Nine months from election day, Joe Biden’s re-election campaign must be getting increasingly exasperated. The US economy’s rebound from the pandemic is the envy of the world, but consumers remain gloomy. Job numbers are up and inflation is down, but the president has received scant credit. Attempts to take a firm line with Israel, meanwhile, have done nothing to stem heavy criticism from young voters. It can come as no surprise that Donald Trump leads in the latest polls of all key battleground states.

With age-old strategies thus far failing to deliver, and an increasing sense in some quarters that it may be “vibes” as much as policy that will swing the outcome this year, the campaign has set its sights on another way to win votes: an endorsement by global pop megastar Taylor Swift.

The case for courting Swift is obvious. A figure of enormous cultural significance who has endorsed Democratic candidates before, the 34-year-old is coming off the back of a tour so huge that it had a measurable impact on the US economy. In recent months, her romance with one of the star players in next weekend’s Super Bowl has helped ensure that her presence is now felt in almost every corner of American culture.