At last weeks fund-raiser celebrating the 25th anniversary of People for the American Way, one of the core liberal groups in Hollywood, the comedian and master of ceremonies George Lopez Who? left no room for doubt about his expectations for next months Congressional elections. Were in! Were in! Mr. Lopez shouted from the stage, to loud applause from a crowd of 600 at the Beverly Hilton.
In their more sober moments, however, the film industrys Democrats and Democratic sympathizers remain pointedly reluctant to declare this election cycle a hit, even while the conventional wisdom points toward coming Republican losses in the House and Senate.
Two years ago we thought we understood the country and we thought there would be change and we got smashed, said Irina Medavoy, a major fund-raiser for the Democrats who is married to the producer Mike Medavoy, in a telephone interview. After the last time, there will be no strutting or Bruce Springsteen playing. We have learned.
With three weeks remaining before the vote, liberal Hollywood has been watching the Congressional midterm elections with the kind of attention usually reserved for presidential races and Oscar night. Potential donors are fielding invitations to as many as three fund-raisers for a single Democratic candidate. So many people are doing events that you just cant go to them all, said Lawrence Bender, a producer of the global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth. There tend to be at least two events every night.
Still, the dominant note, at least among more than a dozen prominent Hollywood Democrats interviewed in the last several days, stops noticeably short of confidence. Several players, like Ms. Medavoy, pointed toward bitter disappointments in the past, when a politically energized film community found itself flummoxed by the perceived maneuvering of Republican strategists and the tendencies of a complex electorate.
Ive learned not to be too optimistic, said Alan Horn, president of Warner Brothers, though he was quick to add, I believe the tide has turned.
Along with natural reluctance to declare victory in advance, Hollywood Democrats may feel a certain reserve born of the fact that Congressional politics is something that mostly occurs elsewhere. Few of the House seats in California are likely to change hands, thanks to a redistricting arrangement that rendered most of them safe for whichever party has them in hand.
All of this points toward a stay-at-home election night for many on Hollywoods glamour circuit. The filmmaker Rob Reiner, for instance, said that he planned to watch the returns on television with his friend the philanthropist and film producer Steve Bing, and that he remained distinctly cautious. You dont want to spike the ball at the 10-yard line, Mr. Reiner said.
In the last several weeks many of the industrys Democratic regulars, including Haim Saban, a Democratic fund-raiser and movie producer, and the former Paramount Pictures chairwoman Sherry Lansing, got a bit closer to the action by throwing support behind Arnold Schwarzenegger, the states Republican governor, in his so-far-flourishing re-election bid.
But there is also an abiding sense here that Democrats have in the past defeated themselves by underestimating the skill and motivation of their foes. There are still a lot of things they could pull with three weeks to go, Mr. Bender cautioned, notwithstanding polls that favor his team and a recent Time magazine cover that looked for the end of the Republican revolution.
On the other side of the aisle, at least one member of Hollywoods somewhat truncated Republican establishment also saw an up side in the current mood. Im a much more popular lunch guest of late, said Lionel Chetwynd, a conservative-leaning writer and producer, who finds Democratic friends more than usually interested in his views.
Mr. Chetwynd, who predicted that the Republicans would hold one and perhaps both sides of Congress, added that his feelings were not all that different from those of his opponents. The truth is, we share a cautious optimism, he said. I hope theres enough to go around.
I hope they do stay at home on election night, lol. I like the fact that they sound so depressed, but I figure they will be feeling much better in a few weeks. How much better is what remains to be seen, methinks. 
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