Despite building one of the biggest brands in pop music and literally being the voice of the millennial generation, Taylor Swift’s folly may be her lack of political activism throughout her career.
In a Daily Beast column from Erin Gloria Ryan, Swift is getting outsmarted by her arch-nemesis Katy Perry in the political domain. How so? Perry has the most powerful woman in politics and possibly the next leader of the free world in her corner, Hillary Clinton.
Perry’s been known for her outspoken support for Secretary Clinton over the course of the 2016 presidential election, but as Ryan points out, she may have endorsed her to one-up Swift in their recent feud.
“While it was a gamble at the time,” Ryan writes. “Katy Perry jumping aboard Hillary Clinton’s bandwagon just months after Taylor Swift concluded her Bad Blood Squad tour could, whether intentional or not, prove to be a checkmate in the greatest white girl pop star feud of this generation.”
Ryan continued, “No matter what Swift did next, it would put her in the loser column. She couldn’t endorse Hillary Clinton shortly after Katy Perry without becoming the pop star with the second-highest seniority in the Clinton camp. She couldn’t endorse another candidate on the liberal side of things without risking being a loser after the dust settled on the primary contests.”
It also goes without saying that Swift couldn’t have endorsed any of the 17 Republican candidates without alienating a majority of her fans, especially if she backed Trump.
Swift has been so adamantly apolitical that even after the 2005 tape of Trump saying “grab them by the pussy” leaked, she said nothing.
It’s possible that this is all hype and that Swift and Perry are actually cool with each other now, but that might not last after the media starts fawning over the budding relationship between Clinton and Perry, assuming Hillary wins the election.
Swift will look back on this election as the biggest missed opportunity to one-up her rival, so in the meantime, all she can hope for is a Trump victory.
