How Taylor Swift could swing the midterm elections

“Running for Senate in the state of Tennessee is a woman named Marsha Blackburn,” she continued. “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 appals and terrifies me. She voted against equal pay for women. She voted against the Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. 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.” She ended by directing fans to register on Vote.org. The post has been liked more than 2 million times.

The image she used was quintessentially “Brand Taylor”: a black and white Polaroid, Swift in a checked shirt, heavy fringe tickling her brows, it chimed with those taken to promote her 2014 album, 1989. But the message was brand new; in fact, it was seismic. Swift — who has been famous since she was 16, who has 112 million followers on Instagram, and 84 million on Twitter, and who has sold more than 40 million albums to a fanbase largely of girls and women in their teens and 20s — has never publicly spoken about her politics. Notably, during the merciless Trump/Clinton election campaign, she copped out with aplomb, sharing a picture of herself in a queue at a polling station, with the limp caption: “Today is the day. Go out and vote”.

For this refusal to play partisan, Swift has been accused of cynical marketeering; of hypocrisy and cowardice; of having no principles except capitalism; of being a sham feminist, and worst of all, of being Team Trump.

To be fair, this absolutism glosses over some of Swift’s biography. No, she has never nailed her colours — or mirrored sequins — to either Republican or Democrat masts before, although she did take a sexual harasser to court — and won — and in the wake of the Parkland school shooting in Florida, in March, she came out in favour of gun control. In 2008, she implied her support for Barack Obama in an interview with Rolling Stone .

“I’ve never seen this country so happy about a political decision in my entire time of being alive. I’m so glad this was my first election.” Swift has never been political, but there is evidence she was politicised.

Nonetheless, this is the first time she has weaponised her influence unambiguously. The post was a straightforward call to arms, and it does matter — like it or not, there’s an entire generation who’d rather hear it from Taylor Swift than anywhere, or anyone, else.

While it is strictly impossible to quantify what difference her Instagram declaration has made, in the first 48 hours after she shared the post, Vote.org tallied 102,000 new registrations by people under 30 — which if it’s a coincidence, is a happy one. Also, the maelstrom around her Instagram post is likely to have added more names to the electoral roll in states across the US.

Plus, in the era of public displays of political intent, of wearing black to awards ceremonies, or removing your high heels as some of Hollywood’s bravest women did this week at a gala event to mark a year since #MeToo began, Swift’s act elevates her to the status of straight-talker with a clear, palpable objective. Voting, after all, changes governments, which in turn shape the policies that determine what women do with their bodies, if high-school pupils can take guns to school, and whether civil liberties are protected or savaged.

On the other hand, it’s just an Instagram post. If this is Taylor versus Trump — silver sequins versus the gold-plated sham opulence of Mar-a-Lago — then the US President is in a strong position as the mid-terms roll up. He’s just got his fratboy Brett Kavanaugh into the Supreme Court; the US economy is (for now) buoyant. Despite promises of a Democratic “Blue Wave” on polling day, many Republicans feel as confident of a “Brett Bump”, hoping the party’s chance to hold the Senate and the House of Representatives will be fortified by a new cohort, inspired by Kavanaugh’s overwrought performance of misogyny and privilege, to register and duly vote Republican on November.

Still, in an era of celebrity presidents, campaigns can start out as Instagram posts — or, as Trump’s legend runs, revenge against Obama’s jokes at the Correspondents Dinner — and end up in the Oval Office.

Inevitably, social media has resounded with calls of “Swift for President”; others observed we had wronged her.

As New York Times journalist and writer on Pod Save America, Kashana Cauley quipped: “Someone should probably start a support group for those of us who originally picked the wrong side of the Kanye/Taylor Swift debate.”

The artist formerly known as Kanye — now “Ye” — and Swift’s long-time foe, is currently wearing a Make America Great Again cap in private jets and lunching in the West Wing with Trump. Indeed — perhaps that posturing by her old enemy that was the final straw — look what you made her do.