Dem
51
GOP
49
Author and 2020 fringe presidential candidate Marianne Williamson has preannounced that in March she is going to announce something. Most likely it will be that she is going to challenge Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2024.
From her point of view, this will bring lots of free publicity, something she craves. She has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show a number of times. When she was young, she once picked up the book A Course in Miracles and initially rejected it out of hand because she was Jewish and the book is full of Christian terminology. Later she came to accept the book's message more and used it as a base to concoct a new "religion" mixing Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, pop psychology, and 12-step recovery programs. Needless to say, she will need a Category 5 miracle (or maybe a 9.5 on the Richter Miracle Scale) to wrest the Democratic nomination from Biden, if he decides to run, which seems increasingly likely.
Her preannouncement of an announcement in a few weeks wouldn't be worth even writing up here but for one thing. The Democrats want South Carolina to hold the first primary, but New Hampshire has a law requiring it to hold the first primary and that law authorizes the secretary of state to pick whatever date is needed to make sure it goes first. Since the Republicans hold the trifecta in New Hampshire and the RNC wants New Hampshire to hold the first primary, don't count on that law being changed.
Consequently, there is a good chance that New Hampshire will indeed go first and the DNC will order Democrats to boycott it. If Williamson and a couple of even kookier people file, she could easily win it and the headlines the next day could be: "Trump Wins New Hampshire GOP Primary; Williamson Wins Democratic Primary." The media will make a big deal about it since the Republican primary between Trump, DeSantis, and others will be huge news and to be fair and balanced, they will need corresponding stories on the Democratic side. She will do interviews with outlets from CNN down to The East Cupcake Middle School Reporter. The next day there will be endless opinion pieces entitled: "Could Williamson actually beat Biden?" Rather than just have a one-word column saying: "No," (unlikely for columnists paid by the word) pundits will blather on about how old and out-of-touch Biden is and how young and in-touch the 71-year-old college dropout Williamson is. All this won't hurt Biden a lot, but for people who don't pay much attention to politics, it will bring up the usual "Democrats are in disarray" meme again. (V)