Well, it’s official, folks: Taylor Swift has finally endorsed Kamala Harris for President. The highly coveted endorsement, which President Biden couldn’t secure when he was running in this year’s presidential race, went to the Vice President following her debate with Donald Trump last night (10 September).

After Trump droned on about migrants eating cats and dogs and “transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prisons”, while consistently being fact-checked by the debate’s hosts, Swift saw it as a perfect time to denounce the former President. In her endorsement, the award-winning singer-songwriter addressed the AI-generated images that Trump shared, falsely depicting her endorsing his campaign.

“It really conjured up my fears around AI and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” she wrote. “It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election.” 

While Swift has been widely – and loudly – criticised for her silence around important political issues, she has been open about her support of the Democratic Party in the past. She endorsed Tennessee’s Democrats in a senate race against Republican candidate Marsha Blackburn and called out Trump before the 2020 presidential election.

Swift’s endorsement of Harris is a liberal feminist’s wet dream. In her endorsement, she listed the ways Harris and Walz champion women’s rights, such as the right to an abortion and IVF, and LGBTQ+ issues. When signing off on the statement, she wrote, “With love and hope, Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady”, which is a dig at the Republican vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance, calling leading Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies”.

Liberals have applauded Swift for her dig at Vance – and it must be said that there is something interesting, even arguably powerful, about Swift proudly calling herself a childless cat lady in the face of Republicans who are fearful of the alleged “decline” of the white birth rate and anxiety around white women not having babies. In the face of patriarchal traditionalists, she is their worst nightmare.

But it’s challenging to find pride in her statement or even believe what she purports about Harris and Walz campaigning for women’s rights when the Vice President refuses to ban fracking, which causes air, water and noise pollution – and is already killing people in the US. It’s difficult to read her endorsement, which suggests that Harris is the hope America needs when the Vice President proudly declares that she and Walz are gun owners, days after the horrific school shooting in Georgia where two students and two teachers were killed (there have already been 385 mass shootings in America this year, at time of writing). Furthermore, it’s almost unbearable to read testimonies about Harris and Walz defending women’s rights while they actively support the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of Israel. Just yesterday (10 September), an Israeli strike on a refugee camp in al-Mawasi, southern Gaza, killed 40 people.

Swift’s endorsement of Harris makes sense. The Democratic Presidential Nominee is seen as the lesser of two evils, and a Trump presidency is something nobody wants to see again. But we so desperately need to expand our political imagination and not settle for one genocide enabler to the other. We deserve better, and acknowledging that shouldn’t make us hostile towards each other as it often does during election season. But if that isn’t something you want to do, you can order your Harris-Walz friendship bracelets, inspired by Swift, on their campaign page here.