Marianne Williamson on How Radical Democracy Really Should Be [07-11-19]

This is Larry Lessig, and this is the third season of the podcast Another Way. In this episode, we will talk to presidential candidate Marianne Williamson. Marianne Williamson, of course, is not a politician, though she has been a political activist for many years, and she has made fundamental reform a central part of her campaign. And in this interview, we talk a little bit about what that reform would look like, and we wrestle through what exactly the details of that reform should be. And I think what you'll see is striking about Marianne is her willingness to listen and to think. And unlike the professional politician who's so good at pretending he or she knows everything, what I love about Marianne is her willingness to open up about where she doesn't yet know what the right answer is, and her really quick recognition of exactly the direction that her platform should take. So here, then, is our conversation with Marianne Williamson. Marianne, thank you so much for joining our podcast.

Well, thank you so much, Larry, for having me. It's an honor.

So, with many of the candidates running for president, the idea of those candidates running for president has been popping around the political sphere for many years. What I love about your candidacy is that it's a surprise in two ways. Number one, it's a surprise because you're not a politician, and. And it's a surprise because you qualified for the debate so early, which just signals how many really passionate fans there are for you out there. So I just want to start in a way I typically don't have to start with, asking you to tell us a little bit about who Marianne Williamson is and how she comes to the place that she wants to do politics with something other than politicians.

Well, it's true that I'm not a politician, but I've been a political activist for decades, and I have not only been a political activist around aids, around poverty, around hunger, around women, also about political activism. I have been on stage with you. I have been involved with audiences. I don't believe that the political establishment should be considered the only ones qualified to do political things. You know, if you look at our Constitution, the qualifications to run for president are that somebody be 35 years old and older or older, born here, and have lived here for 14 years. Now, if the Constitution, if the founders had wanted to say that the person had to be an elected official, had to be a senator, lawyer, congressman, mayor, they would have, and they didn't for a reason. They didn't because they were leaving it to every generation to determine for itself the skill set that that generation feels is most necessary to navigate the times in which they live now. Franklin Roosevelt said that the administrative aspect of the presidency. The administrative aspect of the presidency, he said, is secondary, and the primary role is moral leadership. It wasn't like we didn't have a bunch of qualified and experienced politicians during the Iraq war. That wasn't the problem. So what was lacking was any vision. What was lacking was any risk. What was lacking was any sense of moral responsibility to the people who would be affected by this. So I don't think that any American should be considered, you know, that system protects itself by proffering the illusion that only those who led us here are qualified to lead us out of here.

Yeah, I certainly, of course, agree with that perspective, especially because it's so important to have an outsider with respect to the kind of issues that we want to talk about with you today about the issues of the corruption of our political system. Because the insider is so used to the existing system, so used to the way things are. Can't imagine it any differently. But of course, making it radically different is what we got to figure out how we can do if we're going to get any confidence back in the people. And you've been. I mean, we've been on stage together. You've been an outspoken advocate for reform of this system, and reform is a primary idea of the system. You've put some of these ideas out on your website. I know you've thought about many of them for a long time. But I just want to make sure that people have a clear sense of what you're pushing for, because I think it's very important. On your website, you describe, obviously, a rejection of gerrymandering. You say it should be a state by state process. But I take it you wouldn't oppose the idea of the federal government using the Constitution's power to actually set the conditions that require every state to get rid of political gerrymandering. Is that right?

I wouldn't learn that at all.

Okay, great.

I want to go back to something that you just said. You used two very important words. You used imagination and you used radical. You're right. People within the traditional political establishment imagine it any other way. They're like elephants. You know, when elephants are freed from a place where there are these limited places where they can walk, even when those senses are taken down, something in their brain says, I can't walk past these lines. So in that sense, I believe that so many people whose careers have been entrenched in the political establishment of the last few decades, they're within those constrictions and the idea of actually really bursting out of it, given how much money most of them have received to the tunes, hundreds of thousands of dollars in corporate donations. There's an inherent conflict when they start talking about getting the money out of politics because they can't understand. Now secondly, when you talk about radical democracy is radical. It's very radical to say that every person's voice should be as loud as every other person's voice. Yeah, it's radical to say that the inherent equality of souls expressed politically means that this government is for us, of the people, by the people, for the people. And you can't have the nefarious influence of money on our political system and at the same time have a government of the people, by the people and for the people. And that's why I think it's both radical and takes imagination to consider the possibility of removing that dangerous toxin of dark money and doing whatever it takes to make it happen.

