By Rebecca Shabad -
NBC News
Marianne Williamson ended her campaign to obtain the Democratic nomination for president in 2024 on Wednesday, after NBC News predicted that she would obtain less than 10% of the votes in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries.
"I read a quote the other day that said
sunsets are proof that endings can be beautiful too
," Williamson said in a video posted on YouTube.
"And that's why today, even though the time has come to suspend my campaign for president, I want to see the beauty, and I want everyone who has so incredibly supported me on this journey – as donors, supporters, team and volunteers – to also see the beauty. see."
Marianne Williamson, in Austin, Texas, on February 23, 2020. Drew Angerer / Getty Images file
Williamson launched his candidacy for the White House in March 2023, long before President Joe Biden even publicly declared that he planned to run for re-election.
"It is our job to create a vision of justice and love so powerful that it overrides the forces of hate, injustice and fear," Williamson said at his inaugural event at Union Station in Washington.
"I, as of today,
am a candidate for the position of president of the United States
."
A spokesperson for the Biden campaign declined to comment when contacted by NBC News.
[The report on Biden's classified papers will be published in the coming days and will not include criminal charges against the president]
Williamson has never held elected office.
He ran for president in 2020. He dropped out of that race just weeks before the primary election process began.
Before the New Hampshire primary, Williamson appeared to suggest to voters that former President Donald Trump would win the 2024 general election.
"I don't have a good feeling about what will happen in 2024 because 2024 is not going to be like 2020. 2024 is going to be like 2016," Williamson said at an event in Portsmouth.
He criticized Democrats for pushing an anti-Trump narrative in the 2024 campaign, arguing that
it won't be enough to achieve electoral success
.
"Trying to beat Donald Trump by saying things are going well. Really? For 20% of us things are going well. [...] For 80% of Americans, the idea that things are going well economically, it's like a slap in the face," said Williamson, who has made socioeconomic inequality the cornerstone of his campaign.
The Democrat has presented herself as a progressive candidate and has echoed some of the same platforms with which Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, ran for president in 2016.
[The bipartisan immigration reform fails in the Senate, which is now voting on an aid plan for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan]
"If you are in the top 20% of Americans earning, the economy is doing well," he said on his campaign website.
"But those 20% live on an island that is surrounded by a sea of economic desperation. Within that sea, a wide range of personal and social dysfunctions are easily reproduced: from chronic anxiety and addiction to ideological capture by of
genuinely psychotic, even fascist
, elements in our society.
During his campaign, Williamson called for the creation of "a legal fund for victims of police brutality," said the United States
"must declare a national climate emergency"
and called for stopping "all new fossil fuel projects."