Marianne Williamson, the first officially declared Democratic candidate for president in 2024, accused the Democratic National Committee (DNC) of “rigging” the primary system in favor of President Biden as she begins her long-shot bid to win the party’s nomination.
“The DNC should not be rigging this system,” Williamson said in an interview with ABC’s “This Week.” “They don’t even pretend anymore. They’re not even covert about their swaying the primary season. They’re very overt about it.”
The “rigging” that Williamson railed against included the Biden-backed plan to move New Hampshire from its place as the first primary of election season and replace it with South Carolina, which Biden won overwhelmingly in 2020. Williamson said that people in New Hampshire “were not happy about that.”
Williamson welcomed an opportunity to debate Biden, though the DNC has yet to plan any presidential debates for the 2024 election. Williamson said that Biden should debate her and give the voters a chance to decide who should be the nominee.
“It should be the voters who decide,” Williamson said. “It should not be the DNC that decides.”
Williamson said that she will “absolutely” compete in the New Hampshire primary, even as party leaders try to scrap it as the first primary state.
Williamson has pitched herself as a more progressive candidate than Biden — she endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) when she dropped out of the 2020 Democratic primary. But she said she does not intend to take personal shots at the president, whom she called a “nice man.”
“I don’t see myself as running against Joe Biden,” Williamson said. “I see this campaign as challenging a system.”