Whether Mitch's goal was to silence Elizabeth Warren or to keep people from hearing about King's letter, he failed spectacularly in every possible way. #LetLizSpeak and #ShePersisted are still the top trends on twitter, and, as Donald correctly noted, she is now the face of the Democratic party. (Finally—a proud liberal!)
Coretta Scott King's letter against Jeff Sessions was read--in its entirety--on the Senate floor and is now part of the permanent Senate record. (A male senator, Jeff Merkley, finished reading the letter after Warren was censored with no action being taken against him.) The letter has been featured on every major news outlet thanks to Mitch's attempt to silence Senator Warren last Wednesday. The letter has been read millions of times by people who otherwise may never of heard about it.
And just in case Mitch still somehow missed hearing the content of the letter after all of that, it was delivered to him personally by 400 protestors yesterday.
The protestors read the full text of the letter, in unison, at Mitch's Louisville residence. Today, protestors are reading it in front of his DC residence. Sorry, Mitch, one way or another--you are hearing this letter.
x YouTube VideoH/T amyo28
Before I end, let me briefly explore why Senator McConnell hates Elizabeth Warren so damn much---so much so that an otherwise admittedly politically astute politician shot himself in the foot.
Senator Warren has only been on the political scene a relatively short time, yet she has already made a real difference in people’s lives. Almost as soon as she became a senator, she built the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau into a watchdog agency that has forced big banks and credit card companies to reimburse victims tens of millions of dollars. She has sponsored over 35 bills, including the Equal Employment Act for All, the Schedules That Work Act, the Trade Transparency Act, and the Federal Accountability Act. Every time you see her on television or in a viral video, you see her taking on a variety of American villains: college loan predators, bank grifters, and Wall Street scam artists. She is the champion of the working class and the liberal ideal.
Match this with Mitch McConnell. At the McConnell Center, located at his alma mater, the University of Louisville, Mitch has tried to highlight his “achievements” over nearly 35 years in the Senate. All of them deal with his winning elections. All this time in office and he has absolutely nothing to show for it:
...there’s almost no mention of any bills McConnell has authored...There’s virtually nothing about the people he’s helped, nothing to highlight courageous speeches he’s made on the Senate floor.
That’s because there are no courageous speeches. He doesn’t care about helping people—only himself. Now, here comes a woman who has accomplished more in a few short years than Mithc’s entire lifetime in the Senate. Here is a woman who’s achieved an exalted status within her party that Mitch knows he can never come close to obtaining in his own. Ironically, it was Mitch’s easily bruised ego that ensured that Warren’s stature within our party will reach the stratosphere.
This had nothing to do with any rule of decorum. This had everything to do with what a small man Mitch McConnell really is. Yet somehow he has managed to do the impossible—make himself seem even smaller.