Marianne Williamson. Why bother?

Because some Democrats like her. She wants to provide moral leadership.

Williamson

     "Our national challenges are deep, but our political conversation is shallow. My campaign is for people who want to dig deeper into the questions we face as a nation and deeper into finding the answers."

          Marianne Williamson

There is a firehose volume of additional candidates in New Hampshire on deck for this blog: Williamson, Warren, Bloomberg, Bullock, Sanford, Weld, Steyer, Booker. 

Meanwhile, former congressman, governor, and presidential candidate John Kasich is not a candidate, but he is going around New Hampshire campaigning, and that, too, is a story. Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is putting out rumors of entering. Bloomberg hasn't filed in New Hampshire yet, but has done so in Early-deadline Alabama, and he is a specter floating over the Democratic primary. 

Marianne Williamson is campaigning like a candidate. She is holding campaign events, has buttons and signs and stickers and the staff to organize events. She was in New Hampshire for four days prior to her filing on November 4. She held three events a day. People show up. She gets enthusiastic applause. She is raising money, producing ads, and airing them. TV cameras follow her.

The prediction markets have her "price" at one cent, along with other candidates who have dropped out. She is perceived favorably by about 21% of Democrats versus 60% who see her unfavorably, according to a The Economist/YouGov poll in late October. She is an outlier.

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I have written that she isn't really a candidate, and she has almost no chance of winning. So why bother with her in this blog?

She is changing what political scientists call the Overton Window, those sets of policies that enter the public debate. She is an author and motivational speaker and she exemplifies the reality that being a presidential candidate gives her a platform to make her points. Being a candidate makes her newsworthy.

She says we need a spiritual change in America. We need to change our mindset on what is possible and what we should do to meet our moral obligations.  She speaks to a variety of issues, but most recently she has amped up her belief that America needs to pay reparations to black Americans. "Paying reparations will not fix everything. But America will not have the future we want until we clean up the past."

The word "reparations" polls very badly. A practical expect-to-be-elected candidate cannot advocate it. A majority of white Americans resent the very notion that they would pay for sins that started with remote ancestors. A public discussion is only possible if someone brings it up, and describes it from the position of a moral obligation rather than a practical plan and is willing to be disliked for saying it. That is Williamson's role.

Williamson intends to play the role of a Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. rather than the role of an LBJ. They are two different kinds of leadership.

Guest Post comment from an Oregon reader:

     "My reason for writing to you is simply to express my surprise at the way in which you have written off Marianne Williamson from any consideration as a candidate. On two separate occasions in your blog you dismissed her as not being worthy of any serious attention. I am puzzled as to how you developed this attitude or came to this conclusion. What I see in Marianne Williamson, running as a Democratic Primary candidate for president, is someone who is conscious of and able to articulate the issues and challenges that confront us. What she proposes are twenty-first century solutions to the unique problems facing us that will not respond to twentieth century approaches. She educates her audiences about the issues she presents, emphasizing the importance of individual civic participation and, most importantly, inspiring her audience to become an active part of the solutions we seek. 

Judging by participant and supporter comments, I believe that Marianne Williamson, by means of her emphasis on the reestablishment and rediscovery of political morality, has caused disengaged individuals to become re-engaged in the political process. The other day on Twitter, Andrew Yang spoke of his respect for Mari'nne Williamson and encouraged people to actually donate to her campaign because as he stated “…the American people need to hear more of what she has to say.'

     I’ve voted consistently in a lot of presidential elections. The inspiration and forward thinking of a JFK, a Bill Clinton and a Barack Obama are, at the very least, what we are now going to need in order to bring as many people out to vote as possible and win this critically important election. Although Marianne Williamson is not among the top tier candidates, nevertheless she has an important message that deserves to be heard by more Americans."