Hillary Clinton's defeat in the 2016 presidential election inevitably led to serious people discussing how such a catastrophic result could have happened.

While some pointed to Clinton's persistent dishonesty over her private email server, running a poor campaign, or her establishment candidacy in a change year, other, deeper thinkers have found better scapegoats for keeping her from the White House.

The main culprits for Clinton losing, if you take a gander at cable news, are the Electoral College, Russian hacking, FBI Director James Comey, and fake news:

The Electoral College, for being totally unfair, even though she employed a strategy to reach the requisite 270 electoral votes and was confident of the "Blue Wall" of states that would ensure her victory. Russian hacking, which the CIA says was done during the campaign to help Trump win. When Mitt Romney called Russia the country's top geopolitical foe in 2012, President Obama and the liberal media roundly mocked him. James Comey, who Clinton told donors slowed her momentum with his letter notifying Congress of newly discovered emails related to her private email server investigation. Clinton would never have been under federal probe, of course, if she had chosen not to use a private server to conduct State Department business. Fake news, which means whatever the reader wants it to mean. Clinton said said such false stories have "real-world consequences."

Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump will take office in 37 days.