Cats, Fans, and Reputation: 3 Things Taylor Swift and Kamala Harris Have in Common

After years spent only singing, in 2018 she expressed herself for the elections of midtermendorsing Democratic candidates in the state where she voted, Tennessee: “I have always voted and will always vote for the candidate who will protect and fight for the human rights that I believe we all deserve in this country.” Taylor Swift then publicly supported the Biden-Harris ticket. On Instagram, on October 7, 2020, she declared: “I am so excited to see such a strong and capable woman as Kamala Harris running for vice president. This is the change we need”, then she also shared the cover of the magazine V Magazinewhich included an interview in which she expressed her support for Biden and Harris, writing: “The change we most desperately need is to elect a president who recognizes that people of color deserve to feel safe and represented.” And more pointedly: “I will proudly vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in this year’s presidential election. Under their leadership, I believe America has a chance to begin the healing it so desperately needs.” Now she will support Kamala Harris vs. Trump?

This is the question he also asked himself Vanity Fair America, but Taylor’s staff has not responded. Harris’ campaign – which jumped at the British singer’s endorsement Charlie XCXwho posted on X «Kamala Harris IS Brat», more or less «brat», relaunching the album’s lime green and its characters in the official X profile of politics – can’t wait.

But let’s see how many things the two women have in common, so far.

1. Mobilize supporters

There has been discussion for years about how many votes Swift “moves”, but it is certainly known that she has a great influence on Gen Z: in September 2023 she pushed around 35,000 voters to register to “make their voices heard”. And on X the fan account «Swifties for Harris» has already reached over 40 thousand members, who in addition to inventing new election-themed “friendship bracelets” are also raising funds.

On the Republican front, they fear the Taylor-Kamala association, and for this reason they stigmatize her: two days ago the conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro has disparagingly compared the growing excitement around Vice President Kamala Harris to Taylor Swift. “I’ve never seen so much artificial excitement about anyone, except maybe Taylor Swift,” Shapiro said. The “fear” is real: According to Politic 48 hours after Biden’s endorsement of Harris, the site Vote.org he saw a massive surge of 38,500 new voter registrationsmost of whom were 34 years old or younger. And announcing Harris’s run was enough to gather in three days 126 million dollarsas reported UsaToday.

2. Vance’s Insults, and the Cats

Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vancein 2021, speaking to Tucker Carlson on Fox, had stated that “the United States is governed by ‘childless cat ladies’ who ‘impose their misery on the rest of the country’ and ‘have no direct interest in government because they don’t have children.'” The politician had quoted the vice president Kamala Harris (who lived with her husband Doug Mhoff’s children)Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. This interview, now dusted off, has provoked different reactions: on the one hand the appreciation of the fans, on the other the indignation of people who do not have children, including Jennifer Aniston (“I really can’t believe this is coming from a potential Vice President of the United States,” she wrote on Instagram), although Taylor Swift wasn’t initially mentioned by Vance. Why? Not only because Taylor herself has declared herself a “cat lady” or “cat lover” since 2019but also because the image of one of the poses from the cover of the year has started to go viral Timewhich featured Taylor Swift (person of the year) with one of her three cats, the latest arrival, Benjamin Button.

3. The reputation

Mean, boring, touchy: these are some of the criticisms that Taylor Swift faced until 2017, the year her album was released. Reputationthat of Look What You Made Me Doin which she responds to all this controversy about her. Even the swifties on TikTok seem to have decided that Harris is a girl of the era of Reputation: because she too has been hit with a whole series of criticisms that attributed to her behaviors that were foreign to her, at best, or outright insults, like the laughter thing. And the debate on the perception that Democratic voters have of her has dominated the weeks between the disastrous Trump-Biden TV debate and the withdrawal from the race of the president.