Long shot Democratic candidate Marianne Williamson drops out of the race.

Marianne Williamson. The Guardian/AFP/Getty.

Long shot Democratic candidate Marianne Williamson has dropped out of the 2020 presidential primary race. The Guardian. Williamson said she wanted to drop out so she would not get in the way of a progressive candidate. Williamson's campaign was unusual as it focused on spirituality and love instead of policy. Her campaign was similar to her career, a self help guru. However, she never really caught on with voters and after her first debate performance she was unable to gain enough momentum to continue the race. 

My Comment:

I actually kind of liked Williamson. I thought she was one of the more entertaining candidates at the early debates and her new age woo viewpoints were pretty funny. She always reminded me of a middle aged single mom that gets bored with her life and starts buying crystals to ease her knee pain. Once she failed to qualify for the debates they changed from being an entertaining clown car into a boring train wreck. 

Despite her odd beliefs I also thought that Williamson was one of the less evil Democratic candidates. Unlike some of the rest I don't think she's a hateful person. She was one that was actually trying to improve the country, even though her methods were not going to work at all. Though I don't have much respect for her politcal beliefs I think she was one of the few candidates that I actually would like to have an in person discussion with and I think it would remain civil. 

She never really took off though, and I think the way the media treated her was a big part of it. Williamson was treated as a joke from the beginning, not only by the conservative media that absolutely loved her ironically, but from more mainstream sources as well. If there is one thing that the media hates is Democratic candidates that are outside the mainstream and Williamson was treated similarly to Bernie Sanders in 2016 and Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard are in 2020. 

 I do think that there was a lane that was available for Williamson. Her brand of spiritualist nonsense is popular among older white women who are a key constituency for the Democrats. If she had a better campaign or more positive campaign coverage I think she could have gotten a larger portion of the polls. 

However, outside of that group, Williamson didn't really appeal to anyone. She wasn't as far left economically as Warren and Sanders, wasn't establishment like Biden and didn't appeal to policy wonks. And I doubt minorities were impressed with her new age spiritualism as they tend to be more religious than most Democrats. She tried to appeal to black voters with talk of reparations but it was too little too late. 

Still, it was surprising that she managed to outlast several other big name candidates. If you had told me before anyone had announced that an obscure self help guru would beat out media darlings like Robert Francis O'Rourke and Kamala Harris, I would have said you are nuts. But she did and I think that's a pretty big accomplishment.