How influential was Susan Sarandon in the 2016 election?

[Sympthsical]

6. Almost none at all

But she gave a famous face and focus for people who really wanted to yell about the Bernie Bros. She just made for a convenient locus for the ire.

I think she rubbed some Boomers the wrong way. She's kind of more their thing. And of course, being a woman, she gets that extra target on her back. Just like how Gillibrand single-handedly brought down Al Franken and no man within 1,000 miles of Washington had any kind of opinions on that.

It's just people needing a villain, and women make for better villains.

No one under 50 was hanging on Susan Sarandon's political opinions. People can't accept that in 2016, people didn't really live with Hillary Clinton the same way anymore. They didn't come up with her. They didn't watch her in the 90s. They only really knew her as probably the most privileged white woman in the world at a time when progressives involved with intersectionality were really interrogating that privilege. She was a big meh for a lot of people. But the people who have been invested in her for decades and strongly identified with her biography just could not - and still cannot - perceive that she was no longer viewed in that same deferential way by younger generations.

There was a generational divide on the hagiography that came to the fore in 2016.

Which is why Sarandon being the villain is really funny. There are so many reasons that election went pear-shaped, and I don't think I'd put an elderly former actress in the top 100 there. Like there was an army of twentysomething men roaming around, "Susan Sarandon said what?! Shit, that's all you had to say!"