Hillary graciously absolving herself of any responsibility

[drone]

If people, especially conservatives, already hated Hillary Clinton, I don't think adopting more left-wing positions would have changed their minds.

You have to keep in mind that policies - specific policies - are largely irrelevant to campaigns. The image is what matters. And even with her poor image, Clinton pulled in at least an average result. To diminish this, you would have to argue that Trump was especially hurt by his own actions, rather than helped. The latter is less sanguine to imagine, but it's probably the case. Merely dismissing Trump as a "bad" candidate is to make a similar mistake as you accuse Clinton and the liberal establishment of making.

So while each of us might want to a various extent different, more left-wing policy prescriptions to have been incorporated into her platform, there's no reason to believe it would have helped rather than hindered her actual election performance.

Definitely disagree. There were certainly no exciting contrasts between the generic Republican candidates and Clinton herself. Trump's advantage was motivating non-voters and conservative independents - the respective party bases fell in line otherwise.

She was not going to get conservative votes, she needed Bernie's voters. You are correct, there was not much difference between her and one of the generic GOP candidates. She was already center-right on many things, any left leaning views she had were window dressing/identity politics. When a large percentage of right/center-right already have no intention of voting for her, that puts her in a spot. Her big mistake was in thinking that voters had a binary decision, with a gun to their head and a Trump-Hillary ballot in front of them, the average voter would pick her. But the reality was many would vote Johnson/Stein/McMullin, others would vote change (Trump) for the hell of it, or (most damaging) not vote at all.