Will the most famous ‘childless cat lady’ of them all now declare for Kamala?

If JD Vance’s misogynistic put-down convinces a figure as powerful as Taylor Swift to swing behind the Democrats’ likely presidential nominee, it will be as electorally decisive as Hillary Clinton’s catty comment about ‘deplorables’, says Claire Cohen

Taylor Swift, with one of her three cats, Benjamin Button, on the cover of ‘Time’ magazine (TIME/Reuters)

When Taylor Swift’s cat was photographed luxuriating around her neck on the cover of Time magazine, it confirmed one thing: not only was the singer its most recent “person of the year”, but she was also, without question, queen of the cat ladies.

And, as any fule no, the last thing you do when confronted with a powerful feline, is to yank its tail. Well, the same goes for cat ladies – as JD Vance might be about to discover.

In a resurfaced TV interview from 2021, Donald Trump’s running mate claims that the Democrats are run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” People without children, he went on to say, namechecking Kamala Harris, shouldn’t have a direct stake in the future of America.

Forget Project 2025. The greatest threat to the world’s largest economy is a woman who hasn’t used her womb and has a pet moggy. Heaven forbid! Lock your cat flaps! Quick!

I don’t know about you, but I think it’s more dangerous to have as president a man who once said: “If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”

It might seem like a storm in a GOP tea cup, but Vance is no longer some luvvie author running for the Senate in Ohio. He’s running to become one of the most powerful men in the world, on a platform that he’s already used to oppose abortion and fertility treatment, such as IVF. So these comments matter, even now. Especially now. And I don’t say that just as a currently childless cat lady.

The implication is that women who are childless, childfree or stepmothers, are somehow not “normal” or lesser. Who should be silenced. Who certainly can’t run governments.

Never mind that no US president has ever given birth. Or that Harris is stepmother to her husband Doug Emhoff’s two grown-up children. Or that, if she did have a huge brood of biological children, men like Vance would no doubt be arguing that she should be at home looking after them, or had too many distractions to focus on the Oval Office. Still, at least Harris doesn’t have five children by three different men. Imagine if that sort of person were running for president…

It puts me in mind of the criticism hurled at Swift last month, by a male journalist for Newsweek, who argued that she wasn’t a “wholesome” role model for young women because she is – you guessed it – unmarried and childless. Incidentally, she has three cats, named Meredith Grey, cover star, Benjamin Button and Olivia Benson – reportedly the third-richest pet in the world, worth $97m.

In response to that misogynistic drivel, it’s fair to say that the Swifties came out in force. Social media was overflowing with demands for an apology and my feeds were clogged for days. What would the impact be if all those fans turned out to vote for Harris in November? Could there be a “Swiftie swing” if the most powerful pop star on the planet – who sold out 53 US shows during her current Eras stadium tour, and grossed $1bn – came out for Kamala?

As one Twitter/X user posted in response to the Vance video: “Hell hath no fury like a certain childless cat lady who has yet to endorse a presidential candidate.”

Prior to 2020, Swift had never been drawn on her political leanings for fear of alienating her audience. But she endorsed Joe Biden in the last election, and told her followers that she would be “supporting @KamalaHarris by yelling at the TV a lot” during the vice-presidential debate.

If Swift – who has 283m followers in Instagram alone – were to give Vance the same scathing treatment she usually reserves for the worst of her ex-boyfriends, his “childless cat ladies” comment could prove as toxic as Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” (the name she called Trump supporters) in 2016, and which she has said was a key factor in her losing the election.

It’s ripe for the reclaiming – childless cat lady not being the slur Vance might imagine it is, with Swift purring on her throne to prove it. And, anyway, given the fine mess that catless men with children have made of politics in recent years, perhaps it’s time for the childless cat women to run things for a while, don’t you think?