THE US: Howard Dean had left the building to reinvent his political career elsewhere. Local supporters went home to dinner and, in the end, only the young shock troops of the insurgency were left in the hotel ballroom, wondering what to do next.
What they eventually decide could be more than a footnote. It is of vital interest to the Democratic party leadership, which always wanted to get rid of the awkward Vermont doctor but somehow bottle the political energy he had unleashed.
Yesterday, amid the trampled posters in Wisconsin, it was not clear whether that could be done. Few volunteers understood what a reshaped Dean movement would mean without the momentum of an active campaign to drive it.
The more experienced political hands were talking to other campaigns but, for the newcomers, transferring loyalty was not so easy.
"I entered this campaign for Howard Dean. It would have to be for a particular person I believed in," said Aaron Lavallee (24), who had left his well-paid job as an accountant last summer to work 14 hours a day on the Dean campaign.
The last night of the Deaniacs was a bitter-sweet affair. There were tearful hugs, talk of end-of-term parties and fond imaginings of a good night's sleep. But there was also disbelief that all the effort and the sense of reshaping politics would come to an end with a humiliating defeat in the snows of Wisconsin.
"For a lot of the first-timers who came to the campaign, this was a real shock," Mr Lavallee said.
He will have to consider whether to return to a regular job or stay in politics to keep the Dean legacy alive.
"I think most people here aren't sure," he said.
Some recovering Deaniacs said that dislike of the president would replace devotion to Dean as their motivation.
"I think a lot of people here are so anti-Bush that they'd join up with any campaign that could win," said Josh Bolton, a Wisconsin student wearing a "Generation Dean" T-shirt. But he added that he would probably wait until the nomination was sealed before signing on again as a volunteer.
Rob Davis faced a different quandary. Made redundant from his software job when the dotcom bubble burst, he had invested more than his time over the past year of campaigning.
He and a friend had put their savings into manufacturing "Deanie Babies" - 13cm beanbags decorated with a smiling cartoon figure of the former Vermont governor - and selling them at campaign events.
He didn't know what to do next. Making Kerry Babies or Edwards Babies did not have the same appeal. "Other campaigns are more of the same old business as usual," he said