For about a day, Donald Trump's calendar seemed to say something his aides would not. On Thursday it was reported that the president would skip rallies in Salinas, Kansas, and Dubuque, Iowa, and instead hold nearly twenty virtual events urging Republicans to vote on Tuesday. By Friday the cancellations had themselves been cancelled: Mr Trump will travel to both states on Sunday after all. The reversal matters because of where it happened.

In Kansas, Senator Roger Marshall is virtually tied in the polls with his Democratic challenger; in Iowa, so is Ashley Hinson. Neither contest would normally be considered competitive in a Republican-leaning state, and both are now essential if the party is to defend its narrow Senate majority. A decision to withdraw the president from precisely these places invited suspicion that his team saw him as an asset elsewhere, or perhaps as a liability here. The wider picture is not comforting for the White House.

Opposition parties usually do well in midterm elections, as voters punish whoever governs. On Friday the non-partisan Cook Political Report estimated that Democrats could win as many as 240 House seats, a firmer majority than it had previously forecast. Mr Trump responded in October with a tour of more than thirty states, promising at a Republican convention in Texas to visit some of them twice. Supporters see stamina and commitment; critics see a gruelling schedule that may be exposing the limits of one man's pulling power.