I have been disturbed to see, over the last few days, a lot of vicious attacks on Bernie Sanders coming from Democrats on social media.
Fundamentally, I disagree with the premise of many of these attacks, but I have also, after doing some research, discovered that many of them are misleading or outright false. Most of the people repeating these allegations probably do not realize the extent of this, so I wanted to clear the air with a few facts you may not know about Heath Mello and why Bernie Sanders is supporting him. To be clear, I do not live in Omaha and am not particularly well versed on Heath Mello’s background, and if I am mistaken on any details I will gladly correct them. The information I am providing is readily available online and seems to check out.
1. Health Mello has promised that as mayor of Omaha he will not do anything to infringe on reproductive rights. This is, in my opinion the key fact many people seem to be missing. Heath Mello is not running as an anti-choice candidate, and I am somewhat unnerved by the ease with which people are calling him “pro-life” for votes he has taken in the past. He clearly has, for religious reasons, a deep discomfort with abortion and may identify as pro-life in his private life (as many Catholic Democrats do), but he is not campaigning on governing Omaha that way. If he doesn’t keep this promise, primarying him is always an option down the line.
2. Mello is running for Mayor, not Governor, Senator, or Congressman. While issues relating to reproductive rights perhaps occasionally come up in city government, by and large the role of a mayor is restricted to that one city, its schools, economic development, city taxes, etc. Looking at his platform, it’s very focused on issues specifically related to Omaha, and it seems pretty good for a Democrat in a red area. He’s not exactly what I would call a Berniecrat, but Bernie endorsed a variety of candidates during the 2016 cycle that differed with him on certain issues, usually because they asked for his help. The expectation some have that Bernie should endorse everyone or endorse no one doesn’t take into account the needs of individual districts (some red state Dems don’t want Bernie’s endorsement because they fear he might alienate moderates) and where candidates fall relative to the political climate of their state. If Heath Mello was running in Seattle or Portland or somewhere like that, Bernie might not have endorsed him.
3. Mello’s most reprehensible votes seem to date from 2011 or earlier. See the article above. As recent as 2011 sometimes seems, that was six years ago. In 2011 many mainstream Democrats did not support marriage equality, and now mainstream positions on criminal justice reform, minimum wage, healthcare, and other issues were considered fringe. Admittedly, some of Mello’s legislation is pretty disgusting, though like many moderate Democrats he has used “compromise” as an excuse, claiming he supported moderate restrictions to discourage Republicans from pursuing worse ones. For instance, the ultrasound bill he sponsored in 2009 required doctors offer ultrasounds, while a more restrictive Republican bill would’ve forced doctors to perform the ultrasounds whether the pregnant woman in question wanted it or not. I am not 100% behind his logic here, but it’s a reasoning I’ve heard before from red-state Dems.
4. I would put Mello somewhere in the gray area between pro-life and pro-choice, which is in line with the views of a lot of Americans. His opponent, on the other hand, is anti-abortion according to the Huffington Post. Scott Walker, one of the slimiest Republicans around (ask anyone who’s lived in Wisconsin!) is campaigning for her. Having high profile progressives like Bernie Sanders and DNC Vice-Chair Keith Ellison campaigning for Health Mello could help generate enthusiasm for his campaign and help him win this race.
5. A lot of Democrats have made anti-choice votes at some point in their life. Joe Biden once voted for a late-term abortion ban and received low marks from NARAL in 1999 and 2003. In other years, he got high scores and his position likely became more progressive over time. Tim Kaine is another Catholic Democrat who has faltered on occasion, notably by supporting abstinence only sex-ed as Governor of Virginia. I was in middle school and had to sit through Virginia’s less-than-progressive sex-ed program and it was literally misogyny force fed to children. But I don’t hold that against Tim Kaine, I blame Virginia’s political climate at the time and the fact that sometimes with Republicans you only give them an inch and they take a mile. At the 2016 DNC, there were pro-life Democrats fighting for their place in the party. Like many of you, I’m not necessarily comfortable with them having a huge role in the party unless they’re willing to put the right of women to control their own bodies over their own personal or religious views on abortion. But the pattern, with Joe Biden, Keith Mello, and others, seems to be that they do move in that direction. A lot of Americans identify strongly with the pro-life movement for religious reasons, and unlike some conservative positions (like kicking poor people off of healthcare) it’s not hard for me to see how an otherwise ethical person might end up on the wrong side of this issue. If they are willing to contemplate changing their views, I don’t necessarily think we should be hostile to that.
6. Bernie Sanders has consistently gotten 100% ratings from pro-choice organizations and 0% (or close to it) ratings from anti-choice organizations. He has never shown any inclination to infringe on anyone’s right-to-choose. Bernie chose to endorse Heath Mello, a man who is not aligned with his own views on this particular issue, and perhaps other issues as well. You may not agree with that decision, but he has a history of endorsing candidates who did not necessarily line up with all of his views. I’ve read his memoir, Outsider in the House, where he writes pretty frankly about the difficulties he has had balancing his own views with the political reality in which he lives. He as undoubtedly made his share of missteps, but like all of us we sometimes have to make decisions about which campaigns we want to support and how far we want to go in supporting them. I have voted for candidates I didn’t agree with on hardly anything, and I’ve even volunteered for candidates who I had deep policy disagreements about. If I were to have a litmus test based on the issues most important to me, honestly most candidates would not pass it. Sometimes you have to take into account not just the person’s policies, but the place where you live, and Omaha, Nebraska is not quite the same as Burlington, Vermont. And it’s completely fair to come to your own conclusions, on an individual basis, about whether or not a candidate is acceptable. Reproductive rights is a life or death issue, but so is healthcare, so is police brutality, so is the environment, so is the minimum wage. And to some extent all of these issues are related, and there are a lot of Democrats on the wrong side of all of them. Bernie has been fighting to try and move the entire country to the left, and while perhaps he’s made his share of mistakes like all of us, I will continue to respect the work he has put into that. And, honestly, I think a lot of the criticism he’s receiving, the kind that comes from people who do know all of these facts (and I realize many do not and this isn’t directed at them) is because they are trying to “fire back” at him for criticism he has made about certain policies or candidates that they support, and they’re looking for an issue to hold over him to try and silence the voices of his supporters. But that’s not going to happen, because Bernie isn’t going away and neither are those of us he brought into the political process.