How Status Quo Democrats Could Create Another Trump

A new study suggests Democrats’ broken promises won’t just cost them elections — they could fuel an even more dangerous MAGA backlash.

By David Sirota, The Lever

When I look back on all of my work over the last 30 years, one of the projects I’m most proud of is Meltdown, an audio series I did in 2021 with acclaimed director Alex Gibney that reveals the untold story of how Obama-era Democrats turning promises of economic hope and change into more of the same created the backlash conditions for the rise of Donald Trump.

It is a miracle Meltdown ever got made, because calling its tale “untold” is an understatement. The story of Obama’s 2008 victory concluding with Trump’s 2016 win involves a sequence of economic facts and events that have been suppressed, shadowbanned, memory-holed, and censored from America’s political conversation. This is particularly true in media outlets that serve liberals, who seek comfort in the idea that Trump is an anomaly rather than a symptom of something their own political party participated in creating.

Every now and again, there are attempts to warn about this perpetual doom loop. Gibney and I did so ourselves after Meltdown debuted in the pages of Rolling Stone, where we cautioned against Democrats coming into office promising big New Deal-style economic changes, then mostly delivering only for their big donors. We warned that such a bait-and-switch would result in the inevitable backlash from disillusioned voters who would ignore syrupy odes to restoring democratic “norms” and decide once again to vote for a Joker-style candidate like Trump promising to blow up the entire system.

The piece went viral, but the message went largely unheard amid Democratic politicians and pundits insinuating that voters were insufficiently grateful for Joe Biden’s allegedly wonderful economy.