Bestselling author and spiritual guru Marianne Williamson kicked off her 2024 campaign with a fiery speech savaging the economic system in the United States.
Williamson rattled off a slew of grievances over how working-class families struggle with staggering costs of living and poverty while the wealthy grow richer, bashing the economic system as “sociopathic” and insinuating that President Joe Biden hasn’t gone far enough during an impassioned speech at Union Station in the heart of Washington, D.C.
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON CONFIRMS 2024 PRESIDENTIAL RUN AGAINST BIDEN
“Let me tell you something. It’s neither real capitalism nor is it a free market economy — it is a sociopathic economic system,” she declared.
Her campaign debut makes her the first major Democrat to jump into the ring. Although she didn’t mention Biden by name in her roughly 20-minute-long speech, she alluded to him at times and suggested his presidency was a step in the right direction but woefully inadequate.
“I’m so glad that President Trump did not win the last election. That means we didn’t go over the cliff … but we are still six inches away,” she said. “I have run for president before. I’m not naive. I’m not naive about the forces, which have no intention of allowing anyone into this contest who does not align with their predetermined agenda.”
Touching on many progressive themes, Williamson argued that the U.S. is plagued by many problems, such as “hatred and division,” and specifically pinned the blame on the country’s elites and technocrats who are okay with allowing poor children to starve.
Hearkening back to the U.S. founding, which she described as stemming from a split-mind dichotomy between the deep enlightenment of the founding fathers and the moral crime of slavery, Williamson issued a clarion call for her supporters to address the onslaught of injustices plaguing the nation.
“Yes, we need to identify the problems in the past, but we also need to identify the problem solvers in the past. We responded to slavery with abolition, we responded to the institutionalized oppression of women with the women’s rights movement,” she said. “It’s our turn.”
The room was packed with an audience of a couple hundred ranging from fervent supporters to curious observers.
“The opponent is not a specific situation or circumstance. The opponent is the economic mindset, an economic mindset that over the last 50 years — over the last 48 years — there has been $50 trillion of wealth [that] has been transferred from the bottom 90% to the top 1%,” she said.
Williamson was widely expected to debut her campaign Saturday. Following her campaign announcement, she will embark on a campaign blitz across early primary states, starting with South Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Michigan, according to a campaign staffer.
Biden has long been the favorite to win the party nomination, with virtually all other heavyweight Democrats squelching buzz that they may challenge the incumbent. Biden has not yet officially declared his campaign, but he has maintained he intends to run for a second term. His announcement is rumored to come next month.
“You can appreciate what the president has done — defeating the Republicans in 2020 — and still feel it is time to move on,” Williamson recently told a local New Hampshire radio program, per the news outlet.
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At age 80, Biden is the oldest president in U.S. history, and he would be 82 at the start of a hypothetical second term in office and 86 by its conclusion.
Williamson vied to be the party’s standard bearer in the 2020 primary but dropped out before caucuses and primaries took place and endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). She has consistently hewed toward the progressive flank of the Democratic Party.
Original Location: Marianne Williamson launches 2024 campaign with attack on economy
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