It seemed obvious to me that at one point hosts Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave were keen to have Marianne announce she was planning to run as a progressive challenger to Joe Biden in 2024. Yet true to form, Marianne took the conversation to a deeper level, noting that “it’s not that we challenge Biden or whether we challenge Kamala Harris, we must challenge the entire system.” (Of course, this will mean in time on a practical level challenging corporatist Democrats like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.)
The system Marianne is talking about is the neoliberal ecomomic system by which the Democratic party establisment is enthralled, perhaps not to the same extent as the Republican party but enough so as to never make a genuine effort to name and disrupt this system’s deep dysfunction. This dysfunction isn’t an unfortunate fluke or side-effect, for as Marianne reminds us:
[We] still have locked-in as a feature, not as a bug to the neoliberal establishment, an income disparity the likes of which we have not seen in 100 years. That’s what needs to be challenged. . . . We must challenge the entire system that makes a free market more important than free people. . . . This generation has to find its courage. We must disrupt the neoliberal agenda that has taken this country for the last 40+ years into a place where democracy itself is under an assault.
Following is Rising’s 10-minute interview with Marianne Williamson. It’s followed by more of this interview’s transcript.
Says Marianne Williamson:
I’m disappointed at the lack of choice that the Democrats are allowing. You know, the point of a political party is to facilitate democracy, not suppress democracy, not make it so that nobody can say anything other than their pre-prescribed agenda. And that’s what’s happening right now. We’re changing the primary schedule, making it so that Joe Biden can just stride into South Carolina where he knows he has James Clyburn, where he knows he has Jamie Harrison, where he knows he did well last time. All of this is designed in order to suppress any idea of a progressive challenge or any challenge. I think it’s bad for democracy. I think it increases the distrust that many people, particularly young people, have in the Democratic party. And I think we should start right now calling foul so that they don’t think they can continue with this and everybody’s just going to go, “Oh, okay.”
It’s all a football game to [the corporatist Democratic establishment]. This is exactly what George Washington warned us about: becoming more about the party, more about the faction than about America. We should be talking about what’s happening in this country. We should be talking about the fact that whether it’s Joe Biden or any of the other corporatist Democrats, all we’re talking about is staying within the box of a neoliberal establishment. Yes, the president has done some good things but all within the box.
Let’s talk about what’s really going on in this country. If you put together the poor, the near-poor, and the afraid-of-becoming poor you have a third of the American people. You still have locked-in as a feature, not as a bug to this neoliberal establishment, an income disparity the likes of which we have not seen in 100 years. That’s what needs to be challenged. It’s not whether we challenge Biden or whether we challenge Kamala Harris, we must challenge the entire system. We must challenge the entire system that makes a free market more important than free people. Remember FDR said a necessitous man is not a free man.
. . . So, yes, Joe Biden has made some things easier, he has alleviated some stress, all of which is to be appreciated. But we need more than the alleviation of stress. We need to challenge the underlying, particularly corporate forces, that make the return of that stress always inevitable. We need genuine economic reform – fundamental economic reform, such as you get from universal healthcare, such as you get from free college. If the Democratic party is not a channel for that conversation than it has completely strayed from its traditional roots of genuine advocacy for the working people, for the average person in America.
What are [progressives like Rep. Pramila Jayapal] doing going along with the very system that I thought they were in Washington to disrupt? If they won’t disrupt it, the American people have to disrupt it. And that’s what I think there’s a hunger for.
We need to disrupt the corrupt, and everybody needs to decide for themselves the best way they participate in that disruption. For some people it will be third party involvement, for others it will be staying within the Democratic party and working there. I don’t think there’s a right answer. It’s the way that each person feels that they can best serve.
Having ran myself [as a progressive candidate] I understand how vicious that machine can become. I understand that [the corporatist Democratic establishment] have no patience with anyone who doesn’t fall in line with their pre-prescribed agenda. I know what they will do to you if you “paint outside the lines.” But we must paint outside the lines. This generation has to find its courage. We must disrupt the neoliberal agenda that has taken this country for the last 40+ years into a place where democracy itself is under an assault.
