The Democrat Party is eating its own allies alive.
The very people who built the messaging machine that handed Democrats 40 House seats in 2018 are walking away — and they’re not being quiet about why.
And what these Hollywood insiders are saying about the socialist surge inside the Democrat Party is going to leave a mark.
The Talent That Built 2018 Is Gone for 2026
According to a report from the Washington Sun, the cadre of screenwriters, novelists, and producers who once coached Democrat candidates on stage presence, wrote their speeches, and ran rapid-response war rooms have largely checked out of the 2026 midterm cycle.
These weren’t just celebrities cutting checks at fundraisers. They were hands-on operatives embedded inside the Democrat political machine, doing the unglamorous work that actually moves votes.
Novelist and screenwriter Gregg Hurwitz — known for his thriller series Orphan X — was one of the most active members of that group. He helped the party flip 40 congressional seats in 2018. He’s not doing it again.
“The Democratic Party right now is torn in a couple directions, and some of those directions I’m no longer willing to work for or countenance, and so I’m a lot more sparing about it,” Hurwitz told the Washington Sun.
That’s a pretty direct statement from someone who spent years as one of the party’s most useful backroom assets.
Hurwitz’s break didn’t happen in a vacuum. He worked with Democrat Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who raised concerns about Joe Biden’s fitness to serve as president. The far-left wing of the party responded by threatening to blacklist anyone associated with Phillips — behavior Hurwitz compared to the Chinese Communist Party. He officially re-registered as an independent.
But the blacklisting threat was only part of it. Hurwitz also pointed to the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America inside the party, citing “having candidates winning primaries now who have stated overtly that America is worse than Hamas and that white women are ‘ugly colonialist women'” as behavior he could no longer tolerate.
“To me, it’s a measure of extremism that the left has permitted without drawing a line that is incredibly threatening,” he said.
Herskovitz Calls the Party Leadership “Ossified”
Screenwriter Marshall Herskovitz, who wrote for the TV shows Thirtysomething and My So-Called Life, arrived at a similar conclusion through a different door.
Herskovitz described the party leadership as “ossified” and said he “no longer try to work within the apparatus of the party, which is what I did in 2018, 2020, ’22, making commercials and doing position papers that they could use or not use, that sort of thing.”
“Since Trump was elected again, and when I saw what Democrats were doing and not doing, I just came to realize that if there were going to be any answers, it was going to come from outside the party,” Herskovitz told the Washington Sun.
Screenwriter and producer Shawn Ryan, known for The Night Agent and S.W.A.T., worked alongside Hurwitz and Herskovitz in 2020 making political ads. Ryan told the Sun he stepped back because he “was just super busy with work” and now limits his political involvement to donating to candidates he likes personally.
Ryan acknowledged the frustrations his colleagues were feeling, even if his own departure was less ideological.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Is Still Calling Hollywood — But Fewer Are Picking Up
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has reportedly continued reaching out to entertainment industry figures as a messaging resource heading into 2026. But some executives inside that world are upset that Jeffries and party leadership cannot control the caucus’ growing socialist wing, according to the Washington Sun.
And the socialist wing is not a fringe problem anymore. Progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed defeated Representative Haley Stevens in the Michigan Senate primary, placing a Democratic Socialists of America-aligned candidate at the top of a statewide ticket in one of the most competitive states in the country. The DSA’s own platform calls for government seizure of major corporations, abolition of the Senate, replacement of the presidency and Supreme Court with bodies subordinate to Congress, open borders, and the construction of a classless society — textbook Marxist objectives that would dismantle the constitutional republic and private property rights. Jeffries told NBC’s Meet the Press that DSA members “will be part of our broad caucus” if elected, which is not exactly the reassurance that Hollywood’s nervous donors were looking for.
The party that once presented itself as the home of pragmatic governance is now the party where candidates win primaries by comparing America unfavorably to Hamas. The people who built the messaging infrastructure that made 2018 possible watched that happen and quietly packed their bags.
What does all of this mean going into the 2026 midterms? Quite a bit, actually.
In 2018, Democrats had a bench of skilled communicators willing to produce ads, sharpen debate prep, and run rapid-response operations for free. That bench is thinner now. The talent that understood narrative, timing, and audience is walking away. Hakeem Jeffries is still turning to Hollywood for help, but some of the most experienced people in that world are no longer returning his calls.
Democrats still have celebrity star power for rallies and fundraisers. But celebrity star power and the ability to build a coherent political message are two very different things, and the people who knew how to do the latter are the ones who just left.
The deeper problem for the party is that the socialist surge is not a messaging failure. It’s a content failure. Hurwitz isn’t pulling back because Democrats have bad ads. He’s pulling back because DSA-aligned candidates are winning primaries while saying things that would have been considered disqualifying just a few years ago. No amount of rapid-response infrastructure fixes that.
Herskovitz put it plainly: the answers, if any exist, are coming from outside the party. That’s not a critique of the party’s ad budget. That’s a verdict on the party itself.
And the Marxist wing of the Democrat Party doesn’t seem particularly troubled by any of this. Socialism has a well-documented historical record — economic decline, authoritarian drift, the destruction of the middle class, the seizure of private property — and DSA candidates are running on it openly and winning primaries. The Hollywood insiders who built the machine that once made Democrats look electable are watching that happen from the sidelines.
The Democrat Party spent years telling voters it was the party of competence and stability. The people who helped sell that message no longer believe it themselves.
Sources: Breitbart, “Report: Hollywood Power Players Mute Their Support for Democrats as Socialists Surge in Party” (September 12, 2026); The Washington Sun, “Democrats’ Hollywood Allies Think the Party Has Lost the Plot” (September 10, 2026); NBC News/Meet the Press, Hakeem Jeffries interview (August 2026)