Who’s Afraid of Little Old Taylor?
If Trump and Vance aren’t shaking in their bespoke boots, they should be. A Swift endorsement could give Kamala Harris a Gen Z boost in swing states. The real question is: What's Taylor waiting for?
Taylor Swift has moved economies. Her seemingly endless Eras Tour – almost 150 shows across five continents since it began in March 2023 – has given local economies in the U.S. short-term boosts and had an impact on the GDP of countries from Japan to Sweden, where it briefly set off an inflation scare.
The question on a lot of lips now is: Will Swift step up and materially influence America’s presidential election?
In short, will the most wildly popular pop star in a generation be the October Surprise that helps to send Donald Trump back to the grievance golf course and Kamala Harris to the Oval Office?
The answer, if there is one, is complicated. But what is clear is that Gen Z, the demographic that includes a sizable number of the fanatically loyal Swifties, will be a major eligible cohort on November 5.
According to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University, “In the next presidential election, 40.8 million members of Gen Z…will be eligible to vote.” That includes 8.3 million (ages 18-19 in 2024) more than in the 2022 midterm elections.
Yesterday, in New York Times newsletter The Tilt, Nate Cohn made the case that the traditional generational divide is back to whatever normal is, with young voters now lining up behind Harris since Joe Biden did a Snagglepuss exit stage left. “In high-quality polls over the last month, Vice President Harris leads Mr. Trump by an average of 20 points among the youngest reported demographic cohort (whether that be 18 to 29 or 18 to 34 in a given poll). The same polls showed Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump tied among young voters in July,” he wrote.
And according to CIRCLE, the turnout of young voters (age 18-29) in 2022 was the second-highest is about 30 years. That remains significantly lower than the general voting-eligible population, about two-thirds (66%) of which cast a ballot in the 2020 presidential election, the Pew Research Center reported. Still, there is an upward trend in the so-called youth vote, including in swing states, with the strongest increases in Michigan and Pennsylvania, CIRCLE data show.
In 2020, Swift did endorse Biden, but a lot has happened since then that could complicate a full embrace of Harris. The Eras Tour has made her an even more massive star, and if there are two things at which Swift excels in addition to her lyrics and music, it’s business. With an electorate this divided, choosing sides almost certainly would hurt her brand.
More important to Swift, who seems about as generous to and caring of her fans as an idol can be, it might also endanger Swifties – not an idle concern after authorities in Austria, with the help of the CIA, thwarted an ISIS plans to attack a concert there.
In an Instagram post after three Eras Tour shows in Austria were canceled, Swift wrote: “Let me be very clear: I am not going to speak about something publicly if I think doing so might provoke those who would want to harm the fans who come to my shows.”
And there is also a possible personal problem: Swift, as even remote tribes in Brazil must know, is romantically involved with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, who is big buds with his QB, three-time Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes. Nothing awkward there – except that as Fox News reported Tuesday, in a post on Truth Social, Trump thanked Mahomes’ wife for her apparent support.
As Fox reported, Brittany Mahomes “first indicated her support for Trump on Aug. 13, when she liked Trump's Instagram post that outlined the ‘2024 GOP platform.’” As Fox observed, that “kickstarted a social media firestorm over the last few weeks.”
Another digital wildfire erupted on Aug. 18 when Trump tried to claim that Swift endorsed him. The Times reported that he shared an apparently AI-doctored image of Swift in an Uncle Sam outfit with an American flag behind her. “The image features white lettering that reads, ‘Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump,’” the story said. “‘I accept!’ Mr. Trump wrote in the post.”
Too cute by half, Mr. Former President.
Nine days later, disgusted fans joined in a video call across several social media platforms under the banner of “Swifties for Kamala” to denounce the clumsy attempt at deception. Joining about 34,000 participants, according to the Times, were Carole King and Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. Some $130,000 was reportedly raised for the Harris campaign.
While Taylor is weighing her options, she might look for inspiration to a woman who sacrificed her career to uphold the Constitution, try to safeguard American democracy, and stop the tyrant-in-waiting Trump.
That would be Liz Cheney, the deeply conservative former Representative from Wyoming who was not only ousted from the House Republican leadership but driven out of office for making an overpowering case as co-chair of the Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection that Donald John Trump was and is a clear and present danger to the Republic.
On Wednesday at a Duke University event, Cheney not only publicly refused to vote for Trump but said she would cast a ballot for Harris, whom she once called a “radical liberal.”
Probably only one person knows what Taylor will do, but if the hulk at her side has any sage advice to offer, it should be: Don’t punt.
