The campaign that started in August when Kamala Harris, the least popular sitting vice president in American history, was installed as the Democrat presidential nominee and was “joyously” coronated at the Democrat National Convention, has been a presidential election like no other. With more than an estimated 75 million Americans having already voted, it’s now a matter of who has the best get-out-the-vote (GOTV) effort on the ground in as many as nine states. This includes the so-called swing states—Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, and most importantly, Pennsylvania—and what now appears to be two others in races that are razor thin, Virginia and New Hampshire.

Last week, we saw Joe Biden step on the closing message that his protegee was giving on the Ellipse, calling MAGA Trump supporters “garbage.” No amount of spin or apostrophes on the part of the White House communications team could walk this gaffe back. We all saw and heard what Biden, in an angry old man tirade, said. The Trump Team brilliantly played off Biden’s gaffe, first with Trump riding a garbage truck doing an impromptu press gaggle, then wearing an orange and yellow safety vest at the rally that followed. The White House Damage Control Team, led by Minister of Propaganda Karine Jean-Pierre, couldn’t contain the damage.

Considering all of the misguided statements made by Biden during this election cycle, why was this particular gaffe so damaging? First was the timing—it was committed at exactly the same time Kamala Harris was delivering her “seal the deal” speech on the Ellipse, a mere thousand feet from the White House. Biden might as well have opened a window and shouted it to her.

Second, Biden’s open resentment over being pushed out of his re-election bid and having Harris installed without any primary delegate votes was on full display, as he purposely stomped on her campaign in the most venal, petty, and vengeful way he could. If there was a more intentional way to torpedo the Harris campaign in the final hours of the election, we can’t think of one.

How will it land tonight, tomorrow, and likely in the weeks to come? Conventional wisdom says…

There is no conventional wisdom in this race. Predictions are literally all over the map. After being in the lead, albeit slightly, throughout most of the race, Trump took a clear yet small lead over Harris in all seven swing states, especially in the well-respected Atlas Intelligence Poll. Then over the weekend, on the basis of a single outlier poll in one of the non-swing states, Iowa, it appeared to many observers to have swung back in Harris’ favor.

This was due in part to a poll from the usually reliable Des Moines Register, the so-called “Gold Standard” Selzer Poll conducted by J. Ann Selzer. Selzer said after a last-week swing of more than 15 points, that Harris was now in the lead by three points in this reliable ruby-red state. This outlier poll, even after Joe Biden in a Hillary Clinton-like moment called half its population garbage, was now in play.

We don’t think so.

The fundamentals on the ground in Iowa are clearly not there. Yet the mockingbirds in the mainstream media, from MSDNC (we mean MSNBC), CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, analysts with Stage Four Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) like Jonathan Alter on last Friday’s 2Way livetream hosted by Mark Halperin, and countless other pundits, all repeated this obvious gaslighting attempt to sway the 100 remaining undecided voters nationally to vote for Harris, so they can be on the winning side.

Conversely, when talking about states now in play, we come to New Hampshire and Virginia.

First off, New Hampshire is a notoriously difficult state to poll and it has a traditional anti-incumbent bent. Recent polls have put the state as a toss-up, well within the margin of error. If this turns out to be true, and if it appears that Trump will win, it will likely be because of Biden calling half its state’s voters “garbage” that the metaphoric roosters will come home to roost.

It’s much the same in Virginia, maybe even more so. The state elected Republican Glenn Youngkin over a Hillary Clinton acolyte, Terry McAuliffe, in 2021. This came as something of an upset and since his election, Youngkin has built up a powerful machine in the state. Should the Trump-Vance ticket falter, Youngkin clearly has his eyes on the presidential level in 2028 and beyond.

And again, outside of the counties in Northern Virginia, with its preponderance of Democrat bureaucrats that work in the federal government, the rest of Virginia, with the exception of a few urban areas, is both Republican and Conservative. Joe Biden’s “garbage” comments won’t play well in those counties. Even more than New Hampshire, Virginia could flip red. If it does, Harris will have virtually no road to 270. The night will be a blowout.

As much as early results coming in from Pennsylvania that just started counting early ballots this morning, these three states—Iowa, Virginia, and New Hampshire—will give us an indication of how the race will play out going east to west. If Iowa swings to Harris, it’s going to be a long night for Republicans. If it’s really tight in Virginia and New Hampshire, or if Trump picks off one or both of the states, what happens in Pennsylvania could be almost anti-climactic.

(To see how 2020’s most accurate pollster sees it, download this fact sheet from Atlas Intelligence, taken over the weekend).

From west to east and south to north, saving Pennsylvania for last, here’s how we see it.

Nevada: No tax on tips will play well in Clark County due to its reliance on the hotel and hospitality business sector in Las Vegas. Even with Harris blatantly copying Trump on the issue, Nevadans are not going to be gaslighted into thinking their lives will be better under a cipher that cannot articulate any policy position without either stealing from Trump or issuing a word salad of meaningless platitudes.

