Marianne Williamson, still in Democratic presidential bid, says campaign isn't about winning
Source: ABC News
March 29, 2024, 4:36 PM
Marianne Williamson, the author and spiritualist who has been one of President Joe Biden's few primary challengers in the 2024 presidential race, suspended and unsuspended her campaign last month -- and now that she's back in the race, she told ABC News that her focus is not on taking down Biden, but on bringing progressive ideas and discussions about them to the campaign trail.
Williamson suspended her campaign on Feb. 7 following a string of significant primary losses in early states. She said she didn't have the resources to continue -- however, she wasn't yet ready to abandon her candidacy.
"I suspended because I had done very poorly on the electoral level in the first three primary states. So if you just look at this in terms of the horse race, it was time to get out," Williamson said in an interview with ABC News on March 18 -- one day before a round of primaries that delivered a blow to her campaign. She was on the ballot in three states, earning an average of 3.6%.
She said she made the decision to restart her campaign ahead of Michigan's contest -- even traveling there to hold events ahead of the primary -- but didn't want to split votes between herself and the state's growing coalition of Democrats who disapproved of the Biden administration's handling of the Israel-Hamas war and were therefore voting for an "uncommitted" option. "I was afraid that if I got in right then that it would look like I was challenging something," Williamson said. "The morning after the Michigan primary, I got back in. Realizing the obvious limitations [to my candidacy] but also realizing that there's a larger purpose here than trying to compete in the horse race."
Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/marianne-williamson-democratic-presidential-bid-campaign-isnt-winning/story?id=108316131
Full headline: Marianne Williamson, still in Democratic presidential bid, says campaign isn't about winning: 'There's more than the horse race'
peppertree
(21,639 posts)And leave this fight to President Biden.
Having someone in the White House who sees eye to eye with you on 2 out of 3 things - is always better than some orange Idi Amin who would probably have her jailed if he could (or worse).
hlthe2b
(102,300 posts)put this country at risk from their own arrogance, ego, and actions or who provide zero reason to respect them.
cstanleytech
(26,299 posts)wasting her time doing then vs actually do something that will mean something.
hlthe2b
(102,300 posts)if they unintentionally, but through their actions, harm Biden sufficiently to throw the election to Trump. No. I do not believe you think that.
cstanleytech
(26,299 posts)hlthe2b
(102,300 posts)cstanleytech
(26,299 posts)hlthe2b
(102,300 posts)Suggest NSAIDs and heating pad. Hope you feel better
cstanleytech
(26,299 posts)I do have tramadol but I'm very reluctant to take it.
Not because it knocks me out or anything but rather I have enough health problems already and I would rather avoid adding an addiction to a narcotic even one as mild as tramadol.
NoRethugFriends
(2,319 posts)peppertree
(21,639 posts)But, she's stubborn.
NoRethugFriends
(2,319 posts)Bad temper, treats staff like shit, anti-vax, anti anti-depressants which some people need to survive, crap during AIDS crisis.
Money grubbing self-help phony.
Response to NoRethugFriends (Reply #13)
ShazzieB This message was self-deleted by its author.
ShazzieB
(16,428 posts)That does it. I never did like her, but I now officially can't stand her!
I'm one of those people who need those drugs to survive. She'll have to pry mine out of my cold dead hands someday if she wants to take them away from me!
NoRethugFriends
(2,319 posts)cab67
(2,993 posts)ShazzieB
(16,428 posts)Good article, and I love the hashing #INeedMyMedsMarianne!
SouthernDem4ever
(6,617 posts)ZonkerHarris
(24,229 posts)Politicub
(12,165 posts)And I support most of her ideas.
I dont want her muddying the waters when the focus should be electing Biden. Thats a huge turn off. There is so much at stake in November already without her attention-getting behavior.
No one is paying attention to her, except people who watch broadcast news all day.
On edit: if shes anti-vax, Im questioning my like.
peppertree
(21,639 posts)We shouldn't get carried away with these things. She's a good Democrat and progressive - and one doesn't have to agree with every last thing she says, to acknowledge that.
That said, I do wish she'd withdraw and endorse the president - who represents out best hope right now, especially given the Needy Amin alternative.