So what would you do? What are the changes for money?

Well, what I have learned about from you has to do with submitting to Congress to establish federal funding of political campaigns. Now the problem I have with the idea of just giving something like a, a dollar to spend a certain amount of money, my concern is that that will only do us so much good if at the same time corporations can still give all the money that they want to give. So it seems to me that we need, whether it's in the form of a, of a constitutional amendment or legislation, that not only are we given more power, but that they are given less power. I just want to see money taken out of the system.

Right. So if you're going to restrict the ability of corporations or rich people or unions to spend money in political campaigns, at least with this Supreme Court, you're going to have to change the Constitution. But long before you change the Constitution, you could radically change the way campaigns are funded. And I think this is the real opportunity. Not that the constitutional change is not important, but that the feasible change is something we also need to be talking about. So if we change the way we fund campaigns, there's basically two proposals out there that are being pressed by your colleagues. One idea which is behind the HR1 proposal is matching funds where candidates taking small contributions get those contributions matched. The New York model is 6 to 1, could be up to 9 to 1 depending on the proposal. And Beto has a version of that which even takes larger contributions up to $500. The second proposal, the second idea that's out there is to basically give democracy dollars to People that allows them to spend the money on the candidates that they want to support. So that candidates have to appeal to the people to raise the money they need to fund their campaigns. It can be a hybrid between them, of course, but I just wonder between the two, which feels more radical to you?

The first? Well, the first seems better. I don't know if it seems more radical, but it sounds better. Because the second one, there are so many ways, including financial, that people could be influenced to actually use their dollars that way. In other words, if you have somebody comes up to me and says, okay, you're going to, you can have a dollar, it's a bribe. But so much of politics, unfortunately is legalized bribery. That's what we have now. So it seems to me somebody is told, okay, you can have $100 to spend on whatever campaign you want, but somebody else comes up to you and says, I'll give you 200 to vote the way I want you to vote. I just think we have to be very savvy about all the ways that that could be misused because we want to remember the forces behind the dark money in this country are not going to say for Mary Leslie or Marianne Williamson or any of us, oh, okay, they're going to be thinking of ways that they can countermand anything that we offer. And so I think we have to be very savvy and very smart from the beginning because none of this can happen in the absence of the realization that they're going to do everything they can to undercut the effort.

Okay, but the problem with the first idea, the matching fund idea, is that if you're a candidate raising your contributions in hundred dollar contributions, for most Americans, that's a wildly large number, $100 for a political campaign is just completely unimaginable. So what we know from the experiences we've had in places where this happens is that especially if it's large five hundred dollar matching fund contributions, it's a good way to subsidize rich people giving money to political campaigns. And it doesn't really bring in, you know, the person who's living on minimum wage, certainly, or even the moderate middle, middle income person, because they just can't afford it. So between a system that's helping the relatively rich contribute money to political campaigns and one that's trying to bring in everybody bracketing and agreeing with you, we gotta worry about fraud and we got to worry about the ability of people to buy these contributions. That's actually something there's pretty good ways to regulate. I'M surprised you wouldn't want the more inclusive, the one that brings a wider range and greater diversity of people into the mix.

I want anything that brings a wider array and diversity into the people. But how are you going to deal with the issues of the second one that I said to you?

Well, I mean, first of all, it's illegal to sell vouchers. Number two, you can make it.

Well, there are many ways. You don't have to sell the vouchers, but there are many ways to influence people. Okay, but you know, Larry, I have to tell you something. I don't really care. I don't really care. We get very into in this country, and I deal with political issues all the time. We get into the issue of how are we going to make this office, when I believe the bigger issue is are the American people willing to put the sausage on their plate? Although sausage was probably not the best issue I could come up with. Another element here is what most of this money is used for. Most of this money is needed in order to buy television advertising. And in order to buy digital advertising. We could also do that. This is not instead of the other things, but this is also something we could do. In addition, we could have, as they have in Britain, for instance, the public airways belong to us, we could have it mandated a particular amount of time given to every candidate. Right now, if you're not given approval by the mainstream media, we have a political media industrial complex in this country. So no matter even how much money you have, it's this. They don't have you on because we have broken down the rules that actually have to do with fair play. In this case, we could have it mandated that the only kind instead of regular television advertising, no one can buy television advertising, and that the airwaves, because they belong to us, there's a certain amount of time mandated that is given to every politician. And it has to be, in a way with a population politician, him or herself is actually speaking to the people. So I just think there are a lot of ways that we can cut down on the nefarious influence of money even beyond who has the money to spend.

