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Concord, New Hampshire: When Bernie Sanders took to the dais to accept his thumping victory in the New Hampshire primary, some of his young volunteers in the audience were simply overcome.
One young woman sobbed and sobbed as her companions took turns hugging her. Young men embraced and stomped thunderously in unison.
"We don't need no Super PAC! Bernie Sanders has our back!" they chanted, celebrating Sanders' rejection of privately funded Political Action Committees.
Sanders, the democratic socialist who had just stormed to victory by a projected margin of at least 20 percentage points, noted the enthusiasm and immediately sought to weaponise it.
The electorate was "inflamed and aroused" by his campaign, he said, without blushing.
This was the sort of enthusiasm that was needed secure victory in the coming presidential election, he said.
It is not hard to see how he is generating such enthusiasm, particularly among young people who have so far overwhelmingly rejected Hillary Clinton.
He speaks in absolutes. He calls not for change or reform, but for a revolution to overturn the very real inequities in American political and economic life.
In the face of his surge, Clinton has been forced to fight awkwardly on Sanders' battlefield.
In her concession speech on Tuesday night, she promised action on a litany of issues that Sanders has raised, from campaign finance reform to tougher regulation of Wall Street.
"Now, people - people have every right to be angry. But they're also hungry. They're hungry for solutions. What are we going to do? What is the best way to change people's lives so we can all grow together? Who is the best change-maker?" she said on Monday night, perhaps presuming that her long record in public life would speak for itself.
Her basic argument is that her more moderate reform agenda has more chance of succeeding.
Her message is: What he said, but a little less.
Even she seemed to see that it had failed in New Hampshire.
"I know I have some work to do, particularly with young people," she said as Sanders' young crowd stomped and cheered before her image on the TV screens, "but I will repeat again what I have said this week. Even if they are not supporting me now, I support them."
In the Sanders crowd, 53-year-old Diane Watson was unimpressed.
"I think she has started saying what she is saying because of Bernie's popularity," she said. "You can't take $600,000 speaking fees in Goldman Sachs and then turn around and say you are going to regulate them."
As chastened as Clinton might be, and as invigorated as Bernie's revolutionaries are, she is still favoured to win the nomination, and appears certain to win in the coming states of South Carolina and Nevada and in most of the 15 states to vote on "Super Tuesday" on March 1, states where her deep support among minority voters will come into play.
New Hampshire Republicans also rejected their own party elders, giving Donald Trump a margin of at least 16 percentage points over his nearest rival, Ohio governor John Kasich, who secured around 16 per cent.
Texas senator Ted Cruz was third with 11.5 percent as counting continued late on Monday night.
This was the worst possible result for the Republican establishment. GOP elders know that Trump is barely even a conservative, let alone a Republican, and they do not believe he can win a presidential election.
Many feel they cannot work with Cruz, who has campaigned more against Republicans than Democrats since he was elected to the Senate as a member of the Tea Party insurgency.
There had been hopes in the party that Florida senator Marco Rubio might continue the momentum he began with his strong second place in Iowa and prove to be viable establishment alternative to the outsiders. But Rubio choked in a disastrous debate performance on Saturday night (which he apologised to supporters for in an awkward speech after polls closed) and slipped back into fifth place behind former Florida governor Jeb Bush.
Kasich now will be able to claim, for a time, to be the most viable alternative to Trump and Cruz, but his campaign is poor and lacks deep infrastructure in South Carolina.
Rubio, Bush and Cruz all remain in striking distance. But the split vote between second-tier Republican candidates works to Trump's considerable advantage.
He appeared before his own cheering audience in Manchester, New Hampshire, to make what, in his repertoire, passes for a gracious speech.
"We have to thank the candidates because they really ran - we have some very talented people," he said in that breezy way of his, at once barely coherent but oddly effective.
"And to be victorious against some of these people, even if it's for one week, but believe me, it's going to be for many of weeks, OK? They really are terrific."
He again boasted that he would build a wall across the Mexican border, before returning to his key campaign theme.
"We are going to make our country so strong. We are going to start winning again. As a country ... we don't win with anything. We are going to start winning again and we're going to win so much, you are going to be so happy, we are going to make America so great again, maybe greater than ever before.
"I love you all."
