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Longshot candidate Marianne Williamson exits presidential race

Marianne Williamson speaks to the media following the first day of the CNN Democratic Presidential Debate at the Fox Theater in Detroit on Tuesday, July 30, 2019. Williamson ended her long shot presidential campaign Wednesday. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI
1 of 2 | Marianne Williamson speaks to the media following the first day of the CNN Democratic Presidential Debate at the Fox Theater in Detroit on Tuesday, July 30, 2019. Williamson ended her long shot presidential campaign Wednesday. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

Feb. 7 (UPI) -- Longshot presidential hopeful Marianne Williamson dropped her bid for the 2024 Democratic nomination Wednesday after garnering minuscule numbers in the New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada primaries.

Williamson's announcement came a day after she finished third in Nevada's Democratic presidential primary with 2.8% of the vote share behind President Joe Biden and his 89.2% and "none of these candidates," which had nearly 6% of the vote.

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Williamson also only captured 4% of the vote in New Hampshire and 2% in South Carolina, both of which Biden handily won.

"I read a quote the other day that said that sunsets are proof that endings can be beautiful, too," Williamson said in a video on YouTube. "And so today, even though it is time to suspend my campaign for the presidency, I do want to see the beauty, and I want all of you who so incredibly supported me on this journey -- as donors, as supporters, as team and as volunteers -- to see the beauty, too."

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Williamson announced her candidacy in March, even before President Joe Biden had declared whether he would run for re-election.

"It is our job to create a vision of justice and love that is so powerful that it will override the forces of hatred and injustice and fear," Williamson said at her kickoff event at Washington's Union Station. "I, as of today, am a candidate for the office of president of the United States."

Williamson also ran for president in 2020. She left that race just weeks before the primary elections began. She has never held elected office. While she failed to garner a single delegate in any primary and to show up in Iowa Caucus results, Williamson suggested to voters just before New Hampshire that former President Donald Trump would win the general election in November.

"I do not have good feelings about what will happen in 2024, because 2024 is not going to be like 2020," she said at a town hall event in Portsmouth, adding that this year "is going to be like 2016."

Williamson said an anti-Trump narrative won't be enough for electoral success this year as it was, though just by a razor-thin margin, in 2020.

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"Try to beat Donald Trump by saying things are going well. Really? For 20% of us, things are going well. ... For 80% of Americans, the idea that things are going well economically, it's like a slap in their face," said Williamson, who made socioeconomic inequality the cornerstone of her campaign.

Williamson tried to position herself as a progressive candidate and even ginned up some of the same themes Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., ran on in 2016.

"If you're in the top 20% of American earners, the economy works well," her campaign website said. "But that 20% live on an island that is surrounded by a sea of economic despair. Within that sea, a myriad of personal and societal dysfunctions breed easily -- from chronic anxiety and addiction to ideological capture by genuinely psychotic, even fascist elements of our society."

Williamson also called for creating what she labeled "a legal fund for victims of police brutality" and said the U.S. "must declare a national climate emergency" and called for halting "all new fossil fuel projects."

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