James Van Der Beek calls out DNC for not planning to have primary debates
'Outnumbered' panel discuss whether or not Biden should debate his primary opponents after actor James Van Der Beek calls out the DNC
Marianne Williamson called out President Biden and the Democratic National Committee on Wednesday for avoiding debates between with her and fellow 2024 Democratic candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
In an op-ed for Newsweek on Wednesday, the spiritual guru claimed Biden and the Democratic establishment "don't really think the people can be relied upon" to choose the next president, and have stymied democracy to ensure Biden again wins the nomination.
The DNC has previously announced that it has no plans to hold any primary debates between the three Democratic candidates, essentially announcing it doesn't wish to have a competitive contest between Biden and his challengers. No sitting U.S. president who has again sought his party's nomination has been denied it since Chester Arthur in 1884.
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Self-help author Marianne Williamson speaks to the crowd as she launches her 2024 presidential campaign in Washington, Saturday, March 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Williamson’s scathing column began with her observation that presidential primaries were "where the voters weighed in on who they chose to be a party's nominee," a decision the party respected.
"But that was then, and this is now… Critical questions about the future of our country are decided by essentially a handful of political operatives, a political-media-industrial elite who present themselves as arbiters of wisdom and protectors of the common good," she added.
The candidate, who also ran for the Democratic nomination in 2020, argued that Biden and the party were subverting democracy.
"They believe in the power of democracy; they just don't want to facilitate it. In fact, they're not above thwarting it when it might challenge their own power or lay bare some inconvenient truths about how this country operates," she wrote. "They don't really think the people can be relied upon to make their own decisions about pretty much anything, least of all who should be president of the United States."
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Williamson, whom Fox News recently polled as having 9% of the Democrat primary vote against Biden’s 62% and Kennedy, Jr.’s 19%, complained that the DNC decision to disregard debates designates "any candidates other than President Biden" as "mere political children, and the adults in charge now consider this subject closed."
2024 Democratic contenders Marianne Williamson, President Joe Biden, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Scott Olson/Ting Shen/Joseph Prezioso)
Williamson then went scorched earth on Biden and the DNC in terms of policy, claiming that actual adults would’ve done better.
She wrote, "Real adults would have codified Roe v. Wade when they had the chance and would do whatever they could do right now to reduce the serious harm being done to women around the country due to draconian anti-abortion laws. Real adults would have gotten rid of the debt ceiling when they had the chance."
Giving another example, she claimed, "Real adults would recognize that people's lives are falling apart on their watch—from lack of health care, lack of housing, lack of child care, and lack of a living wage—in ways these faux adults have failed to address."
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She concluded that "candidate suppression" is another form of voter suppression.
"The Democratic Party must allow President Biden to debate his opponents," she wrote. "The fate of our democracy is at stake, and only more democracy can save it."
Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson sits down for an interview with Fox News Digital, on March 8, 2023 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (Fox News )
Actor James Van Der Beek produced a viral TikTok video about the lack of debates, asking, "How is this a democracy?"