Taylor Swift Just Did Something She's Never Done Before
For the first time in her very public life, Taylor Swift has openly endorsed a presidential candidate. Just hours before the vice presidential debate on Wednesday evening, Swift took to social media to announce her intentions to vote for Joe Biden. Her announcement came in the form of a photo of herself holding cookies with "Biden Harris 2020" printed across them as well as the cover of V Magazine's new "The Thought Leaders Issue," which features the singer with the word "Vote" superimposed over her familiar face (CBS News).
"I spoke to @vmagazine about why I'll be voting for Joe Biden for president," she wrote on social media. "So apt that it's come out on the night of the VP debate. Gonna be watching and supporting @KamalaHarris by yelling at the tv a lot. And I also have custom cookies." The move may come a something of a surprise for fans who know she has never before formally supported or denounced a presidential candidate. However, anyone who watched her recent Netflix documentary, Miss Americana, would likely find her decision to be vocal about politics less surprising.
Taylor Swift has been slowly growing more comfortable vocalizing her politics
In the documentary, Swift is enraged looking back at her years of silence and how she was applauded for it, saying: ""It was wild. I said, 'I'm a 22-year-old girl — people don't want to hear what I have to say about politics.' And people would just be like, 'Yeahhhhh!" And even while this grated on her, she constantly thought of the incredible backlash hurled at fellow country music sensation Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks when she spoke out against then-President Bush. "I registered it — that you're always one comment away from being done being able to make music," she said (via Variety).
In the film, we see Swift struggle between her commitment to be "polite no matter what" and her rage at watching what she considered to be injustices carried out by Republican politicians. In 2018, her political side wins the battle, and we see Swift come out of the political closet to endorse Democrats during the midterm elections in her home state of Tennessee. We see Swift's final moment of transformation from polite entertainer to activist. "I can't see another commercial [with] her disguising these policies behind the words 'Tennessee Christian values.' I live in Tennessee," she says. "I am Christian. That's not what we stand for." She says she regrets not speaking out against Trump two years earlier, "but I can't change that," she says. "I need to be on the right side of history."
Taylor Swift makes a clear statement to V Magazine
Via Twitter, V Magazine shared a link to a preview of Swift's interview in which she says, "The change we need most is to elect a president who recognizes that people of color deserve to feel safe and represented, that women deserve the right to choose what happens to their bodies, and that the LGBTQIA+ community deserves to be acknowledged and included." She also stresses that "a government that takes global health risks seriously and puts the lives of its people first...the only way we can begin to make things better is to choose leaders who are willing to face these issues and find ways to work through them."
She goes on to make her formal endorsement of the Biden/Harris ticket: "I will proudly vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in this year's presidential election. Under their leadership, I believe America has a chance to start the healing process it so desperately needs."