But it was Georgia, in this well-off, well-educated suburban district, where Democrats had focused their attention, in a much-hyped battle that attracted the hopes and donations of activists across the country. Though both Ossoff and Handel tried to avoid it, they were cast as proxies in the national partisan fight, with enough hype and money—more than $50 million, or nearly $100 for every potential voter—poured in to make it by far the most expensive House race in history.

It was, as a somber Ossoff had told the crowd when the ballroom was still full, “something much bigger than any of us.”

Her hopes dashed, a dejected Hazel Hunt made her way through the crowd carrying a canvas on which she’d painted Ossoff’s portrait over an original poem, a limerick that began “There once was a country in pain.” Hunt’s green eyes were moist. “It’s very sad,” the middle-aged drama teacher told me. “It tells me that despite all the wonderful people I met in this campaign, there are still a lot of people who support the meanness and ignorance and tearing each other apart” that she saw Trump as representing.

Still, Hunt vowed to fight on, as did most of the others gathered there. They pointed out how much closer the race had been than that of the previous Republican congressman, Tom Price,who beat a token opponent by more than 20 points in November, then left Congress to serve as Health and Human Services secretary. The mood was more defiant than dejected.

“With all our hard work, I’m disappointed we didn’t make a bigger dent, but we’re not going back,” said Jennifer Orlow, who stood near the back of the room with three other women in matching blue Ossoff shirts. Orlow, a 45-year-old technology consultant, grew up here and cast every vote of her life in the Sixth District, which has been in Republican hands since 1979. “It has been a good nine months of disappointment for us, but we have to keep fighting,” she said.

They hoped to send one message to Washington; instead, they may have sent the opposite one—that the mass of American voters are in no hurry to deliver a rebuke to the chaos in Washington, and that Republican representatives still have wide leeway to pursue their policy objectives on issues like health care without losing or disheartening their base.

That is a tough pill to swallow for Democrats who have convinced themselves opposing Trump will bring them back from the brink of powerlessness. So far, they have cut into Republicans’ margins, but they have not yet figured out how to win, and moral victories get no votes in Congress. There was a latent fatalism in Ossoff’s parting words: “As darkness has crept across this planet,” he assured his supporters, they “have provided a beacon of hope for people in Georgia and for people around the world.”

Short of victory, hope would have to suffice.