Is this all because Bernie endorsed ONE LOCAL CANDIDATE IN A LOCAL RACE

[Omaha Steve]

60.  Heres the truth about Mellos record

https://www.thenation.com/article/why-was-heath-mello-thrown-under-the-bus/

 Instead, on April 19, The Wall Street Journal ran a story noting that Mello, a practicing Catholic, is pro-life. The story also falsely claimed that Mello had co-sponsored a bill “requiring women to look at an ultrasound image of their fetus before receiving an abortion.” A similar error was made by The Washington Post, which claimed that Mello had “previously backed a bill requiring ultrasounds for women considering abortions,” and then again the following day by David Nir, political director of Daily Kos, who announced the site was withdrawing its endorsement of Mello—a move applauded by Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, who’d launched a 12-part Twitter storm linking to the WSJ article and accusing Sanders and Perez of kicking off their tour with the message “shame women; we’ll support u anyway.”

 Back in 2009, he co-sponsored a bill requiring a physician performing an abortion to tell a woman that an ultrasound is available (as most already did). It neither mandated that the ultrasound be performed nor, if performed, that it actually be viewed by the woman—although it did require abortion providers to position the screen in such a way that the ultrasound was easily viewable. Daily Kos member Nova Land—a Tennessean who had never heard of Mello before the controversy—posted a comprehensive, well-sourced correction to this effect the same day. That didn’t lead Nir to reconsider. Nor did it stop Perez from issuing a statement announcing that he “fundamentally disagree[s] with Heath Mello’s personal beliefs about women’s reproductive health,” which was worded in a way that appeared to cast doubt on the sincerity of Mello’s pledge that he “would never do anything to restrict access to reproductive health care.”

 What’s more interesting is what happened next—and what didn’t. In 2012, Mello voted with Planned Parenthood on two out of three bills tracked by the group—and was excused from voting on the third. After that, Mello, who had become the influential chair of the state legislature’s budget committee, voted with Planned Parenthood 100 percent of the time. By 2015, the group was celebrating a “fourth straight year…without enacting any new abortion restrictions in Nebraska, thanks largely to committed women’s health advocates engaged in the legislative process.”

 But in Omaha, the DNC’s response was greeted with dismay. “It was Heath’s credibility with pro-life legislators that enabled him to take mandatory ultrasounds off the table and substitute a bill that stated that women had a choice to have one and to see the image,” said Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, of the ultrasound legislation. The competing bill not only required ultrasounds before an abortion; it also required clinics to position the screen so that women would be forced to view the fetus.