The self-help author Marianne Williamson “un-suspended” her quixotic, all-but-certainly doomed campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, saying she did so because Joe Biden could not defeat Donald Trump, who she called a “fascist” and a “juggernaut of dark, dark vision”.
“I am un-suspending my campaign for the presidency of the United States,” Williamson said, in a social media video the morning after a Michigan primary in which despite having suspended her campaign she finished third, way behind Biden and “uncommitted” but slightly ahead of the Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips, another rank outsider.
“I had suspended it because I was losing the horse race,” Williamson said, though she is still clearly losing the horse race. “But something so much more important than the horse race is at stake here. And we must respond.
“Right now we have a fascist standing at the door. Everybody’s all upset about it. Well, we should be upset about it. But we’re not going to defeat the fascist by, well, by what? What is President Biden offering? He says, ‘Let’s finish the job.’ Well, I hope you realise we’re talking about millions of voters [who] can’t even survive unless they work two or three jobs.”
Williamson, who also ran in 2020, had suspended her campaign on 7 February, after failing to make an impact in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.
“I hope future candidates will take what works for them, drinking from the well of information we prepared,” she said. “My team and I brought to the table some great ideas, and I will take pleasure when I see them live on in campaigns and candidates yet to be created.”
She changed her mind after Michigan. Citing economic difficulties faced by many Americans including medical debt and an insufficient minimum wage, she also quoted a bygone Republican president Abraham Lincoln.
“We the people basically don’t own this country right now. Abraham Lincoln said that people who died in the civil war for the union had died so that a government of the people, by the people and for the people would not perish from the earth. It’s perishing now on our watch.”
Promising to end “government of the corporations by the corporations”, and to achieve an “economic U-turn”, Williamson said America needed a response to Trump’s “dark vision” better than that offered by Biden.
“We need to say to the American people, ‘We see your pain.’ And we need to say to Donald Trump, ‘We see your BS.’ Let’s do this. Thanks so much. Spread the word.”
The campaign now moves on to 5 March, Super Tuesday, when 16 states and one territory will vote. The territory, American Samoa, may offer Williamson hope, given that in 2020 it was the sole prize claimed by Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor whose campaign also went nowhere fast.
Still, in national polling averages, Williamson lags about 70 points behind Biden.
