What if Hollywood, a major Democratic financial supporter, cut off Joe Biden’s campaign funding? That potential now looms big after actor George Clooney and other affluent contributors encouraged the US president to withdraw from the presidential election.
“I adore Joe Biden. But we need a new nominee,” Clooney wrote in a New York Times essay on Wednesday, following Biden’s terrible performance in a televised presidential debate against Republican rival Donald Trump, which raised concerns about the 81-year-old’s fitness for office.
The revelation was a significant blow to Biden, coming only three weeks after Clooney headlined a huge event in Los Angeles for his reelection campaign.
At the dinner, the president was able to raise more over $30 million in one evening, setting a record and demonstrating the industry’s ability to fund the American left.
“If all these big donors pull out, he’s sunk,” said Steve Ross, a history professor at the University of Southern California who has written a book about Hollywood’s effect on American politics. “Hollywood is still the one shop stop for candidates.”
Clooney isn’t the only one concerned. In recent days, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, Walt Disney’s granddaughter Abigail, and Hollywood super agency Ari Emanuel, whose brother Rahm served as Barack Obama’s chief of staff, announced they would not fund Biden due to age concerns.
Historic influence
Despite the fact that the millions generated by the American entertainment business benefit both parties, Hollywood’s hearts and wallets have tilted left for decades.
Both Bill and Hillary Clinton relied on Hollywood assistance in their presidential campaigns. In 2007, Obama famously benefited from the “Oprah Winfrey effect,” which increased his reputation after the celebrity TV personality held a luncheon to support the then-senator.
According to Open Secrets, an organization that analyzes campaign spending, the entertainment sector contributed $104 million to Democrats and $13 million to Republicans during the 2020 presidential election.
It wasn’t always that way.
In the 1980s, Republican president Ronald Reagan, himself a former actor, enjoyed the support of stars like Frank Sinatra and relied heavily on Hollywood’s coffers.
“Hollywood actually started as a conservative base for the Republican Party,” Ross told AFP.
“When Louis B. Mayer took over MGM Studios in the late 20s, he turned it into a fundraising publicity wing for the GOP, and he raised enormous amounts of money,” Ross said, referring to the Republican party.
The four Warner brothers, on the other hand, supported Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s with their studio and their stars.
It was the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 that marked Hollywood starting to shift to the left, as the era of blacklisting actors for suspected communist sympathies came to an end.
“It was a new era of free speech for movie stars who weren’t going to be blacklisted if they said anything deemed too radical,” the expert said.
Just hitting pause?
But, despite its cultural and financial supremacy, does Hollywood truly have the ability to remove Biden from the race?
Clooney’s New York Times op-ed “is another pressure point, for sure,” said Steven Maviglio, a Democratic advisor who previously worked with former California Governor Gray Davis.
However, Maviglio feels that the worry among select donors is “a temporary phenomenon.”
“If the president decides to stay and it becomes clear that it’s going to be Biden and Trump, Hollywood will be right back where they started, supporting Joe Biden,” Maviglio said, adding that the industry’s defections are not yet enough to bring Biden’s campaign to a close.
All eyes are now on billionaire Jeffrey Katzenberg, a former Disney executive and Dreamworks co-founder who organized Biden’s June gala event.
Since Biden’s poor debate, Katzenberg has been harshly criticized, yet he has kept mute.
“He’s the engine behind the machine. So if he stops, that’s significant,” Maviglio said.