By Will Weissert -
The Associated Press
Self-help book writer Marianne Williamson became the first Democrat to formally challenge President Joe Biden for the 2024 nomination on Saturday, launching her campaign ahead of the upcoming presidential election.
“We are disgusted by this country,
we are concerned about this country
,” Williamson declared to a crowd of more than 600 at his opening ceremony in Washington DC “It is our job to create a vision of justice and love that is so powerful that it overrides the forces of hate and injustice and fear," he added.
The self-help writer speaks to supporters during the launch of her 2024 presidential campaign, March 4, 2023, in Washington, DCJose Luis Magana/AP
The 70-year-old former spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey has already filed for the 2020 election, in a campaign characterized more by extravagant appeals for spiritual healing than actual voter support.
This time, again, it should be no more than
token opposition
in the primary due to the strong support of Democrats for Biden nationally.
Even so, the candidate put the president, who has been traveling on Amtrak for a long time, on the spot by holding her inaugural rally in one of the most solemn spaces of Union Station, the capital's rail hub.
Biden delivered a speech from Union Station just before the midterm elections last November, urging voters to reject political extremism and saying that “democracy itself” was at stake.
Williamson, whose red, blue and black campaign signs carry the double slogans "A New Beginning" and "Disrupt the System," said he will campaign in early-voting states on the 2024 election calendar.
Figures of the Republican Party did not go to an important conservative forum that Trump did attend
March 5, 202302:11
That includes New Hampshire, which has threatened to challenge a Biden-backed Democratic National Committee plan for South Carolina to top the nomination races.
New Hampshire Democrats and Republicans have warned that if Biden skips the state's unsanctioned primary and is won by a rival, that result could prove embarrassing for the incumbent president, even if that challenger has no realistic chance of being the nominee.
In a defiant tone, Williamson on Saturday denounced "those who feel like adults in the room" and don't take his candidacy seriously, demanding: "
Let me in."
“I have run for president before.
I am not naive about these forces that have no intention of allowing anyone who does not align with their predetermined agenda into this conversation,” she said.
"I understand that, in your mind, only the people who have previously been entrenched in the car that got us into this ditch can be considered qualified to get us out of it."
Biden successfully removed a carcinoma.
The First Lady recently underwent a similar procedure.
March 4, 202300:21
Luke Stowell, 20, a musician and student at American University in Washington who sat in the front row during the announcement, said Williamson "
has a really nice message
that incorporates all the prejudices and social structures that inhibit, I think, a lot of people on a daily basis.
Sitting next to him, Ivan Claudio, a 24-year-old American University law student, noted that if he wins a second term, Biden would be in his late 80s when he leaves office and "I think it's cause for concern.
"
Biden,
the oldest president in US history,
would be 86 at the end of a second term.
Most Americans — and even most Democrats — say they don't want him to run again, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
The president
is expected to announce in the coming weeks that he is running again.
His political advisers have said they are not worried about the Democratic primary, but that Biden is eager to defeat Donald Trump again in the general election.
They say a 2024 campaign against another GOP candidate, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, would be much the same because top Republicans remain supporters of Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement.
Nikki Haley was booed by Trump supporters at the Conservative Action Political Conference
March 4, 202300:33
Williamson did not mention Biden by name in his speech, and while noting that Trump's failure to be re-elected in 2020 prevented the country from falling "off the cliff," he also said he was still "six inches" away from doing so.
The Democratic establishment—and even potential presidential hopefuls who might have competed with Biden from the left or center—support Biden, showing how easy his path to the nomination is likely to be.
Even if other Democrats follow Williamson in the race, the party does not plan to hold primary debates.
Williamson said she opposed a free-market "mentality" and a corrupt political system that she said prioritized greed above all else "like an atomizer of economic injustice."
“The American people have been trained to expect so little,” he said.
"The American people have been played with."
A native of Texas who now lives in Beverly Hills, California,
Williamson is the author of more than a dozen books
and led an unsuccessful independent campaign for Congress in California in 2014. In 2020, she was best known for wanting to create a Department of the Peace and argue that
the federal government should pay large financial reparations to black Americans
as atonement for centuries of slavery and discrimination.
Arguably his most memorable moment from that campaign came during a primary debate, when he called for a "moral lift" but dropped out of the race shortly before the Iowa caucuses began.
On Saturday he said the nation faces so many challenges that “I'm not saying one person can fix it.
Not even a president can fix it."
"But let me tell you something," Williamson added.
"A president who tells it like it is would do a lot of good
. "