Among the growing chorus of voices calling for President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 election amid signs of deteriorating health is Marianne Williamson, the best-selling self-help author and former Detroit-area megachurch leader.
In a statement published Tuesday following Biden’s poor debate performance on Thursday, Williamson said that her on-again, off-again long-shot campaign is back on.
“President Biden deserves our respect, our compassion, and our gratitude,” Williamson said in a statement. “The debate last week, however, made clear that the time is now for another Democratic candidate to take his place on the November ballot.”
Calls for Biden to step down started immediately after he took the stage last week at the first presidential debate in Atlanta. Though Biden’s campaign requested the unusually early debate to try to shore up support ahead of August’s Democratic National Convention and the November election, the plan backfired when the 81-year-old Biden appeared frail and unable to form complete sentences — raising questions about the president’s health and a possible White House coverup.
Biden has given fewer press appearances than any U.S. president in modern history, turning down the traditional televised interview before the Super Bowl for two consecutive years.
Like others, Williamson, 71, has called for Biden’s replacement to be chosen during an open convention to be held at the DNC.
“The nominating process for the Democratic Party needs to begin again,” Williamson said. “We need to recalibrate, and we need to do so quickly. Over the next two months we need to do what we should have been doing over the last year and a half: engaging in a robust conversation about this country and how we’re going to beat Donald Trump in November. Today I throw my hat in the ring. We need to have an exciting campaign and an open convention in August.”
Williamson boasted that she received more than half a million votes in the primary election. She suspended the Williamson 2024 campaign in early February only to “unsuspend” it three weeks later, saying that the Biden-Trump rematch was like “watching a car crash in slow motion.” Williamson withdrew from the race again on June 11, after the primary elections were held.
In her statement, Williamson called for “a genuinely democratic process” that should “not be manipulated by party and media elites.”
She also said her campaign is animated by Americans’ desire for something different.
“I traveled throughout the United States for over a year, gaining personal experience of ravages of both body and soul in communities throughout this country,” she said, adding, “I know how desperately people in this country want change.”
Williamson’s campaign platform includes Medicare for All, tuition-free higher education, affordable housing, and a guaranteed living wage. She has also released an “Economic Bill of Rights,” or what she calls a “vision for a moral economy.”
Previously, Williamson has also called for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Following the debate, Democrats have begun eyeing other presidential candidate alternatives including Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a co-chair of Biden’s re-election campaign who has publicly stated that she continues to stand by him.
Biden’s supporters have maintained that it is too late to switch candidates, and Biden has vowed to stay in the race. However, a new CNN poll found a majority of voters say the Democratic Party would have a better shot at winning the presidency with someone other than Biden at the top of the ticket.
Williamson rose to prominence as a spiritual leader for celebrities in New York City and Los Angeles. In the ’90s and early 2000s, she led the Church of Today in Warren, just outside of Detroit.
She was one of a crowded field of Democrats to run for president in 2020, and was the first to announce a run against the incumbent Biden in the 2024 election.
“We need to revive the spirit of the American people at a moment when hopelessness is rampant,” she said. “For the last forty years I have worked closely with people whose lives were in trouble, and I know something about restoring faith in what’s possible. As a writer, speaker, entrepreneur, and non-profit activist, I have reached millions of people who were looking for hope that things could be better in their lives. I have helped provide that hope. I will provide it as a candidate and as President of the United States.”
She added, “A government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people’ has been replaced by a government ‘of the donors, by the lobbyists, and for the corporations.’ We the People will no longer tolerate this. The political industrial complex has had its way with us for far too long. It’s our turn now.”
