One of the more enduring events of 2005 involved the horror and damage afflicted by Hurricane Katrina.
Perhaps the single most memorable moment of that ordeal, culturally at least, was when rapper and (somehow) 2024 presidential candidate Kanye West, or Ye, as he currently goes by, blurted out in the middle of a fundraising event that then-President George Bush “doesn’t care about black people.”
Kanye West 16 years ago today:
“George Bush doesn’t care about Black people.”pic.twitter.com/3oBeJHioc1
— XXL Magazine (@XXL) September 2, 2021
(Seriously, look at Mike Myers’ awkward and horrified expression, as well as the abrupt cut away from West. It’s comedy gold.)
Bush has actually called that Katrina criticism, including West’s barb, “an all-time low” point of his presidency.
If President Joe Biden had any shame — and there’s increasing evidence he does not — he too may want to have some of that same retrospective as he grapples with his own Kanye West-like incident.
Biden delivered a commencement address to the graduating class of Howard University Saturday morning and, even if you remove whatever evil drivel he managed to pass off as a speech, the entire event was an unmitigated disaster for the president.
Why?
Because the president had his own “doesn’t care about black people” incident, though this one doesn’t appear to involve any rappers-turned-presidential candidates.
According to leftist outlet The Daily Beast and images circulating on Twitter, it appears that some Howard (a historically black university) graduates felt that Biden’s speech was the perfect time to slam the doddering president.
“Turn your back to Biden,” one sign reportedly read.
“[Department of Defense] research is complicit in imperialism,” another sign read.
But the most biting sign came from a male graduate, who wrote the message “Biden and [Vice President Kamala] Harris don’t care about black people” on his cap:
A student at Howard University’s graduation protested Joe Biden yesterday.
“Biden and Harris don’t care about black people.” pic.twitter.com/1GTeNvYGwT
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) May 14, 2023
The Daily Beast also noted that graduates who didn’t hold any signs actually did turn their backs to Biden.
Small picture, this is an embarrassing gaffe for a presidency filled with them.
Big picture, however, this latest debacle highlights that Biden is a remarkably unpopular Democratic president seeking a second term in 2024. That’s not a good combination. It’s so bad, in fact, that even Biden’s establishment media allies can’t sugarcoat things anymore.
Compounding matters is the non-insignificant fact that Biden and Harris, as Democrats often do, largely rely on black voters to come through for them.
Fair is fair, and after the Obama years, it’s a sound strategy for Democrats.
But that strategy of appealing to skin color and little else appears to be backfiring in a major way for Biden and Harris.
If Republicans could stop squabbling for 30 seconds, they could see what an incredible window of opportunity this is to strike while the iron’s hot.
Biden is wildly unpopular, so much so that the college-educated liberals that the Democrats rely on are publicly tuning out the president.
If that’s not the beginning of the end for a second Biden term, nothing is.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