Arizona: Trump had a consistent lead here in spite of the state allowing for non-citizen voting to stand. The question here is whether Trump can pull Kari Lake across the finish line. This is a real toss-up in a state that has seen a huge influx of California refugees who have probably taken their Democrat voting habits with them.

Georgia: Trump burying the hatchet with popular governor Brian Kemp will GOTV for Trump. Georgia could be up to a five percent win for Trump. If it is, and early results show this, it’s likely game over for Harris. If it swings to Harris, as it did for Biden in 2020, that can be big trouble for Trump.

North Carolina: After winning NC in both 2016 and 2020, and in the aftermath of Biden’s garbage comments, does anyone really believe that NC won’t vote for Trump a third time? The wild card here is its unpopular, scandal-plagued governor.

Wisconsin: We don’t have any idea of what will happen here, as polling has been notoriously unreliable. If it looks like Michigan will go red, Wisconsin will likely go too. But there is no guarantee; the ten electoral votes that are up for grabs are going to be awarded based on GOTV efforts and hopefully, the far-left Madison voting bloc will be demoralized enough to stay home on Election Night and watch reruns of 1,000-lb Sisters.

Michigan: In no state has the Harris campaign walked the electoral tightrope more than in Michigan. Michigan, this election year, should be reliably blue. But it’s not because of one specific group that Harris has been unsuccessful in pandering to: Arab-American and Muslim voters. This is especially true in Dearborn, the country’s only major Muslim-majority city.

Here, Trump has played his cards brilliantly. Even though he has a daughter who has converted to Judaism and has Jewish grandchildren, he has not offended this all-important voting bloc. Trump doesn’t need to win these voters to his side, which would be great. He just needs them to sit on their hands and stay away from the polls. Either way, it’s a lose-lose for Harris. Combining this component with upcoming layoffs in the auto industry, which have been officially delayed to December in Ford’s case due to the unpopular EV mandates that have been a disaster, we feel that Michigan will flip for Trump. Not only because of the Dearborn vote, but Governor Whitmer’s condescending attitude to Christians, specifically Roman Catholics, is going to be a problem for Harris.

And now we come to Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania: For weeks we’ve been told by the mainstream media that all roads to 270 drive through the Keystone State. And for the most part, that has been true. In Pennsylvania, since the joy has worn off of Harris’s installation as the Democrat candidate, Trump has maintained a small but consistent lead of around two points in the national polls.

Two things tell us this hasn’t changed. First, the obvious mistake of Harris selecting Tim Walz over the state’s popular governor, Josh Shapiro. More than anything she did in her campaign, not picking the popular Shapiro over the buffoonish Walz likely sealed her fate. How did her advisors let her make such an obvious mistake? One consideration is that Shapiro is Jewish. And that simply wouldn’t, on a national level but especially in Michigan, play well with Democrat voters. This decision was a calculated risk.

And the GOTV effort in Pennsylvania, led by activist Scott Pressler, has been outstanding. Here Republicans have not made the same mistake as in past election cycles, specifically not embracing early and mail-in voting.

As stated last month on the Megyn Kelly podcast, Pressler has lived in the state since September, coordinating the GOTV effort, and tonight we will see if it has paid off. While we will not likely know the actual results in Pennsylvania until Wednesday morning, as in 2020, if Trump maintains his two percent lead or expands it, then we will know that Pressler’s efforts were successful and no amount of Democrat shenanigans in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh will be able to turn the results in Harris’ favor.

Democrats and the Harris team clearly felt at the time of her decision to select Walz as her running mate that Pennsylvania was in the bag. They calculated Walz would help bolster her efforts in both Michigan and Wisconsin. But Walz has been such an embarrassment on the campaign trail that she’s likely regretted her decision. It came down to the decision of what was more important overall, Michigan or Pennsylvania. Clearly, they thought Michigan was in the larger scheme of things across all seven swing states.

Will she regret her decision? Let’s hope so.

In the end, much of this will not matter. The Harriz-Walz campaign was doomed from the start. It began with the palace coup executed by Democrat bosses to force out the duly elected nominee; it continued by installing the absolute worst candidate to face Donald Trump; and it concluded by orchestrating a vacuous, insulting campaign of “Joy” and “A New Way Forward” that leveraged voters’ fears over their quality of life that was decimated by the very same candidate and party responsible.

History will judge this election cycle as the most dishonest presidential campaign supported by the most deceitful legacy media we have seen in modern times. Watch how quickly this disaster gets memory-holed.

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Richard Truesdell is a former consumer electronics retail executive and automotive travel photojournalist. In the last 25 years, he has visited more than 35 countries on six continents. A former high school history teacher with a BA in Political Science from Waynesburg University, he is a lifelong Conservative moderate who has turned his thoughts and keyboard to political commentary and popular culture. A cross-section of his writings can be found here.

Keith Lehmann is a retired consumer electronics industry executive who has written extensively on technology, transportation, and international travel. Living in Southern California for over fifty years, he has first-hand exposure to societal and cultural happenings of the left and submits decidedly realism-based, Conservative viewpoints, much of which can be found on his Substack.