Williamson rides stream of consciousness to debate spotlight

WASHINGTON — Bernie Sanders is calling for revolution. Marianne Williamson would rather see a psychic, “moral uprising.” The 67-year-old self-help author and spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey now vying for the Democratic presidential nomination doesn’t sound or carry herself like a politician. Some of the loudest applause came when Williamson became the first of the 10 candidates on stage to evoke racism at length, calling it “part of the dark underbelly of American society.” “If you think any of this wonkiness is going to deal with dark psychic force of the collectivized hatred that this president is bringing up in this country, then I’m afraid that the Democrats are going to see some very dark days,” Williamson said, adding that, if the party doesn’t “start saying it, then why would those people feel that ‘they’re there for us,’ and I feel like they won’t vote for us, and Donald Trump will win.” Trump has put race at the forefront of his reelection campaign, condemning Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings’ majority-black Baltimore district as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and suggesting that four Democratic congresswomen of color “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” as if they weren’t U.S. citizens. Indeed, Williamson briefly seizing the spotlight came after weeks of dismissing charges that she’s a “new age nutcase.” Earlier, Williamson’s opening statement didn’t seem to help that case much. In it, she decried a “false god” of multinational corporation profits that she said “takes precedence over the safety and the health and the well-being of we the American people.” In her closing statement, Williamson again dismissed the night’s political insider rhetoric and intellectual discussions, proclaiming that it was instead time for “radical truth telling.” But then she returned to the kind of long declaration that has become her trademark.