You know that anxiety you feel when watching a movie, and one of the characters is being framed, but you know the truth and can’t do anything about it?

Well. This past week has felt a lot like that, especially here on Dkos.

It happened when our party decided to move the goalposts and outcast a progressive candidate that our city desperately needs to win.

I saw how users here were not just quick, but eager, to jump on any opportunity to attack another Democrat in the home stretch of a general election. Some even went so far to say that this was an attempt to turn back Roe vs. Wade, to only focus on the “dreams of white males”. Even after the facts were laid out on this very site.

Meanwhile, his opponent has been running with this infighting, and today Scott Walker held a rally for her.

So let’s look at the this article, from a reporter who actually decided to do some research:

www.thenation.com/...

...April 19, the Wall Street Journal ran a story noting that Mello, a practicing Catholic, is pro-life. The story also falsely claimed Mello had co-sponsored a bill “requiring women to look at 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.”

Hogue, on the other hand, seemed much more relaxed about Kaine. “I don’t think we’re in the business of thought policing,” Hogue told Katha Pollitt in July. “I’m okay with people having their own ideas as long as they don’t prevent other people from exercising their right.” Hogue didn’t answers my emails, so I was unable to ask whether her tolerant attitude to Kaine was influenced less by his record than by her own loyalty to Hillary Clinton. Or how much of her current outrage was really directed at Heath Mello—or Bernie Sanders.

Double standard? Seems pretty obvious to me. Why would these national figures jump at the opportunity to attack a fellow Democrat in my hometown mayoral election? Why didn’t they take the most basic step of contacting the campaign so they could learn the truth? I’m guessing you know the answer.

Continued:

But they also knew that while remaining true to his beliefs, and his Catholic faith, he has been a public defender of Planned Parenthood, one who has shifted his efforts from blocking abortion to helping women avoid unwanted pregnancies by supporting comprehensive sex education and access to contraception—the same path travelled by politicians from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden to Tim Kaine. As Governor of Virginia, Kaine not only backed laws mandating parental consent and banning late term abortions, he also signed a law that actually did require women seeking abortions to undergo medically unnecessary ultrasounds.

Like many of his supporters—including some of his most fervently pro-choice supporters—Mello told me he would like abortion to be a private matter, between a woman and her partner, or her conscience. So long as women’s rights are under threat that can’t happen. But when I ask Mello if, when he says he “will not restrict women’s reproductive care,” that includes abortions, he doesn’t equivocate. “Of course. I thought that was obvious.” What isn’t obvious is whether a party that sets the bar so high it excludes Heath Mello can ever hope to become a majority.

I hope this is a lesson to us all.

If we one day want to be a national party again, we need to call other democrats to the carpet when they attack us like this. This cannibalism isn’t productive, and it will only bring the demise of our beliefs sooner.

Unfortunately, for this election that affects me greatly, we have had to focus our efforts on something that never should have been an issue in the first place.