I went to a No Kings rally in Farmington to listen. Nobody changed their mind about Trump. But something else happened, and it's worth talking about.

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"I'm not voting for Trump, I'll tell you."

She said it with a straight face. No smirk. No wink. She meant it.

"Ma'am," I said. "He's not on the ballot."

"Well, he acts like he is."

"But ma'am. He's not."

And then, finally, she told me the plan. "I'm just voting all row A."

Folks, I couldn't have written that exchange if I tried. And I didn't have to. That's a real conversation from a real No Kings protest in Farmington, Connecticut, and it tells you just about everything you need to know about where a lot of people's heads are at right now.

Let me back up.

I ended up at another one of these No Kings protests. I went on purpose. I wanted to try something a little different this time. Not to argue. Not to get a rise out of anybody for a clip. I wanted to walk up, shake a hand, and let people know, look, I'm listening. Tell me what you've got. Common ground, if there's any to be found.

And believe you me, I was saddened by what I saw.

I'll be honest with you, because that's the deal we have. These protests, as a political tool, are meaningless displays of people with a Saturday to burn. Signs calling the president a pedophile. Signs calling him a man who wears diapers. That's the message. That's the big idea. And it's coming from a crowd that threw every ounce of their credibility as voters behind the incontinent, teleprompter-reading 46th Commander in Chief. You don't get to spend four years telling me not to notice that, and then show up on a town green with a diaper sign. Pick a lane.

This was a small gathering. Mostly folks in their sixties. And they were there to fight for democracy. Well, really, to shout for democracy. Which is fine. It's a free country. But the conversation about democracy kind of evaporated the minute I reminded a few of them that we're a constitutional republic. You could see it. The word "republic" just landed on the grass and sat there. Nobody wanted to pick it up.

So a lot of my conversations never got off the ground. That's on both of us, maybe. But I kept trying.

Here's the thing. I didn't go to Farmington to talk about Washington. I went to talk about Hartford. Connecticut has an election for governor coming up. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3rd, and in-person early voting starts tomorrow, Monday, October 19th, and runs through Sunday, November 1st. That's real. That's on the calendar from the Secretary of the State's office. That's the thing that actually decides what your electric bill and your property tax look like next year.

So I walked up and asked, plain as day. "Hey, can I ask you a question about Connecticut's upcoming election for governor?"

"Well," they said, "this is about No Kings and early voting."

"Yes," I said. "Early voting. For governor. Right?"

And that's how I ended up talking to the woman who isn't voting for a man who isn't running. "He acts like he is." Think about that for a second. That's the whole game, right there. If you can convince people that every election is a referendum on one guy in Washington, they'll never look at who's actually on the ballot in their own state. They'll walk in, pull row A, and walk out, and never once ask what the people they just elected have done for them lately. That's not her fault alone. Somebody sold her that. Somebody sells it every single cycle.

Now, I don't want to leave you with the idea that everybody there was the same. They weren't. That's the part that surprised me.

I spoke with a few more people for quite a while. One man was a Democrat. A Democrat. And he hadn't come to protest Trump. He'd come to curse out the No Kings protesters. His beef? All the culture wars that, in his view, got Trump reelected. He told me he hates Trump. Didn't hide it. But he also told me he thought the war in Iran was a good thing.

So, a little off the beaten path. But you know what? I respect a guy who doesn't fit in a box. He's not reading off anybody's script. He's got his own views, they don't line up neatly, and he says them out loud anyway. More of that, please.

Then there was another man. We spoke the longest. He told me about his personal feelings for Trump, and let's just say he's not a fan. But he was very nice and great to talk to. We went back and forth, and we were respectful of each other's point of view the whole way. No name-calling. No talking over each other. Just two grown men disagreeing like grown men.

And here's what happened. After a bit, people started drifting over. A lot of them. They were engaged, they were eavesdropping, they wanted to hear how this was going to go. And nobody got angry. There was some shouting at the rally, sure, but minimal. Around us? Calm. People listening. Imagine that.

Now let me be straight with you. Not one of those people left with a changed mind about Trump. Not one. I didn't flip anybody, and I wasn't trying to. If you came to this column hoping for the big conversion story, I don't have it.

But I'll tell you what I do have.

They seemed to care about the idea of not hating their fellow man for voting for Trump. That came through. Not from everybody, but from enough. You could disagree with me about the president all day long, and a lot of those folks were still willing to say, okay, you're not a monster for the way you voted. I'm not a monster for the way I voted. We still live in the same town, shop at the same Stop and Shop, sit in the same traffic on 84.

That's a thread. And I want to pull on it.

Because the diaper signs don't do anything. The shouting doesn't do anything. Telling a woman in Farmington that every election is about Trump so she'll vote a straight line without looking, that doesn't do anything for her, either. What moved that crowd, even a little, was two people talking and a crowd leaning in to listen.

High hopes, maybe. I've been doing this long enough to know how it usually goes. But it's worth trying.

So here's my ask, and it goes both ways. Early voting opens tomorrow. Before you fill in that ballot, go look at who's actually on the ballot. Not who you're mad at. Who's running. And the next time you see somebody holding a sign you can't stand, walk over and ask them a question. Then shut up and listen to the answer.

Trump's not on the ballot, ma'am. Your neighbor is. Start there.

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