Taylor Swift’s Real Political Power Lies With Her Fans. Just Look at Swifties 4 Kamala.
October 2, 2024
Glamour – Sam Reed
Emerald Medrano was sitting on the couch in his parents’ house in El Paso, Texas, when the news broke: Joe Biden would no longer be seeking reelection. In the president’s statement—snippets of which flashed across the Medrano family’s muted TV—Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place in the 2024 presidential race.
Medrano, a 22-year-old college senior, had been in the middle of texting his sister about grad school applications when he looked up at the screen. Like many Americans, he was astounded. It had really, actually happened. It was so Joever.
“I feel like I saw it coming, but I didn’t,” he recalls of Biden’s historic decision to step away from the race. In shock, he sought an outlet for all his frenetic energy. “I felt like I had to do something, so I just hopped on Twitter and made the tweet.”
That tweet—which came from his handle @hushmirrorball, a reference to Taylor Swift’s 2020 folklore track—was shared on July 21, a little over an hour after Biden’s bombshell announcement. “I feel like us U.S swifties should mass organize and help campaign for Kamala Harris and spread how horrendous project 2025 would be to help get people’s butts down to the polls in November,” Medrano wrote. “Like if we don’t want democracy to end we really need to move and push blue votes.”
Photo: Glamour Media