There comes a time in every mega-pop-star’s mega-masterminded public life that she must release her carefully worded presidential nomination. For one Taylor Alison Swift, that time was 11 P.M. last night, just after the conclusion of the first presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and flaming turd monster slash future Sing Sing Correctional Facility inmate, Donald Trump.
While calls for Swift to endorse a candidate have grown louder recently, she actually made her endorsement nearly a month earlier than she did in 2020, when she endorsed President Joe Biden on October 7. So, why did Swift hard-launch her presidential pick so much earlier this time around? I’ll leave it to the Swifties to crack the case, but if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say the answer rhymes with Fritney Blahomes.
Swift made the announcement on Instagram. “Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight,” she wrote to her 283 million followers, which, just FYI, is 85 percent of the entire US population. “… I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.”
What are those rights and causes? Who knows! Swift didn’t say. It could be sky-high housing costs, or the right to basic universal income for cats, or the right for anybody to be friends with whoever they want without catching flack about it from their parasocial fans!
She went on to say that she believes “we can accomplish more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos,” which, wouldn’t you know it, is an opinion shared by a majority of humans living in the United States of Taymerica.
And lest you accuse Swift of being overly tactful and trafficking in evasive opinions, she eventually expressed her enthusiastic support for [checks notes] the world’s most lovable white dad, Tim Walz.
In all fairness to Swift, she proceeded to namecheck a few rights and causes that Walz supports, so—using the principles of mathematical deduction—we can assume that Swift cares about them, too. But you know what they say about assumptions, right? They make an ass out of anyone who claims to know what Swift is thinking.
Also, let’s take a closer look at the values Swifts mentions Waltz being in support of, and how they might relate back to the tightrope Swift is walks with this endorsement: LGBTQ+ rights (✓ Swift’s massive queer fan base), IVF (✓ any Republican, Democrat, or Independent person who has ever struggled with infertility), and “a woman’s right to her own body” (✓ to not saying abortion.) With these three issues, everybody that matters to Swift is a winner, and nobody is alienated. This may be the most perfectly constructed, inoffensive political statement of all time. Fledgling global pop stars take note: This is how you achieve world domination.
All jokes aside, the part of Swift’s endorsement that I (delusionally) hope her young fans will hold onto is the importance of doing your own research. We shouldn’t look to celebrities to tell us how to feel about important political issues. That’s partly how we ended up with a buckwild Cheeto as the Republican candidate in the first place.
And while couching a political endorsement in vague statements about the importance of doing your own research may be a slick way for Swift to avoid alienating her massive fanbase, it doesn’t mean she’s wrong. I, for one, would be thrilled if as a result of this endorsement, Swifties did a deep dive on fracking.
So go ahead and be as vague as you want, T. Swift. The last thing we need is another celebrity know-it-all spouting off hot takes on important issues. Which reminds me: Elon Musk, shut the fuck up!
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