Clark Hansbarger, meanwhile, said he saw the Trump win coming from a mile away. “I kept telling all of my liberal friends, and they would just laugh at me. They thought no way,” he said. Hansbarger then chuckles and admits he, too, is a liberal. “But, look, I travel a lot. When Trump spoke about carnage in his inaugural address, I’ve seen exactly what he meant all over the country,” he said.

Johnson begins to play his trumpet again, then stops. “I guess I’ll vote,” he admits. “But honestly I am sick of both parties . . . and I am not voting straight ticket, that is for sure.”

Certainly the Democrats are the ones with the most to lose. The party has had a year to craft the perfect message offering voters an alternative to the Republicans in power. Have they succeeded? Maybe. If not, the rejection could be almost as bad as the pain they were dealt nationally last year. Once again, a race easily within their grasp could slip through their fingers because they failed to excite their base.