I hate to bring up old news. However, in this case it was unavoidable. My family and I were on vacation last week and we were on a strict no politics policy. Even with that policy a little slips in here and there and even the most magical place on Earth can’t keep everything out. We watched with glee as hundreds of people left the latest Trump rally early.

As one can imagine, there are hundreds of things that run through your head in moments like these. Most of these things are of the fantasy variety. All of us has that fantasy where a friend, colleague, or family member abandons their delusions and admits that we were right all along. Who knows, maybe this was the case for some of these folks. Sadly, I don’t think that’s the case for most.

As a kid, I remember watching a rerun of a “Wild West” episode. A deformed man inserted himself as the power behind the throne. He propped up another man to be the governor of Arizona, so he could wreak his havoc on an unsuspecting public. When his front man faltered he tried to pick up the mantle. No one was buying. The message was the same, but they just couldn’t accept the messenger.

The secret behind Trump was always that he was an empty vessel. He simply said the things that everyone was thinking and said it out loud so they didn’t have to. Those that walked away said all the right things. They were bored. They had bad seats and couldn’t hear or see well. They had heard it all before. The reality is that they suddenly saw a deformed man. He had become the loser that he had accused John McCain and Mitt Romney of being. If you search the interwebs for videos you can actually hear Trump’s voice as they were walking away. It was very reminiscent of that Wild West episode.

This is both good news and bad news. The good news is that no one is really afraid of Trump. They are afraid of Trump’s base. If his base is leaving then everyone will eventually abandon him as well. The bad news is that they are bored of the messenger and not the message itself. They see him as a loser. They don’t see the message as a loser. So, they lay waiting for the next charismatic jackass to make his or her way to the stage. Who knows who it could be this time.

Moments like these come with windows of opportunity. The window is often very slim and short. It involves finding a way to convince those that walked away that it is the message that is stale and not the messenger. The silver lining is that we don’t need most of them. A simple five percent shift in politics is huge in a national or statewide election. That’s really all we need. Many of these people are in a vulnerable place and if we alienate them now they will just search for the next shining star. Many of them will anyway. Some just need an excuse to champion the next buffoon so they don’t have to say these things themselves.