Last week during the confirmation hearing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, something unusual happened: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was barred from speaking against Sessions by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for the remainder of the hearing. While it is unusual for a sitting senator to testify against another sitting senator’s confirmation hearing — Sessions was a senator from Alabama — McConnell’s rebuke of Warren will have modest, but lasting, consequences on the political situation in this country. Above all, this move will only serve to empower Warren’s left-wing populist brand and deepen the ideological divide already present in the nation’s capital.
Warren was not the only sitting senator to testify against Sessions’ nomination; Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) also felt it necessary to voice his concerns. Sessions’ opponents claim he has worked against civil rights causes throughout his time in public service, which is a compelling reason why he was denied a judgeship for Alabama’s southern district in the 1980s. Thus Booker, an African-American, felt it necessary to express his opposition. McConnell wisely allowed Booker to speak because rebuking him might have cast the Republicans as racially insensitive and would have played favorably for powerless Democrats.
Yet, McConnell’s rebuke of Warren will have a similarly damaging effect for the Republican Party’s image. Just as Booker could have claimed that a rebuke on him would be racially insensitive, Warren now can argue that the rebuke on her was sexually insensitive. Within hours of McConnell’s decision, the hashtag “#ShePersisted,” — which were the exact words McConnell used to justify his verdict — became a rallying cry for feminists and Warren’s 700,000 twitter followers; several clothing companies have even begun to sell t-shirts that feature the hashtag. It seems though the actual reason Warren was speaking against Sessions in the first place is no longer important.
Thanks in no small part to McConnell, Warren has solidified herself as the champion of feminism and liberal activism. However, this comes at the expense of political unity in the U.S. In all likelihood, McConnell did not rebuke Warren because she is a woman but rather because she was delaying the confirmation of a fellow Republican senator. Yet, because Warren is a woman, McConnell has given her the ability to make this an issue about gender. It also reinforces the left’s narrative that women are unable to enjoy the same sort of treatment in the workplace as men.
Situations such as these only deepen our ideological divide because they enable political parties to portray rival parties as representative of only certain citizens. In this case, some Democrats have sought to portray Republicans as insensitive about race and gender in order to depict the party as unfit to represent minorities or women. Although this has long been a complaint from the Left, McConnell’s rebuke of a female senator because of her concern over a prospective Attorney General’s racism certainly does not help McConnell’s party avert this criticism. These sorts of in-group perceptions of political parties are extremely harmful because they inhibit the party’s ability to expand its appeal in any attempt to unify the citizenry.
The senatorial drama that ensued this past week is detrimental to our country’s political unity because it will serve to empower far-left populism and distort the messages of our two major political parties. If Americans are to abridge the ideological chasm that has plagued our political discourse, citizens from both sides of the spectrum will have to come together to find common ground on key issues and beliefs. Yet if the leaders of our major political parties continue to act so divisively, then we cannot expect to cross this bridge anytime soon.
Jesse Berman is an Opinion columnist for the Cavalier Daily. He may be reached at opinion@cavalierdaily.com
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