A hidden evil is set to hand the GOP a shock win — and America is blind to it

Before the 2024 election, I sat at my desk and confidently wrote a column minimizing Elon Musk’s political footprint, zeroing in on his ground-game spending in my home state of Pennsylvania.I looked at the eye-popping numbers being thrown around by his newly minted America PAC and fell back on the rules of politics. There is a sharp point of diminishing returns for late-stage political spending. Prior to his infusion of cash, I also heard from several operatives on the ground who said their informal polling and canvassing indicated Harris would win.After a certain threshold, flooding the airwaves with television ads, filling mailboxes with glossy flyers and going door-to-door don’t move the needle.As a result, I dismissed the Trump campaign’s reliance on Musk’s America PAC, arguing that the promised canvassers “never materialized” in Western Pennsylvania. Subsequent post-election analysis proved my skepticism wrong.Musk’s $170-plus-million ground-game investment was designed to mobilize low-propensity voters....