It may well be that this is not some Biden team opposition research drop, and that Politico just really wondered what Marianne Williamson is like, behind closed doors. And it is likely that Williamson’s former staffers are telling the truth as they remember it, that Williamson had “unpredictable, explosive episodes of anger,” and that “her outbursts could be so loud that two former aides recounted at least four occasions when hotel staff knocked on her door to check on the situation.”
In an email to POLITICO, Williamson said such accusations of her behavior were “slanderous” and “categorically untrue.”
Outside of Williamson and her most diehard supporters, no one really thinks that Williamson is going to defeat Joe Biden in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary.
But the 80-year-old Biden is now disappointing, irritating, or enraging progressives on a metronomically regular basis of roughly once a week. Earlier this month, I wrote:
If the Democratic presidential primary of 2024 only consists of the options of Biden and Williamson, then voting for Williamson becomes the only way of expressing disapproval, frustration, or disappointment with the status quo. That’s not going to be enough to win the nomination, but notice in that Yahoo poll that 20 percent of Democrats don’t approve of the job Biden is doing. You could see 10, 20, maybe even 30 percent of Democrats who bother to show up for the primary marking the box for Williamson to say, “I’m not happy with the way things are going, and I want better options.”
So no, the Biden team isn’t really worried about Marianne Williamson. But they certainly don’t want her to be perceived as a legitimate option for registering displeasure with Biden in the 2024 primary. The people who are deeply invested in a second term for Biden certainly won’t mind coverage that makes Williamson look like a harmless, amiable kook and more of an erratic, demanding, raging diva.
Then again, maybe this is just a way of Williamson appealing to supporters of Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar‘s 2020 presidential bid.