The president is headed to Tennessee, Oklahoma and Alabama, and I think the itinerary is more informative than anything he’ll say when he gets there. Three weeks ago a battleground Republican told reporters, more or less in these words, that he cannot come. So he’s going where nobody has to say it. He gets a full arena of people who like him, the party gets him nowhere near a competitive race, and both sides can call it a plan.

The catch is that the containment is geographic and the medium isn’t. A rally in Alabama becomes a clip, and the clip lands on the same phones in the same swing-district suburbs it would have reached from a stage in Pennsylvania. The candidates asking him to stay away are managing where he stands, and where he stands was never what voters were reacting to.

Michael Whatley, in North Carolina, is the one Senate Republican still sticking by him while the race looks shaky. That’s either loyalty or a bet that the base is the only part of the electorate he can still count on. From here I can’t tell which, and I suspect he can’t either.

Meanwhile, Alaskans told reporters they were dismayed by Mary Peltola’s treatment of her staff, and that it wouldn’t change their vote. I keep reading “dismayed but not moved” as a description of the whole season: people register the offense and the ballot doesn’t follow. Those two accounts used to be linked. Did anyone see them come apart?

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