. . . So, yeah, I’m doing what I think everyone I know is doing: making that decision. And it’s time to make that decision of how can I best serve, how can I help articulate an alternative to the current agenda, and how can I best help effectuate it. And I’ll be making that decision very shortly, I think.
Related Off-site Links:
“The System” Is Ruining Our Present and Collective Future – Peter Montague (Common Dreams, December 28, 2022).
Beyond the Politics of Despair: An Interview With Marianne Williamson – Charlotte Dennett (CounterPunch, October 19, 2022).
Marianne Williamson Advocates for ‘Ethic of Love’ and Economic Reform at Stanford Town Hall – Cassidy Dalva (The Stanford Daily, October 3, 2022).
Former Presidential Hopeful, Marianne Williamson, Says Purity Testing in Candidate Endorsements Is “Immature” – The Hill (February 16, 2022).
Marianne Williamson Says Difference Between Two Political Parties Is “Performative” – The Hill (January 20, 2022).
Marianne Williamson: A Politico or Apolitical? – Casey Schwartz (The New York Times, January 16, 2022).
Marianne Williamson: Democratic Convention “Like Binge Watching a Marriott Commercial” – The Hill (August 18, 2020).
For more of Marianne Williamson’s political insights at The Wild Reed, see:
• Progressive Perspectives on the U.S. Midterm Election Results
• Marianne Williamson on the Current Condition of the U.S.
• An Essential Read Ahead of the Midterms
• Marianne Williamson’s Politics of Love: The Rich Roll Interview
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – July 28, 2022
• Progressive Perspectives on the Overturning of Roe v. Wade
• “For the Love of Our Children, Let’s Not Shut Up”
• Celebrating Tuesday’s Progressive Wins in the Midst of the Ongoing “War for the Future of the Democratic Party”
• Now Here’s a Voice I’d Like to Hear Regularly on the Sunday Morning Talk Shows
• A Deeper Perspective on What’s Really Attacking American Democracy
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – November 11, 2021
• Marianne Williamson on the Tenth Anniversary of Occupy Wall Street
• Progressive Perspectives on Nina Turner’s Election Loss
• Cultivating Peace
• “Two of the Most Dedicated and Enlightened Heroes of Present Day America”
• Inauguration Eve Musings
• Progressive Perspectives on the 2020 U.S. Election Results
• “As Much the Sounding of An Alarm As a Time for Self-Congratulations”
• We Cannot Allow a Biden Win to Mean a Return to “Brunch Liberalism”
• Marianne Williamson on America’s “Cults of Madness”
• Marianne Williamson on the Movement for a People’s Party
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – September 4, 2020
• Eight Leading Progressive Voices on Why They’re Voting for Biden
• “We Have an Emergency On Our Hands”: Marianne Williamson On the “Freefall” of American Democracy
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – June 2, 2020
• Deep Gratitude
• Marianne Williamson on the Contest Being Played Out by Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders
• “It's Time to Take a Stand”: Marianne Williamson Endorses Bernie Sanders for President
• “I Learned So Much From the Experience”: Marianne Williamson on Her Presidential Bid
• “A Beautiful Message, So Full of Greatness”
• Marianne Williamson and the Power of Politicized Love
• Marianne Williamson: “Anything That Will Help People Thrive, I’m Interested In”
• The Relevance and Vitality of Marianne Williamson’s 2020 Presidential Campaign
• Caitlin Johnstone: “Status Quo Politicians Are Infinitely ‘Weirder’ Than Marianne Williamson”
• Presidential Candidate Marianne Williamson: “We’re Living at a Critical Moment in Our Democracy”
• “A Lefty With Soul”: Why Presidential Candidate Marianne Williamson Deserves Some Serious Attention
• Marianne Williamson: Reaching for Higher Ground
• Why Marianne Williamson Is a Serious and Credible Presidential Candidate
• Talkin’ ’Bout An Evolution: Marianne Williamson’s Presidential Bid
For more on neoliberalism, see:
• Will Democrats Never Learn?
• Cornel West: Quote of the Day – December 3, 2020
• Ben Ehrenreich on the Global Uprisings Against Neoliberalism
• Sarah Jones: Quote of the Day – October 30, 2019
• The Neoliberal Economic Doctrine: A View From Australia
• Carrying It On
• Hope, History and Bernie Sanders
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