Endorsements

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.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More