Democrats simply cannot believe that despite their fundraising advantage, despite their fawning media coverage, despite the inexperience and uncouthness of President Trump, despite a popular outgoing incumbent in their own party, and despite their “analytics team” packed with “data nerds,” they lost the 2016 election.

That’s why we spent Wednesday watching former special counsel Robert Mueller struggle through two hearings on his already-closed investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The hearings broke no new ground, as Mueller did what he told everyone he would do, and merely reiterated what his office stated in its 400-page report earlier this year. Thus, the purpose of these hearings called by House Democrats was neither oversight nor illumination. It was an ax-grinding exercise in creating a fictional narrative that Russia stole the election.

Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff made that clear in his melodramatic opening statement. What is at stake in the Russia investigation, Schiff said, is the principle “that we the people, and not some foreign power that wishes us ill, we decide who governs us.” Later Schiff said the same thing a different way, asserting that the Russia investigation was an attempt to restore the idea “that our government is chosen by our people through our franchise, and not by some hostile foreign power.”

Schiff clearly and repeatedly implied that the 2016 election wasn’t decided by American voters but by Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is fantasy.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the No. 2 Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, spent her time trying to establish that Putin’s interference moved millions of votes. Rep. Jim Himes, the No. 2 Democrat on House Intelligence, offered the same argument, asking Mueller: “126 million Facebook impressions, fake rallies, attacks on Hillary Clinton’s health — would you rule out that it might have had some effect on the election?”

Mueller, of course, didn’t answer this question, as is fitting. It’s crazy to say that Putin handed Trump the election. If anyone handed Trump the election, it was Hillary Clinton.

Russian interference in our election certainly happened, and we shouldn’t tolerate it. (For what it’s worth, Joe Biden should be made to answer for why the Obama-Biden administration let it happen.) Republicans in Congress were right to insist on tough sanctions over Trump’s objections. Trump shouldn’t wave off the interference just because Democrats have their conspiracy theories about it.

It wasn’t Putin, though, but the American electorate, through the method prescribed by our Constitution, who chose the president. That fact is what drives Democrats crazy, and it’s behind their obsession with the Russia investigation. Other potential misdeeds by Trump, such as his continuing to profit from his hotel businesses, don’t provide Democrats with the emotional salve they so desire. They want proof of their conspiracy theory that they really won in 2016.

In 2000, Democrats famously protested that the Supreme Court stole the election for Republicans, although the most exhaustive recounts showed that even a contrary ruling would have resulted in a Bush win. In 2004, House Democrats held up the Electoral College count claiming that Ohio’s secretary of state had stolen the election for Republicans.

Now they’re doing it again. It’s all an effort to avoid facing the fact that maybe the Democrats aren’t the party of the people as much as they believe themselves to be.