Taylor Swift has been at the top of the pop music charts for over 15 years. That's an eternity in show business.
It's no accident. Swift's rise to superstardom was as carefully planned as a military campaign. Her studio recordings, her songwriting, her tours, her public appearances, and her advocacy have all been carefully structured to give her maximum exposure with minimum risk.
Until she endorsed Kamala Harris for president.
Swift transcended pop music to become an American icon. Her Harris endorsement has now squandered that precious admiration and goodwill and, for the first time in her hugely successful career, she has stumbled.
It's not a big stumble, to be sure. But the Harris endorsement has opened the door to criticism and in show business, where everyone is waiting to pounce on any error you make and tear you down, it was a strategic mistake.
"Who's afraid of little old me? Republicans," Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, the Democratic pollster who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, said of Swift. "Her personal ratings have dropped from +2 to -35 among Republicans."
"A good lesson that it's better to be a tortured poet than a tortured figure in the political arena," Horwitt continued.
About 47% of Republicans say they view Swift negatively in a poll conducted days after her presidential endorsement, a sharp uptick from the 26% who reported viewing her negatively in NBC’s Nov. 2023 poll, the last time she was included in the survey. Just 12% of Republicans report positive attitudes toward the singer, down from 28% last year.
Among Democrats, 58% view Swift in a positive light, a slight increase from 53% in 2023. About 26% of independents have a positive attitude toward Swift, a drop from 34% in 2023.
The significant shift from Republican voters has pushed Swift’s overall favorability rating among registered voters lower than last year, decreasing from 40% in 2023 to 33% this year. While 16% had negative feelings about her in 2023, 27% say they do now.
I'm not much for Taylor Swift. She has a nice little voice, and her songs are inoffensive pop fluff. As for her political opinions, if America wants to follow Taylor Swift's recommendations in voting for president, that's fine. It's still a free country and your choice for president can be as uninformed as you wish.
For myself, I'll take the endorsement of Trump of a fabulously wealthy, brilliant, entrepreneurial genius like Elon Musk over Ms. Swift's backing of Harris. Not that Musk could convince me to vote for Trump, but if I were going to be swayed by a celebrity endorsement, I'd take Muk over Swift every day.
Musk playfully joked with Swift after her endorsement of Harris. Swift took a dig at J.D. Vance in her endorsement, signing it“Childless Cat Lady" referencing Vance's remarks about some women in power. Musk shot back, "Fine Taylor...you win...I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life."
The former editor of Time Magazine, Susanna Schrobsdorff, wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post, saying "It’s creepy to talk about impregnating people you don’t really know." It would be "creepy" if Musk was serious. What's truly "creepy" is the author being the only person on the planet who would actually take that jest seriously. But Ms. Schrobsdorff kept digging.
But Musk’s language – and statements by both former president Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance — represent a dangerous thread that runs deep in this presidential campaign: the unnamed but ever-present one in which right-wing men are fighting to restore old sexual hierarchies and reassert their control of women’s bodies and priorities. The same sort of guys who fear they will be “replaced” by migrants also fear that smart, capable and, yes, sometimes childless women will end the sweet deal they have long had as so-called alpha males.
Is that what Trump supporters are fighting for? Shame on them. Now, get back in the kitchen, Ms. Schrobbsdorff, and please wear that nice, revealing nightie I like so much when you come to bed.
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