#LetLizSpeak

Senator Elizabeth Warren views herself as a left-wing champion of the people—a lioness who has the courage to criticize special interests, evil corporations, big banks, "Wall Street," big oil, and any other entity that doesn't fit nicely within her socialist ideology. Anyone who disagrees with her stridency is a racist or a misogynist or a bigot or an Islmophobe.

Yesterday, Warren initiated a planned stunt to gain attention for herself. Knowingly violating an arcane Senate rule, she introduced 30-year old criticism against Jeff Session, now confirmed as Attorney General. When warned that she was in violation, the lioness persisted and was asked to sit down. Oh ... my. Liz was "silenced."

Here's Chris Stirewalt's comment on the stunt:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren gave her underwhelming re-election bid a shot in the arm with a high-profile attack on her colleague from Alabama, Jeff Sessions.

The Massachusetts senator was booted from the marathon debate over Sessions’ appointment to be attorney general for quoting a 1986 letter from Martin Luther King’s widow, Coretta. The letter calls Sessions “reprehensible” for his prosecution of a civil rights activist on voter fraud charges.

Do not waste your time on the question of whether Senate rules permitted Warren’s silencing. After all, she got exactly what she wanted. Spend your sympathy elsewhere.

Warren was ready to go with a social media livestream and a hashtag, #LetLizSpeak, to make the most of the moment. But, press coverage of the event still must have surpassed even her wildest expectations, including doozies like this one. Not since Wendy Davis’ trod the aisles of the Texas state Senate in pink Mizuno tennis shoes has the political press been so agog about legislative maneuvering.

In the end, this will matter about as much as Davis’ 2013 filibuster or her fellow Texan Ted Cruz’s “Green Eggs and Ham” moment of the same year.

Democrats who already hated Sessions and thought him racist will feel virtuous and develop new depths of admiration for a woman they already adored. Republicans will despise her more fully, and most people just won’t care.

But if this is the direction Warren and her party are heading, President Trump can remain in his bathrobe, or whatever loungewear the White House claims he prefers, content in the knowledge that 2020 will be a shoo-in for him.

Warren represents the worst in a politician—an opportunist who acts obnoxiously, is then gently spanked, and then characterizes herself as a victim for acting obnoxiously. The Wall Street Journal comments:

HRH Warren isn’t a victim, even if she enjoys feeling she is, and Republicans aren’t trying to get her to “shut up,” as if that’s possible. She knowingly broke protocol and said Mr. Sessions was “racist” and prosecuting “a campaign of bigotry,” among other gross, false and personal insults that Democrats now feel entitled to hurl. Our guess is that Ms. Warren wanted to be punished so she could play out this political theater.

A question for Republicans is whether Mr. McConnell enhanced the Warren brand by responding to her provocations in this way. She already has a formidable platform but the story dominated Wednesday’s news. Then again, sooner or later Mr. McConnell had to send a signal that Senate rules can’t be violated with impunity.

Warren is a true social justice warrior—making a lot of noise, energized her rabid supporters, but accomplishing almost nothing in the end. Her convenient hastag—#LetLizSpeak—is, as Stirewalt suggests, something that the GOP should do. She might energize her band of supporters, but I suspect, her strident (and sometimes unhinged) language causes the majority of people who will be voting in 2018 and 2020 to just shake their heads in dismay.