For instance, as I wrote years ago, long before these latest allegations surfaced, Harvey Weinstein was one of the most prominent defenders of filmmaker Roman Polanski who admitted raping a young girl. Apparently, that wasn’t an important enough detail to matter to Weinstein because Polanski makes good films, so the mogul was a key force behind a petition supporting the director’s release after being taken into custody again in Switzerland in 2009.

Now I want you to take a moment and consider what the reaction would be from prominent progressives if any of the country’s leading conservative donors (The Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, take your pick) actively defended an admitted pedophile. I have a feeling the protests and think pieces would never end—at least not until candidates backed by said donors returned money from them.