US President Joe Biden announced on Monday that he has withdrawn from the presidential race, and offered his support to the Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. Amidst stiff opposition and criticism over the 81-year-old running for another term at the White House, Biden announced he is quitting his campaign less than four months before the elections.
This news spurred endless memes and social media reactions.Among them were tweets that highlighted the eerie resemblance between these political events and ‘The Simpsons’. The show that seemed to have predicted several major events over the years, including Donald Trump‘s election as US President, has once again captured the interest of netizens for its accurate prediction.
In the episode titled “Bart to the Future” which first aired in March 2000, the plot sees Lisa Simpson as President of the United States while Bart is a White House freeloader.
This episode went viral nearly four years ago when Kamala Harris took her oath as the first female Vice President of the United States. Observers noted the striking similarities between Harris’s attire and that of Lisa Simpson in the episode, with some news outlets suggesting Harris took inspiration from the cartoon’s outfit. Yeardley Smith, who voiced Lisa since the show’s 1989 debut, even tweeted, “I really wanna believe Kamala Harris chose her wardrobe yesterday as a subtle nod to Lisa Simpson.”
Despite airing two decades earlier, “Bart to the Future” is one of many prophetic sequences that have defined “The Simpsons” as a highly predictive show.
Twitter users were quick to point out the resemblances, declaring, “The Simpsons are back at it again!” Sharing a picture of Harris in a purple blazer and pearl necklace, similar to Lisa’s attire, another said, “Simpsons predictions always accurate.”
“Whoever the writers were for the Simpsons needs to be studied at Harvard” and “I’m now convinced that the people who wrote the scripts for each episode of the Simpsons are time travellers” said others in social media comments.
While it still remains to be seen if Harris, like Lisa will succeed in her Presidential bid, she has Biden’s endorsement. Thanking the President for the support, she said in a statement, “On behalf of the American people, I thank Joe Biden for his extraordinary leadership as President of the United States and for his decades of service to our country.”
“I am honoured to have the President’s endorsement, and my intention is to earn and win this nomination,” she said.
This is not the first time that ‘The Simpsons’ has seemingly predicted a major world event. Addressing the growing buzz around the show’s eerie predictions, writer Al Jean said it was nothing more than ‘luck’. “If you write 700 episodes and you don’t predict anything, then you’re pretty bad. If you throw enough darts, you’re going to get some bullseyes,’” Jean explained.