Yeah, but again, that change requires changing the Constitution because whether or not the airways are public, cable television wires are not public, and the Internet, you know, state the Internet channels that are broadcast are not public. The Supreme Court has been pretty clear that there's not gonna be a constitutional basis to force them to change what they make accessible unless you change the First Amendment. So again, this is a mend. The Constitution Strategy. And I do think it's important to push back on what you just said to be clear about solutions that are actually possible, because people need to believe that something is possible. And if you tell them your proposal is to amend the Constitution in a world where an amendment requires 3/4 of the state states to pass it, assuming you get 2/3 in Congress, I think most people would look at that and say, yeah, well, that's just not going to happen. So I'm not going to fight for it. I'm not going to care about it if it's not going to happen.

Well, I'm not trying to understand why that's any different than amending the Constitution for public funding. And secondly, why was it possible for Ronald Reagan to say that we could advertise on television? Before Ronald Reagan, he suspected pharmaceutical companies were not able to advertise on television. Once Ronald Reagan came in, they were able to advertise on television. That did not take a constitutional amendment.

It took the Supreme Court to interpret the First Amendment in the way that they have to say that the Constitution actually guarantees the right of these people to advertise on television. And the other really important point to be clear about is that the public funding proposals, for example, like Democracy Dollars, doesn't require a constitutional amendment. It just requires Congress to pass that law. It could do it tomorrow just like it funded the presidential election of Ronald Reagan. You know, Ronald Reagan, every, every president between Nixon and Obama got elected with public funding. And Ronald Reagan benefited more than anybody. He ran three national campaigns on the public's dime that was all perfectly constitutional and still would be constitutional without an amendment, because spending money to increase political speech is not restricting speech under the First Amendment.

Well, then why isn't that the only conversation that we're having?

I want to have that conversation, which is why I resist. You know, I think a lot of your colleagues on the debate stage are going to be the sort of people who say, like, our solution to the problem is to amend the Constitution to get rid of Citizens United States. And that's just a. That's a cheap solution, because what they know, as well as you know, as well as I know, is that the idea that the United States Congress is going to propose such an amendment is just laughable right now. And so instead of talking about things we know can't happen, we ought to be talking about things we know could happen if we got a majority in Congress that could actually push for it and made it clear to the American people what you were committed to doing. And Making a commitment, a strong commitment to, to public funding is, I think, the most important thing that can be done. And so few of your colleagues are doing that. They're talking in the air about the corruption of money in politics. But you know, my friend Elizabeth Warren, there, she is talking about a plan for everything. She's got a plan for everything, but she's got no plan for this. And when you talk to her about what's the corruption, how are you going to deal with corruption? Talks about lobbying reform, as if that's enough. Right. So I think we got to focus the conversation on the real changes. And I think you could be a real advocate for these changes because you are not in the system.

But my understanding is that I already am. And I already am because of what you have said. I have said in campaign stop after campaign stop that the first thing I would do is submit legislation to Congress for public funding for federal campaigns. Isn't that what we're talking about here?

Right. We were trying to understand what kind of public funding, because I think that's also important. Are you empowering ordinary people?

I have heard everything from. I've heard some candidates talk about how it should be $100. I've heard some candidates say it should be up to $600. Yeah, but what do you think it should be?

I love more the better. But those candidates are talking about democracy dollars or democracy vouchers, as Seattle puts it. Most of the other candidates are talking about matching funds, you know, the kind of model that HR1 had. And so I'm just trying to understand where you are. I hope to pull you to the side of democracy dollars, but I just want to know where. And you don't have to have an answer for that because, you know, obviously you're at the stage, we're all at the stage of trying to motivate the movement for reform. And you've done an extraordinary job for that. But, you know, when we start getting down to what exactly could work, we ought to be clear about empowering as many people as possible. And I would think that's exactly where you would be.

