President Biden’s approval ratings are in the toilet and polls show him losing to likely GOP opponent, former President Donald Trump, as young voters turn their backs on the incumbent Democrat.
Mr. Biden’s campaign is eyeing mega-pop star Taylor Swift for help.
They want Ms. Swift to endorse him, as she did in 2020. Ms. Swift’s Eras Tour has drawn as many as 71,000 fans to a single show and is the highest grossing music tour of all time. His campaign could send him to visit during her tour for her 2024 endorsement.
The plan, supposedly hatched by Biden campaign aides and perhaps, they say, only in jest, has provoked wild conspiracy theories and anger among Republicans.
For example, some of the conspiracy theorists predict Ms. Swift will announce her endorsement after a rigged Super Bowl LVIII delivers a victory to the Kansas City Chiefs and Ms. Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce, the team’s tight end.
“I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall,” former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who has endorsed Mr. Trump, posted on X. “Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”
Ms. Swift has lashed out at Mr. Trump in the past, once accusing him on social media of “stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency.”
She could be a powerful anti-Trump messenger for Mr. Biden in the 2024 race. She has 279 million followers on Instagram and 95 million followers on X.
But celebrity endorsements don’t always turn into big wins for the endorsee, not even those from Ms. Swift.
She waded into the 2018 midterm elections in her home state of Tennessee, backing Democrat and former Gov. Phil Bredesen over GOP Rep. Marsha Blackburn in the Senate race. She posted her opposition to Ms. Blackburn in a post on Instagram, explaining that the voting record of Ms. Blackburn, a pro-Trump conservative, “appalls and terrifies me.”
The pop star urged those who have turned 18 to register to vote and provided information on how to sign up.
Any hope that she could flip the state’s longtime GOP-held Senate seat to the Democrats, however, quickly evaporated.
Despite an initial spike in voter registrations among young people following her Instagram post, which got 2.2 million likes, Ms. Blackburn won with 55%, beating Mr. Bredesen by 11 points.
Now even more popular, Ms. Swift, who was just named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, could influence the outcome of what is shaping up to be another close presidential election if she endorses Mr. Biden, some analysts believe.
“Her best use would be to get young people to register to vote. She could have an impact with that,” said pollster Ron Faucheux.
In September, Ms. Swift took to Instagram to again urge young people to register to vote. The nonpartisan website Vote.org, which Ms. Swift included in her post, said it received more than 35,000 new registrations that day, the biggest single-day sign-up since 2020.
The polls show a significant drop in support for Mr. Biden from the 2020 election, when he won voters ages 18-29 by 25 points, according to exit polling.
The incumbent president has been struggling to keep the support of young voters, many of whom oppose U.S. support of Israel’s war against the terrorist group Hamas.
