Shake It Up, Taylor Swift, Shake It Up

Written By: - Date published: 7:29 am, October 10th, 2018 - 36 comments
Categories: Donald Trump, International, music, us politics - Tags:

There is a long a proud history of musicians adding their weight to the Democratic cause in the United States, but this one is about as on-message as you can get.

Taylor Swift is amplifying to 100 decibels the great feminist revival occurring right now, by siding very strongly with Democrat candidates in the solid Republican state of Tennessee, and against Republican candidates.

Now, if you make your living out of being popular in a fiercely divided country, it takes a whole bunch to put half of that at risk by choosing one political side or the other.

Taylor Swift’s text has already got a million hits and will probably get a million more. It is a really serious tilt to the mid-term elections in a state that might not otherwise have been in play.

The gustiness of this is if the Democratic candidates that she is promoting lose, she will be laughed at and she will lose a lot of fans and a lot of income.

And if the candidates she supports win, the story will not be hers but will be about the new candidate and the policy positions to be contested.

There’s no upside to her for this move. She’s not like Bruce Springsteen who has been Democrat since he was born wearing jeans and a red-checked shirt. This is brand-altering and career-altering for her.

But Taylor Swift has some of the largest and most devoted followers on the planet, and my bet is most of them are female. Right now, female is political hot sauce.

Her issues are hers to promote, and she does so without denigrating anyone and by recommending people inform themselves about their own choices in their own way. It’s tailored, and the reaction is swift.

All power to her, and may it encourage more to do the same.

taylorswift

I’m writing this post about the upcoming midterm elections on November 6th, in which I’ll be voting in the state of Tennessee. In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now. I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country. I believe in the fight for LGBTQ rights, and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG. I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening and prevalent.

I cannot vote for someone who will not be willing to fight for dignity for ALL Americans, no matter their skin color, gender or who they love. Running for Senate in the state of Tennessee is a woman named Marsha Blackburn. As much as I have in the past and would like to continue voting for women in office, I cannot support Marsha Blackburn. Her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me. She voted against equal pay for women. She voted against the Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which attempts to protect women from domestic violence, stalking, and date rape. She believes businesses have a right to refuse service to gay couples. She also believes they should not have the right to marry. These are not MY Tennessee values. I will be voting for Phil Bredesen for Senate and Jim Cooper for House of Representatives. Please, please educate yourself on the candidates running in your state and vote based on who most closely represents your values. For a lot of us, we may never find a candidate or party with whom we agree 100% on every issue, but we have to vote anyway.

So many intelligent, thoughtful, self-possessed people have turned 18 in the past two years and now have the right and privilege to make their vote count. But first you need to register, which is quick and easy to do. October 9th is the LAST DAY to register to vote in the state of TN. Go to vote.org and you can find all the info. Happy Voting! 🗳😃🌈

36 comments on “Shake It Up, Taylor Swift, Shake It Up ”

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  1. Sanctuary 1
    10 October 2018 at 7:41 am

    Go Tay-tay! I hope her BFF Lorde has had a quiet word in her shell-like to help her along the road.

    Soon Trump supporters with only be left with Kanye, some country and western and those horrible Christian rock bands singing excruciatingly corny Brooke Frazer songs that they can safely listen to without fear of a Godless liberal communist trying to seduce them via music.

  2. Chris T 2
    10 October 2018 at 7:56 am

    “There’s no upside to her for this move. She’s not like Bruce Springsteen who has been Democrat since he was born wearing jeans and a red-checked shirt. This is brand-altering and career-altering for her.”

    I’ll take a wild stab in the dark and guess she might have recently brought out an album.

    • Nick 2.1
      10 October 2018 at 8:41 am

      Reading her statement, I don’t think it’s got to do with album sales Christy.

    • SHG 2.2
      10 October 2018 at 1:00 pm

      She just finished the midwest-south leg of her US tour and won’t be back for a while. She waited until all the gate takings were in for the red states before making this statement.