Yes, I understand that and I understand what you're saying. I heard you a few minutes ago when you were saying if people don't think it's actually possible, then they won't be behind us. But that's sort of not. And I think that's certainly legitimate and valid. And I. To me, for me, I have felt that the main problem in America is that Americans, number one, have not been awakened, although I think they are awakening now to the nefarious influence of money on politics, which is how. How I met you, because I've been onto this topic forever. That money is the corruption that we have had, not a covert corporate takeover of the United States government. We've had an overt corporate takeover of the US Government. As I speak to now, I just was at a town hall meeting in Merrimack, New Hampshire, where the entire town basically has been poisoned by. It's called tfac. It has to do with Teflon, that it's in everything. It's in the water, it's in people's blood, it's in the sewage. It's absolutely horrifying. Well, why is that? Because DuPont and other chemical companies have had the kind of financial power that they've had, making billions and billions of dollars and influencing public policy to the extent where they were able to get away with these things because of our lax environmental standards, whether it had to do with the EPA or the FDA or whatever, that allows for cheaper, egregious transgressions to happen. To me, the most important thing has been for Americans to wake up to this level of corruption. This is not a swamp. This is a sea of corruption. For Americans to wake up to the fact that this is economic tyranny. For Americans to wake up to the fact that this is not only killing democracy, it's killing us, and it's killing the chances of survivability on this planet. So when you say, you know, it's an interesting conversation. When you say people need to know it's possible, I think people need to know it's necessary. And so I, you know, I think when people really get the level on which it's necessary, then within that we can talk about what's possible.

Yeah, well, I mean, I agree they've got to understand it's necessary. Although I actually, you know, in the 12 years I've been out on the road talking about this, feel that there's a radical difference in appreciation. We did a poll recently.

I agree. Largely because of you, Larry.

Well, no, no, no, because of me.

I disagree with Larry.

We did a poll a couple years ago where we found 96% of Americans, 96% thought it was important to reduce the influence of money in politics, but 91% thought it was possible. I mean, thought it was not possible. So this is the politics of resignation. Like, everybody wants it, but just about the same number believes you just can't do it. So if you don't believe it's possible, you're not gonna step up and do anything about it. You know, if you would ask.

I hear what you're saying.

Yeah, I hear what you're saying and that. So, so this is why it gets to. It frustrates me to see this debate out there of people talking as if you just have to say we have to fix the corruption without realizing you need to bring the people into the fight and you bring them in by showing there's a plan, you know, and when you give them a plan they can fight for, it's incredible to see them rally. I mean, if you look in 2018. In 2018, the largest number of grassroots citizen driven referenda to change politics was passed across this country. In the history of America. There's never been an election where more separate proposals were passed, from gerrymandering reform to ranked choice voting, to corruption to money in politics all across the country. And the reason that happened is that people woke up to the problem, which I think, you know, we all see. They see more now than they did a decade ago and that there was a solution. They could see if we just get this referendum on the ballot and then get people to vote for it, we'll end Gerry Mannering in Michigan, which is what the great Katie Fahey did in Michigan. And I think that this is the missing part, to give people that sense and that hope because they certainly have that desire. And you are so great at inspiring people about what's possible. And that's why I think, you know, having your voice in this fight is going to be critical to getting them rallied, to make it, make sure it happens.

So you're saying that democracy dollars is the way to go.

That's the way to go. I'm totally in favor of that.

Well, I am going to become very articulate about democracy.

Well, that's wonderful. Okay, now I want to ask you about another thing that I think you're going to be in the right or the place that I believe is right on this. But it's very important today because today in Maine, the Maine House passed a bill to establish ranked choice voting in the presidential election. Maine, of course, has ranked choice voting. It's the first state that has it for federal elections. They elected their first member of Congress with ranked choice voting in 2018. And they've now been. And if the governor signs this, it'll be the first state to have ranked choice voting for the president. So what that means is you come in and you say, yeah, I know

what, ranked choice voting.

Yeah. Okay, so is this something that you're behind as well.

Yes, I think going towards voting is great, particularly just for a candidate like myself, for instance.

Absolutely.

Very much benefit from ranked choice voting.

Yeah, we fought. We fought really hard to try to get New Hampshire to do it, because it seems to me so obvious in this presidential election year with, you know, 20 some candidates running, that New Hampshire, the first primary, ought to have a way to tell the difference between just who happens to be the frontrunner and who are the other candidates who actually rally support. And very stupidly, at the end, I think the state decided to pull back from that. But it's basically the way the Iowa caucuses will work. And what it does is it gives people a chance to state a case that people are not afraid to support because they are not afraid their vote will be lost. So. Okay. I'm not surprised by that. The one additional thing I think it's important to put on the table, though, that at least your website doesn't talk about, and I haven't had the chance to see you on the stump, so I'm not sure whether you're talking about it as well. Is this extraordinary conspiracy to suppress the vote may be motivated by race, maybe motivated by politics? From my perspective, I don't care which. The idea that politicians work to make it harder for some to vote than for others and thereby keep out of our political system. So many people who want to participate. You want to address this in many ways, like by the automatic vote registration for everybody who's 16 and over, an elimination of the restrictions on eligible voters, such as picture IDs. But I wonder whether there's a more fundamental point that if you are rigging the system against your political opponents, that ought to be extremely costly for you, and we ought to have a much more aggressive federal ability to regulate and stop that.

