If at first you don’t succeed, pitch, pitch again.
Marianne Williamson, the self-help guru and perennial political candidate, on Tuesday reminded Democrats that she is ready to step in at any point should they choose to jettison Joe Biden as their presidential nominee.
“President Biden deserves our respect, and our compassion, and our gratitude,” she said in a five-minute video statement. “But the debate on Thursday night made it very clear that the Democrats need a new nominee on the ballot in November.”
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But who? Why, Williamson, of course. “Today I throw my hat in the ring,” she said, calling on the party to “recalibrate” and hold an open nominating convention in August.
The statement marks the third time this election cycle that the onetime megachurch leader, who turns 72 next week, has announced her candidacy.
Having lost to Biden in the 2020 primary, Williamson kicked off her second long-shot bid for the White House in early March 2023. She suspended her campaign the following February, noting that “sunsets are proof that endings can be beautiful too.”
But she wasn’t gone for long, resurrecting her bid three weeks later. “We’re watching a car crash in slow motion here,” Williamson said of Biden’s campaign. “Everybody knows it.”
She was eliminated from contention the next month, after Biden had clinched enough delegates to secure the party’s eventual nomination.
Williamson noted in her Tuesday statement that she had received more than half a million votes over the course of the 2024 primary season.
“Over the last year, I’ve been traveling this country, and I have seen up close and personal the ravages of body and soul that dot the landscape of our nation,” she said. “I know how much people are desperate for change.”