      #shot

      • Ad 2.2.1
        10 October 2018 at 4:52 pm

        I don’t think anyone’s accusing her of being commercially stupid.
        Whatever the downstream cost to her, she still gets to shake it up.

    • Phil 2.3
      10 October 2018 at 1:04 pm

      I’ll take a wild stab in the dark and guess she might have recently brought out an album.

      I’m furious at you for making me google her discography now…

      Swift used to release albums like clockwork – every second year in the US-fall from ’06 to ’14. Then she took three years to release Reputation (her most recent) in the US-fall of ’17.

      So, no. She hasn’t just released or is about to release another album. This isn’t about sales in the slightest.

  3. Incognito 3
    10 October 2018 at 8:34 am

    Yes, good on her and POTUS now likes her 25% less bigly, which means he actually thought about it for a moment.

  5. Morrissey 5
    10 October 2018 at 8:58 am

    …a proud history of musicians adding their weight to the Democratic cause in the United States…

    ?????

    “Proud”?

    One of the grimmest and most embarrassing moments in Stevie Wonder’s career was his inane chanting of “Bar-ack O-baaaaa-ma!” in front of thousands of placard-waving, doe-eyed Kool Aid drinkers in 2008. It’s understandable, I guess, that he and a whole lot of other naïve and poorly read celebrities—Oprah, Tommy Hilfiger, Kevin Spacey, Will Smith. Harvey Weinstein— brought in to Obama’s vacuous and cynical “hope and change” bullshit in 2008.

    But there was no excuse whatsoever for this fool to STILL be shilling for the Great Impostor four years and tens of thousands of dead Syrians, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghanistanis and Yemenis later….

  6. esoteric pineapples 6
    10 October 2018 at 9:00 am

  7. Ad 7
    10 October 2018 at 9:51 am

    And here is Taylor Swift’s actual political effect so far: a massive upswing in voter registrations in Tennessee:

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=12139942

    As of noon Tuesday, less than 48 hours after Swift’s post, more than 169,000 new people had registered on the site to vote, spokeswoman Kamari Guthrie told The Washington Post on Tuesday.

    That put the number of new voters registered on the site in October, to date, at 240,329. By comparison, the group said 56,669 new voters registered in August and 190,178 registered in September. In October 2016, there were 405,149 new registrations on Vote.org for the whole month.

    Among the 169,000 new registrations since Sunday, more than half were by those ages 18 to 29.

    “One thing is clear, we’re seeing a massive surge in the 18-24 and 25-29 voters, which is her fan demographic. The 18-24 number almost doubled overnight,” Guthrie said. “Taylor Swift’s visibility on this issue is driving a lot of coverage of voter registration and it’s reaching many of her fans who would not otherwise be following news like this.”

    Great to see this star power used to such public service-spirited effect.

  8. SPC 8
    10 October 2018 at 11:07 am

    A well constructed argument in defence of the equal citizenship of Americans, when this is under attack by the GOP using divide and conquer politics to enable establishing a regime (and call it what it is, Christian dominionism) over America via control of the Supreme Court.

  9. joe90 9
    10 October 2018 at 1:22 pm

    Mr Hoarse is always right.

    In retrospect, we all probably shoulda known Taylor and Kanye would someday be fighting for control of our democracy.— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) October 10, 2018

  10. Cinny 10
    10 October 2018 at 5:03 pm

    Awesome, if she is helping to drive voter up registrations, then bloody good on that girl.

    • Humma 10.1
      10 October 2018 at 5:44 pm

      Yeah driving up Republican voters to register it seems. Latest poll has Blackburn up by 17.
      Bit ironic is it not that Swift is supporting the 80 year old white guy against a woman. Go the patriarchy.

  12. Amanda Atkinson 12
    11 October 2018 at 3:53 pm

    Who cares what celebs think, they think what they say matters …. they don’t have a friggin clue what the real world is like, they only get 1 vote like everyone else …

    … and, as always, the silence about the plight of USA’s ‘first people’ is deafening.

    The 1 single group of people in the USA who deserve the most attention, because they were shafted the most and are still getting shafted the most, get no attention.