The cycle ended as it started: in pieces, with the left doing everything it could to demonize the center, the center supposedly complacently standing stock still, hoping no one would notice, and the right howling in madness. Somehow an election on June 2nd, tomorrow, would work it all out and fashion from "the will of the people" something resembling a masterpiece.

Michelangelo would be proud.

Or at least, Donald Trump would have something - the raw materials - to tweet about it at 3 in the morning on June 3rd.

What would happen?

What will happen?

Will anything happen?

InsiderNJ has driven around the state with jalopy-like dedication to find the underlying ailments out there in the country compressed into this cantankerous rustbelt reject otherwise known as New Jersey, hopeful of going eyeball to eyeball with America, only to crash land outside Delaney Hall on the murky, industrial side of the Ironbound surrounded by people in masks and gas masks screaming "F-ck you!" and "Oh, yeah? F-ck you!"

It's hard to see eye to eye under such conditions, but as for the elections, certainly three come to mind right away: CD-7, CD-12, and CD-2, each a separate theater bobbing up and down out there in the ocean like isolated messages wadded into bottles in a song by Sting.

First, seven.

My colleague Fred Snowflack has painstakingly documented the late influx of negative mail hurled at perceived frontrunner Rebecca Bennett, which supposedly has confused low information voters and created an opportunity for one of the other Democratic Primary contestants to sneak into the breach. Sources suspect that incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Kean, Jr., widely perceived as incapable at this point of manning the parapet of a district created for him with a fortification of 20k more registered Republicans than Democrats, would have an especially difficult time trying to ward off Bennett. Sources in both parties wonder if he would even run if Bennett wins tomorrow night. Of course, the backers of Tina Shah, Brian Varela and Michael Roth all object to that analysis, and Shah herself released a poll showing she would work over Kean with the same panache as Bennett or anyone else. But longtime watchers of the district wonder about that and see in Bennett the right kind of course correcting qualities appealing to a place essentially molded to fit a conservative worldview. If the bewildered Kean is helplessly trussed to Trump's twitter feed like an original Mayflower passenger in distress, Bennett comes across as a hardnosed damsel at the controls of a helicopter who can rescue the district. Simplistic? Certainly Roth-Shah-Varela think so, but let's see what happens. Bennett remains the frontrunner, certified by the attacks coming in from all sides, suggesting she could get Malinowskied but unlikely, given the same lane occupation by her opposition.

Then there's CD-12. If you ever thought you could hide from the traumas of the rest of the world, think again. Just as the cough in Timbuctoo rattles the doorframe in Rocky Hill, the nightmare collision of Israel and Gaza land in Central Jersey unceremoniously in time for an election a few candidates not long ago thought could be settled by a handful of Jersey guys in a backroom who couldn't find the Middle East on a map of the Middle East. There are a dozen candidates contending (for a Democratic seat now held by retiring U.S. Rep Bonnie Watson Coleman) and retired Army surgeon Adam Hamawy looks like the frontrunner, with East Brunswick Mayor Brad Cohen (another doctor, y trade) threatening to snatch away Hamay's stethoscope and blood pressure cuff. If you ever pay attention to Trump anymore, you might still hear him persistently shrieking derisively about Barack HUSSEIN Obama, one of our former presidents, as if "Hussein" is tantamount to treason. If you're someone in this country with a name that doesn't fade into wallpaper it comes out of someone's mouth, you're probably tired of the leader of the free world trying to turn the Statue of Liberty - with apologies to the great Lou Reed - into the Statue of Bigotry. That gives Hamawy an edge with some core supporters, that and the progressive wing of the party coming in here with Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Ro Khanna. Certainly, Hamawy's failure to convincingly subscribe to a two-state solution (as many of the other candidates have done), in addition to the Achilles Heel of his candidacy, namely his association long ago with the Blind Sheikh, have Cohen's core of supporters over in Middlesex, in places like Monroe and the Brunswicks, taking up strong offensive positions. Just as Hamawy has strong progressive reinforcements, Cohen has the Middlesex County Democratic Committee, one of the last legitimate county party organizations, coming in with heavier political firepower. There are others in the contest. Activist Sue Altman is running a real operation and steadied her campaign after it stepped on a banana peel at the starting gate. Somerset County Commissioner Director Shanel Robinson and attorney-entrepreneur Squire Servance have likewise distinguished themselves. Jay Vaingankar is a comer, Plainfield Mayor Adrian Mapp has guts, and Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds Jackson amassed the strongest record in the field of legislative accomplishment. In the end, those watching this donnybrook tomorrow will ascertain whether Hamawy can get his backers to the polls and amass sufficient support to press through the negative drumbeat or if someone - most people see Cohen as the person with the most obvious amassed resistance in a moderate, strongly pro-Israel lane with little interference in the Democratic Primary - can stop him.

As for CD-2, we rattled down to South Jersey but didn't get in there enough. Good race. Another Democratic Primary. The winner gets to take on incumbent Educated at Oxford, a veteran of the state department, Bayly Winder seems to have won the air war. But can he do enough on the ground? Cape May Mayor Zack Mullock has his backers convinced he can be the Rebecca Bennett of CD-2, that is to say the strongest most organic and authentic general election option. Civil rights attorney Tim Alexander disagrees, pointing out that he has better name ID than his rivals, from having previously run against Van Drew. Activist Terri Reese has street smarts. But does she have enough money in the end to compete with Winder and Mullock. Those two look to have the edge based on fundraising. It will come down to who wins the ground war tomorrow. Winder had a packed public schedule on the last weekend prior to Election Day.

When all of it shakes out, New Jersey will have a few winners and multiple losers, hurt feelings, no doubt, some heartbreak, certainly, and an ongoing state - Garden or otherwise, of agitation - in this case, that still must look into its own soul and find there gaping up through the post-industrial haze and the catatonic torments of cyberspace, more than a scared, lawless and sweaty face gaping from behind a mask.

It was volatile. This - incidentally - just in...