Biden did move ahead with large-scale student debt relief, but the marquee 2022 broad cancellation plan (up to $10k/$20k for most borrowers) was ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court in Biden v. Nebraska, so the full, one-time "broad bailout" that Sacks was reacting to never actually took effect.(en.wikipedia.org) The administration instead delivered roughly $180+ billion of more targeted forgiveness through existing and revised programs (PSLF fixes, income‑driven repayment adjustments, borrower‑defense settlements, disability discharges, etc.), which is politically salient but different from a one‑shot, everyone‑gets‑relief bailout.(investopedia.com)

On public opinion, multiple national polls in 2022 found that forgiving around $10k in student loans was either modestly popular or evenly split overall, not broadly unpopular. Economist/YouGov polling after Biden’s announcement showed 51% support vs. 39% opposition for canceling up to $10,000, with even 43% of people who never had student loans in favor.(today.yougov.com) Ipsos/NPR and other surveys likewise found slim majorities supporting limited forgiveness, with opposition rising mainly as the proposed amount grew.(ipsos.com) A Data for Progress survey reported that 60% of voters supported eliminating all or some student debt, including majority support even among voters who never had loans.(dataforprogress.org) While Republicans were strongly opposed and some non‑college voters did see it as unfair, a Georgia poll found that party identification was a better predictor of views on Biden’s plan than education or income—suggesting the main cleavage ran along partisan lines, not simply college vs. non‑college.(georgiarecorder.com) Overall, the polling record does not show clear, broad‑based backlash from non‑college, working‑class voters large enough to make the policy an obvious net political loser.

On actual electoral outcomes, Democrats slightly underperformed their 2018 and 2020 levels with non‑college/working‑class voters in the 2022 midterms, continuing a pre‑existing trend of working‑class drift toward the GOP. Exit‑poll and postelection analyses show that voters without college degrees favored Republicans (roughly 57–42 nationally), and Democrats’ share of non‑college voters fell back to around 43%, compared with higher shares in 2018 and 2020.(pewresearch.org) But these same analyses attribute the overall 2022 pattern mostly to turnout differences (older and more Republican‑leaning voters showing up at higher rates, younger and more Democratic‑leaning voters turning out less) and to salient issues like inflation and abortion, not directly to student debt relief.(washingtonpost.com) There is no strong quantitative evidence isolating student loan forgiveness as the cause of Democrats’ working‑class losses, and Democrats avoided the widely expected "red wave" despite having announced the plan.

Finally, the substance of the 2022 proposal also undercuts the specific "bailout of the woke professional class" frame. Academic analysis of the announced plan finds that, as designed (with Pell‑Grant bonuses and income caps), its benefits would have been concentrated more in lower‑ and middle‑income neighborhoods and disproportionately among Black and Hispanic borrowers—not primarily among affluent professionals.(direct.mit.edu) That doesn’t mean some working‑class non‑beneficiaries didn’t resent it, but it does mean the factual premise that this was mainly a giveaway to affluent elites at their expense is overstated.

Putting this together: (1) the exact broad bailout Sacks described never fully materialized due to court intervention; (2) opinion data show the actual plans were at least as popular as unpopular overall, including among many people without loans; and (3) while Democrats have continued to lose some non‑college working‑class support, there is no clear empirical link pinning that erosion specifically on loan forgiveness rather than on broader, long‑running trends and other 2022 issues. Because we cannot cleanly attribute measurable net political harm to student loan forgiveness alone, and because the predicted mechanism (a massive, enacted bailout producing broad working‑class taxpayer backlash) didn’t fully occur, the accuracy of Sacks’s prediction is ambiguous rather than clearly right or clearly wrong.