Rebl2
(13,528 posts)dropped out a while ago.
BumRushDaShow
(129,143 posts)but apparently she went *poof* and reanimated into a campaign again.
Duncanpup
(12,863 posts)After she dropped out she was still on ballot and she received 3% of votes.
So she decided to get back in race.
BumRushDaShow
(129,143 posts)especially with Super Tuesday being a week after the Michigan primary.
AZ8theist
(5,477 posts)50 Shades Of Blue
(10,017 posts)I absolutely despise her.
Owens
(199 posts)I wouldn't even hire her as a receptionist in my office. She has no work skills or experience.
LiberalFighter
(50,954 posts)DinahMoeHum
(21,795 posts)a long time ago
RockRaven
(14,974 posts)at lectures aka ticket prices, and...
NanaCat
(1,178 posts)And stay away. You're the liberal equivalent of QAnon, and thus too stupid to be in polite company.
Hassler
(3,379 posts)CousinIT
(9,247 posts)That will be the net sum of it if she continues this bullshit instead of supporting Biden.
She's not helping anybody here. Well, except TRUMP.
She's bad at logic and too self-serving.
PlutosHeart
(1,281 posts)getting publicity.
Go home girl. Please for the love of the country.
As Leonard Cohen said "So Long Marianne".
brooklynite
(94,609 posts)Why didn't she save money and just astrally project?
DemocraticPatriot
(4,372 posts)Now that is damned funny!
mpcamb
(2,871 posts)Marcuse
(7,490 posts)wolfie001
(2,252 posts)I just read it and I'll keep mine up because I think this is the reason.
RandySF
(58,936 posts)wolfie001
(2,252 posts)Wouldn't be the first jaw-dropping thing I've seen in American politics.
LudwigPastorius
(9,156 posts)It's like a candidate in 1941 saying, "Hey, let's stop sending Britain and France weapons to defeat Hitler so we can use the money to buy everybody in the U.S. a pony!"
Tom of Temecula
(1,156 posts)BumRushDaShow
(129,143 posts)And DU is a discussion site that supports the Democratic Party (even if some are loons)?
Tom of Temecula
(1,156 posts)Maybe there should be a page called Irrelevant Breaking News.
IBN for short.
BumRushDaShow
(129,143 posts)She's as looney as RFK Jr. but as long as she keeps indicating she is still "running", then like the turncoat Russian asset Tulsi Gabbard when she was a (D), she is still showing up on (D) primary ballots where she qualified.
Tom of Temecula
(1,156 posts)Oopsie Daisy
(2,641 posts)Yeah, we've heard it all before, Marianne. She's totally on the grift.
Bucky
(54,027 posts)oldsoftie
(12,558 posts)idiot
GoneOffShore
(17,340 posts)Gore1FL
(21,132 posts)I have not, do not and never will watch her.
I dont care about her favorite things list.
I know that there are people who like her and that is their right. I also know that she has helped some people which is great.
I just do not care for her.
As for Williamson? Having good ideas is nice. Getting good ideas into policies and legislation is entirely different.
Dulcinea
(6,647 posts)I watched her show once back in the day to see what all the hype was about. Some people really loved her & her show, but it left me cold. My impression was that Oprah is all about Oprah.
Oprah has done 1000% more good than bad.
I realize she brought us Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz (bad). I know Marianne Williamson had been on her show but she wasn't necessarily introduced to the world via Oprah.
I used to go listen to Marianne with a friend every Monday night in Los Angeles at The Wilshire Ebell Theatre. I was very positively effected by what she had to say. This was back in the time when she wrote a wonderful book, A Return To Love.
I wish she had NEVER gotten involved in politics.
GoneOffShore
(17,340 posts)Andersen wrote when the Oprah was flirting with running for the presidency.
Here's a little excerpt, but the entire piece is fascinating in a horrible way.
