Warren Gets 2020 Boost from Anti-Sessions Spectacle

Sen. Elizabeth Warren appears to be using Sen. Jeff Sessions as a stepping stool to boost support for a presidential bid in 2020.

Warren has been beating the war drums about Sessions for many a moon now, but it seems clear that Tuesday night’s stunt was little more than a cowardly exercise in impugning the character of a colleague for political gain.

After an already lengthy attack on Session that implied he was racist, Warren attempted to read an old letter authored by Coretta Scott King, which charged Sessions directly with racism.

Wishing to preserve the order and decorum that should be inherent to Senate proceedings, Republican lawmakers silenced Warren after repeated warnings. Warren, her fellow Democrats, and the mainstream media had a field day.

Warren was on the phone with CNN minutes after the incident, fiddling her tune of shock and sorrow about the injustice of her silencing. Social media lit up with accusations that the Republicans silenced Warren specifically for trying to read a letter written by Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, accusations made eagerly by Warren herself.

“I spoke out about @SenatorSessions — until @SenateMajLdr McConnell decided to silence me,” Warren tweeted. “I will not be silent about a nominee for AG who has made derogatory & racist comments that have no place in our justice system,” she added.

“Tonight @SenateMajLdr silenced Mrs King’s voice on the Sen floor — & millions who are afraid & appalled by what’s happening in our country,” read her final tweet of the evening.

Warren isn’t the first Democratic senator to attack Sessions’ character and his motives. In what many also thought to be a clear signal of 2020 intent, Sen. Corey Booker launched a scathing attack on Sessions’ alleged racism — despite having partnered with Sessions to co-sponsor successful legislation that awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to those who participated in the 1965 Selma march. Booker broke with decades of precedent when he testified against his colleague during Sessions’ confirmation hearing.

Booker’s anti-Sessions broadside gained him sympathetic media coverage and gave the Democratic National Committee a golden fundraising opportunity. Warren’s has done the same.

The following morning, CNN posted an article titled “The Coretta Scott King letter Elizabeth Warren was trying to read,” while NBC chose to go with the even less subtle “Warren Silenced for Reading Coretta Scott King Letter at Sessions Debate.”

Critics said McConnell committed an unforced error on Tuesday evening by stepping in to stop Warren’s speech. Instead of allowing her late-night letter-reading to fade into the annals of CSPAN, he drew dramatic attention to the Massachusetts Democrat, guaranteeing her a flattering 24-hour news cycle, a series of celebratory hashtags, and a ready-made 2020 campaign ad.

Meanwhile, the DNC sent out a dramatic fundraising email from Donna Brazile with the subject “The letter Elizabeth Warren tried to read last night.” The email asks recipients to sign their name in support of Warren’s anti-Sessions efforts, but doing so leads down a rabbit hole of landing pages that arrives eventually at an online payment form, as do most political petition emails.

But while many may try to laud Warren’s actions as brave, there was little to celebrate about her harsh treatment of Sessions. Warren was silenced not for trying to read King, but for trying to damage the character and question the motives of a fellow senator, a direct violation of Senate Rule XIX.

The rule cited in her silencing explicitly states that “no Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.”

Appearing on CNN Wednesday morning, former Sen. Rick Santorum was asked if had ever seen “something like that happen — what happened to Elizabeth Warren last night?”

“As a matter of fact I did, and I would say that on one or two occasions, Rule XIX was brought up when I was up on the floor going after some folks,” Santorum responded.

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“The whole reason for these rules is to keep the temperature down and to keep decorum in the Senate and make it a deliberative body, so you don’t have personal attacks and you’re not directly addressing the senator, accusing them or something,” Santorum continued. “All of this is in place and has been for hundreds of years to keep the temperature down.”

But there are few signs Warren has any desire to share a peace pipe with her Republican colleagues, as she has chosen instead to grandstand, bloviate, and play the victim in order to tarnish them and further increase her support among progressives.

That Warren would seek to raise her profile in preparation for a presidential bid in 2020 is hardly surprising. With Hillary Clinton out of the way for good, and her only main competition for the progressive mantle being a septuagenarian socialist who isn’t even a registered Democrat, the Massachusetts senator is using her war against the Trump administration to stake out her claim as a party leader.