Self-help author and Democratic presidential hopeful Marianne Williamson on Sunday accused party bigs of “rigging” the primary system in favor of President Biden.
“The [Democratic National Committee] should not be rigging this system. They don’t even pretend anymore. They’re not even covert about their — their swaying the primary season. They’re very overt about it,” said Williamson, a former spiritual guru to Oprah Winfrey, on ABC News’ “This Week.”
Williamson — whose candidacy has already been labeled a “joke” by some Dem operatives — said the fact that the DNC plans to hold the party’s first primary in South Carolina instead of its usual New Hampshire is clearly designed to help Biden.
Biden, 80, won by a landslide in the Palmetto State in 2020, a victory that resurrected his flailing campaign and propelled him to the nomination.
ABC News’ Jonathan Karl asked Williamson, “So that’s what’s going on, is they’re rigging the system for Biden?”
Williamson, who mounted an unsuccessful presidential bid in 2020, replied, “They even admit that, Jonathan.”
Williamson, 70, who announced on her website Saturday that she is running for the Democratic nomination, said she is taking on Biden because voters in a democracy, not party honchos, should be able to decide who leads them.
“I believe the American people should be offered an agenda for genuine, fundamental economic reform. And … it should not be the DNC that decides. It should be the voters who decide. That is what a democracy is,” she said.
Williamson bristled when asked about The Associated Press calling her presidential bid a “longshot.”
“I would bet that ’The Associated Press’ also said that Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in,” she said, referring to the former first lady’s stunning loss in 2016 against Donald Trump.
“So the system that is now saying that I’m unserious and I’m not credible or I’m a long shot is the very system that protects and maintains this idea that only those whose careers have been entrenched within the system that drove us into a ditch should possibly be considered qualified to lead us out of that ditch,” she said.
“My qualification is not that I know how to perpetuate that system. My qualification is that I know how to disrupt it. And that is what we need,” she added.