Clinton decided to run with that. In a hacked message revealed by WikiLeaks, DNC staffers discussed how the Clinton campaign had made a strategic decision to try to decouple Trump from the rest of the GOP, calculating that the risks of normalizing Trump by making him seem like just another Republican outweighed the benefits of collateral damage Trump might to do other Republicans. Clinton dialed back her rhetoric. She began courting Republican endorsements. Former GOP officials who had decided to back her got prominent billing at the Democratic National Convention in July, which struck a patriotic, perhaps jingoistic pose that seemed custom-made to appeal to wavering conservatives.

That worked, to a degree. Dozens of Republicans, including former senators, congressmen, and cabinet members, announced they would back Clinton. A host of staunchly Republican newspapers endorsed her, in some cases making it their first Democratic endorsement in decades—or ever. But while Clinton has built her formidable lead, that hasn’t translated into a predicted Democratic landslide in the House and Senate.

On the Senate side, FiveThirtyEight gives a nearly three-in-four chance of Democratic control. The Upshot offers a more sober 60 percent chance. But there are peculiar results on the board. Clinton holds a solid lead in New Hampshire, but Democrat Maggie Hassan has been unable to break away from Senator Kelly Ayotte. Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey was thought to be one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the chamber, but he’s keeping the race close, too. (If Democrats had recruited stronger candidates, they might be doing better in the Ohio Senate race and winning in the North Carolina contest.)

The House side offers less hope for progressives. Although Democrats now hold a sizable lead on the generic ballot (i.e., “Would you vote for a Democrat or a Republican for U.S. House?”), their odds of actually winning the chamber remain slim, for reasons that include the big Republican edge now, gerrymandering, and Democrats being disadvantageously packed into urban districts.

So what are Democrats to do? Clinton’s overtures to Trump-hating Republicans have largely disappeared, and it’s reasonable to assume that they already achieved their maximum impact. But they haven’t been replaced by a coherent new strategy. That’s visible in a pair of stories Tuesday. Ruby Cramer and Nathaniel Meyersohn report on how Clinton seems determined to hold back on the GOP. Alex Seitz-Wald, meanwhile, reports that Clinton aides are plotting a more aggressive message. Any friction between these two storylines seems to indicate continued lack of agreement, not inaccurate reporting.

The man to watch here is Obama, because even as Clinton holds back the president is speaking more aggressively. But while some reports have portrayed this as a full return to the approach from spring, a close look at what Obama’s saying demonstrates that he’s attempting a sort of hybrid approach, both tying Republicans to Trump but also creating a certain amount of distance.