It all comes down to Pennsylvania.

That is not an exaggeration.

If Kamala Harris loses Pennsylvania, Donald Trump is the 47th president of the United States.

Now you could say the same about Michigan or Wisconsin, but it especially seems that a Democratic candidate should be able to carry the Keystone State.

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And that’s why, in my view, Kamala should have picked Josh Shapiro, its popular governor.

I have nothing against Tim Walz, of football coach fame, but I don’t see what he’s done for the ticket. There’s a reason the campaign hasn’t let him do any solo interviews – a stark contrast with JD Vance, who is constantly doing interviews and holding press conferences.

In fact, Vance now frequently takes reporters’ questions in front of supporters, who boo the journalists, sometimes even before they start speaking.

We’ll find out whether Walz can think on his feet when he faces off against Vance in tonight’s VP debate. The most generous thing I can say is that the Coach will be rusty.

Gov. Tim Walz speaks to his supporters at Grand Rapids Public Museum on Sept. 12. (Detroit Free Press/Adam Vander Kooy/USA Today Network via Imagn Images)

Let’s look at the latest numbers.

The Real Clear Politics average has Trump leading Harris by a miniscule margin, 48.1% to 47.9%, which of course is a statistical tie.

At 538, the micro-margin in Pennsylvania is flipped, with Harris averaging 47.9% and Trump at 47.1%, another tie.

Now imagine that Shapiro, who is more of a moderate liberal than the uber-progressive Walz, was the running mate. And let’s say Shapiro had brought in another 50,000 votes as the home-state guy. You can see where that would tip the balance.

Kamala didn’t pick Josh for two reasons. They had a rough conversation when she interviewed him, with the governor insisting on an influential role if he were to relinquish his current job. But so what? Presidents and their veeps often don’t see eye to eye. She preferred the image of Walz, hunter and fisherman, to the prospect of two East Coast lawyers.

But the more important reason is more troubling. Harris was under pressure from the anti-Israel faction in her party not to tap Shapiro, who is Jewish and a strong supporter of the Jewish state.

So the vice president effectively handed veto power to this minority faction, which basically backs the Hamas terrorists who would wipe out Israel, and would have faced a week or two of controversy as a result. I said at the time this would be a world-class mistake if she lost Pennsylvania.

An anti-Israel protester, in straw hat, interrupts Vice President Kamala Harris in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. (Charlie Creitz/Fox News)

The reason Harris has spent so much time in the Pittsburgh area is that the western end of the state is much more conservative than the eastern section anchored by Philadelphia. Her goal is to hold down Trump’s margin in a part of the state that he’ll easily win.

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One problem Harris faces right now is that she makes little news. By picking “friendly” interviewers, such as MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, who has trashed Trump as a danger to democracy, she avoids tough questions and followups. 

Visiting the Mexican border was a smart move, not just because Trump has a major lead on immigration, but because Harris broke into the news cycle, where images can count more than words, and attempted to position herself as tougher than Joe Biden on the issue.

Otherwise, I’m just hearing chunks of her stump speech in response to questions, starting with how her mother raised her. Repetition is important in politics, but if you don’t throw in a few new lines, the press is left without a headline.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a rally on Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Meanwhile, Trump over the weekend called Harris “mentally impaired,” saying Biden just got old but she was born that way. He also said Harris should be impeached, and maybe prosecuted, for the way she helped run the country.

Now that is classic Trump. By using over-the-top rhetoric, he sparks a media debate about whether he’s gone too far, and that debate revolves around the words “Kamala” and “mentally impaired.” 

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Harris has wisely not responded to every Trump jab. But remember, Trump benefits from negative coverage as much as positive coverage because he’s driving the news agenda.

Here’s a pool report from Harris at a West Coast political event over the weekend: “She then switched her remarks to talking about the need for comprehensive immigration reform. VP Harris remarks on the issue were very similar to her remarks in Arizona on Friday.” In other words, no news.

Think about this: Trump has been absolutely pummeled by a hostile press corps, is a twice-impeached convicted felon and carries the burden of Jan. 6. Harris has been riding an extraordinary wave of positive press, and yet she’s slipped slightly in the polls and is tied in Pennsylvania.

And there’s no question that if she loses there, the election is over.

FIRST ON FOX: The National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF) political action committee is stepping into Ohio’s U.S. Senate race with a seven-figure ad campaign targeting Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown, who has an F rating from the NRA on Second Amendment advocacy.

The 30-second TV ad, airing on cable networks from Oct. 1 until the election, urges voters to “Vote like your life depends on it” and positions Brown’s conservative opponent, Bernie Moreno, as a strong advocate for the Second Amendment.

The ad, which is part of a larger media blitz that includes digital ads, texting, direct mail and door-to-door canvassing, also slams “soft-on-crime politicians” like Brown for allegedly not defending gun owners’ rights, “even putting anti-gun judges on the bench.”

