Just for fun during the presidential campaign, President Obama’s longtime former speechwriter Jon Favreau and three other Obama White House veterans — Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer and San Franciscan Tommy Vietor — produced a podcast series called “Keepin’ it 1600.”

Snarky, fiercely partisan and insightful, the California production blew up, with 400,000 listens to its mournful, self-flagellating, we-got-it-wrong day-after-the election episode.

Donald Trump’s election didn’t just surprise the mid-30s politicos, it made them rethink their next step and the role of the political punditry they often mocked. For days after the election, Vietor said people asked him, online and in person, “‘What should I be doing now?’ And I was frustrated that I didn’t have a good answer for them.”

On Monday, they will reveal their corner of what progressives are calling the resistance to Trump. Their next gig revolves around a simple credo: less punditry and more advocacy.

They’re leaving their West Coast consulting gigs to bootstrap a new venture, a media company called Crooked Media — it’s a nod to Trump’s sobriquet for the press. Their new podcast, “Pod Save America,” premieres Monday just in time for the East Coast afternoon commute.

It’s an early sign that at least a few leading progressives with Beltway pedigrees get the fact that dejected liberals want to do something — like be part of a resistance — instead of just fret about the political and policy changes Trump might wreak.

“We want to help,” the golden-voiced Favreau said. “As we look back at the podcast, if we want to be self-critical, it was too much punditry and prediction. We talked about what just happened instead of what should happen.”

It is also an early media response from Democrats on how Trump schooled them during their campaign. As Vietor said, Trump demonstrated that “if you’re solely filtering your message through the media, you’ve already lost. He has Breitbart and Twitter, and he’ll just swamp you. We need to do a better job of connecting directly and activating people.”

The three admit that Trump’s victory imbued them with a new dose of humility after the glory of Obama’s groundbreaking 2008 campaign and first term.

Favreau, whom Obama called his “mind reader” for his ability to craft sweeping speeches in the president’s voice, was on Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” list in 2009.

Lovett, who left the speech-writing team after three years, went to Hollywood, where he was co-producer of the short-lived sitcom “1600 Penn” and wrote for Aaron Sorkin’s HBO show “Newsroom.”

And Vietor departed the White House with Favreau after Obama’s first term for a lucrative consulting career.

A fourth “Keepin’ It 1600” and Obama White House alum, Pfeiffer, will also appear on the new podcast, but he’s keeping his day job at GoFundMe instead of joining Crooked Media.

The group is now looking to do something different, something with more meaning and impact.

Lovett, who peppers the podcast with one-liners and perhaps the worst fake Russian accent this side of Boris Badenov, said learning how listeners responded to their day-after the election episode — when “we were despondent, but open, honest and vulnerable and talked about all the things we got wrong” — moved him.

“There’s many horrible, horrible things to come out of Trump’s victory,” Lovett said. “But if there’s one kind of response that’s been kind of inspiring, it’s that people have started knitting themselves together. They’re reaching out to hear new ideas. Starting new ideas. Listening.”

The past few weeks have helped him and his colleagues “to be humble about our ability to change things and be less worried about being predictors — and more worried about being in the moment.”

As Vietor said: “I personally was too glib and too snarky, and I needed a dose of humility. I think it was good for me.”

How that humility translates into a media company is a work in progress. The name “Pod Save America” is sly admission that a podcast won’t save the nation. But it’s a place to start.

But this incarnation, which will be produced in Los Angeles, won’t be filled with their usual buddies-on-barstools political banter. Instead, they’ll bring in a variety of new voices. Artists, technologists, comedians, activists, students — people on the front lines of thinking differently in a Trump-led world. And yes, Favreau assures, it will keep its fun tone.

Being in California — where much of the intellectual and grassroots firepower of the resistance seems to be amassing — is a natural fit in the same way that the 2007-08 Obama campaign chose to headquarter in Chicago and not Washington, D.C.

“The best ideas are going to come from outside Washington,” Vietor said. “It’s good to remove yourself from the D.C. bubble. There’s really talented people everywhere who want to be involved, and we can help channel that energy.”

Next, they want to recruit a stable of other podcasters, start live-streaming video shows and include online written content — as well as call attention to the best journalism from elsewhere. Eventually, they want Crooked Media to be the place where young people instinctively turn to get their political news. They’ve talked with venture funders and, with their Obama and private-sector consulting connections, cash shouldn’t be tough to find, but for now they are self-funding and accepting advertising.

That way, “We can throw whatever s— up against the wall and see what sticks without having to worry about click-bait,” Vietor said. “I haven’t been as excited about anything I’ve done since I left the White House.”

Of course, they have in their back pocket the ultimate click-bait: a soon-to-be ex-president with some time on his hands. Favreau and Vietor spent last weekend in Washington with other Obama veterans at a reunion and farewell gathering. No doubt an open invitation was offered.

“If he wanted to talk to us,” Vietor said, “that would be the greatest thing to happen to us.”

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli

‘Pod Save America’

Download the podcast: https://art19.com/shows/pod-save-america