The president arrived in Colorado this week. Udall did not appear with him. “It bothers me a lot,” one liberal Coloradan told a reporter, as she took her place at an Obama rally. Maybe Udall couldn’t believe that he was in a close race with Republican Cory Gardner, a cherub-faced congressman whose brightest moment in the spotlight came when he asked Kathleen Sebelius to defend the “brosurance” health care ad campaign. But Udall’s fear and trembling gave Gardner a week of easy attack lines. In campaigning, as in facing down a bear in the wilderness, it has never been a good idea to broadcast weakness.

So, how should other Democrats behave toward the president? This election year presents them with the most unforgiving Senate map a party has faced in a generation. There are seven seats currently held by Democrats in states won by Mitt Romney in 2012. Republicans only need to win six of those races (and hold on elsewhere) to take the Senate. There are at most two states, Georgia and Kentucky, where Democrats think they have any chance of winning a Republican seat. Romney carried those states too. When asked if she wanted President Obama to stump for her, Kentucky’s Democratic star Alison Lundergan Grimes nonanswered that hers was a “race that’s one about putting the people of this state first.”

Please remember that Mark Udall’s tap dance happened in a state that Barack Obama actually won. Twice! The 2014 election is likely to give us many more moments of gut-wrenching agony and Democrats going all Apostle Peter on the president they universally supported when elected in 2008. Members of the White House political team will grit their teeth and ask low-level campaign staffers if, you know, it would be OK for the commander-in-chief to show up. They will be told to call back in a few days. Often, they will be told, “No thanks, but send money.”