Marianne Williamson, a former 2020 Democrat presidential candidate, is set to travel to New Hampshire this weekend, where she is expected to launch a primary challenge against President Joe Biden’s expected 2024 reelection campaign, according to Politico.
In a Friday interview with Politico, Williamson spoke vaguely about her plans to launch her presidential campaign this weekend.
Marianne Williamson is expected to announce her 2024 presidential run on the Democratic ticket.
A glimpse into her decision and why she thinks Biden isn't the right person to lead the party ⬇️https://t.co/s2GzsyOj6J
— POLITICO (@politico) February 17, 2023
“I’ll be making a statement this weekend,” Williamson said when asked whether she has decided to run for president in 2024.
Then, she told Politico, “I will be in New Hampshire,” when pressed for more details about her weekend plans.
Williamson also told the outlet that if she does run for president, she would “absolutely” run as a Democrat rather than an Independent.
Williamson’s interview seems to be the most concrete piece of evidence that points to her presidential ambitions after it was reported in December that she was trying to build campaign operations in early Democrat primary states and “put out feelers to donors.”
Interestingly, the Democrat National Committee (DNC) in December reorganized its primary calendar schedule by replacing Iowa with South Carolina as the first state on the presidential nominating calendar.
The DNC’s decision is thought to favor Biden, as his victory in South Carolina’s 2020 primary propelled him to frontrunner status in the Democrat primary field.
However, Williamson said the DNC’s decision to upend five decades of tradition by reorganizing its primary schedule is “spitting in the face of democracy.”
“How can the Democratic Party present itself as a champion of democracy and do something as undemocratic as overtly engineering the primary schedule to make sure that their chosen candidate would win it?” Williamson asked.
In the 2020 cycle, Williamson did not make it to the Democrat primaries. Instead, she suspended her campaign in January 2020 amid Democrat National Committee changes to the debate threshold, making it harder for her to qualify for the debates. She went on to endorse Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I) failed candidacy in February 2020.
If Williamson does launch her campaign this weekend, she would be the first Democrat to step up and launch a primary challenge against the incumbent Democrat president.
Although Biden has consistently indicated he would run again in 2024, a growing number of Democrats do not want him to seek reelection. An AP poll earlier in the month found that just 37 percent of Democrats want him to run for reelection, which is down from the 52 percent who did in the weeks leading up to November’s midterm elections.
Williamson cautioned Biden against running on a message that the economy is growing stronger.
Williamson said:
Apparently Biden’s going to run on a message that the economy is getting stronger. I think that speaks to the disconnect between the analysis of party elites versus the struggle of everyday Americans. We’re being asked to limit our political imaginations — to just accept the low unemployment and low inflation rate, that that is sort of the best that we can get. But that is a hollow victory. The majority of Americans are still struggling to survive.
She said her campaign strategy under the new Democrat primary calendar “would be to tell the truth as I understand it.”
“Did Donald Trump in 2016 have a strategy? I don’t think he had a strategy,” Williamson said. “He hit a nerve.”
Story cited here.
