“But that can’t happen!” Delaney says.

It’s quickly evident that Delaney can’t get this voter, but courtesy dictates that he now listen politely while the man talks about how he wants to fix up the shed across the road.

Read: John Delaney is playing the long game

After that, Delaney’s small caravan, a big blue-and-red bus trailed by a car, rolls on. No one is home at the next two houses. When a woman pulls into the driveway of the second house, Delaney’s campaign manager tries to talk to her, but she walks in the back door and doesn’t come out again. Up a hill and around a corner is another house that the campaign staff have identified as belonging to a Democratic voter. An old man opens the door. He says he’s recovering from eye surgery but that he doesn’t like Donald Trump and is happy to talk. Finally—a prospect! He says the main thing he’s looking for in a candidate is honesty. Delaney makes his pitch, but the man is soon trying to wrap up the conversation. “Hope you do well,” the man says. Delaney invites him to a free dinner that the campaign is hosting the next town over. The man just smiles noncommittally.

At this late stage of a very long presidential campaign that has by any conventional measure been remarkably unsuccessful, this actually counts as a pretty good hour for Delaney. How, I asked him as he walked away from the old man’s house, does he keep his head up?

“I’m disappointed it hasn’t gone better, but I think it’s a privilege to do this,” he said. “I meet people who are really struggling. And I realize, you know, I have really no problems. And the opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives is—what better way to spend my time?”

A successful businessman and former representative from Maryland, Delaney could be spending his time on pretty much anything else. Or anywhere else. Like Fiji. Or at least Florida. Or lifting weights, which he likes to show off that he does. He’s not a billionaire, but public estimates tend to put his wealth in the high hundreds of millions. But instead of relaxing on a beach, he’s sitting on a ratty recliner draped with a faded afghan, riding around on a bus with his name on it to meet with small groups in small towns, insisting that he’s the only one talking about what they care about.

Running for president, even when it’s going well, requires a level of delusion. Yet, after two and a half years and $10 million of his own money (and 44 trips and counting to Iowa), Delaney’s delusion has been replaced by a kind of stoic acceptance that approaches Zen.*

“My incredibly supportive wife even gets more frustrated than I do about this,” he said. “I feel like I’ve changed the debate on a couple of issues, mostly health care. I think I went on the debate stage twice and took down Medicare for All, which deserved to be taken down.” At the July Democratic debate, in Detroit, he went hard after Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders for what he called their “impossible promises” and “fairy-tale economics.” “And I think I did a huge service to the party. And I think people now realize that. That doesn’t mean that you get credit … Is that frustrating? Yes. Do I think I made a contribution? Yes.”