My wife just came back from delivering things to Livingston Parish. “No matter how bad you think it is, the reality is worse,” she said. “The are entire subdivisions where everything people own is in a massive pile out on the curb. People look like they’ve been beaten.”

Meanwhile, on Martha’s Vineyard this week, President Obama found time in his vacation schedule to show up for a Democratic fundraiser. The AP reported:

Democrats Hank Goldberg and his wife, Carol Brown Goldberg, hosted the event at their home in Chilmark, the same town where the president is renting a vacation home. About 60 Obama and Clinton supporters paid between $10,000 and $33,400 to attend the event that was held in a tent on the sprawling property. Servers wore white aprons that said, ‘‘Thank You, President Obama.’’

The proceeds will benefit Clinton’s campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and state parties across the country.

I suppose that tens of thousands of Louisiana flood victims lost all their “Thank You, President Obama” garments in the water. I bet that the pile of money the president raised for the Democrats — at least $600,000 by those figures, but probably considerably more — would go a long way towards buying homeless refugees clean t-shirts at Wal-mart.

Meanwhile, the Baton Rouge Advocate editorializes about the president’s absence. Excerpts:

We’ve seen this story before in Louisiana, and we don’t deserve a sequel. In 2005, a fly-over by a vacationing President George W. Bush became a symbol of official neglect for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The current president was among those making political hay out of Bush’s aloofness.

Sometimes presidential visits can get in the way of emergency response, doing more harm than good. But we don’t see that as a factor now that flood waters are subsiding, even if at an agonizing pace. It’s past time for the president to pay a personal visit, showing his solidarity with suffering Americans.

More:

And if the president can interrupt his vacation for a swanky fundraiser for fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton, as he did on Monday, then surely he can make time to show up for a catastrophe that’s displaced thousands.

Oh hell yes.

By the way, as far as I can tell, Louisiana’s Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, seems to be doing a great job with this crisis.