Marianne Williamson ends long-shot presidential bid as Democratic challenger

WASHINGTON — Marianne Williamson ended her 2024 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday after poor showings in both the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries.

“I read a quote the other day that said that sunsets are proof that endings can be beautiful too,” Williamson in a video posted to YouTube. “And so today, even though it is time to suspend my campaign for the presidency, I do want to see the beauty, and I want all of you who so incredibly supported me on this journey — as donors, as supporters, as team and as volunteers — to see the beauty too.”

Williamson launched her long shot White House bid in March 2023, well before even President Joe Biden publicly declared that he planned to run for re-election. 

“It is our job to create a vision of justice and love that is so powerful that it will override the forces of hatred and injustice and fear,” Williamson said at her kick-off event at Washington’s Union Station. “I, as of today, am a candidate for the office of president of the United States.”

A spokesperson for Biden’s campaign declined to comment when reached by NBC News.

Williamson has never held elected office, but she previously ran for president in 2020. She exited that race just weeks before the primary election process began.  

Ahead of the New Hampshire primary, Williamson appeared to suggest to voters that former President Donald Trump would win the 2024 general election.

“I do not have good feelings about what will happen in 2024 because 2024 is not going to be like 2020. 2024 is going to be like 2016,” Williamson said at a town hall event in Portsmouth. 

Williamson criticized Democrats for pushing an anti-Trump narrative in the 2024 campaign, saying that it won’t be enough for electoral success during this cycle.

“Try to beat Donald Trump by saying things are going well. Really? For 20% of us things are going well. … For 80% of Americans, the idea that things are going well, economically, it’s like a slap in their face,” said Williamson, who’s made socio-economic inequality the cornerstone of her campaign. 

The Democrat has presented herself as a progressive candidate, echoing some of the same platforms that Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., ran on in 2016. 

“If you’re in the top 20 per cent of American earners, the economy works well,” it said on her campaign website. “But that 20 per cent live on an island that is surrounded by a sea of economic despair. Within that sea, a myriad of personal and societal dysfunctions breed easily — from chronic anxiety and addiction to ideological capture by genuinely psychotic, even fascist elements of our society.”

For other issues during her campaign, Williamson called for the creation of “a legal fund for victims of police brutality,” said the U.S. “must declare a national climate emergency” and called for halting “all new fossil fuel projects.”