THE HOPE GOES ON FOREVER AND THE VIBES WILL NEVER DIE:
Few things were more inevitable than an Obama musical. What better way to commemorate the Hamilton presidency than with a vibes-drenched, profanity-laced sing-along for liberals who stopped being proud of their country on Nov. 8, 2016? That was the day Eli Bauman resolved to start writing what would become 44: The Musical, which began a limited run in Washington, D.C., last month after stints in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.
You might be surprised to learn that 44 was created by a white male Millennial nepo baby. Bauman is the son of Jon “Bowzer” Bauman—best known as the greaser frontman for doo-wop revival group Sha Na Na. His cousin, Eric Bauman, chaired the California Democratic Party until his resignation in 2018 due to sexual misconduct allegations.
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Bauman, who worked on the 2008 Obama campaign before going to journalism school, has described 44 as his “best answer” to an “inexplicable” question: How did we get from Obama—hope and change, soaring rhetoric, epic vibes—to Donald Trump?
There have been many attempts to answer this question. Very few have incorporated a live R&B band, a slutty Sarah Palin telling Katie Couric to “suck my d—,” and a racy scene in which Barack and Michelle Obama croon about being one another’s “freak dot gov” while making “White House love.”
In other words, 44 is a relatively good answer to the question of how we got from Obama to Trump. Certainly not in the way it was intended, but that’s how it goes sometimes. Obama and his swooning fans presumably envisioned a Lincolnesque figure who could inspire a nation with words. Now he’s just another celebrity we hear about every now and then. But nostalgia is a powerful drug. To revel in what could have been, irrespective of what actually was.
Incidentally, a subtext of the Spencer Pratt campaign is reminding Los Angelinos of their craziest voting choices over the past decade, even beyond the disastrous Karen Bass. The AI video of “Pratt Summer” is a sendup of one of Kamp Kamala’s stranger messaging choices in 2024, and he isn’t afraid to reference someone who benefited from 2008’s mass formation psychosis on the left:
Spencer Pratt just reminded everyone during a CBS interview that Barack Obama was a community organizer before becoming president 😭
“Why can Obama become a senator and then the president? He had no experience running the whole entire country, which is way bigger than L.A.”… pic.twitter.com/qAgiGWBrHQ
— Gina Milan (@ginamilan_) May 8, 2026
Which was one of the mile markers on the road to Trump:
