During the 2016 presidential race, Democrat candidates and politicians tripped over themselves to be closely associated with Hillary Clinton. Today, they’re running away in droves.

Not long ago, Clinton was viewed by many on the political Left as the standard-bearer of the modern feminist movement. But there were plenty of problems with this assumption, including Hillary’s efforts to destroy all the women who dared to accuse her husband of sexual assault over the years.

Despite her ‘90s claims to the contrary, Hillary Clinton really was Tammy Wynette standing by her man. Ironically, it took Donald Trump to invite Bill Clinton’s accusers to a presidential debate in 2016 and finally give them a voice that had been silenced for decades.

The silencing of women — indeed, the demonization of women — who happen to disagree with her is one of the core problems with Clinton’s brand of feminism. This became crystal clear when she claimed recently in India that white women were pressured by their husbands to vote for Donald Trump.

Essentially, Clinton “stripped women of any free will, a posture the modern feminist movement has increasingly adopted,” argues to The Federalist’s Sabrina Schaeffer. “Whether it’s a conversation about the so-called wage gap, the political gap between sexes, or sexual assault on college campuses, feminists more and more overlook how women make choices, and those decisions contribute to the realities of our society.”

Clinton’s comments rightly caused a furor, and on St. Patrick’s Day she tried to do damage control via Facebook: “I did not realize how hard it would hit many who heard it,” she unconvincingly insisted. “I was out there having a conversation, and this was one piece of a larger point about how Democrats need to do better with white women.”

Of course, this was nothing more than another phony Clinton non-apology. How could she not know that her comments would rightly be seen as a swipe at Trump’s female supporters? Clinton has a history of mocking and demeaning anyone who doesn’t support her. Her vile “basket of deplorables” comments come immediately to mind. Somehow, she doesn’t understand that demeaning millions of voters isn’t good strategy for those seeking elective office.

Clinton’s lack of faith in the modern American woman is one of the main reasons why so many of them voted instead for a man with his own problematic history with the opposite sex. The fact that Trump was able to win the support of so many women, even after the Access Hollywood tape hit the airwaves, suggests that he offered something Clinton did not.

Maybe the women who voted for Trump weren’t convinced that Clinton’s gender was the ultimate qualification for office. After all, isn’t the heart of feminism the belief that women should have the ability to make their own choices? Hillary doesn’t think so, and that’s the real issue here. Clearly, she embraces only those women who blindly follow her marching orders. This might make the leftist base happy, but it’s harder to translate into a national political victory.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) senses what’s going on, and she didn’t waste time throwing Clinton under the bus. “Those are kind of fighting words for me, because I’m partial to Missouri voters,” McCaskill said of Clinton’s recent condemnation of women. “I don’t think that’s the way you should talk about any voter, especially ones in my state.”

In reality, McCaskill probably has the same core beliefs about Trump’s voters as Clinton, but at least on the surface she’s taking a different stance to avoid Clinton’s fate. As a result, look for more Democrat candidates to launch ads distancing themselves from Hillary. Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey thinks we’ll see Clinton’s remarks “cut into 30- and 60-second TV spots at some time, probably more in October. And don’t think for one of those seconds that campaigns aren’t cutting ads on Hillary’s remarks in places like North Dakota, West Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and so on.”

Democrats circle the wagons better than anyone, but their current refusal to do so for Hillary is indicative of a seismic shift in how Democrat Party leaders are thinking about the 2018 and 2020 elections.

But it’s not just the candidates who are warning other Democrats about Hillary. Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign adviser, Patti Solis Doyle, admitted, “Look, this was bad. I can’t sugarcoat it.” She added that Clinton “was wrong and clearly it’s not helpful to Democrats going into the midterms and certainly not going into 2020.” Doyle thinks that Clinton “put herself in a position where Democrats are going to have to distance themselves from her, particularly those Democrats that are running in the states that Donald Trump won.”

Her former director of communications, Jennifer Palmieri, also weighed in: “People’s distrust of her isn’t that everybody is sexist or misogynist; she vexes people and they don’t know what to make of her.” Oh, we know what to make of her.

The fact that the Democrat Party’s nominee for president in 2016 is being shunned by those who celebrated her only a year ago is telling in two ways. First, Hillary Clinton still fails to publicly acknowledge the real reasons why she lost to Donald Trump; second, Trump’s victory was a wake-up call to Democrats who finally realize that Hillary’s playbook is a sure-fire way to lose an election.

And so, after 26 years of favorable coverage from a fawning media, Hillary has finally become an afterthought. The only person who doesn’t know it is Hillary Clinton.