Self-help author Marianne Williamson, whose 2020 White House campaign featured more quirky calls for spiritual healing than actual voter support, launched another long-shot bid for the presidency on Saturday, becoming the first Democrat to formally challenge Joe Biden for the 2024 nomination.
“We are upset about this country, we’re worried about this country,” Williamson told a crowd of more than 600 at a kickoff in the nation’s capital. “It is our job to create a vision of justice and love that is so powerful that it will override the forces of hatred and injustice and fear.”
The 70-year-old onetime spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey should provide only token primary opposition – a testament to how strongly national Democrats are united behind Biden if, as expected, he runs for re-election.
Williamson’s campaign signs featured the slogans “A New Beginning” and “Disrupt the System”.
Striking a defiant tone Saturday, Williamson denounced “those who feel they are the adults in the room” and aren’t taking her candidacy seriously, proclaiming: “Let me in there.”
“I am not naïve about these forces which have no intention of allowing anyone into this conversation who does not align with their predetermined agenda,” she said. “I understand that, in their mind, only people who previously have been entrenched in the car that brought us into this ditch can possibly be considered qualified to bring us out of it.”
Williamson didn’t mention Biden by name in her speech, and though she noted that Donald Trump not being re-elected in 2020 kept the country from going “over the cliff”, she also said it was still “six inches” from doing so.
Williamson, a Texas native who now lives in Beverly Hills, California, said she was opposing a free market “mindset” and corrupt political system that she said prioritized greed.
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