Swiftie Nation

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

Forget the debate, the poll numbers, the talking heads on TV or the flame wars on social media. The biggest bombshell coming out of political circles came around 10 p.m. last Tuesday night.

Taylor Swift officially endorsed Kamala Harris for president!

I’ll give you a minute to pick your jaw up off the floor…

So, it wasn’t really a shock to hear that Taylor Swift would be voting for Harris in November, but it’s not an insignificant thing either. Here in the age of the “Influencer,” there are few folks who can boast of the influence that the singer/songwriter has over millions of her followers.

Long before the endorsement, and even long before the election, Swift has used her social media reach to encourage people to vote — especially those in her generation and younger (she’s 34 years old, by the way, so she’s a year too young to actually

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run for president herself — but the data is there to show that when she says it’s important to vote, people listen, including the 400,000 people who registered to vote in the hours following the endorsement Tuesday night.

Now, make no mistake, that doesn’t mean 400,000 more votes for Kamala Harris — or at least no necessarily. It could be that a significant number of people heard that and went, “Oh no, I better register to make sure Trump gets my support!” Remember that Swift started at a country singer and the South is pretty big into the whole MAGA deal.

But here’s the deal: You should not vote for Kamala Harris because Taylor Swift told you to. In fact, you should not vote for anyone simply because someone told you to. Look, I’d say 40% of voters are dead set voting for Donald Trump even if he blew his nose on the American flag, and 40% of voters are voting “blue” even if the ticket is Ronald McDonald and The Hamburglar. But those 20% of undecided?

They are up for grabs and a person could do much worse than get a thumbs up from someone like Taylor Swift.

And yeah, she might lose some fans and some money over the endorsement, but she is a billionaire, so I think she will be just fine.

And she’s doing OK for a childless cat lady…