It should be more than costly. People should go to jail for that, I would think. You know, in 1965, the voting rights act guaranteed that black people would be able to have equal voting rights. And in 2013, the Supreme Court started chipping away at the Voting Rights Act. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her dissent, made a great point. She said it's like. Because what John Roberts had said was, well, the south isn't like that in we don't have those problems anymore. And Moose Ginsburg said, that's like saying, I have an umbrella. I'm not getting wet even though it's raining, so obviously I don't need my umbrella anymore. She said, we're not getting wet because we have the umbrella. And so she predicted that if they chipped away the Voting Rights act in the way that they have, she predicted that exactly what has happened would happen. And it absolutely stemmed from the original Voting Rights act, stemmed from the desire to give equal voting rights to black people. And even today, many of the voting suppression efforts have to do with people of color and also people who are not financially advantaged. For instance, when you have, let's say there's an 80 year old woman and she's living in a rural community, well, she doesn't have a passport, she doesn't have a driver's license, she hasn't driven in many years. She doesn't have something with her picture on it. And so she walked in and what does she have? Well, I paid my water bill and people tell her, well no, you have to have something with your picture on it. Well, how was she supposed to, who was supposed to drive her? She's nearly blind, let's say. Because when I talk about something like an 80 year old woman who's nearly blind in a rural community that's millions of Americans and so she doesn't have a picture. So there are so many ways in making it difficult with things like that. And then of course the proponents of that say, oh, so we don't have voter fraud. We don't even have. We have like 000001 cases of evidence of voter fraud. And yet voter suppression is exactly the kind of thing that I just mentioned or saying to people. We all know this about people who convicted felons or whatever. I believe it should be a. It is a major issue of American jurisprudence that once you have paid your, once you have exited prison, you have paid your dues to society and all rights of citizenship that accrue to citizenship thereof should be given back to you right now. They're cases of boredom with actual trying to make people who are formerly incarcerated takes time to get their legal voting rights back. Absolutely. This has racial, gender, tongues, it has suppression of people who are not financially advantaged. This is how aristocracy works. That's all that this is. All any of these things are is that America has reverted to an aristocratic paradigm. And who repudiated that in 1776 and it's gone to repudiate it again.

Yeah, the Florida story is so symbolic because first of all, what's astonishing about that Amendment 4 that was passed in 2018 is that it passed by either 61 or 64%. I don't have the number in front of me, but an incredible number in A state where the largest percentage that a Democrat got was less than 50%. So what that means is we know that Republicans and independents and Democrats voted to empower ex felons to vote once again. And now the legislature is trying to find a way to undermine what Republicans, independents and Democrats, as voters, said in Florida. And that pattern happens everywhere. It's what happened in Maine with ranked choice voting. It's what happened in South Dakota, which in 2016 passed a an incredible bill to put public funding into the election of representatives. In South Dakota, there's a completely red state voting for public funding through a referendum. And then the legislature undid it. So I think the conflict here is often not just between Republicans, Democrats. The more interesting conflict is between the people and the politicians, which is why you, running not as a traditional politician, not as an elected official, has such an opportunity to rally these people to this cause.

Well, the politicians, the political establishment did not wake up one day and say, let's free the slave. It happened because the people stepped in. The political establishment did not wake up one day and say, let's give women the right to vote. It happened because the people stepped in. Political establishment didn't wake up one day and say, let's desegregate the South. It happened because the people stepped in. And the same thing today, as a matter of fact, that that's something that we have in our generation that other generations didn't have. The other generations had a healthier skepticism of the political establishment. Our problem is that we don't have enough healthy skepticism of the political establishment. And that goes back to your main point. It's because it's been bought and sold. It's because we have a system that's little more than a system of legalized bribery. You can look at issue after issue after issue, and you can see, much as you just said, where the American people are on one side and what the political establishment is doing is on the other side.

