Trials and tribulations, signs and wonders

Author and former presidential candidate Marianne Williamson on where the Democrats went wrong and the future of American political and spiritual life

by Ade Adeniji

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Writer, activist, and spiritual leader Marianne Williamson mounted outsider campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and 2024 on an unabashedly progressive platform, and whether or not you took her candidacies seriously given her background as a self-help guru, it’s undeniable that her diagnoses of the problems of the Democratic Party and of Donald Trump’s appeal have been spot on.

Williamson’s evolving political philosophy, combining the prophetic voice and the pragmatic, calls for a real commitment to economic populism and for taking on what she’s called the “dark psychic forces” of Trumpism — getting at the material and emotional roots of the problems of American democracy. We talked to her about where it all went wrong for Kamala Harris, how the Democrats need to not let the Republicans own patriotism and religion, and how to rebuild a serious coalition that can curb Trumpism in the long run.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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What was your mood when the election results first came in? Were you surprised?

The election results were exactly what I said they would be for the last year and a half. I ran with the deep conviction that the neoliberal paradigm that the Democratic party refused to let go, would be a path to disaster in 2024. I told anyone who would listen that this was not going to be like 2020, so much as like 2016. I travel this country a lot in my work. I have seen up close the despair, the pain and the rage of so many people across this country who feel completely abandoned by their government, and who, in their experience, have not felt that they received much — if any — more help from the Democrats than from the Republicans.

What are some of the main missteps of Democrats from your perspective? Do you think Biden should have stepped down sooner?

We surrendered our commitment to democracy itself. It shouldn't have even mattered whether or not President Biden chose to run again. First, the role of the party is to facilitate democracy, to channel the voices of the people, not to engineer the process, or to in any way obstruct the voice of the people.

Secondly, we lost because we let go of our own values. And that is a problem that began back in the Seventies when the Democrats started taking corporate money and landed in a place where we tried to have it both ways. We wanted to help people, but never so much that we would challenge the donor class to any great extent. Ronald Reagan began the process of snatching away the working-class loyalty to the Democratic Party that had been there previously. The fact that we allowed Donald Trump to complete the job is outrageous.

And third — and this I think, is extremely important going forward — is that the party stopped listening to people. It listened to donors. It listens to its elite council of operatives. But it stopped listening to people, and the people that the party needs to listen to right now are not only Democrats, but also Republicans — particularly people who used to vote Democrat. When you listen to people, you learn a lot. Someone who pays so much for gas getting to work when their salary at work itself leaves them in economic survival mode. Don't be surprised when they become vulnerable to a message like “drill, baby drill!”

You’ve spoken at length about all these systemic issues in Washington. And I saw something on X where you talked about how Trump kind of came in speaking a language as if he was a reformer. But how do we move away from people being fooled by the false reform he was talking about and move towards actually addressing the feeling that there needs to be some real ground-up changes in Washington?