Another arena for Taylor Swift: Politics

‘GETTING YOUNG PEOPLE ACTIVATED’ Taylor Swift performs in Inglewood, California, on Aug. 7.Swifties registered in huge numbers as voters upon her urging last month.—AFP

NEW YORK—Another day, another Taylor Swift media circus.

Talk of the pop phenomenon is omnipresent, and as her power grows all-consuming, renewed discussion of her potential political weight has followed.

The 33-year-old is taking a break from playing sold-out arenas before heading back on the road for the remainder of her Eras Tour, which is poised to become the first tour to make $1 billion.

But she’s still gracing stadiums, as she cheers on rumored beau Travis Kelce, a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs.

The presence of Swift at two of his games saw television ratings spike and sales of the NFL player’s jersey soar 400 percent.

Late last month, Swift encouraged her fans to register, directing them to the nonpartisan nonprofit Vote.org.

The Swifties did not disappoint.

That single message posted on National Voter Registration Day saw the institution record more than 35,000 new registrations—23 percent more than last year and the most since 2020.

California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom told entertainment outlet TMZ that Swift was “using her celebrity for good.”

“What she was able to accomplish, in getting young people activated to consider that they have a voice and they should have a voice in the next election, I think it’s profoundly powerful.”

Finding her voice

Swift’s toe-dips into politics have been heavily scrutinized, garnering both criticism and praise, just as her yearslong reticence to voice political opinions had received the same treatment.

Both the right and the left have long wanted to count her as their own. But she stayed conspicuously quiet for years, including in 2016 when Donald Trump won the presidency.

Her silence led many critics to speculate that Swift was a closet Republican—until 2018, when she broke both her silence and the internet by endorsing the Democratic opponent of far-right politician Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee.

Following her post, even Trump reacted, saying he now liked Swift’s music “about 25 percent less.”

Blackburn won anyway, but Swift’s comments ushered in a new era for the pop star, who began explaining that as a young artist catapulted to fame, she struggled to control her own voice.

Swift said once she was “remorseful” for not backing Hillary Clinton in 2016, and has since delivered full-throated criticisms of Trump.

She endorsed Joe Biden in 2020, and has conveyed pro-LGBTQ+ messages.

Swift also condemned the Supreme Court’s reversal last year of the federal right to abortion.

Political scientist David Jackson noted that though Swift took her time before making endorsements, she wasn’t the apolitical pop princess many people cast her as, having made clear statements, for example, about the importance of feminism.

The pop star, then 25, told Maxim magazine in 2015 that “feminism is probably the most important movement that you could embrace, because it’s just basically another word for equality.”

Smear attacks

Swift’s rumored romance with Kelce has triggered a wave of right-wing vitriol against her, with conservative pundit Tomi Lahren saying the artist has “lefty, liberal, brain-dead political opinions.”

For Jackson, who has studied the power of celebrity endorsements, such attacks on a figure of Swift’s stature is, on its face, “hilarious.”

“They’re picking a fight with someone pretty big,” the Bowling Green State University professor told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

He said such smear attacks were less about diminishing Swift herself and more about “clout-chasing”—or “latching on to her fame, trying to get extra views and clicks and links and attention for themselves.”

So as the Biden campaign prepares for a likely rematch with Trump, should the President’s aides be courting Swift?

“Absolutely,” said Jackson. “100 percent.”

“Her celebrity endorsement right now could be considered the holy grail of potential celebrity endorsements,” he said. —AFP