If Delta was smart, they could make one simple change to reduce the pain and lock in loyalty in a similar fashion to what AA does with their LPs:
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• Platinum automatically gets $5,000 MQD to start the next year
• Diamond automatically gets $10,000 MQD to start the next year

Think about it -- if you hit Diamond, you would get an automatic boost of $10,000 MQD to start the next year. That would be a strong incentive to stay in the Delta ecosystem, and make the $35,000 MQD requirement for Diamond a more modest $25,000 MQD, and not a huge increase over the current $20K. It would also make you strongly not want to lose Diamond status after achieving it since you'd lose the $10,000 MQD to start the year. Similar logic would apply for Platinum. - $5,000 MQD to start would make future re-qualification $13K vs the current $12K, and likewise create a strong incentive not to lose your Platinum status or else lose the $5,000 MQD to start the next year. AA does something similar with LP where if you have higher status, it is easier to re-qualify, and you don't want to lose that advantage.Giving Diamond/Platinum starting MQDs would function in a similar fashion to reward and lock customers in.

Maybe this is what they have in mind for future Platinum/Diamond enhancements. Just speculating, but I think something like this would make a lot of sense.