It is no secret that the default ideology of Hollywood is progressivism. When it comes to fundraising or endorsements, progressives Democrats can always count on actors, directors, and producers to join the cause—whether that cause be green energy, sexual politics, war and peace, or “social justice.” There are exceptions, of course, but progressive ideology is the mother’s milk of Hollywood.

Not every Hollywood movie or TV series feels compelled to advance explicit progressive messages, but it is always interesting to see the way Hollywood portrays progressive characters when it does make an overtly political movie or TV series.

I call the Hollywood default image of a progressive the “Aaron Sorkin Democrat.” The prototype is President Josiah Bartlet from the television series, The West Wing (1999-2006). Bartlet, portrayed by Martin Sheen, not only holds a Nobel Prize in economics, but is also a devout Catholic who knows the Bible by heart, which comes in handy when he needs to demolish pretentious right-wing religious fanatics who continually vex him and obstruct his efforts to make America a better place.

Although his administration is reliably liberal, President Bartlet possesses virtues even a conservative could admire. He obeys the Constitution and the law. He is devoted to his wife and daughter. Being unfaithful to his wife would never cross his mind. He is no wimp when it comes to foreign policy—no quid pro quo for him. When a hostile state shoots down a U.S. plane carrying a Navy doctor who has treated him, President Bartlet takes it personally and makes his chief of staff as well as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff explain why he shouldn’t call down the wrath of God on the people who did it.

He is always open-minded and insists on hearing all views, even conservative ones. In one episode, a conservative woman commentator, probably based on Ann Coulter, obliterates Rob Lowe’s character, the brilliant lawyer Sam Seaborn, in a television debate. President Bartlet insists that she be offered a job. Despite her deeply held conservative beliefs, she is soon won over by the integrity of the president and his advisers. One can imagine her saying “Jed Bartlet is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I have ever known in my life.”

For the student of popular culture, the most interesting thing about The West Wing is what it reveals about how liberals see themselves. Not only are they right, they are good. Not only are their conservative opponents wrong, they are evil. This is especially true of conservative Christians, who are portrayed as anti-homosexual, anti-woman, and anti-Semitic.

Twenty-three years ago, I wrote an essay titled, “Real Liberals vs. The West Wing” in which I argued that in actual practice, the former failed to live up to the standards established by the latter. In an important way, The West Wing was an apologia for the Clinton administration. Indeed, Josiah Bartlet was a sanitized Bill Clinton, an attractive, charismatic, competent character without the character flaws.

Bill Clinton was always a problem for progressives because he was not progressive enough. He was too “Southern.” He was an actual moderate, a kind of Democrat that is in the minority today. Accordingly, he was known for his ability to “triangulate” to gain support from Republicans and conservatives. As a result, his presidency was generally successful. Of course, he was reliable enough on the issues that mattered most to progressives, especially abortion. As Nina Burleigh—then a reporter for The Washington Post—said of Clinton just as the Monica Lewinsky scandal was peaking, “I’d be happy to give Bill Clinton a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal.”

But Clinton’s womanizing and behind the scenes actions provided an opening for his opponents, both right and left. Those character flaws were the plot drivers of the 1996 novel, Primary Colors, a roman à clef that became a 1998 film starring John Travolta as Jack Stanton, the charismatic Southern governor standing in for Bill Clinton, and Emma Thomson as his wife, Susan (or Hillary). The author was listed as “Anonymous” but was soon revealed to be Joe Klein, a political writer for Newsweek. There is little or nothing noble about this couple, who wreck the lives of the people who helped to advance their political goals.

The limitations of the Aaron Sorkin Democrat serve as the subplot of the 2011 political thriller, The Ides of March, starring George Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood, and the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman. Clooney plays Mike Morris, governor of Pennsylvania, who is locked in a tight race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Gosling plays Morris’s idealistic junior campaign manager, Stephen Meyers, who works for the cynical, jaded Paul Zara (Hoffman). The film is excellent, capturing the excitement and intrigue of electoral politics. Clooney co-produced the film

Clooney’s Morris is a Democrat’s beau ideal of a candidate. He mouths all the liberal pieties and platitudes about policy, both domestic and international. He claims that the Constitution is his “religion” even though his policy proposals are in direct contradiction with its provisions. The Aaron Sorkin model here is Obama, which is made clear by the ubiquitous art deco campaign posters for Morris that evoke Obama’s “Hope” campaign.

Clooney’s Morris is no radical. He fought in the first Gulf War and protested the second. He appears to be squeaky clean in his personal life. He is just the sort of candidate to whom a young, liberal idealist such as Gosling’s Meyers is drawn.

But The Ides of March essentially argues that an Aaron Sorkin candidate is not enough: even the most ostensibly honest man is vulnerable to human weakness and corruption, and sometimes must be forced to make corrupt bargains to win an election. It turns out that even though Morris appears to be a paragon of virtue—refusing to compromise on policy proposals and political alliances, which may lead to his defeat—he has impregnated a 20-year-old intern, Molly Stearns (Wood). When Meyers confronts Morris, he delivers a classic line: “You can start a war. You can bankrupt the country. You can lie, you can cheat. But you can’t f**k the interns.”

But prior to discovering Morris’s transgression, the still-idealistic Meyers tells a New York Times reporter that Morris “is the only one that’s actually going to make a difference in people’s lives.” In his mind he was saying “Mike Morris is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I have ever known in my life.” But having discovered the indiscretion, Meyers blackmails Morris into taking steps that he has previously rejected, in order to win. The irony is that Meyers corruptly uses Morris’s own corruption against him to force him onto a path that will lead to the “right” outcome.

No one would ever mistake Joe Biden for an Aaron Sorkin Democrat. An old, venal pol who was never very smart even in his prime, Biden has been the poster boy for political corruption. His faux “moderation” was always a ploy to provide cover for the progressives who run the Democratic Party, and who continued to prop him up until his physical and mental condition became undeniable.

The Democrats, at least so far, appear to be trying to portray Kamala Harris as an Aaron Sorkin candidate. Considering her obvious shortcomings, however, this strategy is probably doomed. Nonetheless, the Democrats have dusted off the old “Republicans are sexist bullies” playbook. In her 2000 book, Real Politics: At the Center of Everyday Life, the late American political philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain identified what she described as the two poles of modern radical feminism: the “repressive androgynists,” who contend that there are no real differences between men and women (indeed, the idea that there are differences is supposedly an illusion fostered by a repressive patriarchy); and the “feminist victimization wing,” which paints the relations between the sexes as a continuous train of abuses by men who victimize women on a daily basis. For decades, these wings of feminist ideology have worked in tandem to repel any criticism of women in politics, business, or the military.

Given that the argument for advancing Harris to the presidency is that women are as capable as men, it is indeed ironic that those rallying to Harris fall back on the arguments of the victimization wing. Thus, any criticism of Harris’s lack of accomplishments or, indeed, qualifications is treated as male bullying.

If progressives were really seeking to anoint Harris as a viable presidential candidate, they would stress her abilities and accomplishments rather than her victim status. But with no record of accomplishment, progressives, with the cooperation of a compliant media, are currently doing their best to erase her history. “The past was erased. The erasure was forgotten. The lie became the truth.” And having erased her past, any criticism can be attributed to male bullying.

Progressives in Hollywood will still flock to any politicians who appear likely to advance the progressive cause. But Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee means the age of the Aaron Sorkin Democrat may have reached its end.