Now it's the Trump party vs. the Anti-Trump party

After Donald Trump delivered his big shock of 2016 by winning the presidential election, even President Barack Obama -- Mr. "Hope and Change" himself -- began to sound to associates like he was losing his optimism about America's future.

So says Benjamin J. Rhodes, a close advisor through both of Obama's terms, in his new memoir, "The World as It Is," as reported by The New York Times, which obtained an advance copy.

"What if we were wrong?" he asked his aides who were riding with him in a motorcade in Lima, Peru, according to Rhodes, then Obama's deputy national security adviser. Obama's aides tried to reassure the president, Rhodes writes. He still would have gotten re-elected again if he could have run for a third term, they told him. He wouldn't make big mistakes, like fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton's campaign when it seemingly forgot to campaign in Michigan and Wisconsin. They talked about the long-term victory: The next generation had more in common with Obama than with Trump.

But Obama did not seem convinced. "Maybe we pushed too far," the president continued. "Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe."

What? After all the happy talk of a "post-racial society" that surrounded Obama's election, has tribalism triumphed? I understand his gloom. His legacy was in jeopardy now, after Clinton's defeat by a man who had treated Obama for most of the campaign as some sort of alien life form who didn't deserve the simple courtesy of having his American birth acknowledged.

"Sometimes I wonder whether I was 10 or 20 years too early," he said.

Well, who's to say? Nobody knew when he started his presidential campaign as to whether America was ready to elect an African-American president. It turned out that we were. Twice. But elections are only the first step to big change.

As one of the pundits who urged him to throw his hat in the ring after his 2004 debut on the national stage, I'm glad he didn't wait. After his national debut at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, his approval ratings soared past 80 percent. Approvals don't get much better than that. Besides, before Americans can take their next step in racial progress, somebody's got to get the ball rolling.

Still, even though he claims Chicago as his hometown, a town that gave us the expression. "Politics ain't beanbag," Obama apparently wasn't prepared for the brutal lies and paranoid conspiracy theories that were hurled his way.

Perhaps Obama could take some tips from former Speaker of the House John Boehner on how to have a happy retirement, even after the Trump incursion has devastated the Grand Old Party as Boehner -- and most of the rest of us -- knew it.

"There is no Republican Party," the former Ohio congressman said with a Bloody Mary in his hand, handed to him by his interviewer in a Q&A onstage at a policy conference in Mackinac Island, Mich. "There's a Trump party. The Republican Party is kinda taking a nap somewhere."

Boehner, who stepped down as speaker in 2015 and recently joined the board of a cannabis company, called Trump one of the "most unusual" people to be elected as U.S. president. Yet Boehner still defended the former reality TV star for enacting what Republicans say "by and large are really good things."

Indeed, from a GOP point of view, Trump is often crude, rude and unpredictable. He's a recent Republican but he still dances with the folks who brought him, and that can mean everything in politics. Even when he signs a tax cut that benefits the rich more than working stiffs, his voters stay loyal, judging by the polls and his rally crowds.

That's the political tribalism to which Obama alluded. In the tribe, issues take a back seat to which team you're on. It's working for Trump. The only Republicans criticizing him are those who aren't running for office again.

Boehner's right. The party of "Honest Abe" Lincoln has become the party of fabulist Trump, whose falsehoods in office now exceed 3,000, according to the Washington Post Fact Checker's count.

And Democrats have become the party of anti-Trumpers, fired-up and eager to vote against Trump -- as soon as they decide who to vote for.

========

(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)