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September 11, 2024
How Kamala Harris Liberated Taylor Swift
The megastar thought she could hurt Hillary Clinton by endorsing her in 2016. Now, she’s overcome her fear. May we all do the same.
A fan of musician Taylor Swift on the convention floor during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
(Francis Chung / Politico via AP Images)
This made me cry.
As we all know, Taylor Swift endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris after her debate tour de force Tuesday night. In its report on the endorsement, The New York Times pointed out that Swift has become more politically involved in recent election cycles, reminding us that Swift didn’t endorse Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“Swift…shared concerns that public criticism of her at the time would be unfairly applied to Ms. Clinton as well,” the Times reported, going on to quote Swift:
“The summer before that election, all people were saying was, ‘She’s calculated. She’s manipulative. She’s not what she seems. She’s a snake. She’s a liar.’ These are the same exact insults people were hurling at Hillary. Would I be an endorsement or would I be a liability?”
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Swift was 26 at the time. Why did she have to think through misogynistic equations like that? I mean, I know why I do. I just thought it would be better by now (she and my daughter are almost exactly the same age).
But maybe it finally did just get better.
I felt so much relief last night and this morning too. Kamala Harris won the debate with Donald Trump overwhelmingly. She did almost everything right. When you’re a woman, you internalize that feeling that “she might fuck it up for all of us.” Or in some situations, that you might do the same thing.
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Harris did not.
It was a master class in being a woman fully inhabiting your own… I was gonna say space, but also face. That smiling, glaring, mocking, all-knowing, also beautiful face. Harris was not afraid to be herself.
Master GOP manipulator Frank Luntz got rightfully dragged on social media for one of the dumbest posts I’ve ever seen: “If she wants to win, Harris needs to train her face not to respond. It feeds into a female stereotype and, more importantly, risks offending undecided voters.”
Frank, you need to train your brain to respond logically, without your ingrained misogyny. ABC wouldn’t accede to her request to keep both candidates mics on, so Harris kept her face on. And we saw everything she was thinking.
There is a take out there, that Harris is surpassing Hillary Clinton by not emphasizing her gender. There’s no more “I’m with her” or talk about “the highest, hardest glass ceiling.” There are too many examples of this argument for me to link to; I saw Ashley Parker of The Washington Post go on about this approvingly on MSNBC Tuesday.
It kind of makes me sick.
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But maybe our first female vice president doesn’t have to make that case. After all, thousands of her supporters are doing that for her. Maybe she knows we internalized that brutal, unexpected loss in 2016 (when Harris won her California Senate seat, and by her own account, inhaled a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos). Maybe we don’t need to talk anymore about whether we were at the Javits Center that awful night.
When your walk-on song is Beyoncé’s “Freedom,” maybe you realize you don’t have to make a big deal about your gender, or your race. Nobody’s gonna miss it. Suddenly, Taylor Swift feels free to endorse you—unburdened by what has been, no longer worried that she might hurt you with the baggage she carries. Because she can let go of it. And so can we.
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Onwards,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation
Joan Walsh
Joan Walsh, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, is a coproducer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show and the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America. Her new book (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power and Wealth In America.