Trading friendship bracelets at political rallies. Wearing T-shirts that say \u201cIn my voting era.\u201d Holding debate watch parties that are as glittering as album-drop parties.<\/p>\n
Those are a few of the ways some Taylor Swift fans are seeking to intertwine their fandom with get-out-the-vote efforts ahead of the presidential election. Urging their fellow Swifties to support Vice President Kamala Harris, organizers of a Zoom call Tuesday said Harris could \u201clead this country into daylight.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than 34,000 people joined the Swifties for Kamala call, raising more than $122,000, according to its organizers. The call featured appearances from singer Carole King and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a way to win Eras Tour tickets \u2014 and plenty of allusions to Swift lyrics.<\/p>\n
Swift, whose representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has yet to weigh in on the presidential race and is not affiliated with Swifties for Kamala. But the Zoom was part of grassroots efforts to turn the energy of Swift fans \u2014 whose spending has altered local economies and whose enthusiasm has triggered earthquake sensors during the singer\u2019s Eras Tour \u2014 toward the election.<\/p>\n
The group is working to \u201charness our Swiftie power into political power,\u201d said April Glick Pulito, the group\u2019s political director. Swifties for Kamala did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday from The Washington Post.<\/p>\n
The Zoom call was modeled after the identity-based calls held by other pro-Harris groups, which began with Win With Black Women on the day President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid. At least 40 have been held, according to a Post tally, raising more than $20 million collectively in July.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am looking forward to the era of the first woman president,\u201d Warren said on the call, speaking from Milwaukee, where she was campaigning for Harris. \u201cSwifties, you can get this done.\u201d<\/p>\n
King, who said she is friends with Swift, sang the chorus of \u201cShake It Off,\u201d saying it was her favorite Swift song. \u201cI see her as sort of my musical and songwriting granddaughter,\u201d King said. \u201cWe have a lovely relationship, and I\u2019m so proud of her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tuesday\u2019s organizers walked Swift fans through how to campaign for Harris by knocking on doors, making phone calls and registering voters, sprinkling in a healthy amount of lyrical allusions \u2014 \u201ckeeping everything very political and civically engaged but also everything having that layer of Swiftie-ness to it,\u201d said Annie Wu Henry, the group\u2019s campaign manager.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can \u2026 take the excitement and community we have and turn it into something more,\u201d Henry told participants.<\/p>\n
The group was born out of an X post by Emerald Medrano, a Swift fan who suggested that the community \u201corganize and create a blue wave filled with hand hearts and friendship bracelets,\u201d he recalled on the Zoom. \u201cTo my surprise \u2026 so many people were excited to contribute.\u201d<\/p>\n
Swift endorsed Biden in 2020, but she has not weighed in on the 2024 race or publicly reacted since Harris became the Democratic nominee. She supports LGBTQ rights, women\u2019s rights, abortion access and gun violence prevention \u2014 issues that generally align with the Democratic Party\u2019s platform.<\/p>\n
In 2020, when she backed Biden, Swift did not make a formal endorsement until Oct. 7, about a month before the election.<\/p>\n
She appeared to be a Harris fan at the time, retweeting Harris\u2019s announcement that she would be Biden\u2019s running mate with the caption, \u201cYES.\u201d Swift then announced her endorsement of Biden on the day of a vice-presidential debate.<\/p>\n
\u201cGonna be watching and supporting @KamalaHarris by yelling at the tv a lot,\u201d Swift wrote in the post announcing her vote for Biden. She also included a photo of her holding cookies frosted with the Biden-Harris campaign logo.<\/p>\n
\u201cVoting never goes out of style,\u201d Harris replied on Twitter at the time, nodding to a Swift lyric. \u201cThank you so much for your support Taylor.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Swift\u2019s popularity high amid her record-breaking tour and her reach to millions of millennial and Gen Z fans, she could have the ability to affect the 2024 election, as The Post\u2019s Philip Bump wrote this month.<\/p>\n
The country got a glimpse of that power in September: After Swift told people to register to vote in honor of National Voter Registration Day, thousands appeared to heed her call.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been so lucky to see so many of you guys at my U.S. shows recently. I\u2019ve heard you raise your voices, and I know how powerful they are,\u201d Swift wrote then. \u201cMake sure you\u2019re ready to use them in our elections this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether she will say anything more partisan this election cycle remains an open question.<\/p>\n
Before Biden exited the race, the idea of a Swift endorsement was seen as a pursuit to be treated with delicacy, and the campaign kept fairly mum on the question, The Post reported in February. Harris\u2019s campaign did the same Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Republican presidential nominee and former president Donald Trump this month used a fake image of Swift to incorrectly imply she had endorsed him. He also shared another image, generated by artificial intelligence, that depicted women in \u201cSwifties for Trump\u201d T-shirts.<\/p>\n
Swift wrapped up the European leg of her Eras Tour last week and is on a break before the final scheduled leg of the show. The tour is set to conclude in December, after the election.<\/p>\n
Swift stayed away from politics as a young country music star before becoming more vocal later in her career. Some fans have urged her to use her platform more aggressively. After the war in Gaza broke out, for instance, some fans formed a \u201cSwifties for Palestine\u201d group and asked Swift on social media to speak out. (She did not respond.)<\/p>\n
The recent Swift frenzy perhaps reached a high leading up to the Super Bowl in February. Her relationship with football player Travis Kelce and her presence at NFL games drew a wave of public attention, prompting conspiracy theories from some on the right. In a February poll by Monmouth University, about one-third of Republicans said they believed Swift was part of a \u201ccovert government effort\u201d to reelect Biden, an unfounded conspiracy theory.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the Zoom speakers sought to draw connections between Swift\u2019s work and Harris\u2019s ideals. Warren said Harris would \u201ctake on big corporations,\u201d name-dropping Ticketmaster, which had a server meltdown during the 2022 sale of Eras Tour tickets.<\/p>\n
Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) touted Harris\u2019s desire to tackle climate change, noting that the waters off the coast of Swift\u2019s beach house are warming.<\/p>\n
And Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said Swift has \u201clived all the challenges\u201d she herself and other women have experienced.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether it\u2019s sexism or misogyny, or not being listened to, or being spoken over, or being disregarded or being counted out, she\u2019s lived those experiences,\u201d Gillibrand said, \u201cand I think that\u2019s why she\u2019s such a rallying cry for women.\u201d<\/p>\n
Medrano, the effort\u2019s co-founder, said the fact that a single tweet led to the online mobilization of 34,000 people showed that \u201cevery single voice matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThings will change,\u201d Medrano said, quoting a Swift song, \u201cand we have the power to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Trading friendship bracelets at political rallies. Wearing T-shirts that say \u201cIn my voting era.\u201d Holding…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3526,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}