The Daily
Politicus Pod
Taylor Swift, Unity, Joy, And Kamala Harris
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Taylor Swift, Unity, Joy, And Kamala Harris

The debate wasn't just a debate, but it was an evening when a unity movement spoke with a loud voice.
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Excerpts from the podcast episode:

The Importance Of The Taylor Swift Endorsement

A lot of media are trying to downplay the Taylor Swift endorsement. They say celebrity endorsements don't mean anything. And I think that's usually true because there isn't this action, this call to action, and that people don't have the kind of sway that Taylor Swift has. But she's this global brand. And so we already saw by 11:00 this morning the General Services Administration spokesperson told NPR that by 11:00, they had 306,422 visitors to vote.gov from Taylor Swift's URL that she shared on Instagram. Now that's 11:00. So she made that endorsement, what, 1030 11:00 last night?

So 12 hours overnight and two, you know, like that's overnight. I would imagine that number is going to grow during the day today probably quite a bit. That seems like a lot of people to be signing up to register to vote. It's a lot of people. And there's an exponential factor involved, because if this if her fans go to get their friends or family members also registered to vote, it kind of there's a there's a mushroom effect and it just keeps kind of building outward. So maybe 306,000 people visited, but. Each of those people, or even a 10th of those people, get somebody else to register to vote. That number goes up a lot more. I think it matters. It matters a great deal because of, and let's be honest, who her audience is, right?

It isn't old white cable news viewers. Her audience is women. They're Gen Zs. It's a lot of people. A lot of young women are turning 18. 18 to 24. Women need to have autonomy over their bodies. That is an age where, you know, unfortunately, women are targeted for rape and for, for violent offenses that this is just a really dangerous age for women, and they need to have this autonomy. So I'm really glad that she's sending them to the register to vote. And you know, she urged. I thought the whole statement was great. I mean, everybody's kind of pointed out how well she laid that out. She didn't tell people who to support. She told them, you know, go do your research. This is what I think is important.

The Unity Movement Around Kamala Harris

I don't remember which piece it was, but maybe the Taylor Swift piece, but a little bit of what makes me feel really positive as a woman is the Taylor Swift endorsement. She, as we all know, is a white woman. There has been such a failure on the part of white women to stand up for black women to include them in fights for justice efforts. It felt really good to see Taylor Swift, the pop princess, endorse Kamala Harris. And to see this, there is this coalition that's coming together. I think there's a call coming up next week or the week after that, which is rural voters with black women for Kamala. I mean, this is the kind of unity that we need in this country.

If we are going to come back together and be the powerful country trying to live up to our ideals that we will never achieve but should always be aspiring to. And we have been divided by this man. I've been writing about that since the Obama era, so it did feel really good for me. She brought up that when she responded to the race question, she started talking about how Donald Trump brings up race to divide this country, and people are tired of it. I have been talking about race as used to divide people since President Obama when, you know, that was obviously what Republicans use.

Donald Trump was the original birther. So it felt full circle to have this coalition is coming together to say, we are not going to believe we're not going to fall for this stuff. We're not going to let you destroy this country and our respect for one another, our humanity. And while I know not everyone is going to come together, and there are a lot of people that have been radicalized by Donald Trump and none of us seem to be coming together to make this a real stand and to hopefully win this election.

I know it's going to be a super close election, but my faith in humanity the day that he won that election, I lost faith in my neighbors. I lost faith in so many people in this country I could not wrap my head around. How could you? How could you elect a man who was on tape admitting to serially sexually assaulting women? Is that what you guys think of us as, you know, to think of women? Kamala Harris and Tim Walz they do bring the joy.

Discussion about this podcast

The Daily
Politicus Pod
The Politicus Pod is the official PoliticusUSA podcast where we dive deep into the news that matters to you.