LOS ANGELES, 7 August 2004 — It sounds like the stuff of a particularly narcissistic Hollywood movie script. A group of coddled entertainers decide to leave their pampered ways and join forces on an epic road trip to swing the most fateful election in modern times away from a leader widely seen as a threat to the world.

That’s no movie script however. After months of mobilizing against President George W. Bush with movies like “Fahrenheit 9/11” and the political conspiracy thriller “The Manchurian Candidate”, the entertainment world is now sending forth a vanguard of musicians on an unprecedented political concert tour.

The “Vote for Change” tour was announced Wednesday and proclaimed by the Los Angeles Times as “among the most ambitious efforts ever by entertainers of any kind to influence the outcome of a presidential race.”

But will they succeed? Not since Bob Dylan and his colleagues energized opposition to the Vietnam War in the 1960s have artists had much direct influence on major political issues. Though Hollywood has consistently veered toward left-of-center political beliefs and has raised fortunes for the Democratic Party, it has rarely succeeded in persuading entertainment fans to take up the same political approach.

“There has been a credibility gap,” says University of California political science professor Cherie Paris. “They are often seen as a media elite who have little in common with the lives and problems of ordinary Americans.

Bush himself has been consistent in casting their criticism as the kind of wimpish liberal nonsense that might seem like a good idea on Los Angeles’ Rodeo Drive, but has little relevance in the real world.

“They somehow believe the heart and soul of America can be found in Hollywood,” he said last week on a campaign tour. “The heart and soul of America is found right here in Springfield, Missouri.”

But “Vote for Change” hopes to put an end to that equation. It plans a week-long concert blitz a month before the election in which Springsteen, Pearl Jam, R.E.M. and some 20 other artists will perform more than 34 shows in nine battleground states that are tightly contested between Bush and his Democratic challenger John Kerry. They hope to raise money for the Democratic Party but also to sway voters’ opinions.

The big difference between this and other celebrity efforts is Springsteen, an iconic US entertainer who has a unique appeal to many Americans — even those firmly in the Republican Camp. It was he who led the moving tributes to 9/11 victims and it was his song “Born in the USA” which was adopted as Ronald Reagan’s campaign tune, even though its lyrics were critical of the country’s domineering role in the world.

Much of the respect Springsteen engendered has been the result of his decision to stay clear of partisan politics, even as he espoused a generally liberal world view in his seminal songs about American life. But now he says he was forced to stick his neck out by the seriousness of the current situation.

“Personally, for the last 25 years I have always stayed one step away from partisan politics,” he wrote in Thursday’s New York Times. “This year the stakes have risen too high to sit this election out.”

Springsteen and his fellow musicians will make hard hitting arguments that are often too strident for regular Democratic politicians to voice.

“We dived headlong into an unnecessary war in Iraq, offering up the lives of our young men and women under circumstances that are now discredited,” he wrote. “We ran record deficits, while simultaneously cutting and squeezing services like after school programs. We granted tax cuts to the richest 1 percent (corporate bigwigs, well-to-do guitar players), increasing the division of wealth that threatens to destroy our social contract with one another and render mute the promise of ‘one nation indivisible’.”

Entertainers may also have a decisive effect in mobilizing the youth vote. In the past, young voters have been noticeably absent from polling booths. But with surveys showing an overwhelming preference among young adults for Kerry even a small increase in youth turnout could prove decisive. Thus even a nominally non-partisan effort like that of rap mogul Sean P. Diddy Combs or MTV to get young voters to exercise their democratic rights could work powerfully against Bush.

Of course the initiatives may spark a backlash, both politically and commercially, like the one that country group the Dixie Chicks experienced when they had the temerity to criticize Bush’s policies on Iraq.

“Do I think we are going to get bashed?” Springsteen told the Los Angeles Times. “Sure, in this political season, that’s coming. But there are particular moments when you have to (say), ‘This is the moment when you take your place on the playing field and the chips are going to fall where they may’.”