Hollywood Democrats Are M.I.A. as Their Party Goes Down in Flames

That’s the consistent sentiment veteran entertainment journalist Richard Rushfield says he’s getting from industry power players. “A better description of Hollywood’s opposition mobilization would be ‘MIA’ or ‘non-existent.’ ‘Totally invisible’ also works,” Rushfield writes in The Ankler, the slick inside-Hollywood newsletter he helps helm.

He points to the dearth of Democrat fundraisers, for instance. Those high-dollar soirees should be a regular occurrence after an off-year election spring and summer in which candidates are finally being fielded for races needing funding for a litany of campaign operations. They just aren’t happening.

It’s not as if high-stakes political machines aren’t humming in Hollywood. The California governor’s race has been in full-swing for months, with major, opinion-swaying polls dropping almost daily.

One Hollywood titan making massive political waves? Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), who’s challenging current California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) plan to redraw the Golden States’s congressional map. The Terminator star called Newsom’s plan “evil.” Newsom fired back this week by touting the endorsement of his plan by none other than Bernie Bro and Schwarzenegger’s Twins co-star Danny DeVito.

No offense to Frank Reynolds, but his backing Newsom’s plan is a drop compared to what should be a tsunami of celebrity opposition to President Donald Trump and his Republican Party’s political agenda.

The Hollywood Democrat pushback is just nonexistent, Rushfield notes:

I’ve been talking to people across the industry, people who are, year in and year out, generally interested and active in progressive-leaning causes and Democratic campaigns — the people meeting candidates, attending events and raising money. What I’ve been asking is whether there might be lots of planning, foment and organizing going on beneath the surface that I’m missing. And they are, to a person, dismayed and horrified by how, at this moment, Hollywood seems to be sitting out the entire furor. (The ones I spoke with all also declined to be identified.)

The biggest Hollywood Democrat news to drop this summer was about how the party’s deep-pocketed powerbrokers are organizing a Bel Air fundraiser for Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME).

Media moguls, mainstays on the Democrat donor scene in Hollywood, opening their home and their wallets (tickets range from $3,500 to $10,000) to a Republican senator gearing up for what could be a brutal reelection? This is unheard of in the Pelosi-Schumer Era. And yet, here we are.

Hollywood Democrats missing in action is also coinciding with what is still deep resentment among many Democrat donors (some of whom are still paying off millions of dollars of Kamala Harris’ debt) and Democrat Party popularity that hasn’t been as bad as it is since 1990.