Rallying cry T-shirt at
San Francisco March for Truth Feminists and supporters of Senator Warren immediately adopted as a rallying cry the three-word sentence, "Nevertheless, she persisted." Amy Wang of
The Washington Post observed,
CNN reported, "For Warren's supporters, it was a textbook case of
mansplaining followed by males silencing a woman". On
National Public Radio's
All Things Considered, Scott Detrow said that "Nevertheless, she persisted" had become the new "
nasty woman", which had become a rallying cry derived from Donald Trump's description of Hillary Clinton in 2016. Megan Garber of
The Atlantic wrote that "Nevertheless, she persisted" appeared on the internet next to "images not just of Warren and King, but also of
Harriet Tubman,
Malala Yousafzai,
Beyoncé,
Emmeline Pankhurst,
Gabby Giffords,
Michelle Obama,
Hillary Clinton, and
Princess Leia. It accompanied tags that celebrated
#TheResistance". Hoodies and mugs with the
meme were also produced. On June 7, 2017, Senator Warren tweeted support for Senator
Kamala Harris using the "Nevertheless She Persisted" hashtag, after Harris was admonished for interrupting Deputy Attorney General
Rod Rosenstein during a hearing. In 2018, the
Women's History Month theme in the United States was "Nevertheless, She Persisted: Honoring Women Who Fight All Forms of Discrimination against Women", intentionally referring to the "Nevertheless, she persisted" remark by
Mitch McConnell.
Criticism Others were less favorably inclined toward the expression and its application to Warren. Charlotte Allen of
The Weekly Standard suggested that #Shepersisted was yet another tactic in the marketing of Warren as a possible presidential candidate, describing it as "Red meat for Warren's supporters, who promptly cried
sexism and compared her to
Rosa Parks in her refusal to move to the back of the bus, and also to
Marie Curie, who never gave up on her quest to discover radium. Within hours entrepreneurs were grinding out 'Nevertheless, she persisted' T-shirts in every size and color". The incident was also discussed in the context of Senator Warren's possible presidential candidacy by the
National Reviews
David Harsanyi, who referred to Rule XIX as "an arbitrary, speech-inhibiting rule that should not be used". Stating that "it was unlikely any persuadable voter would have even heard about Warren's grandstanding if it weren't for the
kerfuffle", he suggested that the "fuss" (including popularity of the hashtags "#ShePersisted" and "#LetLizspeak") was indicative of a Democratic tendency to "rely heavily on the
identity politics that have failed them for six years, if not longer". Also in the
National Review, Alexandra Desanctis wrote that McConnell's remark was "inviting endless inappropriate comparisons between Warren and female political activists from around the world". Desanctis continued: Gretel Kaufman of
The Christian Science Monitor noted that some Democrats used the hashtag #LetLizSpeak to call Senator McConnell's remarks sexist and that the video of Senator Warren reading the full letter was widely viewed on social media. Raising concerns that the incident was "an example of partisanship getting in the way of productive debate", Kaufman quoted Republican Senator
Orrin Hatch of
Utah, as saying, "All of us need to take stock and need to start thinking about the people on the other side of the aisle and need to start thinking about how we might bring each other together."
Broader themes attendee in
San Francisco carrying a tote bag displaying the phrase Some observers posited non-political reasons for the meme's proliferation. According to Daniel Victor of
The New York Times, "A broader theme—that women are too commonly shushed or ignored—emerged on social media." Valerie Schultz wrote in
America: the Jesuit Review of Faith & Culture, "It is a phrase we women embrace because persistence is what we do." After describing stories of persistent women from the
Gospels, she concluded: == Cultural references ==