Presidential candidate and author Marianne Williamson doubled down on her criticism of the Democratic National Committee, accusing the DNC of “dictating rather than facilitating the process of democracy.”
“This whole idea of using the debates to kind of narrow things down — the primary should narrow things down,” Williamson told Hill.TV during an exclusive interview on Monday.
“That’s what elections are for,” she continued. “Some people say, ‘Well you’re a sore loser,’ but look how you lose in this situation.”
The DNC didn’t immediately respond to Hill.TV’s request for comment.
Williamson, who had standout performances during previous Democratic debates, failed to qualify for last week’s debate in Ohio, where 12 candidates took the stage in the largest one-night debate ever.
In an op-ed penned a day after the debate, Williamson accused the DNC of trying to exclude certain candidates who don’t discuss a “preordained category of topics.”
“Try as they might to throw people off the scent, the DNC and its media pals are creating the stench of inauthenticity at exactly the moment when some blazing truths should be shining through,” she argued.
Williamson in the op-ed also vowed to stay in the race, saying all of the candidates in the fourth Democratic debate “had a bad night” and demonstrated “the worst of who we are.”
“Last night’s debate was a lot of things, but it was not exciting,” she wrote in The Washington Post. “If anything, it reduced some very nice people to behavior their mothers probably raised them not to engage in.”
But in her interview with Hill.TV, Williamson maintained that her criticism focused on the structure of the debates instead of the candidates themselves.
“One of the pillars of my campaign is this idea that we’re only talking about the symptoms,” she said. “We’re not talking about the deeper dynamics. We’re not talking about the deeper causes of our problems.”
—Tess Bonn
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