Evidence since 2021 shows some support for Sacks’s idea that Democrats in deep‑blue jurisdictions use Trump/MAGA branding against opponents, but it does not support his stronger claim that this would become the enduring playbook, displacing local‑governance issues.

Where the prediction fits reality (partially)

• In the 2021 California recall, Gavin Newsom explicitly framed the race as a fight against “Republicans and Trump supporters” and “Trumpism,” branding the recall as the “Republican recall” and warning that “Trumpism is still on the ballot in California.” (foxnews.com)
• In New York’s 2022 governor race—an overwhelmingly Democratic state—Kathy Hochul repeatedly tied Lee Zeldin to Trump and the “MAGA agenda,” calling his events a “MAGA Republican bus tour,” even as crime and public safety were the top voter concerns. (wamc.org)
• In the 2022 Los Angeles mayor’s race, Karen Bass’s campaign and an allied group ran ads linking Rick Caruso to Trump, emphasizing his long Republican history and portraying him as Trump‑aligned in a heavily Democratic city. (foxnews.com)
• In Chicago’s 2023 mayoral runoff, Brandon Johnson repeatedly portrayed Paul Vallas as effectively a Republican backed by donors who also supported Donald Trump and by “right‑wing extremists,” and his campaign was accused (by local GOP) of pushing fake “MAGA” Vallas signs. (chicago.suntimes.com)

These examples show that anti‑Trump / anti‑MAGA framing is indeed a recurring tactic used by progressive or mainstream Democratic candidates in blue jurisdictions, sometimes against opponents whose own records are more mixed or moderate than “Trumpist” branding suggests. That aligns with part of Sacks’s forecast.

Where the prediction fails

• In the same LA mayor’s race, mainstream coverage and the candidates’ debate focused overwhelmingly on local concerns—homelessness, crime, corruption, and housing—rather than treating Trump as the central issue. Bass’s closing message emphasized solving homelessness, reducing crime, and making housing affordable, not Trump. (latimes.com) This undercuts the claim that campaigns in such cities would primarily be about Trumpism rather than local governance.
• Chicago’s 2023 mayoral campaign was dominated by crime, schools, taxes, and policing. Johnson’s attacks on Vallas’s Republican/Trump ties were one line of attack layered onto a fundamentally local, crime‑and‑schools‑centered race, not a replacement for those issues. (en.wikipedia.org)
• In San Francisco, some of the emblematic contests in this period—the 2022 school‑board recall, the 2022 recall of progressive DA Chesa Boudin, and the 2025 recall of Supervisor Joel Engardio—have been framed primarily around school reopening, competence, crime, homelessness, and quality‑of‑life concerns. Trump is largely absent from the pro‑recall messaging; instead, voters are said to be reacting to perceived local mismanagement and safety problems. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Even where Trump/MAGA rhetoric appears (e.g., Newsom’s recall, Hochul vs. Zeldin), it operates alongside, not instead of, issues like COVID policy, abortion rights, guns, crime, and cost of living. The campaigns are not simply “always campaigning against Trump” while ignoring local or policy specifics.

Assessment

• Sacks predicted that from that point forward, progressive Democrats in jurisdictions they control would always campaign against Trump/Trumpism and would rely on branding any opponent as a Trumpist “whether they are or not,” effectively making that “the playbook from now on” instead of contesting local governance.
• The record through late 2025 shows a more mixed reality: anti‑Trump/MAGA branding is an important and recurrent tool, but major state and city races in blue areas still hinge largely on, and are publicly framed around, local performance—crime, homelessness, schools, housing, and corruption.
• Because we already see numerous high‑salience elections where local‑governance themes dominate and Trump plays a minor or secondary role, the strong version of his forecast (“they’re always going to campaign against Trump and Trumpism” rather than on local issues) has not materialized.

Given that, the fairest scoring is that the prediction, as stated, is wrong: it overstates the degree to which anti‑Trumpism has displaced local governance as the primary campaign frame in progressive‑run cities and states, even though elements of the behavior he described do occur regularly.