10 November 14 - 20, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Harris Lost the Pop Culture War Swift, Beyoncé and Cuban couldn’t help a bad strategy. BY GARRETT GRAVLEY L iberals and Democrats ate a dou- ble-decker shit sandwich on Tuesday night, and the truth and reconciliation committee is still deliberating on what went wrong. Maybe Vice President Kamala Harris will follow in Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s footsteps and write a tell-all book explaining how it all happened, but before the dust set- tles, we would be remiss not to point out how poorly Harris weaponized pop culture. For one thing, Harris made a fatal mis- take by not appearing on the No. 1 podcast in the world, The Joe Rogan Experience. This was a possibility for a moment, according to Rogan, who tweeted on Oct. 28, “They of- fered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour. I strongly feel the best way to do it is in the studio in Austin. My sincere wish is to just have a nice conversation and get to know her as a human being. I really hope we can make it happen.” It would have been advantageous for Harris to make that trek and devote three hours to the interview. Trump did, and as of last Thursday, the video of that interview has 46 million hits on YouTube. Harris did an hour-long interview with Howard Stern, and that video has only 1.8 million views. It’s hard to imagine that the Stern inter- view earned Harris any converts. Stern had a dedicated following of young men back in the 1990s. Rogan has a dedicated following of young men now, and they are notoriously independent politically. And love him or hate him, Rogan is putty in the hands of any- one he interviews; if Harris had done it right, Rogan would have been singing her praises, softening the blow of his endorse- ment of Trump. Instead, the Harris campaign suggested Rogan needed her more than she needed him. So she decided not to fly to Austin. But she wasn’t too busy to host a Houston rally that same week with Beyoncé and Wil- lie Nelson. Those celebrated Texas icons didn’t make a dent in Texas’ election results. Indeed, it appears that Harris’ momen- tum had a meteoric fall from grace in the world of pop culture. Sure, Charli XCX’s declaration that “Kamala IS Brat” was quite a peacock feather in her cap, and Taylor Swift’s endorsement after the debate with Trump appeared to have an impact. Otherwise, the endorsements came mostly from the usual suspects: George Clooney, Lady Gaga, Bruce Springsteen and Oprah Winfrey, among others. These celeb- rities have offered presidential endorse- ments for decades and have been nothing if not predictable about it. That many of them are A-listers is beside the point: this race came down to working-class people in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, and it’s hard to imagine that a sanitation worker in Bensalem Township would have made the ideological leap to Harris even if that person were a fan of any of these celebrities. It wasn’t just the A-listers, either: Harris rubbed elbows with has-beens and laugh- ingstocks such as Katy Perry and Lance Bass. (If you’re in the market for some good ol’ cringe, watch Harris and Bass saying “Bye. Bye. Bye.” to Trump.) Harris’ media game was not completely out of touch. She appeared on one of the largest podcasts today (Call Her Daddy), and Mark Cuban was a valuable endorsement because of his Pittsburgh origins and appeal to steadfast capitalists. For different reasons, the same value can be attributed to rappers Eminem and Megan Thee Stallion. But the pop culture war was ultimately lost to Trump, who came with a larger ce- lebrity arsenal this time around. Among his quiver were Caitlyn Jenner, Jake Paul, Am- ber Rose, Brett Favre and Mike Tyson. The days of Trump’s only music bona fi- des coming from Kid Rock and Ted Nugent are over, as he scored endorsements from rappers Lil Wayne, Kodak Black, Swae Lee, Fivio Foreign, Chief Keef and 42 Dugg. (The first two received pardons from Trump.) His offensive Puerto Rico comment over- shadowed a Trump campaign event, but co- median Tony Hinchliffe has one of the largest podcasts in the country (Kill Tony), and his endorsement of Trump no doubt carried some weight. Ditto for another jug- gernaut podcast, This Past Weekend w/Theo Von, which hosted Trump two months ago. Meanwhile, Harris couldn’t even make a dent in the declining radio market. Shortly before the election, she appeared for a town hall on The Breakfast Club, a show that draws only 4 million terrestrial listeners in 80 syndication markets — peanuts com- pared with the listenership of conservative talk radio hosts. Voters have grown accustomed to the same old celebrities endorsing the nominee of their respective party, even if they like those celebrities. Democrats were too smug with their pop cultural hegemony and too busy flaunting their celebrity laurels to notice some celebrity deflections to Trump. Pod- casts are the prevailing medium in today’s world, and Trump ultimately outperformed Harris on this front while Harris treaded wa- ter on Howard Stern’s show like it was 1998. Democrats need to adapt to today’s pop culture and reach people where they are now, not where they once were. Kamala may be Brat, but as Charli XCX herself declared, Brat Summer is over forever. The question remains whether celebrity endorsements make a difference. A 2012 arti- cle by economists Craig Garthwaite and Timo- thy J. Moore in The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization found that Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama affected 1 mil- lion votes in the 2008 Democratic primary. A more recent study by political scientists David J. Jackson, Anthony Nownes and Thomas Norton for Fordham University di- vided surveyed participants into two groups. One was asked, “How do you feel about the following statement? Parents and teachers should have an equal say in deciding which books to include in high school libraries,” and the other was asked, “Taylor Swift be- lieves that parents and teachers should have an equal say in deciding which books to in- clude in high school libraries. How do you feel about this?” The Swiftie group was more likely to be either neutral or in agreement than the non- Swiftie group, the study found. But Swift is not the only pop leviathan with a political impact. Variety reported on Tuesday that Sabrina Carpenter registered more than 35,000 people to vote during her 2024 tour through her partnership with HeadCount, shattering previous records. So, yes, it makes a difference. ▼ Culture Gage Skidmore Donald Trump can thank Joe Rogan and his media strategist for his win.
