Marianne Williamson, a former 2020 Democrat presidential candidate, is preparing to launch a primary challenge against President Joe Biden’s expected 2024 reelection campaign, according to reports.
Puck News’s Tara Palmeri reported that Williamson spoke out against “corporate Democrats” and the need to challenge Biden during a party in Los Angeles last month. Williamson “has already put out feelers to donors,” according to Palmeri’s sources.
Further, Williamson has secured an exploratory committee campaign tab on Act Blue, the top Democrat fundraising apparatus.
As Palmeri reported:
She has visited New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Iowa (before the decision to nix Iowa from the primary lineup). She’s already trying to build an operation in South Carolina where staffers are reaching out to former Bernie Sanders alumni to see if they’re game. (Williamson declined to comment.)
Although Biden has not officially launched his reelection campaign, he has consistently signaled that he plans to seek reelection in 2024. The Biden family “fully” supports a 2024 reelection campaign, a senior White House adviser recently told Fox News.
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks as he delivers a Christmas address in the East Room of the White House on December 22, 2022, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“As the President has said, he intends to run for reelection,” the senior adviser said. “That is something both Dr. Biden and the family fully support.”
Biden is expected to make his decision in the coming weeks, according to White House chief of staff Ron Klain.
“I expect it shortly after the holidays,” Klain said of Biden’s decision to run for reelection. “But I expect the decision will be to do it.”
Currently, the only declared candidate running in 2024 is former President Donald Trump.
Williamson will be placed in an unusual position if she follows through and launches a primary campaign against the incumbent Democrat president.
However, reports about her 2024 campaign come amid declining Democrat support for Biden.
A recent USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll found that the amount of Democrats who want Biden to run for a second term has fallen from 45 percent down to 40 percent. That poll also found that less than a quarter of Americans, 23 percent, want to see him run for reelection in 2024.
Biden’s declining numbers in the poll, taken one month after the midterm elections, comes after several Democrat politicians refused to say if they would support a Biden 2024 candidacy when questioned on the midterm campaign trail.
Democratic presidential candidates, Marianne Williamson, John Hickenlooper, Andrew Yang, Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), raise their hands when asked if they would provide healthcare for undocumented immigrants during the Democratic primary debate hosted by NBC News on June 27, 2019, in Miami. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Moderate Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) to progressive firebrands like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have all stayed silent on Biden’s 2024 hopes.
“Jake, I’m not getting involved in any election right now. 2022, 2024, I’m not speculating on it,” Manchin told CNN in July.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Ocasio-Cortez told CNN in June. “If the president has a vision and that’s something we’re all willing to entertain and examine when the time comes … we should endorse when we get to it. We’ll take a look at it.”
Other Democrats, like Pennsylvania Senator-elect John Fetterman, have refrained from calling on Biden to run for office again. Fetterman dodged the question about Biden’s 2024 hopes by saying the decision to run for president again lies with Biden alone.
“It’s up to his choice whether he runs, and if he does choose to run, I would absolutely support him. But ultimately that’s his choice,” Fetterman said during a debate with Mehmet Oz.
In the 2020 cycle, Williamson did not make it to the Democrat primaries. Instead, she suspended her campaign in January 2020 amid Democrat National Committee changes to the debate threshold, making it harder for her to qualify for the debates. She went on to endorse Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I) failed candidacy in February 2020.
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter.
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