Marianne Williamson

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      Marianne Williamson says 2024 bid is not a challenge to Biden but to a system

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      Marianne Williamson says 2024 bid is not a challenge to Biden but to a system‘I know how to disrupt’: the two-time aspirant to the Democratic presidential nomination fleshes out her vision for the countryAuthor Marianne Williamson has said she doesn’t view her very outsider bid for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination as a direct challenge to Joe Biden but as “challenging a system”.The self-help writer and speaker, who also ran a nomination challenge in 2020, said voters “have to rise up” to secure an equitable economic future for the US.“I want to be president because this country needs to make an economic U-turn,” Williamson told ABC News on Sunday. Among her priorities, she said, were free healthcare, free college and free childcare.‘I am your retribution’: Trump rules supreme at CPAC as he relaunches bid for White HouseRead more“The system that effectuates and perpetuates that kind of income and opportunity inequality is not changing itself … It’s not going to change if we continue to elect the same-old, same-old,” she added.Williamson is currently the only Democrat to challenge Biden – although the president has yet to announce his bid for re-election – after announcing her campaign in Washington DC on Saturday afternoon.Before dropping out of the 2020 race, Williamson made a splash when, addressing then president Donald Trump in the first Democratic presidential debate with her closing argument, she said: “I’m going to harness love for political purposes. I will meet you on that field. And, sir, love will win.”Williamson, author of 14 books, describes herself as “a leader in spiritual and religiously progressive circles” for more than three decades. She established a national profile on Oprah Winfrey’s daytime talkshow, and has taken independent-minded and often controversial positions on depression and vaccine mandates.ABC host Jonathan Karl, attributing a quote about Williamson as “the longest of long shots” to the Associated Press, asked Williamson, 70, why she thought she could win the White House.“I would bet that the Associated Press also said that Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in [in 2016],” Williamson fired back.“The system that is now saying that I’m unserious, I’m not credible or I’m a long shot is the very system that protects and maintains this idea that only those whose careers have been entrenched within the system that drove us into a ditch should possibly be considered qualified to lead us out of that ditch,” Williamson said.Her qualification for the job, she continued, “is not that I know how to perpetuate that system. My qualification is that I know how to disrupt it,”While Williamson appeared to support the White House policy on Ukraine, she stopped short of endorsing a US military response if China were to attack Taiwan.“We must make a stand for such things as human rights. At this point, we must be committed that this not spill over into a military confrontation,” she said.And she declined to criticize Biden over his age. “I’m not going there,” she said. “I don’t think ageism has any place in our thinking” and would “do whatever I feel I can do as an American to make sure that the neo-fascist threat that is represented by some aspects of the Republican party does not win in 2024”.The Democratic National Committee has indicated that the party doesn’t plan to hold primary debates. But Williamson maintained that Biden should debate her. “It’s called democracy,” she said. “And I’m running as well.”TopicsMarianne WilliamsonUS elections 2024DemocratsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Marianne Williamson officially launches long-shot 2024 presidential campaign

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      Marianne Williamson officially launches long-shot 2024 presidential campaignSelf-help author becomes first Democrat to formally challenge Biden for the nominationSelf-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.”Marianne Williamson is running for President. pic.twitter.com/mDWavHoFRS— Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) March 4, 2023
      Luke Stowell, 20, a musician and student at American University in Washington who sat in the front row for Williamson’s announcement, said “she has a really nice message that incorporates all of the prejudices and the social structures that inhibit, I think, a lot of people on a daily basis.”Seated next to him, 24-year-old American University law student Ivan Claudio noted that, should he win a second term, Biden would be in his late 80s by the time he leaves office and “I think it is a cause for concern.”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.TopicsMarianne WilliamsonUS elections 2024US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Marianne Williamson to run for president again to ‘help repair America’

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      Marianne Williamson to run for president again to ‘help repair America’Self-help author who brought quirky spiritualism to the 2020 presidential race becomes first Democrat to challenge BidenBestselling self-help author Marianne Williamson, who brought quirky spiritualism to the 2020 presidential race, has announced she’s running for the White House again, becoming the first major Democrat to challenge Joe Biden for his party’s nomination in 2024.Williamson, 70, pulled out of the 2020 presidential election in early January of that year, after failing to gain much traction with primary voters. She then endorsed Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination and he ended up coming in second to Biden, who had been trailing him badly but surged ahead after a crucial win in South Carolina.But she has now signaled she will soon head to key early primary voting states New Hampshire and South Carolina and will visit the site of the recent toxic chemical train spill that has caused an environmental crisis in East Palestine, Ohio.Williamson is formally kicking off her campaign with an event in Washington DC, on Saturday. Without mentioning former US president Donald Trump, she noted in a weekend Facebook post that his unconventional White House win in 2016 makes it “odd for anyone to think they can know who can win the presidency”.“I’m not putting myself through this again just to add to the conversation,” Williamson wrote. “I’m running for president to help bring an aberrational chapter of our history to a close, and to help bring forth a new beginning.”Williamson running against a sitting president from her own party would be the longest of long shots in any circumstances.But that’s especially true this cycle, as the Democratic establishment – and even potential presidential hopefuls who could have competed with Biden from the left or middle – has closed ranks with remarkable uniformity behind the president.Williamson declared: “I feel my 40 years being up close and personal with the trauma of so many thousands of individuals gives me a unique perspective on what is needed to help repair America. We need a politics that treats not just symptoms, but cause. That does not base itself on the crass imperatives of endless corporate profit, but on the eternal imperatives of our principles and values.”She is a spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey.One of her signature proposals was a plan to create a US Department of Peace. She also advocated that the federal government pay massive financial reparations to Black Americans as atonement for centuries of slavery and discrimination.TopicsUS elections 2024Marianne WilliamsonUS politicsJoe BidenDemocratsnewsReuse this content More