Oprah went on the air nationally in the 1980s, just as non-Christian faith healing and channeling the spirits of the dead and harmonic convergence and alternative medicine and all the rest of the New Age movement had scaled up. By the 1990s, there was a big, respectable, glamorous New Age counterestablishment. Marianne Williamson, one of the new superstar New Age preachers, popularized a channeled book of spiritual revelation, A Course in Miracles: The author, a Columbia University psychology professor who was anonymous until after her death in the 1980s, had claimed that its 1,333 pages were dictated to her by Jesus. Her basic idea was that physical existence is a collective illusionthe dream. Endorsed by Williamson, the book became a gigantic best-seller. Deepak Chopra had been a distinguished endocrinologist before he quit regular medicine in his 30s to become the physician to the gods in the Transcendental Meditation organization and in 1989 hung out his own shingle as wise man, author, lecturer, and marketer of dietary supplements.
Out of its various threads, the philosophy now had its basic doctrines in place: Rationalism is mostly wrongheaded, mystical feelings should override scientific understandings, reality is an illusion one can remake to suit oneself. The 1960s countercultural relativism out of which all that flowed originated mainly as a means of fighting the Man, unmasking the oppressive charlatans-in-charge. But now they had become mind-blowing ways to make yourself happy and successful by becoming the charlatan-in-charge of your own little piece of the universe. Its not just the interpretation of objective reality that is subjective, according to Chopra. Objective reality per se is a concept of reality we have created subjectively.
...snip
....she is an ecumenical promoter of fantasies. Remember the satanic panic, the mass hysteria during the 1980s and early 90s about satanists abusing and murdering children that resulted in the wrongful convictions of dozens of people who collectively spent hundreds of years incarcerated? Multiple Oprah episodes featured the celebrity victims who got that fantasy going. When a Christian questioner in her audience once described her as New Age, Winfrey was pissed. I am not New Age anything, she said, and I resent being called that. I dont see spirits in the trees, and I dont sit in the room with crystals. Maybe not those two things specifically; shes the respectable promoter of New Age belief and practice and nostrums, a member of the elite and friend to presidents, five of whom have appeared on her shows. New Age, Oprah-style, shares with American Christianities their special mixtures of superstition, selfishness, and a refusal to believe in the random. Nothing about my life is lucky, she has said. Nothing. A lot of grace. A lot of blessings. A lot of divine order. But I dont believe in luck.
JohnSJ
(92,250 posts)possibly help trump into the WH again, and for that reason alone they are DEPLORABLE
Bucky
(54,027 posts)Inspirational and irrelevant
patphil
(6,185 posts)but I don't want to see her on the ballot as an independent in November.
Primary season is fine.
Ping Tung
(594 posts)BumRushDaShow
(129,143 posts)Ping Tung
(594 posts)Of course, if the Dems nominated a ham sandwich with a D tattooed on the bread I'd still vote for it.
LiberalFighter
(50,954 posts)karin_sj
(810 posts)... and be a spoiler in this election to benefit Trump. But she is just a grifter who wants to take away votes from Joe Biden. Why can't we find out who is funding her?
LiberalLovinLug
(14,174 posts)Half of you in this thread could be reported on ie. the DU rules about ridiculing and smearing Democrats.
I think she was and is fantastic. That is if you actually listen to her, and not the right wing critics. To those who say her ideas are not reasonable. Sorry but you need visionaries, like Bernie Sanders who many think he's wasting his time going on about universal medicare, the 1% etc. But he keeps those talking points alive and one day the USA will have a national healthcare plan.
To those who called her a "loon" please look at her policy proposals and tell me which ones you disagree with or think are loony?
https://marianne2024.com/issues/
She's not running against him so much as using her position as a candidate to publicize and make the public aware of alternative and positive progressive directions for the country. That is healthy in a democracy. She, I'm sure, will be endorsing Biden. Sanders ran against Biden, and his presence pushed issues for progressives to the point that Biden worked with him to come up with one of the most progressive policy platforms ever.
Democrats need to work together, not badmouth each other. As far as I can see she is concentrating on educating and bringing a new perspective, not criticizing Biden. Glass half full. She's not going to pilfer votes. People are so afraid of the progress of ideas, getting them into the lexicon of discussion, its laughable
SergeStorms
(19,204 posts)but all of the sudden she does?
Where did those resources come from?
Inquiring minds want to know. 🤨
Hekate
(90,719 posts)wyldwolf
(43,867 posts)Nixie
(16,954 posts)"It's not about winning."
U betcha.