The 2024 presidential election is, as best as anyone can tell from the inexact art of polling, essentially a toss-up. No one knows who is going to win on Tuesday (and we probably won’t know for a while afterwards, for that matter). In lieu of any definitive edge in numbers, both prognosticators and casual observers are resorting to vibes – that amorphous, indefinable and personal sense of who has the momentum, where the energy is shifting, what feels true. And for the candidates, one guaranteed way to assert a vibe – albeit maybe not the one they intended – is to recruit arguably the defining element of modern American politics: celebrity.
In the past two weeks alone, both Trump and Harris have assembled their respective famous avengers (including in Harris’s case, the actual Avengers), to stump for their campaign. Harris, unsurprisingly, boasts far more and higher-profile endorsements, including but not limited to: Taylor Swift, LeBron James, George Clooney, Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts, Marc Anthony, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tyler Perry, Usher, Lizzo, Eminem and the Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny, who released a video this week rebuking the racist comments made by the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe during Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden. During the final weeks of the campaign, Harris was joined on the trail by Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Maggie Rogers, Willie Nelson, Jennifer Lopez and Oprah, among others.
