TRANSFORM with Marianne Williamson (12/01/25)

12/10/2025

After the 2016 election, a group of Bernie supporters sued the DNC for unfair practices. Incredibly, the DNC’s defense was “Hey, we don’t owe people fairness! We’re a private corporation!” Yes, they’re a private corporation but they perform a quasi-governmental function; if they don’t play fairly they are betraying the public. Even more incredibly, the DNC won the case!

At that point, all constraints were removed. In 2020 – and I would know – the party recognized, however begrudgingly, its responsibility to let any FEC registered candidate have a chance to get their message to the public. But by 2024, they figured to hell with that. A small group of White House insiders decided that there would be no primary, that the threat Trump posed to our country was so great that the only way to save democracy was to suppress it. This was far too important a decision to leave in the hands of the people!

The DNC put out the word: Biden would be the candidate, and that was that. No other voices would be heard, even tolerated. “We will all line up and support the President.” I remember standing at the baggage carousel at the airport in Charleston, South Carolina, reading on my phone that DNC Chairman Jaimie Harrison had just said, “Helping Joe Biden win is our top priority,” when the primary race had hardly even started. I thought, “Wow, that’s not the role of the party Chair to say that.” I had no idea what was coming.

Partnering with their media cohorts, the primary was effectively cancelled but not cancelled. It reminded me of the Soviet Union, where the party would brag of free elections yet they themselves had chosen the candidates. No lies, no infiltration, no shaming was too low to go in the effort to peripheralize whoever’s voice they intended to shut out. When fate stepped in and President Biden gave a disastrous debate performance, the bosses then simply appointed his successor. And oh yes, there could have been a blitz primary; many supported it. Yes, it could have been taken to the floor of the convention! It would have actually been very exciting, and a boost of energy we sorely needed.

Don’t let anyone tell you the problem was that the President should have gotten out sooner. They’re all saying that now simply to cover their own asses. It should not have mattered whether or not the President was still running. Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy Sr. ran against Lyndon Johnson, and McCarthy doing so well in New Hampshire is what made Johnson drop out. “We don’t have a primary when there’s an incumbent President” was just one of the many gaslights put out on the internet and allowed to roam freely in people’s heads.

Rehashing history is not my intent. My concern is not with the past but with the future. Do I want the Democrats to win next year? I want them to crush it. Do I want a Democratic presidential candidate to win in 2028? I want him or her to crush it. But it won’t happen if the party doesn’t reclaim its principles, because without them it lacks what Martin Luther King Jr. called “cosmic companionship.” The party has to more than win individual elections; it has to win the hearts and minds of people who no longer trust Democrats to do what they say. The party will only win those voters if we return to our core: an unequivocal dedication to things that actually serve the average American, and commitment to the democratic process. Just complaining about Trump won’t win the future for the Democrats. Looking at ourselves, and cleaning our own house, is the only power great enough to override the darkness.

I agree with Sunday’s speaker that the crisis we face now is as great as any in our nation’s history. For those of us who see in the Trump administration a neo-fascist threat to democracy, nothing could be more important than that the Democratic party be strong. But the needed strengthening will not occur without some brutal self-awareness and acknowledgements of the party’s defects. We won’t be able to help course-correct the country if we’re not willing to course-correct ourselves. When and if we do, everything will change. If we recognize the mistakes we made, with humility and sincerity, heeding the call to make good on democracy’s promises and our responsibility to its principles, then the future will be ours.