Yeah. And breaking that is such a big challenge at the federal level. Let me ask you about the Electoral College. What do we do about that mess?

I think we just get rid of it. I think we just get rid of it. But I also. And it took me a little bit to fully get there, but I am fully there now. But it's not going to happen immediately. It's not going to happen in the next two years. And I think it will happen, though, because I think you get the feeling with that that it's an idea whose time has come between Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. People have had it. People can see what has happened here. Isn't that how you feel about the Electoral College as well?

Yeah. I mean, again, the problem is you have to amend the Constitution to get rid of it. So the question is what we can do before we amend the Constitution.

What could we do shy of amending the Constitution to get rid of the Electoral College?

Well, the biggest opportunity is the National Popular Vote Compact, which, you know, a bunch of states. So if, if states representing 270 electoral votes join the compact, they pledge to pledge their electors to the winner of the national popular vote, whoever wins in their own state. So we're at about, so we're at about 191 electors so far. We need a couple red states states and we'd get over 270. But what that would do is overnight, assuming the Supreme Court didn't strike it down, that would give us a guarantee that the winner of the Electoral College is the winner of the national popular vote. And that doesn't require, again, assuming the Supreme Court doesn't cause a mess, it doesn't require amending the Constitution. So that movement I think is alive and well and really important. But the second thing we could do, again, going back to the point you've got already supported, is just get ranked choice voting. Because if we got ranked choice voting, there's still the problem of the existing system, which I think most people don't focus on. The biggest problem with the existing system is because you've got winner take all, the only states that matter are the so called swing states. So in 2016, 99% of spending was in 14 states. But the problem with those 14 states is they don't represent America. They are older, they're whiter, their industry is kind of late 19th century industry. And so those states get all the power in picking our president when. Yeah, and so there's no reason for that system. And that system will only change if somehow you made it so every vote counted equally. A national popular vote would do that. Or amending the Constitution, which of course is going to be very difficult, especially with something like this.

How do I find out more about that Electoral College plan that we just talked about?

It will be in your inbox by tomorrow morning, I promise.

I appreciate that because I never had heard about that, Larry. I thought it was just sort of we get rid of it or we don't get rid of it. And I've never heard about a kind of half step like you were just talking about. I had never heard about that. And I'm Very eager to know more. Thank you.

Great, Great. Okay, so here's. So the structure of our calls goes like this. We have this conversation, and then I ask a question which I know the answer to, but it's important that I get to hear it because it's important for us to be able to tell people this is true. You've given us in your website and in this conversation a clear conception of fundamental reform. So you, you pass this fundamental reform requirement. The other part, which is important, and you and I have talked about this separately, is that like some of the other candidates, like Mayor Pete, for example, or Kirsten Gillibrand, you say that this is the sort of thing you're gonna do first. This is a primary objective. This, because you understand, as you've said a million times I've heard you say this, you're not gonna get anything unless you get this reform first. So is this a primary objective of your administration, something you're going to do in the first hundred days of the presidency of Marianne Williamson?

Absolutely. You know, I ran for Congress in 2014, and I was saying this, even this, this has been an issue that I've been more than aware of. I guess we've been yelling about for debt for many years. So I. Absolutely. And when people have asked me what would be the first thing you would do? I had said I would submit legislation to Congress for providing federal funding, public funding, a federal campaign.

Excellent.

And once again, it's the cancer underlying all the other cancers. Everything else is just a symptom. Every problem we have in terms of public policy is a symptom of that disease. It is anti democratic. It is an assault on the very foundation of government, of the people, by the people, for the people.

I couldn't have said it better myself. I am so grateful for your work, Marianne, for many, many years. You are a true bestseller. I mean, not only, you know, many people say they're a New York Times bestsellers. You're a number one bestseller at least four times, I think, because people listen and are inspired by your words. And I'm so happy that inspiration has turned to the cause of reforming this democracy. Thank you for this campaign and thank you for the time on this call.

Thank you so much, Larry, for everything you give to all of us. Thank you.

That's the episode of this podcast, another way, subtitled POTUS 1. Marianne Williamson has identified herself as a POTUS 1 candidate. A candidate who is committing herself to fundamental reform first. You can find this podcast on our website at Equal Citizens Us. There's also a place on the website to give feedback and comments, give us ideas, give us criticism, give us ways to make this podcast spread. You can use the tools there to spread it to your friends. The only way these matter is if more people listen.