She outlasted Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) by 38 days and Beto O’Rourke by 70 — but Marianne Williamson still didn’t even make it to the Iowa caucus before reality got the best of her.
So ends this cycle’s zaniest presidential run. Williamson explained in a note to her supporters on Friday (posted beneath a blurry picture of herself) that she is “suspending” her campaign so as not to get “in the way of a progressive candidate winning” Iowa or the New Hampshire primaries.
“The ideas we discussed are important, and I hope they’ll find seed in other ways and in other campaigns,” she wrote. “From rescuing underserved, at risk and traumatized children; to proactively waging an agenda for peace and making humanity itself America’s greatest ally; to integrative health models within our health care system and incentivizing health; to reparations to achieve deeper reconciliation between races; to repudiating the corporate aristocracy; to the creation of a more mindful politics; to changing from an economic to a humanitarian bottom line; to initiating a season of moral repair — we brought issues to the fore that I hope contributed to the campaign season.”
Williamson’s pleas for a “politics of morality” contributed a lot — more than she gets credit for. Now that she’s gone, who among the remaining candidates could ever fill the void she leaves?
Not Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.). Too many plans. Williamson explained in July that Warren’s “wonkiness” is no match for the “dark psychic forces” assailing the United States.
Definitely not Pete Buttigieg. Williamson told me in October that, while God’s Favorite Customer may talk a good game on “moral repair,” it’s just because that Christianity stuff did well in a “focus group.”
And Biden? No way. For Williamson, he’s likely just a discount Hillary Clinton — the walking incarnation of the “Democratic establishment” Williamson castigated in October for “smearing women it finds inconvenient!”
There’s always Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), of course. But he’s already got his own brand to curate. And economic socialism tends not to leave room for anything even vaguely spiritual.
Maybe Marianne should draft her fellow guru Deepak Chopra into the race. He’s not up to much else. After all, Williamson already enlisted his support in late December, when she was struggling to meet fundraising goals.
Chopra went all in for the then-ailing candidate at a fundraiser on the Upper West Side, declaring before a crowd of die-hard fans that Williamson was best suited to force the United States to “emerge” from its insanity.
“We need to be independent of the critics and cynics of the world,” Chopra said. “When you get together, something magical happens. It’s called emergence. And this is the time of emergence. Right now.”
Marianne couldn’t hack it, but maybe you could conjure that magic, Deepak. Break all the rules. It’s your turn.
