The social media version of the Politico headline is ‘Trump drags Hurricane Helene into 2024 campaign’ while the site headline is ‘Trump brings Hurricane Helene into 2024 campaign’.

But whichever version you go with the implication is quite clear. Natural disasters shouldn’t be a campaign issue. No one should actually criticize an administration over its hurricane response. Absolutely not.

Like the time Democrats and their media did not suggest that Trump had deliberately killed everyone in Puerto Rico with a hurricane or Kanye West and Brian Williams teaming up to suggest that New Orleans had become a cannibalistic hellscape because Bush didn’t care about black people.

Biden and Kamala refusing to visit affected areas, we are told, is the newly dignified thing to do. Trump visiting Georgia to hand out aid is just ‘politicizing’ a natural disaster. But this begs the question of why Biden and Kamala don’t want to go?

Obama probably won the election on the strength of visiting areas affected by a hurricane and then offering some fake sympathy. He then promptly turned his back on all those people the moment he got what he wanted. But why can’t Biden or Kamala manage to do as much? Biden used to be a functional retail campaigner, albeit with a penchant for inappropriately handling the female population from age 8 to 99, but Kamala can’t even convincingly do that much. She has no other mode other than fake female friend and that’s inadequate to the task of meeting with disaster victims. At some point she’s going to have to go do that.

The media would like to delay that as long as possible. So it’s doling out ‘Republicans pounce on failed hurricane response’ headlines to push back the moment Kamala has to interact with people who aren’t female celebrities of her social class and wealth for as long as possible.