Story highlights Errol Louis: McConnell's silencing of Elizabeth Warren delivered a rallying point to Democrats

Louis: Fight on Senate floor gives Warren cred as leader in battle for Democrats' direction

Errol Louis is the host of "Inside City Hall," a nightly political show on NY1, a New York all-news channel. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) The effort by Republican leaders to silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday was a Pyrrhic victory -- a short-term win within the Senate chamber. But it has also given Warren and the Democrats a rallying point from which to defy the Trump administration -- not just on the Jeff Sessions confirmation, but on others to come -- and to paint the GOP as hostile to civil rights.

As of this writing, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has enough votes to get Sessions approved as the next attorney general. But McConnell's use of an obscure parliamentary rule to prohibit Warren from speaking against the nomination on the Senate floor made Republicans look like tone-deaf bullies.

Warren was, after all, reading the words of the late Coretta Scott King on the subject of voting rights. "Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters," King wrote in 1986. "For this reprehensible conduct, he should not be rewarded with a federal judgeship."

McConnell deemed Warren's reading a violation of Senate rules of decorum and decreed her unable to participate in any further debate about the Sessions nomination.