If you watched the Democratic debates on Tuesday night, there was one face missing on the stage that still attracts a lot of attention. Marianne Williamson didn’t make the cut and was forced to watch the proceedings remotely. So does that mean she’s giving up and dropping out? Not on your life, brother. She’s just inspired to ride the power of love and keep on trucking. (Washington Post)
The establishment’s paternalistic insistence that, in essence, “it’s time to shut this thing down” — making sure only its preordained category of people, discussing its preordained category of topics, is placed before the American people for consideration as contenders for the nomination to run against President Trump — has created a false, inauthentic piece of high school theater posing as the Democratic debates.
Last night’s debate was a lot of things, but it was not exciting. It contained no magic. If anything, it reduced some very nice people to behavior their mothers probably raised them not to engage in. Which woman who claims feminist ideals can be the nastiest to another woman? Which young person can show the greatest arrogance toward those with decades of experience under their belts? Which intelligent person can best reduce a complicated topic to pabulum for the masses? …
“Isn’t it time for you to drop out now, Marianne?” After that debate Tuesday night, are you kidding? Let me get this right. You think a sanitized wish list of Democratic proposals, focused just enough on appealing to people’s self-interest but not going anywhere near a serious discussion of what ails us, is going to defeat the Republicans?
Just for full disclosure, the author is a donor to the Willamson campaign. (I sent her a dollar to help her make the cut for the previous debates because it thought it would keep the entertainment factor higher.)
Now, after reading this op-ed she published, I wish more than ever that she was still on the stage. The list of grievances she airs in this piece is both entertaining and also potentially accurate. She’s opening up in the DNC with both rhetorical barrels, accusing them of peddling “tepid, corporatized, compromised truths.” As for the current frontrunners, Williamson has a piece of her mind for them as well. They are described as, “political leftovers, prepackaged as bromides with all the vitality and richness of spoiled food.”
Assuming she wrote this herself (and I have no reason to suspect otherwise), I’ll have to confess to being impressed. She knows how to turn a phrase and hurl some snark. And a dose of that certainly would have livened up that tedious debate on Tuesday.
Look, I’m not saying I actually want the woman to become the leader of the free world. She still comes off all too often as ten pounds of crazy packed into a five-pound bag. But she can definitely liven up any forum she’s involved in. When she really gets revved up, you never know where she’s going next. And sooner or later she’s bound to invoke the mystical power of love as the only path to defeating the Bad Orange Man.
But hey… if this presidential thing doesn’t work out for her, she might consider applying for a job writing with us. That was some Class A bombast on display.
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