By Bill Berkowitz and Gale Bataille
"Taylor Swift is going to come out in the presidential election and she is going to mobilize her fans. And we're going to be like, 'Oh wow, where did all these young, female voters come from?' We better have a plan for that."– Charlie Kirk, founder and executive director, Turning Point USA
Since 2018, Taylor Swift has encouraged young people to register to vote; to come out in support of President Joe Biden and Democrats in her home state of Tennessee, and has weighed in on the right-wing’s assault on abortion rights, trans rights, gay rights and any measures to deal with gun violence. In doing this she went against advice from friends and family who remembered the right wing trashing of the Dixie Chicks for their opposition to George W. Bush’s Iraq War.
During a 2020 interview about the filming of the documentary Miss Americana, (https://variety.com/2020/music/features/taylor-swift-politics-sundance-documentary-miss-americana-1203471910/)
Swift commented on the risk of taking a political stand, “…what happened to the Dixie Chicks was real outrage. I registered it — that you’re always one comment away from being done being able to make music.” But she felt like she had to speak out.
As the threat of a Trump autocracy looms in 2024, will Swift, the globe’s biggest star who has given her fans her heart and soul, once again stand strong for democracy in America?
According to a January 2020 piece by Variety’s Chris Willman (https://variety.com/2020/music/features/taylor-swift-politics-sundance-documentary-miss-americana-1203471910/), Swift was “adamant about pressing the button to send a nearly internet-breaking Instagram post, saying that [Tennessee Republican Senator Marsha] Blackburn has voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act as well as LGBTQ-friendly bills: [Tennessee Senator Marsha] Blackburn. Swift said that ‘I can’t see another commercial [with] her disguising these policies behind the words ‘Tennessee Christian values.’ I live in Tennessee. I am Christian. That’s not what we stand for.’” Willman noted that Swift “Pushing back tears, she lamented not having come out against Trump two years earlier, ‘but I can’t change that. … I need to be on the right side of history.
Says Swift now, “This was a situation where, from a humanity perspective, and from what my moral compass was telling me I needed to do, I knew I was right, and I really didn’t care about repercussions.” Swift clearly understood that her father “[was] terrified of threats against my safety and my life, and he has to see how many stalkers we deal with on a daily basis, and know that this is his kid. It’s where he comes from.”
Now that Gannett, the largest newspaper chain in the country, has hired a reporter to exclusively cover all things Taylor Swift and there are breathless wall-to-wall stories across social media about her ERAS tour and romance with Kansas City Chiefs football star, Travis Kelce, the world’s most popular pop star is perfectly positioned to use her platform. Granted, by opposing the rise of autocracy and criticizing right wing bigots, haters, and MAGA-ites, she might lose some of her fan base, and face threats to her health and well-being. But Lord knows she could lose half of her followers while still breaking box office records for a concert film, selling millions of records, and winning Grammy Awards by the bucketful.
California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said that her influence on the 2024 presidential election would be “profoundly powerful.”
According to Politico’s Claudia Chiappa (https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2023/09/29/the-unavoidable-politics-of-taylor-swift-00119201), “Swift’s ability to move political markets appears to be growing, whether she’s interested in being a political actor or not. No matter how much she wants to avoid it, in an increasingly polarized country where everyone wants to know where you fall along a political divide, Swift is consigned to having every action (and everyone she dates) picked apart by people trying to understand her politics.”
Travis Kelce has engaged in some political activism; he took a knee “during the Star Spangled Banner in 2017, the NFL star triggered anti-vaxxers earlier this [fall]when he posted an advertisementin partnership with Pfizer, encouraging fans to get their COVID-19 shot. This came only a few months after he starred in a Bud Light commercial, the beer brand that was boycotted by conservatives for partnering with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney — in an era of polarization, that track record is viewed as a signal that Kelce has chosen sides,” Chiappa reported.
After a recent Chiefs game, “ Upon seeing photos of the two of them, popular conservative voices seized on the moment, with Charlie Kirk [the head of the ultra-conservative Turning Point USA] immediately highlighting Kelce’s pro-vaccine advocacy and Tomi Lahren referring to Swift’s ‘lefty, liberal, brain-dead political opinions.’”
Reporting for the Kansas Reflector, Tim Carpenter pointed out that “In 2020, Swift endorsed … Biden for president. She stepped further into the spotlight in 2022 by criticizing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to undercut national recognition of abortion rights. She has identified as a feminist and advocated for LGBTQ rights and gun control. She’s been critical of police brutality, racism and white supremacy. She donated to the NAACP and Black Lives Matter.”
The Kansas Reflector noted that “Former White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin, who co-hosts The View, said Swift was the only person capable of defeating former President Donald Trump in next year’s presidential contest.”
Swift’s influence is even being parlayed internationally. In November 2023, AP’s Daniel Politi and Natacha Pisarenko reported that as thousands of Taylor Swift fans eagerly lined up for the superstar’s first-ever concert in Argentina, they saw themselves surrounded by posters urging them to vote against right-wing populist Javier Milei in the presidential election. ‘A Swiftie Doesn’t Vote Milei,’ read one of the posters, using the term commonly used to describe fans of the 12-time Grammy winner. In this instance, there were not enough fans to defeat Milei who won handily.
“I think she’s avoided being caught up in kind of culture war discourse,” Brian Donovan, a University of Kansas sociology professor who is writing a book about Swift said: “Her star is burning so bright right now she’s almost untouchable.”
Donovan added: “She said that we need to learn to live alongside cringe. What is cringe now might be cool later. I think that’s a great lesson, not just for leaders and politicians, but for everyone else.”
What is clearly “cringe” now is the concerted right-wing attack on democracy, and candidate Trump’s ratcheting up hatred against his political opponents. Taylor Swift could be an influential player in the 2024 election cycle. Pro-democracy advocates need Swift -- and her many friends in the music and entertainment industries -- to mobilize youth in opposition to MAGA authoritarianism.