DETROIT, Michigan — Dozens of Marianne Williamson supporters crammed into the lobby and bar of the Fillmore theater, next door to the second Democratic debate, cheering their heroine as she answered each new question.
They were thrilled with her performance: “I think she’s doing a really good job of staying true to herself,” said Mary, of Troy, Michigan.
“The others are just spinning the questions to say what they want to say. Marianne is staying truthful in answering,” she added.
Cynthia, from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, said: “When the ‘forces’ allow her to speak, she’s slam-dunkin’ it.”
The only question, she said, was “whether the country is ready for a Jewish female, speaking almost prophetic, Christ-like words.”
Online polls — unscientific though they are — tended to agree with Williamson’s supporters: the Drudge Report had Williamson winning, by a wide margin, before the debate was over.
The unusually monkish debate allowed Williamson to provide a stark contrast to the other candidates by avoiding policy particulars and speaking about general themes of frustration with politics and hopes for change.
In between, she sprinkled signature spiritualist phrases like “dark psychic energy” — often the target of social media ridicule, but endearing to her fans.
Williamson, positioned on the far left of the stage, also checked left-wing boxes, such as support for reparations for slavery, drawing applause from the live television audience as she argued that the present value of “40 acres and a mule” would have been substantial. She also argued that eliminating student debt would stimulate the economy, drawing cheers from the theatre — and the Fillmore.
More than “intellectual” talk, Williamson said in her closing statement, America needed “radical truth-telling.” She seemed almost on the verge of tears as she delivered her passionate call for “energy” and “love” as the answer to the country’s problems.
Prior to the debate, Williamson supporters held a large rally outside the debate venue.
They outnumbered every other campaign present in Detroit, chanting about love and peace.
(Breitbart News was there.)
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.