MANY Democrats were dreading Hillary Clinton’s chronicle of electoral failure, “What Happened”, which was published this week. The former First Lady was always more admired than loved by her party (a dirty secret that even the slickest Clinton-style stage-management of her rallies could not conceal), and her defeat by Donald Trump eroded much of that grudging regard. Worse for her resentful supporters, in post-election interviews and leaked excerpts of the book, Mrs Clinton appeared to blame everyone but herself for her loss—including Senator Bernie Sanders, her rival in a rancorous primary contest that still divides the Trump-bruised Democrats. Many considered that disloyal. “If I were her, I would move on,” advised David Axelrod, a Democratic guru. A columnist for the New York Daily News was more forthright: “Hey, Hillary Clinton, shut the f--- up and go away already.”

Mrs Clinton’s book will rile her critics even more. Granted, she owns up to her errors, including a naive faith in the power of wonkish ideas to placate angry voters, and some embarrassing bloopers. Celebrating the death of coal-mining in Ohio is (no kidding) a particular regret. Mrs Clinton also acknowledges her “limitations” as a campaigner, including the carefulness of a rote-learned performer, which many voters find insincere: “I wear my composure like a suit of armour.” Yet not for a moment does Mrs Clinton believe she caused her defeat. Most of the 494-page tome (her books, produced with trusted aides, are always too long) is dedicated to causes beyond her control. Mr Sanders is among them; Mrs Clinton accuses him, among other dirty tricks, of portraying her as a “corrupt corporatist who couldn’t be trusted…paving the way for Trump’s “Crooked Hillary” campaign”. But that is trifling, set against her three biggest gripes.

One is the savaging of her reputation by an updated version of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” she accused, with some justification, of smearing her and her husband in the 1990s—including radical conservative donors, fake-news peddlers and Russian hackers and their internet bots, all egged on, wittingly or not, by a Republican candidate who “trafficked in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the internet”. The results were devastating. Out canvassing in leafy suburbs, Mrs Clinton’s supporters were politely assured their candidate “had killed someone, sold drugs and committed any number of unreported crimes”. When, a month after the election, an apparently sane man shot up a pizza parlour in Washington, DC, in a bid to free the child sex slaves he believed Mrs Clinton had imprisoned there, no one was surprised.

A second complaint is the hyperventilating coverage mainstream outlets gave to Mrs Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server while secretary of state. This, as she concedes, was a fatheaded blunder. But it broke no law, caused no security breach and, while frowned upon, was not especially unusual at the State Department. Yet it was the prevailing intrigue of the election, more incessantly discussed than any of Mr Trump’s manifold scandals. By one measure, television news devoted three times as much airtime to Mrs Clinton’s e-mails as to her entire policy agenda. Her third grievance is related—the late intervention into the election of James Comey, the then FBI director, to announce he had reopened, and then that he had closed, an investigation into Mrs Clinton’s e-mails—even as early voting was taking place.

Even admirers of Mrs Clinton will curl their toes at this. No one likes a sour loser. And Mrs Clinton’s account is sufficiently self-serving to be open to that charge. In particular, she blames the competing din of fake news for her failure to persuade voters that her economic plans—an infrastructure package, incentives for apprenticeships and so on— represented a compelling picture of future prosperity. But Lexington listened hard to her economic speeches and could not identify the main point of them—a shortcoming her book repeats. Mrs Clinton insists she had “fundamental differences” with the populist Mr Sanders, while also suggesting they were only of degree—he vowed to soak the rich and splurge on everyone else; she says that would be nice, but tricky to pull off, so advocates a watery version of the same. This will not discourage the many Democrats who believe Mrs Clinton’s failure to impart a compelling economic vision cost her the election—especially as many of them back Mr Sanders’s vision.

To the devil her due

But there is a problem with that: Mrs Clinton’s analysis is basically sound. Had it not been for the uncontrollable “headwinds” she describes, she would probably have won, despite her shortcomings. Going into the election, she was up by six points; then Mr Comey intruded and her lead evaporated, as undecided voters recoiled from this clinching evidence of her perfidy. Of course, had she been a better campaigner, including on economic issues, she might have been further ahead. But that is harder to quantify; in fact, in the rustbelt states where she is thought to have lost the election, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, she polled well on economic issues. There is also little reason to think a more populist message would have helped her there. The white, working-class voters who, continuing a decades-old-trend, went from Democrat to Republican in those states, wanted less immigration, not more handouts for immigrants (among others) to enjoy.

In this election, policies, messaging and campaign effectiveness hardly seemed to matter. It was decided by partisanship and internet-borne misinformation—the enabling environment and means by which Mr Trump and his proxies destroyed Mrs Clinton. Wonk that she is (“If you’re unconvinced that friends are worth it, consider the data,” she writes), that is a surpassing humiliation. For her party, it is a warning not to resort to the comfort-blanket of left-wing policy. It might make the Democrats feel better; it probably cannot restore them to power.