If Elizabeth Warren emerges as the Democratic candidate in 2020 she will have Mansplaining McConnell to thank

Gagging your political opponents is rarely a good idea

The letter Warren read out has been widely circulated online since she was shut down in the Senate

Since taking office, Donald Trump has unleashed a rolling tempest of utterances that could be described as, well, impugning. He is a serial impugner, often by Tweet. “So-called judges”, the “very dishonest media”. His is a philosophy of reverse-courtesy and insult as political weapon.

That is only one reason why the shutting down of Elizabeth Warren on the Senate floor because of her opposition to Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions as America’s next Attorney General was so astounding. Another is the sheer boneheadedness of the Republicans who did it, notably Mansplainer-in-Chief Mitch McConnell. The backlash has only just begun.

What were they so afraid of anyway? The way the Republicans have manipulated the rules, there was never any doubt that Senator Sessions was on his way to being confirmed in his new post even though there are any number of compelling reasons to doubt his suitability for it.

Some of those came to light when in 1986 when he was up for a federal judgeship. He was turned down for the job amidst claims he had displayed racist attitudes while serving as a federal prosecutor. Like the time he was discussing a murder case involving KKK members. He said he had been “okay” with them until he discovered they smoked marijuana. He testified in 1986 he had been joking. But it didn’t seem any funnier then than it does now.

In his two decades in the US Senate, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, to use his full name, has been consistent in his opposition to immigration, illegal and even legal, fervently opposing any past attempt at reform that would have offered amnesty to any of those already in the country without documentation. Democrats see him as a threat to voting rights and civil rights.

Most concerning is the degree to which Sessions and Trump are hip-conjoined. He was the first member of Congress to endorse Trump one year ago and worked tirelessly for him on the campaign trail. Yet if there is one cabinet post that demands independence from the political priorities of the Oval Office, it is this one. In times when a president or his executive are accused of breaking the law, for example, it is the Attorney General who decides if an investigation is appropriate.

Warren, in case you missed it, had the temerity during debate on Sessions to cite letters written at the time of his 1986 judgeship hearing by the late Senator Ted Kennedy and Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr. Kennedy had written: “He is, I believe, a disgrace to the Justice Department and he should withdraw his nomination and resign his position.”

In her letter, Ms King said Sessions' actions as a federal prosecutor were “reprehensible” and that he used his office “in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters.” She went on: “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge.”

McConnell had invoked one of that club’s more obscure rules that prohibits members from, yes, impugning one another. To use Rule 19, as it is known, against Warren was absurd not least because senators have said much worse without anyone mentioning it. In 2015, Ted Cruz called McConnell a liar on the Senate floor. No Rule 19 problem then. Last year, Senator Tom Cotton talked about the “cancerous leadership” of Senator Harry Reid. Nope, no Rule 19 then either.

But here was McConnell positively glowing with satisfaction after the triggering of Rule 19 was put to a vote and was passed by 49 to 43, strictly on party lines. The effect was straightforward: Warren was thereafter forbidden from taking the floor to say anything until the final vote to confirm Session was taken. She had been muzzled.

“Senator Warren was giving a lengthy speech,” McConnell said flatly. “She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” Precocious and disobedient, she had been sent - by that wagging finger - to the naughty seat.

Also by that wagging finger, McConnell had attached a booster rocket to Warren’s chances of being the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020. History should have told him that gagging an opponent rarely has the desired effect. (Imprisoning her, even in Trump’s America, presumably won’t be an option.) Within minutes of her being forced to sit down, T-shirts were being printed across America with ‘She Persisted’ slapped across them. Supporters of Warren christened the handle #LetLizSpeak on Twitter and posted copies of King’s letter on Facebook.

Warren herself left the chamber for another room in the Senate building where she recorded a Facebook video reading the letter by Ms Scott King. As I write this, it has already attracted over six million views. Other Democrat Senators, including Bernie Sanders, defiantly used the time they had during the waning hours of debate on Sessions also to read from the letter.

“The idea that a letter, a statement made by Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., a letter that she wrote, could not be presented and spoken about here on the floor of the Senate, is to me incomprehensible,” Sanders said before reading the letter. “I want the American people to make a decision whether or not we should be able to look at Senator Sessions' record and hear from one of the heroines of the Civil Rights Movement.”

The battle over Sessions is lost to Democrats, but the war is just getting started. The antediluvian behaviour of McConnell and his Senate crew has poured still more fuel on the fury of a progressive movement that is already on the march to take away his majority in 2018 and dump Trump in 2020. And for now, at least, no one offers a better vessel for that anger than Warren.