The Odious & Awful
Saltpeter Days
A couple of weeks ago in an interview with Megyn Kelly, the boy-man right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson, who graduated from a New England prep school but seems to have never left, said that Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Waltz is the kind of guy the lads at St. George’s used to call “a creeper.”
That apparently was a slap-back at the Minnesota governor, who rose to the top of the potential-Veep heap after he labeled Donald Trump and his MAGA minions “weird.”
St. George’s School – located on Purgatory Road in Middletown, Rhode Island – is mere miles from Portsmouth Abbey School (formerly Portsmouth Priory School) and share the same founder, a cleric who started the former as an Episcopal school for boys before he apparently saw the light, became a monk, and created a Roman Catholic academy in the shadow of an English Benedictine monastery.
The two also share a certain boarding-school ethos, and the term “creeper” is familiar to old boys at both. For male children of privilege at St. George’s and Portsmouth, denigrating each other was an often-amusing blood sport, and in an era earlier than Carlson’s, there was a boy at the Priory who seemed strange and was actually known as “The Creeper.”
The truth is that rich kids, like their parents, are often quite odd, and monikers abounded. Besides “The Creeper,” there was “The Mad Humper,” for example, and even teachers were not immune: One monk was known as “The Gaper” (short for “Great Gaping A------“).
Tucker, still stuck in his blazer-and-rep-tie uniforms, might be personally familiar with another term frequently used: “Dipshit.”
My Book Report
By Deidre Depke
A Love Letter to Elderly British Women
In my 20s, I made a hobby out of collecting books by Muriel Spark. It was sort of an odd pastime for someone who had just landed in New York City looking to start a career in journalism. Spark, after all, was an octogenarian Scottish author writing slightly waspish novels about women living lives far removed from my own.
But I loved Spark for her style: sly, subversive, and bitingly funny. Like her contemporary (and friend) Graham Greene, her work was informed by Catholicism (her family was Jewish; she converted in her 30s), and the characters in her slim, highly polished novels often grappled with thematic questions of good and evil.
You’ve probably read 1961’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (or seen the excellent film with Maggie Smith in the lead role). But if you aren’t already a fan, do yourself a favor and dig deeper into her catalogue. Spark wrote 22 novels in all (as well as poetry and essays), so you’ve got plenty to choose from. I love The Girls of Slender Means (1963) about housemates who share one dress during a wartime London summer. Updike’s blurb: “Miss Spark’s darkling imagination has never glimmered better.” (Darkling! Glimmered! On some days, Updike just can’t be bested.)
Memento Mori (1959) is a black comedy in which elderly Londoners receive phone calls from a disembodied voice warning: “Remember You Must Die.” The New Yorker called it “flawless.”
The Public Image (1968) tells the story of Annabel Christopher, a film star who becomes tangled in an extortion plot. (Interestingly, the Booker people say this novel was considered for its very first prize in 1969, though it was ultimately rejected by the judges when author and journalist Rebecca West deemed it “clever but too playful.” Sour grapes, anyone? (Though, really, West is another British woman well worth your time – especially her Nuremberg reporting for The New Yorker, collected as A Train of Powder.)
All of this is a very long windup to my report on Jane Campbell’s Interpretations of Love, one of fall’s most anticipated novels. Campbell’s work has been compared by The New York Times to Edna O’Brien and Spark…hence the digression above. It’s the first novel for Campbell, also British and an octogenarian. With a wry sense of humor, Interpretations explores the emotional barriers of a woman raised in post-war England. (More Sparkian qualities, it’s true.)
The novel’s slender plot begins with the deaths in a car crash of four-year-old Agnes’ parents. The mother’s last wish is for her brother to deliver a letter she’d written to a wartime one-night stand, who may or may not be Agnes’ father.
From there, not a whole lot happens. This isn’t a novel for fans of narrative fiction. But it is a rather old-fashioned, languorously written character study highly informed by the theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.
Here are the musings of one character: “I seem to recall standing by the open window of my attic bedroom, staring out at the wide empty stretch of the sea. A breeze was bouncing off it and bringing from over the links the scent of the sand and grass to me. I thought of my memories and I wound words around them and tucked them safely away in my mind for I knew I would need them one day. I think even then I realised that they might enable me to survive.”
As I said, languorous, old-fashioned and Jungian. If you’re looking for action, this one may not be for you. Reading Interpretations is like taking a long, relaxing soak in the tub. It’s a style of writing that barely exists any longer. And if you’re willing to give yourself over to it, Interpretations is a delight.
Tucker rhymes with … um, sucker. As in Putin’s useful idiot.