Politicians have been looking to harness the power of the pop-culture celebrity since, at the very least, 1920, the year Warren G. Harding enjoyed the support of the actors Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, the backing of the Chicago Cubs and a campaign song by Al Jolson (“We’re here to make a fuss!/Mister Harding, you’re the man for us”). Evidence of the actual impact of such endorsements remains mixed — it all seems highly dependent on the circumstances. But the quest to translate celebrity allure into cold, hard votes seems almost irresistible.

This August, Bernie Sanders’s campaign released two separate videos made in conjunction with pop-culture figures. One had Sanders in conversation with a longtime surrogate, the rapper Killer Mike, but it’s the other that drew more attention. In that one, the candidate sits across from the 26-year-old star Cardi B in a nail salon in Detroit. Sanders wears a navy suit and his signature hunch. Cardi is in a mint-green dress, slightly sheer and buttoned up to her neck. (This is Business Cardi; the only added flash comes from her signature acrylic nails.) Everything about the scene reads as a classic television-news interview. Both are miked up, their gray armchairs angled toward one another in front of a tastefully neutral background. The sole difference is that instead of a gray-haired news anchor presiding, it’s Cardi B, the stripper turned reality-television star turned chart-topping rapper, asking questions about the minimum wage and health care.