Democratic presidential longshot Marianne Williamson on challenging Biden: 'We should have as many people running in an election as feel moved'

By Victor Reklaitis

Williamson says President Biden has 'taken an incremental approach to America's problems,' rather than delivering 'fundamental economic reform'

Democrats largely have closed ranks behind President Joe Biden ahead of next year's election, but he isn't completely without challengers for the party's nomination.

Author and activist Marianne Williamson has thrown her hat in the ring, pursuing a longshot bid that comes after her 2020 presidential campaign fizzled out before the Iowa caucuses.

Why isn't she falling in line and supporting her party's incumbent president? What's her pitch to people who think she's not a serious candidate? What are her top economic proposals?

Williamson, 70, tackled those questions and more in a phone interview earlier this week.

Our Q&A with the Democratic presidential hopeful has been edited for clarity and length.

MarketWatch: In a nutshell, could you explain why you're running for president?

Williamson: I'm running for president because I believe that some things need to be said and some changes need to be made, in order to repair some serious damage that's been done to our democracy, to our country, to our people and to our environment over the last 50 years.

MarketWatch: You've talked about running to address "systemic economic injustices endured by millions of Americans" because of the "undue influence of corporate money on our political system." What do you see as the top examples of that?

Williamson: During the 1970s, the average American worker had decent benefits, could afford a home, could afford a yearly vacation, could afford a car and could afford to send their child to college. In the last 48 years, there has been a $50 trillion transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 1% of Americans. That transfer has decimated our middle class. We are now at a point where if you are among 20% of Americans, then the economy's doing pretty well for you. But, unfortunately, that 20% is surrounded by a vast sea of economic despair. We have 60,000 people in the United States who die every year because they can't afford healthcare (XLV), one in four Americans living with a medical debt, and 18 million Americans unable to fill the prescriptions that their doctors give to them.

If you are in the club in America, if you are making it in America -- and I have sold some books, so I understand the high side of the free market and have benefited, and I'm grateful for that -- but no conscious persons wants to feel that they create wealth at the expense of other people having a chance. That is not American. It's not what the American Dream is supposed to be.

I'm not trying to whitewash and romanticize American capitalism before this era. I'm not saying we were ever perfect, but it does seem to me that when I was growing up, the social consensus is that we were supposed to try. We knew that the higher good was that there would be this balance between individual liberty, including economic liberty, and a concern for the common good. But today concern for the common good has become almost derided as some quaint notion, and that we shouldn't really give much more than lip service to it. And that's a lot of human suffering that occurs because of that change in the social contract.

MarketWatch: Here's kind of a two-part question. What would be your top economic priorities, and how in particular would you address high inflation and the recent banking (KBE)crisis?

Williamson: I'd like to see universal healthcare. I want to see tuition-free college at state colleges and universities, which is what we had in this country until the 1960s. There should be free childcare. There should be paid family leave. There should be guaranteed sick pay and a livable wage. And I think Americans are waking up to the fact that those things that I just mentioned are considered moderate issues in every other advanced democracy. They should not be considered left-wing fringe issues. They are granted to the citizens of every other advanced democracy.

That was your first question. The second has to do with high inflation. A lot of that high inflation has to do with price gouging by huge corporations, whether it has to do with food companies, transportation companies and so forth. All of those CEOs should testify before Congress and talk about the ways that they have -- for the sake of their own profits -- gouged the American people, particularly at such a time as this. And this is what happens when we normalize such a lack of conscience and such a lack of ethics within our system.

In terms of what happened with the bank in Silicon Valley (SIVBQ), which is what your third question was, right? I think the depositors should be made whole, but the bank executives who were taking multimillion-dollar bonuses for themselves, both before and right after the crash, they certainly should not get those bonuses. And also it's concerning that some of the tech investors that would benefit the most from those deposits were the ones who caused the run on the bank. I don't think that they should receive the benefit of what happens when those deposits are made whole. But the average depositor absolutely should be made whole in such cases.

MarketWatch: You mentioned free tuition and child care. Where would the funding for that come from?

Williamson: The funding should come, first of all, from taxation. The 2017 tax cut in this country was a $2 trillion tax cut, and 83 cents of every dollar went to the highest-earning corporations and individuals. Now that tax cut also included the middle-class tax cut, and the middle-class tax cut was good.

That tax cut for the highest earners should be repealed, but the middle-class tax cut should be put back in immediately.

Secondly, we should stop all the corporate subsidies. Why are we giving subsidies to these companies that are already making multibillions of dollars in profit and often then price gouging the American people?

Third, I believe there should be a wealth tax. If somebody has $50 million, I don't have any problem with their paying an extra 2% tax. And if they have $1 billion, let them pay another 1%. Somebody with a $50 million portfolio, much less $1 billion in assets, would not even feel that change, but the changes in people's lives that would be created by those shifts would be huge.

MarketWatch: Your campaign often gets described as a real longshot bid. Why are you running when so many people say you have a low chance for success?

Williamson: Well, certainly Donald Trump was considered a longshot. For that matter, when he began Barack Obama was considered a longshot. Surely we remember when Hillary Clinton was considered a shoo-in.

MarketWatch: A recent Monmouth University poll of Democratic voters found 11% had a favorable view of you, 16% had an unfavorable view, 21% had no opinion, and 52% had not heard of you. How do you win over those voters who have an unfavorable view, and how do you reach the folks who haven't heard of you?

Williamson: Well, there was a poll that came out last week that put me at 10%, including 18% with independents and 21% with people under 30.

It's very difficult for someone like myself to get the message out when you have such institutional resistance to my even being in the conversation, and that is displayed in various ways. But there is independent media today. God knows there's TikTok, where my information seems to be doing quite well.

This early, no candidate should be allowing the polls to determine their path forward. I didn't go into this expecting the approval of institutional forces. And I, as a matter of fact, expected the kind of resistance that I've received, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that a certain agenda be placed before the American people, and I am providing that option -- the option of that alternative agenda.

I believe that agenda is the way for the Democrats to win in 2024. But even more importantly, I think it's the agenda that will lead to the repair of this country.

MarketWatch: You mentioned TikTok, and that has been a hot topic in Washington, D.C., in recent weeks. Do you have a view on the Democratic and Republican proposals to ban TikTok in the U.S?

Williamson: I think the United States government does need to be concerned with tech (XLK) surveillance, but I wish they were as concerned when it comes to American-run companies as when it comes to Chinese. It's a serious issue, it's a valid issue -- the whole issue of surveillance. But it's a gnarly issue as well, and rushing to shut something down, which is so obviously a platform depended on by millions and millions of Americans for information sharing, is never something that should be done lightly.

MarketWatch: Some Americans may know you only for your spiritual work, and these folks may not think you're a serious presidential candidate. The White House press secretary indicated she's in that camp. What's your message to win those folks over?

Williamson: First of all, I don't think of my campaign as quote-unquote trying to win anyone over. There's something that I read years ago that has always guided my work: "If there's something you genuinely need to say, there's someone out there who genuinely needs to hear it." I am speaking to people who I know agree with me. I wouldn't be doing this if I weren't aware that millions of people agree with me.

I think it's very sad that the president would allow a presidential press podium to be used to mock a political opponent, and I think that many people were and are offended by that. This is a democracy. We should have as many voices out there as possible. We should have as many people running in an election as feel moved. Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas. There are ideas on the left and ideas on the right. There are ideas all across the spectrum, and this is a point in American history where we as Americans should hear them all.

MarketWatch: What do you think are some of the main things that President Biden has gotten right, and in what areas has he gone wrong?

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04-15-23 1251ET

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