Tailored Stance: Swift’s democratic mic drop has deeper meaning

Jennifer Weiner

For a certain swath of America, the big news of Tuesday night’s presidential debate wasn’t made by Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, but by Taylor Swift. As you’ve probably heard by now, mere moments after the candidates left the stage, she went on Instagram and, in a move many Democrats had prayed for, endorsed. Harris. “She fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them,” Swift wrote to her 283 million followers.

The endorsement was not a surprise, nor were the responses: Democrats exulted. Republicans fumed. Elon Musk chimed in with something deeply creepy. Many pundits described Swift’s statement as a knockout punch — the cherry on the garbage sundae that was Trump’s Tuesday night. Swift, they said, had smartly waited until the former president was wounded, down on the floor whimpering, in order to deliver that final blow. “The timing on it is absolutely exquisite. The wording of it is flawless,” said the MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell.

But Swift’s decision to give her blessing so soon after the debate left others scratching their heads. Harris had a great night. Why not let her ride that wave? Wait a few days, let the news cycle run until Trump staggers back to his feet, then drop the endorsement for maximum impact.

Some looked back, wondering why Swift hadn’t come out for Harris in August, when Trump supporters used artificial intelligence to whomp up a fake image of Swift endorsing him, and he boosted the image as though it were real. Or at the Democratic National Convention, when rumours abounded that Swift or Beyoncé, or perhaps Swift and Beyoncé, would be the surprise guests?

Maybe Swift wanted to divert attention from friends such as Brittany Mahomes, who’s been under fire for liking (then seemingly un-liking) a post by Trump that promised, among other things, to “Keep men OUT of women’s sports,” “Deport pro-Hamas radicals” and “build a great iron dome missile defense shield over our entire country.” Maybe Swift wanted to lean into her relatability, so that we could imagine her on her couch, watching the debate just like us regular folk, listening carefully, taking notes and clicking “post” because she couldn’t wait.

Personally, I like to imagine that Swift saw how Harris’s dismissiveness and humour, her decision to treat Trump as not an existential threat but an unserious man, got under his skin, and she couldn’t resist giving that wounded bear one last poke.

The Harris/Walz campaign says it learned about Swift’s statement at the same time the rest of us did, though the fact that it wasted less than an hour before selling Swiftian friendship bracelets left a different impression. Regardless, Swift has a history of thinking long and hard before lending her name to a cause.

In 2016, when some of her fellow pop stars were all in for Hillary Clinton, Swift stayed on the fence. Something changed when she was slapped with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit from a man she accused of groping her. (She countersued for $1 — and won.) “I was so angry,” she recalled in her 2020 Netflix documentary “Miss Americana.” “I really couldn’t stop thinking about it. And I just thought to myself, ‘Next time there is any opportunity to change anything, you had better know what you stand for and what you want to say.’”

Swift’s endorsement may not swing the needle for the tiny sliver of persuadable voters in the handful of swing states. If people want to make their decisions based on something other than a pop star’s Instagram post, more power to them. But that post, with its tongue-in-cheek-y humour, raises the hope that the joy Harris has been running on might get us to a place that attacks never could.