Friday, August 17, 2018

Fated in the Stars? Marianne Williamson Exploring Presidential Bid

I found this article on The Guardian.

It was interesting to me in large part because Williamson had run for Congress in 2014 in my Congressional District. She had hosted a town hall of sorts in Palos Verdes Estates to meet with prospective voters before the June primary.



She had an interesting buzz, or at least "aura" about her.

She didn't make it into the Top Two, and she ultimately endorsed Ted Lieu, who went on to be our next Congressman (sadly).

Williamson hasn't quite quit herself of the politician bug yet however.

Apparently:

A presidential bid by the author would mark the first celebrity campaign for the White House against Donald Trump

No it wouldn't. Mark Cuban is exploring a bid, and so did Dawyne "The Rock" Johnson.

New Age author Marianne Williamson was in Iowa earlier this week meeting with Democratic activists to explore the possibility of a presidential campaign.

She should go back to looking at the stars. I think she would have a better chance of charting her future that way.

Tom Henderson, a prominent Democratic activist in the state, told the Guardian that Williamson said she was “just looking into it and not a candidate yet”.

Let's hope she keeps it that way ... for her sake, for starters. It would be massively embarrassing for her to throw more time and money into a political campaign as a populist from the left, when she has hardly done anything or promoted anything that connects with the needs of working people trying to make something of themselves when the political class was so busy taking advantage of them.

Williamson is a prominent New Age author who has written New York Times best sellers, most recently Tears to Triumph about “the spiritual journey from suffering to enlightenment”.


New Age is snake oil. What does she believe in?

Just about anything ,which means that she doesn't really believe anything at all.

In effect, she believes nothing. What gives? She was a life-long Democrat, then registered as an Independent for the 2014 Congressional Election, hoping that she could sweep into office with disaffected Democrats and Independents. She probably didn't care all that much about Republicans.

Much of what she talked about didn't really cross over to conservatives.

One source said Williamson took meetings in the Des Moines area and also in Fairfield, Iowa, a rural town that is home to the Maharishi University of Management and has a thriving community of practitioners of transcendental meditation.

She met with the meditation centers. Really.

Are they going to chant "Ohm" until she comes into the zenith point where everything meets within herself, and she herself connects with everything and everyone else?

Oh brother.

Williamson’s interest in a potential presidential bid is a sign of how broad the Democratic field in 2020 might be. Dozens of Democrats have been mooted as candidates and Williamson would have competition even for the “yoga vote”. Ohio congressman Tim Ryan has reportedly said that he is hoping to court that demographic if he mounts a bid. Ryan, a Rust Belt Democrat who mounted an unsuccessful challenge to Nancy Pelosi for minority leader,  meditation.

"The yoga vote". That sounds interesting.

She will really have to stretch really, really hard to get anywhere near the tipping point. 

A presidential bid by the author would mark the first celebrity campaign for the White House against Donald Trump. Although a host of A-listers ranging from Oprah Winfrey to Mark Cuban to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson have been floated as a candidates, none of them have been reported to be taking the necessary steps to consider a presidential bid.

Hmm. What constitutes taking steps? Showing up in Iowa? Talking about it? Raising money? Not really sure how to evaluate much of this.

The biggest reason this article stood out to me was that she had run for Congress four years ago. Now she's thinking about running for President. That's pretty far out, to say the least. Perhaps she thinks that Trump's meteoric rise is so spectacular, that she could rocket ahead to the front of the polls and replace him in the constellation of political power.

A presidential bid would not be Williamson’s first foray in politics. In 2014, she mounted an unsuccessful congressional bid in California’s 33rd congressional district. She finished fourth with 13% of the vote despite spending nearly $2m. At the time, celebrities like Alanis Morrisette as well as former congressman Dennis Kucinich.

She ran as a Tea Party of the Left type of candidate. She wanted to stand outside the mainstream. She wanted to run away from political establishments, both left and right. She ended up endorsing Lyin' Ted Lieu, however, so it begs many questions why she thought that she could make a difference in politics or any other field. She ultimately wanted to get along to go along.

Her hyper, wafty spiritualization will not connect with anyone, especially working and middle income Americans who live in the real world. Her brand of spirituality, if anyone can call it that, will only apply to the secularized religious set which dominates West Los Angeles and upstate New York, men and women who worship their money, but want to put another name on it and believe that they are working to make the world a better place in some way.



What a loss for the Democratic Party, or at least the liberal groups all over the country. As for me, I say "Run, Marianne, Run!"

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