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| Williamson |
She spoke to a hundred students and faculty at Plymouth State College in New Hampshire.
They have seen it all. Ten candidates so far in April, three this week alone. They have reason to be jaded.
They weren't. They stood up and cheered.
Marianne Williamson is a motivational speaker. It is both a description and an vocation. Running for president gives her the opportunity to do both. She is 14,000 donations away from meeting the qualifications to be on the debate stage.
She said our democracy isn't broken, it is corrupted. Republicans have totally lost their way, dominated by big money, and Democrats are not far behind.
We need universal health care, with Medicare as an option for people. Some people will want to keep their current private health insurance, and we should let them.
We need to control guns and require registration and gun locks. Guns are killing Americans, she said, and we have to do something.
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| 5-minute stand up interview with Adam Sexton |
We need to do the right thing and pay restitution to blacks who instead of getting forty acres and a mule got Black Codes, segregation, and lynching. It is not only justice for blacks, it will be cathartic for white Americans. We know we did wrong, she said.
She said we need to focus Afghanistan policy by finding out what the women of Afghanistan want.
She said we need to put way more emphasis on early childhood education and services.
She said we need to reduce the crippling political power of corporations.
There is nothing particularly different about her policy prescriptions other than her overtly calling for restitution for blacks. Distilling them as I did above, she is positioned as one more Democrat who is generally Bernie-compliant, someone who wants us to make a big, bold lurch toward economic and social justice, as progressives see it.
What is different about Marianne Williamson was that she framed each of these ideas as great moral issues, facing Americans. It was a political sermon, like M. L. King's I have a Dream speech, where she called on her listeners to accept their great duty to reconnect America with its destiny of freedom and justice.
It is better to show her style than to describe it.
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| Candidate like doing selfies. They hope they will get posted to social media |
Our duty to children: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D5QBDbtIQJY
Our duty of restitution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcLN-qfCPGk
Our duty to fix democracy: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D5QBDbtIQJY
I see no path to electoral success for her, but she has the capacity to further divide up a crowded space and is certain to be another person on the debate stage.
I suspect her real power will be in the opposite direction. Whether or not she get delegate votes, she may be called in to speak at a divided convention. If she is given the floor at a time of hopeless division she has the oratorical power to bring an audience toward unity behind a candidate. She might play the role of a late inning relief pitcher.
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