Hollywood Reporter Wonders: Did Big Celeb Doom Kamala?

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Say, remember when this would be a game-changer in the presidential election? How it would influence young voters to flock to Kamala Harris? ABC literally referred to the Taylor Swift celebrity endorsement as a game-changer, in fact:

How Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Harris could change the election end game

… Because of this, the fact that Swift’s audience is already Democratic-leaning doesn’t mean her endorsement won’t matter — it could be a reason it does matter. Turning out new and low-propensity voters has been a major strategy for Trump since his 2016 campaign, but celebrities like Swift have the potential to provide a boost among a bloc of unlikely voters who are much more inclined to vote for Democrats.

Swift’s endorsement seemed tailored to do this by urging fans to register to vote, and by sharing her reasons for supporting the Harris-Walz ticket, including by mentioning reproductive rights — an issue that’s disproportionately important among younger Americans and women, and among Swift fans, 39 percent of whom listed it as one of the top three issues deciding their vote in the February Change Research poll. It’s also an area that Democrats have a huge advantage on, and candidates’ focus on issues important to young voters could be key to motivating turnout in an election where their votes could matter more than ever.

Swift issued her endorsement after the only debate between Harris and Donald Trump. The media swooned, but our late and great Jazz Shaw pronounced himself skeptical of any real impact, and worried about what it would say if it did impact a presidential election:

The bottom line here is that we seem to be setting a disturbing and potentially damaging precedent if a person like Taylor Swift can go public following a presidential debate and cause even a measurable swing in the polls. We’ll need to wait for a cycle or two before we find out if she had any real impact. Even then, it will be hard to suss out whether the shift was caused by Swift or by Kamala’s (slightly better than disastrous) performance at the debate that did it. But it remains highly worrisome to say the least. An unserious American government elected by unserious pop-music fans is not the shining city on the hill that our allies are awaiting.

Jazz needn’t have worried after all. Despite the hype around Swift’s endorsement, as well as even more robust support from Hollywood A-listers like Beyoncé, Cardi B, Bruce Springsteen, and Lizzo, Harris flopped on Tuesday night. So did the “joy” and “brat” campaign themes. 

In fact, Harris ended up losing ground to young voters in comparison to Joe Biden’s 2020 performance, and not just marginally either with the youngest demo. Let’s compare 2020 and 2024 exit polling:

• 18-24: Biden 65/35 in 2020; Harris 54/42 in 2024
• 25-29: Biden 54/43; Harris 53/45
• 30-39: Biden 51/46; Harris 50/46
• 40-49: Biden 54/44; Trump 50/48

What about unmarried voters? Swift made a big deal about J.D. Vance’s “unmarried cat ladies” in her endorsement. Biden won unmarried voters 58/40 four years ago, but Harris only won them 54/42. Trump won married voters by thirteen points, a six-point improvement in the gap from 2020. 

So much for the Swift endorsement. Kamala’s Kavalcade of Celebrities had so little impact that it has the Hollywood Reporter wondering what happened. Could America’s thirst for celebrity insight into politics finally be drying up?

Yet for all the Gen Z courtship and endorsements from celebrities with legions of young fans, vote tallies showed that Harris significantly lost ground among 18- to 29-year-olds compared to Biden. …

Of course, it’s impossible to know how well Harris might have performed if she hadn’t gotten — and embraced — all these endorsements. It’s always possible they were still a net positive for her campaign despite losing the race by a fair margin.

But in retrospect — and it’s always easy to say such things in retrospect — Trump’s viral stunt “working” at a McDonald’s (which showed him warmly interacting with customers) and sitting for a three-hour chat with podcast king Joe Rogan on Oct. 25 (where the former president came across as relatively normal — at least, by his standards), might have been far more effective than having Hollywood stars onstage and in ads — particularly when trying to court voters in the critical Rust Belt “blue wall” states who might not necessarily associate Hollywood values with their own.

Gee … ya think? Having Cardi B on the campaign in particular seems like an odd choice. It’s not clear what message the heartland took from the singer of “WAP” and its lyrics, “There’s some whores in the house,” but I’d bet it wasn’t down-home family values. And that was about the only part of the lyrics I can quote here. Yeesh.

(Note to self for the future: Do not Google Cardi B song titles like “WAP.”)

In seriousness, it seems unlikely that her celebrity endorsers did any more damage to Kamala than Harris did to herself. But in a populist environment, voters aren’t going to be impressed by endorsements from elites to fellow elites. The reason why Joe Rogan’s podcast with and endorsement for Donald Trump resonate is because Rogan isn’t one of the elites, not in the cultural sense. He’s a regular guy, still in touch with regular Americans, and has the same values as the voters who decided this election. 

Having Beyoncé come on stage to pronounce herself down with the motherhood struggle would only impress fellow elites. No one buys it; it has no real authentic connection to the lives of most Americans. It’s not that they resent Beyoncé’s celebrity or Taylor Swift’s wealth, but it just separates them from the everyday cares of most Americans. Pretending otherwise is inauthentic. 

Harris doesn’t recognize that, because she’s one of the celebrity elites. Her mantra of “I was raised in a middle-class household” rings hollow for that reason. The media is even worse at authenticity than Harris is. Their breathless coverage of Swift’s endorsement was almost an exercise in absurdist comedy. While they marveled at her ability to get voters to register, practically every media outlet missed the Gallup data showing that the electorate had shifted from five points Democrat to three points GOP since the 2020 election. And according to the exit polls, the final gap was R+4.

Celebrities didn’t doom Kamala, but they didn’t help her at all either. If Harris had spent real time with voters and media talking about her own positions, policies, and experiences, that might have helped. But glitz and glamour were all she wanted to sell … and voters simply weren’t buying.