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A prediction: America, and the world, will miss the Obamas.

While we wish new President Donald J. Trump and his family well, we will miss the calm and serious stewardship, and dignity, that Barack and Michelle Obama brought to the White House.

Sure, there's plenty of room for disagreement on things like our degree of involvement in Syria, the details of Obama's signature Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare, his arms-length relationship with Congress and lots more. But on balance the good of the Obamas' tenure far outweighed the not-so-good.

While Obama helped almost 20 million Americans without health insurance to get it, that battle early in his tenure also helped fuel the discontent that cost the Democrats control of the House and Senate, 13 additional governorships, and more than 900 state legislative seats.

Obama, in fact, has made it part of his post-presidential plan to help rebuild the party, starting with attempts to temper the partisan gerrymandering by state legislators that has helped fuel gridlock in Congress by drawing districts designed to help the party in power.

As he left office, Obama indicated he's most likely done with politics as a candidate though he left room to change his mind if he sees institutional unfairness taking hold.

"There's a difference between that normal functioning of politics and certain issues or certain moments where I think our core values may be at stake," he told reporters at his final press conference.

"I put in that category if I saw systematic discrimination being ratified in some fashion," Obama said. "I put in that category explicit or functional obstacles to people being able to vote, to exercise their franchise.

"I'd put in that category institutional efforts to silence dissent or the press," he said. "And for me at least, I would put in that category efforts to round up kids who have grown up here and for all practical purposes are American kids and send them someplace else, when they love this country."

Indivisible: Progressive Democrats should copy tea party ... A game plan on how progressives can influence Congress should learn from the tea party's blooming back in 2009, according to former congressional staffers.

Three of them, all former staffers for Democratic U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Austin, decided to channel their disappointment at the election of Donald Trump as president by copying the tea party's grassroots effort to confront Barack Obama.

The three former Doggett staffers are Ezra Levin, Sarah Dohl, and Jeremy Haile, plus Levin's wife Leah Greenberg, another former congressional staffer.

They personally witnessed and experienced the impact tea party advocates made on influencing their local members of Congress on opposing Obama's health care initiative.

The effort's name Indivisible, Levin told the Austin American-Statesman, was suggested by his wife Greenberg.

"She said, 'Hey, what do you think of Indivisible?' And immediately it felt right," Levin said. "We have to treat an attack on one as an attack on all."

In a column in The New York Times just after New Year's Day, Levin, Greenberg and another former congressional staffer, Angel Padillajan, outlined the tactics tea party advocates used to try to influence members of congress in their home districts.

"In Austin and in congressional districts across the country the tea partyers chanted what became their battle cry: 'Just say no!'

"Their tactics weren't fancy: They just showed up on their own home turf and they just said no.

Here's the crazy thing: It worked," the former staffers wrote.

"The tea party's ideas were wrong, and their often racist rhetoric and physical threats were unacceptable. But they understood how to wield political power and made two critical strategic decisions. First, they organized locally, focusing on their own members of Congress. Second, they played defense, sticking together to aggressively resist anything with President Obama's support."

Through the Times and other news coverage, Indivisible has rapidly gained national attention. The former staffers say they have been stunned at how their ideas have taken off, with thousands of local groups organizing almost immediately.

Their website had more than 7 million hits by late last week, and they are getting feedback that the movement already has well more than 100,000 followers and several thousand local organizations.

It will be interesting to see if this effort takes hold, and what impact it may have both on Congress during the next two years and in the 2018 mid-term election.

Dave McNeely, an Austin-based columnist who covers Texas politics, appears Thursday.

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McNeely: Adios, Obamas; Indivisible copies tea party - Longview ... - Longview News-Journal