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“Sen. Brown has failed us,” the ad’s narrator says.

“This November, gun owners must act to preserve their rights,” said NRA-PVF Chair Randy Kozuch in a statement. “Soft-on-crime politicians like Sherrod Brown have made everyday life more dangerous for American communities but failed to protect gun owners and their right to defend themselves.”

Moreno and Brown are in a neck and neck battle for a crucial Senate seat as most polls indicate that their race falls within the margin of error.

Brown has also earned himself a progressive reputation among some critics.

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Bernie Moreno, Republican U.S. Senate candidate from Ohio (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images)

He has been criticized for supporting the Biden administration’s policies nearly 100% of the time, according to the Voteview database maintained by UCLA political scientists, but has bucked the administration on certain issues related to climate change. But his critics say he is more in line with the progressive “Green New Deal” than he is the oil and gas industry in Ohio.

Ohio is the second state the NRA-PVF has targeted this election cycle. Last month, the gun group went live on Montana’s airwaves with a massive push against vulnerable Democrat Sen. Jon Tester.

Fox News Digital’s Brian Flood and Julia Johnson contributed to this report.

Last weekend, Donald Trump delivered what even he admitted was a “dark” speech.

Beyond the usual nonsense about America ceasing to exist if he loses, he called immigrants here illegally “vile animals” and “monsters” who “will walk into your kitchen, they’ll cut your throat.” The supposed enemy of censorship said that the media, including Fox News, shouldn’t “be allowed” to cover Kamala Harris’ speech on immigration. He called Harris “mentally disabled.” And he mused that if police were allowed an hour of “real rough, nasty,” unrestrained violence against shoplifters, the problem would go away.

As strange as it sounds, Trump’s increasingly repugnant rhetoric is an effort to win over undecided voters.

This might seem like an odd thing to say given that pundits (including me) have said the presidential race is extremely close and that few undecided voters remain — and given that such voters are usually thought of as moderates who dislike extremist politics. That’s true. But there’s a difference between people who have decided to vote but aren’t sure for whom, and those who know which candidate they support but haven’t decided whether to vote at all.

It’s like the difference between a film buff who will definitely go to the movies this weekend but isn’t sure what to see, and someone who is interested in one movie but isn’t sure it’s worth the effort to go to the theater. Why not just wait for it to show up on Netflix?

It turns out that there are a lot more wait-for-Netflix voters than indecisive-film-buff voters.

Ron Brownstein wrote an illuminating exploration of all this for the Atlantic. Among campaign professionals, people who have to be convinced that they should back a specific candidate are called “persuadable voters.” Those who have to be motivated to vote at all are called “irregular voters.”

Trump’s apocalyptic rhetoric probably turns off most persuadable voters. But it may be just the ticket to move a subgroup of irregular voters.

Plenty of decent, knowledgeable people decline to vote regularly for various reasons, but most of the irregulars — especially those whom Trump and his boosters are hoping to motivate — are low-information voters. Most of what they hear about politics comes from social media “influencers” such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.

If you’re not normally inclined to vote, policy differences aren’t going to motivate you to do so. But being told America’s very existence depends on it might.

That’s precisely what Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter) and prominent Trump supporter, told his 200 million followers on Saturday. “Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election,” Musk wrote. “Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!”

Now, I think this is dangerous nonsense. But if you didn’t know that, it would be a pretty compelling reason to vote.

As Brownstein notes, the media are fairly obsessed with voters who swing from one party to another. We’ve seen countless focus groups and interviews with such people. But they’re a tiny fraction of potential voters compared with those who don’t normally vote at all.

Even in 2020, the highest-turnout national election in more than a century, a third of eligible voters — about 80 million people — stayed home. All else being equal, if Trump or Harris could disproportionately turn out even a tenth of such people, it would be enough for a landslide.

I don’t have a lot of respect or admiration for the sort of low-information voters who have to be duped into voting with apocalyptic and demonizing bilge. But I have greater contempt for the voters and especially the leaders who condone the strategy even though they know better. Let’s call them the “normies.”

Trump’s normie defenders in elected office and the media dismiss his irresponsible rhetoric and conspiracy theories as an unfortunate distraction. The closest they get to criticizing him for it is to say he should “stick to the issues.” But many contort themselves into suggesting that Trump has valid points.

As a result, Trump can take normie voters and politicians for granted because they’re cheap dates who will support him no matter what. This empowers him to expand his coalition to people motivated by his celebrations of bigotry, crudeness and violence.

The normies make up the majority of the electorate because they vote reliably. And because Trump can rely on so many of them to vote for him no matter what he says, it’s the normies who could make Trump’s grotesquerie a winning strategy.

@JonahDispatch