WORCESTER — Massachusetts Democrats trooped into the DCU Center Saturday morning to formally kick off their statewide convention — and the photo of the floor went viral for all the wrong reasons.

Row after row of empty chairs. A scattering of attendees. A podium and an American flag waiting on speakers no one had come to hear. The replies were instant.

The first one out of the gate flagged the obvious — and pulled 34 likes for it.

Another user called the empty seats directly:

A third asked the question the rest of the timeline was already asking:

One reply zeroed in on the flag-and-songs moment the camera caught on the dais — the same imagery the party spent years calling “nationalist”:

And then there was the verdict, repeated under nearly every other reply:

This is the state Democratic Party’s annual statewide endorsement convention — the room where the bench gathers, the platform gets debated, and delegates do the work of formally nominating. It is, in theory, a flex of party muscle in the most Democratic state in America.

Massachusetts has eight Democrats in its nine-member congressional delegation. The governor, both senators, the attorney general, the auditor, the treasurer, and the secretary of state are all Democrats. Both legislative chambers are supermajority Democratic. The state party should, by any reasonable measure, be packing a Worcester arena.

What it packed was rows.

It is, in other words, the same lineup that has run the state for the last decade.

The chairs they were addressing? Mostly the empty ones.