Hillary Clinton’s former staff and insiders were ready to move on after their disappointing failure earlier this month but then Jill Stein’s recount/fundraiser pulled them back in. That’s the basic message of a Politico story published Monday afternoon. Clinton insiders claim no one close to the former candidate believes the recount will amount to anything, they just feel obligated to see it through:

There’s no push to have Clinton say anything public about the recount — or even for anyone on the campaign side to weigh in beyond occasional blog posts and tweets from campaign lawyer Marc Elias.

The election, they know, is over.

“Recounting votes is as American as apple pie. There’s nothing wrong with the effort, but it’s not somewhere where I would put the political energy of my groups, and I’m not,” said David Brock, a Clinton ally whose network of Democratic political firms supported the nominee’s White House bid.

Not mentioned as a possible reason Brock wouldn’t want his “network” to focus on the recount: the glaring hypocrisy. Right up until election day, Brock’s Media Matters was harping on Trump’s refusal to say he would accept the results of the election. A month ago the site was highlighting the shock of progressive journalist at the fact that Trump wouldn’t agree to concede to Hillary in advance. Even for the hacks at Media Matters it would be hard to reverse course now and defend Hillary’s involvement in a last minute recount.

Speaking of Hillary’s involvement, the obvious question, about how the Stein recount effort got started, only gets mentioned in passing. The author says Stein’s decision to pursue the recounts in 3 key swing states stemmed from conversation the Clinton camp was having with outside experts:

A group of top aides that includes Elias and former campaign chairman John Podesta has listened when credible observers come forth with theories or reason to question the results — such as the call with a cadre of academics that eventually led to Stein’s push. But the Democrats who made up Clinton’s campaign structure are now scattered all over the country, still picking up the pieces from her stunning loss and looking for their own next jobs while helping carve a new path forward for the party amid its latest soul-search…

they say they’d like to move on, if only Trump — and the small but loud minority of Democratic loyalists and donors who are still furious and dedicated to re-litigating the campaign’s failings – would let them.

Stein herself has since said that the reason for the recounts is that Hillary didn’t win as expected. At some point it would be nice to clarify if there was any communication between the Clinton camp and the Stein camp before the latter announced the recount effort. The tenor of the story, i.e. Clinton world is exasperated with Stein for putting them in this position, suggests they did not have a hand in it, but then Hillary and her people have been known to lie.