On the eve of the election, the veteran source said he loved the country but hated New Jersey politics.

Especially now, he admitted.

He said he went to the events for weeks and it was deadsville for incumbent U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and few seemed to care.

People make their own brands in politics.

But President Donald J. Trump kept inserting himself into the bloodstream, and that changed the game late, the source insisted.

That shook up the party apparatus and altered the mission, in his opinion.

“They wanted to weaken [Governor Phil] Murphy,” the source argued. “their thought was, ‘Menendez is weak, we can take Hugin out later’; but the main effort was to weaken Murphy as the titular head of the party. They wanted to be able to say, ‘Look at this guy, he can’t even protect a U.S. Senator.’

“But Trump made it impossible,” the source added. “Otherwise the story could reflect on them. You guys let a U.S. Senator go down. Honestly, I noticed this. A sea change. These guys know the organizations aren’t what they were. They understand that we will be held accountable in a primary, and if they didn’t take the bat to Trump, there could be hell to pay. They’re nervous.”

It was a veteran point of view, one that didn’t accommodate the fact it was, after all, Lisa McCormick who ran off the line against Menendez in the Democratic Primary and harvested nearly 40% of the vote; or Menendez’s own peculiar challenge as the survivor of a corruption trial.

But the source spoke as one alert to the potential of a primary split between Murphy and the party establishment amid a blame game, with Menendez symbolic of weakened power.

“Trump just became too much for everyone to bear,” the source said. “Trump made it impossible for these guys to take the walk they wanted to.”