How influential is old money in the US?

There are a few families: Bush, Kennedy, Clintons who were/are involved in politics and have fairly large amounts of wealth. I guess they can be considered "American aristocrats" there are also the Rockefellers who are still wealthy and whose wealth has survived but is split up across many members and many genarations. In the future there may be the Trump family. I can't think of anyone like the Rothchilds in the US. The Kennedy family is probably the closest thing we have to aristocrats.

Do the Kardashians count?

The Rothschilds conspiracy gets me every time. If there is something like that in the US, I guess it's been hidden really well. 

Clinton's are not old money.  Old money is very very powerful in the usa.  If you don't know...well..you don't know.  Certain last names have more power and influence.

Haha, nah. Say your great grandfather was #329 on the forbes 400 list in 1985 with 200 million... 

He probably had four children, who had four children, who had four children. You claim is roughly 3.125 million in 1985 dollars. Say its roughly 5x over the years (optimistic to be honest, considering a lot of money is donated, used up, etc.)... your claim is about 16 million. Your grandfather is probably still alive and is living on the money. Have to wait another 30 years minimum before your parents die to get that money.

Not bad, but these families don't have any influence these days. Family name could land you a top job or university, but nothing more asides from that unfortunately. 

There are a number of old money families that have influence (maybe less than 20 American families). The reality is that tech billionaires have the most influence now. 

The heir to the Kennedy throne just took his first job out of college at Accenture... So...

The Weyerhausers & du Ponts lowkey are huge though. They all go to HYPs and have for decades, and they've all bred into other blueblood government/business families. 

How do you even define "Old money"?

There are "old old money" families that have been wealthy for centuries (before the Industrial Revolution) like the du Ponts, Roosevelts, and Astors. There are so many of them with moderate wealth and the last time these guys were influential was before WW1.

Then, there are late 19th century industrialists & bankers like the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Carnegies, Morgans, etc... These guys probably have money but you rarely hear about them.

And then, there are early to mid 20th century moguls like the Hiltons, Kochs, Waltons, etc... Many of whom are still influential.

I used to work at a company whose clients were mainly ultra-wealthy people- net worths in the 100s of millions or billions. In almost every single case that I can remember, the client was either the person who earned the money or - in a couple of cases - was the ex-wife of the person who earned the money. The one exception I recall was a NYC real estate family that had gotten wealthy one generation earlier.