The conventions are over. The first debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris looms. But for many observers, there’s a highly anticipated event in this election season that’s yet to happen and could occur at any moment: an endorsement announcement from Taylor Swift.
Just one day after President Biden announced in July that he was abandoning his re-election bid, the Yale historian Timothy Snyder speculated publicly about the possibility of Ms. Swift endorsing Ms. Harris. The “Will Taylor Swift Endorse Kamala Harris?” headlines soon proliferated. During the Democratic National Convention in August, a rumor surfaced about a supposed mystery guest on the final night — who many excited observers speculated might be Ms. Swift. (In the end, there was no surprise guest.) The countdown clock restarted: When might we expect Ms. Swift’s official endorsement?
A better question might be: Why should we care? We already know that celebrity endorsements have limited power to sway a race. In 2004, John Kerry had endorsements from celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and Larry David, and in 2020, Bernie Sanders had Ariana Grande and Killer Mike’s official support. They lost. Ms. Swift, who endorsed Mr. Biden late in the 2020 race, failed to meaningfully move the needle in 2018, when she backed Phil Bredesen, a Democrat and the former governor of Tennessee, over Marsha Blackburn in a Senate race that Ms. Blackburn won. If celebrities had the amount of persuasive power that some Americans apparently wish they had, a substantial percentage of the population would be steadfast vegan Scientologists by now.
The fantasy that a superstar like Ms. Swift might come around on a white horse to sway the electorate is a seductive one — but it’s worth asking what we hope this superstar will save us from. It’s not that Ms. Swift’s fans hope she’ll save them from Donald Trump. It’s more that, as an electorate, we continue to hold out hope that celebrities, through their sheer persuasive charisma, will save us from the hard work of politics itself.
It would be exceedingly convenient if a superstar entertainer could make irrelevant the thorny questions of how to persuade voters in key states to vote for your chosen candidate. Ms. Swift’s popularity can’t be discounted, and it cuts through all sorts of American divides. An NBC News poll in 2023 reported that Ms. Swift was regarded favorably or neutrally by nearly 80 percent of registered voters. If she wears a specific pair of shoes out of her house, those shoes might sell out the moment they’re identified. But our political decisions are, and should be, rooted in more practical concerns. Anger among Arab American voters in Michigan over U.S. support for Israel and the war in Gaza, for example, is significant enough that it could cost Democrats the state. The idea that a Swiftie-inclined voter might ignore those concerns simply because of an endorsement from a favorite pop star isn’t just insulting, it’s dystopian.
You might be thinking: But what about the ’60s? What about Bob Dylan and “Blowin’ in the Wind”? Didn’t celebrities change the course of history? Protest music did flourish; the cause, though, was another story. In a 2003 interview in the magazine In These Times, Kurt Vonnegut reflected on his experience speaking out against the Vietnam War: “Every artist worth a damn in this country, every serious writer, painter, stand-up comedian, musician, actor and actress, you name it, came out against the thing.” Yet this “laser beam of protest,” Vonnegut said, proved to have “the power of a banana-cream pie three feet in diameter when dropped from a stepladder five-feet high.”
The fact that so much celebrity wattage produces so little social change might be at least in part because celebrities exist for us as aspirational figures, not practical ones. I might try Jane Fonda’s aerobics program because I envy her physique or join Reese Witherspoon’s book club because it will make me feel like we’re friends. But political candidates are ultimately public servants. They work for us; we’re not their fans, we’re their employers. They may occasionally acquire an aura of celebrity — something attributed to figures as diverse as Barack Obama and Mr. Trump — but their task should be to persuade voters that they will improve their lives. If they succeed, they’ll win. If they don’t, they’ll lose. But we should leave celebrity opinions out of it.
I don’t want it to sound like I believe celebrities should, as the saying goes, “shut up and sing.” As individuals and as citizens, celebrities should feel free to speak out publicly about issues they care about, just as they should feel free to organize, volunteer where possible and donate their money. But their voices, in practical terms, should count for just as much or as little as any other individual’s voice. We shouldn’t look to them to solve politics for the rest of us — and it’s for the best that they can’t.
If you’re still hoping that Swifties can be politically activated, the good news is that they already are. “Swifties for Kamala” is a fan-led effort to harness the power of fandom for politics, and their recent Zoom launch featured, among others, Elizabeth Warren and Carole King, if not Taylor herself. The decision by Mr. Biden to step aside has energized many young voters, more so than a celebrity Instagram post ever could. And while Ms. Swift may not have a proven track record in controlling who her fans vote for, she has proved effective at encouraging young voters to register.
As a practical matter, art can do a lot for us — such as giving us a shared language to speak to one another across the divides of politics, religion and class. But rather than sitting around and waiting for the brute force of celebrity to sway an election, fans should embrace the shared language of their fandom as a way to talk to, and potentially persuade, one another over practical issues that matter. The real work of politics remains just that: work. In the (sort of) words of Ms. Swift: Instead of getting down and out about the liars and the dirty, dirty cheats of the world, shake it off — and get involved.
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