An Endorsement Of Marianne Williamson In The Democratic Primary.
It’s an incredibly long shot. It probably won’t work. We’re probably stuck riding with Biden in the General. But it’s better to fight than to surrender, and protest votes may change outcomes.
Hello, friends,
Last week, we talked about what to expect in 2024. When discussing the upcoming Presidential election, we analyzed things like President Biden’s approval ratings, and how not-very-good they are.
This week, as I sort of implied in last week’s post, I’m coming out with an endorsement of Marianne Williamson for the Democratic Primary.
Allow me to explain:
The Primary As A Protest Vote
Look, this is a year with an incumbent President with no strong primary challenger. Let’s run through the list.
Dean Phillips is, on the surface, the strongest, since he’s in the House of Representatives whereas neither of Biden’s other two main challengers are not, but his record is full of “Did Not Votes,” and that’s…Well, weird. Extremely weird, honestly. Maybe that’s because Republicans control the House and he doesn’t want to vote on Republican priorities, but shouldn’t that just mean, “Hey I’m voting no on all this crap?” While he has the highest governmental rank, he does not poll the highest.
Cenk Ugyur is one of Biden’s other main challengers, and Cenk’s situation is unique. As someone born in Turkey, he’s not a natural-born U.S. citizen, which is - in theory! - a requirement to be President. However, since we’re currently in a nationwide bicker-fest about whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s prohibition of insurrectionists running for office, the truth is that the Fourteenth Amendment does something else that’s interesting: It essentially redefines citizenship, and declares that all people naturalized have the same rights as others. That leaves open the argument that a naturalized citizen might be eligible, and Cenk is mostly using his campaign to make that argument.
Then there’s Marianne Williamson.
First of all, nationally speaking, Williamson is polling at about 6.1%. Biden is polling over 70%, and Phillips is almost at 3%. While that does mean there’s a fairly large undecided block out there, the facts are that unless a Black Swan event happens, Biden is going to win the primary. Even if Marianne pulled in 25% (her current 6% plus most of the undecideds), that’s really not enough to do more than get a few delegates at the convention.
But maybe that’s sort of the point: Maybe we just want to get some outside voices in the room to speak up and extract some kind of concessions.
Maybe we just want to tell Biden we don’t think he’s doing a very good job, and maybe this is the only way we can get our voices heard.
So Why Williamson?
Besides the fact that she’s polling higher nationally than Phillips or Uygur are? Her policies would follow on down to her delegates.
Let’s take her policy on economic rights: The very first thing I notice is that it is long. Longer than virtually any political “Issues” statement I’ve seen. That in and of itself is interesting, because I’m sick and tired of politicians who throw like one three-sentence paragraph at voters and expect that to be enough.
Let’s compare that to someone we’ve talked about before: Tom Suozzi. Tom has a ten-point plan for all he wants to accomplish…And that ten point plan is about as long as one entry in Williamson’s issues stance. It also includes collusion with a Fascist (Peter King) on immigration, so you know it’s gonna be awful.
Williamson’s economic rights article is long as hell, but I’m not necessarily as experienced in that as I am with another entry on her Issues page: LGBTQIA+ Rights. It has specific entries for what her plans are, overviews of the status-quo of Queer rights in the US, and more.
Let’s Compare This Outreach To Biden’s.
Biden’s website opens up with a plea for money.
Nowhere on it did I find a section about Queer rights.
In fact, nowhere on it did I find a section telling voters what Biden fucking believes in.
Maybe I missed it. Maybe it’s hidden somewhere I can’t find. Maybe JoeBiden.com is the wrong website, because there’s a sponsored “Official Biden website” that is literally just an ActBlue donations page.
In other words, Biden is so downright condescending towards voters that he doesn’t seem to feel he owes us so much as an agenda for us to point undecided voters to and say, “This is what Biden believes.”
Or maybe he just doesn’t believe in anything? That seems like a bad answer, because Biden doesn’t give off nihilistic vibes or anything, but he sure as hell doesn’t feel like elaborating on what beliefs he holds dear.
So That’s It.
I’m under no impression that Williamson will win. As I said last week, it is all but certain Biden will be the Democratic nominee, despite historically-low approval ratings. We will have to more than simply hold our noses and vote for him in 2024 - we’ll need fucking radiation gear to do it. Hazmat gear. Use whatever metaphor you’d like.
But maybe - MAYBE - if Biden sees he’s unpopular in his own party? Maybe he’ll change some of the course around. Maybe not.
But as far as a protest vote goes - and that’s what this is - there’s no better choice than Williamson.
In Other News
Apparently Pharmaceutical company GSK is switching its Flovent inhaler from a proprietary version to a generic. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but with the way it seems to be being executed, well, it’s going to cause a lot of technical hangups as the generic version may not be covered by prior prescribing practices. As someone who at one point depended on Flovent to breathe - and has had asthma his entire life? That’s a problem.
North Korea launched an artillery barrage in the vicinity of the South Korean border island of Yeonpyeong. It’s never a good thing when North Korea feels like it can threaten the South, but whether this is a prelude to a larger conflict is yet to be seen.
The terrorists of Islamic State claimed responsibility for a horrific attack on an Iranian celebration. To paraphrase Beau Of The Fifth Column, this is IS’s biggest attack in a while, and it comes off as a declaration of “we’re back, baby!” towards the world. It is, to quote Beau, a “PR campaign with violence.” I guess Trump didn’t defeat them, after all, huh?
Speaking of the Orange Nazi: The Supreme Court will be hearing a case about whether or not he is eligible to run for the Presidency. Oral arguments are February 8th.
Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe. If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list. This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.