Marianne Williamson enters the race for DNC chair: We need to 'create the energy' to counter Trump

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Independent

Thursday 26 December 2024 17:34 GMT


The race to lead the Democratic Party in the wake of Kamala Harris’s election defeat expanded on Thursday as author and two-time candidate Marianne Williamson announced that she was seeking the role.

Williamson is a long-shot candidate for the job and enters an already crowded field as the Democratic Party faces an internal debate about its future. Harris’s defeat in swing states across the board led to Donald Trump’s first popular vote victory, a crushing blow for the Democrats who also saw two incumbent senators unseated, throwing total control of the legislative and executive branches into Republican control.

Williamson’s two runs for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020 and 2024 both ended in defeat. But her first run, coupled with an energetic campaign and media presence, including on the debate stage, earned Williamson fans in progressive circles across the country. That was evident in 2024 when, despite the Democratic primary process being sidelined by the party in favor of propping up Joe Biden’s bid for re-election, Williamson garnered 3 percent of the vote in Michigan, where an “uncommitted” campaign urged voters angry about Biden’s response to the war in Gaza to register protest votes in the Democratic primary.

Staffers who worked for her 2020 bid, speaking anonymously due to nondisclosure agreements, described the campaign as an intensely toxic environment perpetuated by Williamson, whom they said displayed intense flashes of anger and sometimes lashed out physically. She denied the allegations at the time, calling them “slanderous” and “categorically untrue.” In January of 2020, she laid off her entire campaign staff ahead of the Iowa Caucuses.

Read more: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/dnc-chair-marianne-williamson-democrats-b2670221.html