First, they contend, Clinton need not have wholly ceded white working-class voters to Trump, who won them by a larger margin than Ronald Reagan in his 1984 landslide. Meanwhile, she failed to get young people and minorities—the too-aptly-named “Obama coalition”—excited about her candidacy. Both of those weaknesses, critics say, could be traced back to a message that emphasized social diversity over economic fairness. And the Clinton team’s overweening confidence blinded it to her weaknesses.

The postmortem debate over Clinton’s loss is more than just finger-pointing—it has important implications for how the Democratic Party moves forward. Some partisans side with her team in blaming external forces, from events like the Comey letter to the media’s coverage of the race. Others look at Clinton's lead going into the final weeks, in a nation where most voters view President Obama favorably, and conclude that she blew an eminently winnable race. (A Clinton campaign official disputed many of these critiques to me, but acknowledged that the widespread expectation she was going to win made it difficult for the campaign to see weaknesses. The official also conceded that Clinton’s campaign underestimated the electorate’s desire for change.)

How partisans decide to view Clinton’s loss—as a fluke, as a tactical shortcoming, or as the product of deeper issues—will determine how they attempt to rebuild. For a party that finds itself decimated and powerless at almost every level, those are consequential conclusions indeed.

Explanation No. 1: The white working class. Trump galvanized white voters without college degrees, particularly in the Rust Belt; Clinton’s team calculated that this bloc was a lost cause and could be ignored in favor of focusing on her base and trying to persuade white-collar voters she was the less risky choice. Bill Clinton reportedly agitated for the campaign to pay more attention to the “bubbas” that had once been his base, only to be rebuffed by a campaign staff that believed his worldview was out of date.

Were these voters gettable? As Alec MacGillis reported, many blue-collar men voted for Barack Obama against John McCain and Mitt Romney because they thought he better related to their struggles. They did not think the same of Clinton, who spent the last eight years becoming synonymous with the global elite. The result was that, while Obama won union households by 18 points nationally, Clinton won them by just 8 points, and fared far worse in the midwestern states that decided the election. She lost rural voters by a 2-to-1 margin, again worse than Obama.

Obama, at his press conference Monday, argued against the idea that Democrats can afford to write off any group or region of voters, saying, “We have to compete everywhere. We have to show up everywhere. We have to work at a grassroots level, something that's been a running thread in my career.” He won states like Iowa, the president argued, because he competed hard for their votes.