Studio 1A listens to Marianne.

FDR: “The presidency is not merely an administrative office, that’s the least of it. It is preeminently a place of moral leadership.”

Foresight 2020: Marianne Williamson

“There are 22 Democratic candidates running for president in 2020. Marianne Williamson is one of them.

She doesn’t have any previous political experience, but the author and motivational speaker does have a large following on social media and has advised Oprah.

And she’s gaining traction. Williamson recently qualified for the first Democratic debate by garnering at least 65,000 individual campaign donors.

Speaking to FiveThirtyEight, Williamson’s communications director framed “the unusual nature of Williamson’s candidacy as a strength. “We’re different. We know that and we embrace that.’”

Williamson has made action on climate change a key part of her campaign platform.

Here’s her position, summarized by the PBS NewsHour:

Williamson believes action is needed to address climate change, and she has said she supports appointing a “world-class environmentalist” to head the Environmental Protection Agency. She supports halting all new fossil fuel projects, and restarting the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. Williamson would also place a temporary ban on new oil and gas fracking, and invest in electric vehicle production and high-speed trains.

She also supports reparations for slavery.

When a student asked her about her political experience during a CNN Town Hall here’s how she responded:

You know, the — the Latin root of the word “politeia” doesn’t mean of the government. It means of the people. And I think our political establishment has gotten too far away from the people.

We have a political establishment that doesn’t get to the heart of the matter, doesn’t speak to what’s really wrong. Politicians don’t really get down and talk about what’s really wrong, even though they know it. And because they don’t talk about what’s really wrong, they don’t get to what can really be made really within us./p>

So in a way, for me, I challenge the idea that people whose careers have been entrenched in the same limitations that are endemic to the system that got us into this ditch are the only people we should possibly consider qualified to take us out of the ditch. I challenge that, and that’s why I’m running./p>

We speak to Willamson about her long-shot status, her policy priorities and more.”

Host Joshua Johnson.

https://the1a.org/shows/2019-05-15/a-conversation-with-marianne-williamson

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