ANALYSIS/OPINION:

What a difference an election makes. Hillary Clinton and her team need to decide on a brand new slogan now that “I’m with her” means you’re an unemployed sycophant.

Having been crushed by Donald Trump making presidential elections great again, Hillary may want to inaugurate the less optimistic “It’s not her fault!” slogan, which is already echoing through her campaign, media, the Democratic Party, and safe-space dorm rooms everywhere.

During a conference call with donors the Saturday after the election, the wife of Monica Lewinsky’s ex-boyfriend blamed FBI Director James M. Comey for her embarrassing and decisive loss to Mr. Trump.

Reuters reported, “According to two participants who were on the call … [Mrs. Clinton] said Comey’s decision to go public with the renewed examination of her email server had caused an erosion of support in the upper Midwest … .”

It has apparently never occurred to her that if she hadn’t engaged in corrupt and possibly criminal activity that the FBI needed to investigate, Mr. Comey wouldn’t have been involved at all. But, you see, nothing is her fault.

While Mr. Comey’s actions were indeed surprising, blaming him is hogwash. The fact is independents had already decided they didn’t want Mrs. Clinton as president and began breaking for Mr. Trump weeks before Mr. Comey’s announcement that they were reopening the email investigation.

On Oct. 26, two days before Mr. Comey’s letter to Congress, Fox News released a poll showing Mrs. Clinton leading Mr. Trump by 3 points. Most polls did show her in the lead nationally, but there was an internal Fox News poll number that signaled Mr. Trump’s impending win: Three weeks earlier, Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton had been tied with independent voters 35-35 percent. The next week Mr. Trump was ahead by 7 points with that cohort, and in the Oct. 26 poll, one week later, independent support for Mr. Trump almost doubled, giving him a 13-point lead, 41-28 percent.

Independents were key to the election, as were undecideds who could be counted on to act as independents as Election Day approached. Exit polls show that’s exactly what happened, as both broke for Mr. Trump.

While Mrs. Clinton was blaming Mr. Comey for her failure, her supporters were blaming sexism … of women. Sexism does exist, of course, but for Mrs. Clinton it was turned into a convenient torch with which to set things on fire and hopefully manipulate and intimidate people into voting for her, and against Mr. Trump.

In other words, Mrs. Clinton forgot that women have minds of their own. The feminist movement, even after having been hijacked by the left, at least ensconced in the sisterhood the importance of thinking for ourselves, and making choices that best suit us.

Yet, more often we are seeing the serious issue of female victimhood being weaponized by women who seek money, fame or power. It used to be something to defeat and overcome, not grow rich by. But at least in this election, that tactic did not work.

Women were supposed to be Mrs. Clinton’s firewall, like African-Americans were for Barack Obama, but that didn’t happen. In the key battleground state of Florida, as an example, exit polls indicated she led Mr. Trump with women by only 4 points.

Mr. Trump, moreover, defeated her soundly 53-43 with white women in general and with white women without a college degree by a whopping 28 points. According to FiveThirtyEight.com, Mrs. Clinton won white women with a college degree by a simple 6 points. That’s the equivalent of leaving a nickel for a tip. Sometimes it’s more of a statement than leaving nothing at all.

But don’t worry, not being able to persuade women to vote for her is not Hillary’s fault, it’s the “internalized misogyny” of the women who didn’t vote for her. This according to Jess McIntosh, the director of communications outreach for the Clinton campaign, as she explained to Chris Hayes on MSNBC: “Internalized misogyny is a real thing and this is a thing we have to be talking about as we go through and see.”

That’s right, Hillary’s “feminists” prefer to condemn other women as self-loathing sexists to avoid accepting the fact that women do want a woman president, they just don’t want a corrupt woman.

For Mr. Obama, nothing was his fault, either, so for once there was someone willing to blame Hillary, which the president did at his last press conference. His assessment? Hillary was a lazy campaigner.

As the Daily Mail reported, “President Barack Obama delivered a veiled rebuke to Hillary Clinton today for spending the summer and much of the fall taking it easy as Donald Trump barnstormed the nation. The two-time Electoral College winner said he was victorious in Iowa, a mostly white state, ‘not because the demographics dictated’ it, but because he spent 87 days going to ‘every small town and fair and fish fry and VFW hall.’ “

The irony is Mrs. Clinton’s loss actually isn’t entirely her own fault; it is shared by the head of the Democratic Party, Mr. Obama himself, who used liberal policies to destroy people’s lives. Hillary was his inheritor, seen as the incumbent, and she suffered the price of Mr. Obama’s feckless incompetence. His endorsement and “passing the baton” to her was like standing next to an arsonist and having him hand you his box of matches. Yeah, people might not want more of that.

Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee blamed their failures on the Russians, WikiLeaks, Mr. Comey, Facebook, the media and even the pervert husband of a supplicant. And they wonder why we kicked them to the curb.

• Tammy Bruce, author and Fox News contributor, is a radio talk show host.

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