Celebrity endorsements might not seem as consequential for political candidates as those from former presidents and state governors, but there’s data to suggest that a celebrity’s endorsement often leads their fandom — which can include millions of people — to follow their lead. And when you’re Taylor Swift, arguably the biggest pop star on the planet — whose call for her fans to register to vote in 2023 led to 35,000 registrations, the largest since 2020 — an endorsement could be the driving force that pushes the needle over the edge.
From the moment Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed his VP Kamala Harris, everyone — fans, bystanders, political commentators, and even naysayers — waited to see if Swift would throw her weight behind Harris, as an endorsement would be a major shot in the arm for the Harris-Walz campaign. In 2020, Swift endorsed Biden, noting she was a fan of his running mate, Harris. However, Swift’s foray into the political domain is relatively new. In 2016, she was chastised for not endorsing Hillary Clinton.
Don’t think an endorsement from Swift really matters? Just look at Donald Trump’s desperate (and quite frankly, legally stupid) attempt to snag the Swiftie vote by posting to his Truth Social account AI-generated images of Swift in an Uncle Sam getup urging voters to vote for him. Among those AI-generated images were fake photos of Swifties wearing Trump-supporting T-shirts.
With the Democratic National Convention concluded, Harris the party’s official nominee, and the gap between now and Nov. 5 growing ever more thin, Swift still has not made an endorsement. While most believe it is unlikely she will back Trump, as she has previously criticized the MAGA leader, she hasn’t endorsed Harris either. …Or has she?
Taylor is “very clear” about where she stands
Swift is famous for sprinkling Easter eggs into her lyrics, her outfits, her music videos, her marketing, and even her public speeches. Since she began re-recording her studio albums in 2021, those Easter eggs have grown more elaborate, and in her official statement regarding the attempted terror plot that led to the cancellation of her Eras Tour shows in Vienna, Taylor offered a clue so subtle that most everyone missed it — except this writer.
There, near the end of her statement, Taylor says “Let me be very clear” before going on to explain why she remained silent about the attempted terror plot until after the European leg concluded. To any layperson, the forceful sentence would read as just that, a forceful explanation and condemnation of the events that rattled her tour, and the obvious protection of her fandom. But to those who’ve analyzed Swift’s public addresses in the past, the forceful tone is just slightly out of character enough to grab attention.
For Taylor — someone who has described herself as Machiavellian and a mastermind, someone who cheekily held up two fingers during her 2024 Grammy Award acceptance speech to signify the double-album surprise of her Tortured Poets Department, or who encoded her website with error messages that doubled as anagrams foreshadowing the release of TPT — the use of “let me be clear” is very clearly a nod to Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Let me be clear” or a variation of it, has become a Kamala Harris calling card in her campaign speeches. At the DNC, she said it five times. At her rallies, she’s employed it dozens more. It’s become her “ism.” Most presidents have an ism. For Biden, it was “Folks,” or “Look, folks.” For Obama, it was “Listen,” and sometimes, too, “Let me be clear,” (another way Kamala has paid homage to Obama’s presidency).
With more U.S. stops on her Eras Tour, and especially in the wake of her Vienna scare, Swift might not feel comfortable endorsing a political candidate just yet, as that could alienate fans of differing parties and lead to public displays of affiliation at her shows, which in turn could cause squabbles, fights, or — God forbid — another terror scare.
The truth of the matter is the Taylor effect is not just monetary (her billion-dollar Eras Tour has bolstered economies around the globe). It’s also political. Whichever candidate snags her endorsement, their campaign will be all the stronger for it. For all we know, she’s already endorsed Harris and we just haven’t been paying attention to the Easter eggs. In that case, Swifties assemble! We have some decoding to do.