Marianne Williamson suspends 2024 Democratic presidential campaign
Washington DC - Marianne Williamson said Wednesday she was suspending her campaign to unseat Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee in the 2024 presidential election.
Williamson, who also threw her hat in the ring in 2020 but dropped out in January of that year, faced an uphill battle to take on the incumbent president in 2024.
"It is time to suspend my campaign for the presidency," the 71-year-old said in a video posted to her Instagram account, adding that she still saw the "beauty" in her and her team's work.
"While the level of our failure is obvious to all, a level of success is real nonetheless," the author, who in 1992 penned her debut book A Return to Love, wrote in the accompanying social media post.
"There is so much for us to take from this, and that includes knowing that we laid it down in ways that we should all be proud of," she said. "We spoke for those who cannot speak for themselves in this society. We spoke for those whose lives are falling apart, at least indirectly, because of bad public policy. We spoke for those who are suffering because of environmental crises, because of racial crises, because of criminal crises, because of economic crises."
"We did what we could to shed some light in some very darkened times."
Marianne Williamson challenges Biden from the left
Williamson campaigned on Medicare For All, a 21st-century Economic Bill of Rights, and many other progressive priorities.
In launching her primary challenge, she said, "We owe President Biden a debt of gratitude for defeating President Trump in 2020" but added that he was not equipped to handle everything the Republicans "are going to be throwing at us in 2024."
In the first Democratic primary in New Hampshire last month, Williamson won just 4% of the vote, with only 5,000 ballots cast for her. That was in comparison to the 64% won by Biden, who did not technically appear on the ballot due to a row with local officials.
Biden also overwhelmingly won the South Carolina and Nevada Democratic primaries.
Over the past months, Williamson and her supporters have been critical of the Democratic National Committee for endorsing the Biden-Harris campaign and doing away with primary debates, delivering massive institutional advantages to the incumbents. She has also been critical of the mainstream media for failing to give her campaign its due coverage.
Despite those structural disadvantages, the theme of love popped up again in Williamson's message ending her campaign Wednesday night.
"May love yet prevail, in our hearts and in the world," she wrote, along with a blue heart emoji.
Cover photo: JUSTIN SULLIVAN / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP