Barack Obama used to be confident America would survive Donald Trump. He’s not so sure anymore.

The 44th president can still draw a crowd of thousands or dial Gavin Newsom’s cell phone to strategize about the California governor’s redistricting push. But friends who talk to him say it’s become clear that eight years out of the White House, darkness and anxiety have crept in on Obama’s message of hope and change.

After deliberately stepping back during the Biden years — while remaining the party’s biggest fundraiser even then — Obama and his aides are reworking his longstanding strategy of minimizing his public presence to allow the next generation of Democrats to emerge. Trump’s moves to block Democrats from power since his return to the White House and his calls to indict or shut down liberal institutions might, Obama fears, deny that next generation the chance.

“The harm is so profound that this calls for both a different approach generally, and a different involvement specifically by President Obama,” said Eric Holder, the former attorney general who described the mindset of his longtime friend.

“If we are focused, if we’re willing to engage, if we are willing to do the work, the nation and our democracy can survive this,” Holder told CNN. “There will be damage done along the way — there’s no question about that. We won’t win every battle.”

Or as Obama tends to put it himself in private conversations, according to several who’ve spoken with him: “If you have convictions and they’re not being tested, then it’s just fashion.”

Hitting the campaign trail for moderate gubernatorial candidates, as Obama is scheduled to do in back-to-back stops on Saturday for Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, is the easy part for the former president.

It’s what to do every other day of the year, and each of the years to come, that he’s been struggling with, according to CNN’s conversati