Blame Hillary for doing jack-shit to energize the base.
Damn right! Like, so many people who could have gone out and voted in 2016, didn't. Why? Because Hillary campaigned on "I'm not Donald Trump." And clearly, that's not good enough. If you want people to vote for you, you don't campaign on "at least I'm not the other guy!".
And that's not discounting the shenanigans going on at the DNC in 2016. According to former DNC Chair Donna Brazile, essentially, at the end of Obama's term, the Democratic Party was broke. Flat broke and had debts to pay off. Hillary wanted to run for President. So, her people call up the DNC and say "We'll take care of your debts if you make Hillary the nominee." It was a Faustian bargain, as several key figures in the DNC were replaced with Clinton Foundation personnel. Essentially, they bought the whole DNC.