.

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