Until now. most Democrats seemed pleased to amplify Hillary Clinton’s post-election blamethrowing. The Russians? Behind every negative story! Voter suppression? Why, the entire state of Wisconsin disappeared on Election Day! James Comey? In league with nefarious Republicans! Whenever Hillary has claimed a new part of the Unified Theory of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy to explain away her defeat to Donald Trump, Democrats have happily embraced it as settled science.

That it, they happily embraced the blamethrowing until Hillary made them catch a few curveballs themselves. Suddenly, Democrats seem a lot less enthusiastic about Operation Pin the Tail on the Donkeys, and more interested than ever in personal accountability:

Irritated Democrats say Hillary Clinton is wrong to cast blame on the national party for her loss to Donald Trump. Allies of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in particular were incensed by Clinton’s criticism of the party apparatus, saying she mischaracterized the committee’s work while needlessly stoking internal divisions. “This is all about the last campaign. And really, what Democrats should be focusing on, and what I think Hillary Clinton should be figuring out, is how do we empower the DNC to have the best data resources to win races this year, in 2018 and 2020,” a former DNC aide said.

Yesterday, former data operations chief Andrew Therriualt ripped Hillary in a series of now-deleted tweets for her accusations. The Hill reports that one of the DNC’s main vendors — which relies on Democratic candidates for their customer base — came to Therriault’s defense, and asked a simple question. Why did it take two years for Team Hillary to discover the data didn’t work?

Tom Bonier, the CEO of TargetSmart, a data firm that works with many Democratic clients, defended the DNC’s 2016 efforts as “the most robust data operation the DNC has ever seen.” Bonier also noted in a series of tweets that, “the Clinton team was using DNC data throughout the primary. If it was that bad, they knew that for 2 yrs but did nothing.”

The Daily Beast’s Gideon Resnick also picks up on the spring and summer of Democratic discontent with Hillary:

Depending on who is providing the reflection, Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election because of Russian interference, former FBI Director James Comey’s unexpected October announcement, a surge in white-working class support for now-president Donald Trump, the media coverage of Clinton’s use of a private email server, her lack of attention to the Blue Wall states or a combination of all the above. And none of these would be necessarily wrong. But a new excuse Clinton provided on Wednesday drew the ire of Democratic party operatives whose job it is to assist candidates with data for campaigns. They took this one personally as it called their jobs into question and passed the buck of responsibility onto data they deemed to be reliable. … “Forgive the analogy,” John Hagner, currently a partner at Clarity Campaign Labs told The Daily Beast. “The DNC is farming and what the campaign does is cooking. It’s hard to blame the farmer if the souffle folds.”

Hagner points to a clear example that disproves the DNC/data scapegoat theory: North Carolina. Hillary managed to lose it while Hagner’s team helped Democrat Roy Cooper win the governor’s race, albeit over an unpopular incumbent. They both used DNC resources, but Hagner’s team made better use of them than Team Hillary did. Clearly it wasn’t the data that did in Hillary in the Tar Heel State.

Hillary might be doing Democrats a favor by slapping a little egg on their faces. It gives them an excuse to finally cut the strings to the Clintons, and to stop indulging in conspiracy theories over their losses last year — and the six years previous, too. Hillary lost for the same reasons Democrats have been in retreat for most of the past decade at all levels of American politics: because they have embraced a hard-Left view and insist on nothing but acquiescence to it. And at the same time, Democrats have gone all-in on protecting their own establishment rather than expanding their reach, which is why jettisoning the Clintons would make for a very good first step on the road to relevance.