Taylor Swift’s endorsement is good — but an endorsement from her boyfriend would be better: column

11 September 2024

After global pop star Taylor Swift endorsed 2024 Democratic nominee Kamala Harris Tuesday night, columnist Alex Thomas suggested that while the announcement could matter to the "army of (mostly) young women following her," an endorsement from her boyfriend, NFL star Travis Kelce would matter much more.

In an op-ed published by The Daily Beast, Thomas noted the Kansas City Chiefs tight end's "podcast, New Heights, is number three on the Spotify sports podcast charts," which means that "people are listening to him."

The 'primarily young men" who listen to Kelce's podcast, are what are called "low-information voters," Thomas wrote.

"These are just normal, (mostly) sane guys who don’t feel like tuning into the dumpster-fire-in-a-flood that is the American political ecosystem," he added. "But more, and more, these guys are becoming 'sh—ty-information voters.' They’re watching Jordan Peterson cosplay as a fun guy on Kill Tony; or they’re hearing Aaron Rodgers bashing the covid vaccine on Pat McAffee’s show and these (mostly) sane guys are nodding along. In the process, they are becoming a little less sane."

Perhaps, Thomas emphasized, "Kelce could be the guy to say hey, all this sounds a little nuts, let’s aim for sanity."

Thomas also noted:

I don’t know if a Travis Kelce endorsement would turn into many votes. Probably it won’t. We have this fantasy about celebrity endorsements. As one Swifty critic in the New York Times recently bemoaned, we carry on our impossible hope that celebrities, 'through their sheer persuasive charisma, will save us from the hard work of politics itself.' But what if we make the hard work fun? What if we made it look a little less like work? Again, I’m not arguing that Kelce can swing this thing. He can’t. But a Kelce endorsement stands alone in a media ecosystem that treats Trump as an American everyman selling a rational worldview. And a Kelce endorsement would now sit side-by-side with a Taylor Swift endorsement. These two are America’s it-couple at the moment.

According to a source familiar with the NFL star, "a Harris endorsement from Kelce could be coming 'very soon.'"

They added, "After Taylor revealed her endorsement for Kamala, Travis knew what he had to do. He understood the assignment.'"

Thomas' full op-ed is available at this link (subscription required).

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