(March 5) Kudos to New Age spiritualist Marianne Williamson for having the gumption to challenge President Joe Biden for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination, but she’s a left winger untethered from reality. Where, pray tell, are the pragmatic Democrats courageous enough to offer Democrats a legitimate choice?
Williamson, author and frequent guest of Oprah Winfrey, announced on Saturday her second run for the White House after having gotten approximately less than nowhere in her attempt in 2020. Back then, she pushed for economic reparations for slavery, held a public meditation session, and offered grandiloquent rhetoric straight from the typical guru’s guide to the galaxy.
With hair falling over one eye and her unique diction, Williamson, in her announcement, sounded like a female Huey Long railing against people who eat too much of the communal barbeque. She doesn’t have a prayer of winning anything but a séance audience.
Still, Biden should not be reelected. Every reasonable Democratic leader knows he is both too old and too unpopular. Even if first lady Jill Biden pushes him into a reelection race, he ought not go unchallenged. More importantly, the challenge should come not from the wacky Left but from what passes for the more pragmatic wing of the party that still, on a good day, can at least remember what political centrism means.
Remember that Biden won by pretending to be the main centrist alternative to the 2020 field’s conglomeration of “progressive” crusaders. There are still enough ordinary Americans who will vote in Democratic primaries for a semi-centrist that a talented one can win.
So where is Virginia’s Sen. Mark Warner, he of the $275 million fortune and a record of serious bipartisanship on the Intelligence Committee? Where is “infrastructure czar” and former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, a pragmatic liberal with a trained thespian’s ability to deliver galvanizing stump speeches? Where is Colorado’s Sen. John Hickenlooper, a self-proclaimed defender of capitalism?…. [The full column is here.]
